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Steam for Mac Now Live, Portal is Free Until May 24th
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Yes. I ran portal on a PC with a GeForce 5400 with 375mb of ram. HL2 had no chance.
Here's a full review of Steam for Mac.
"Lets face it, folks. Gaming on the Mac has sucked for a long, long time. Oh sure, Mac gamers get ports of Windows games here and there. But usually it takes forever for them to appear and, in some cases, they never do. Mac gaming has been a sad, sad story that has gone on for far too long. Well those days are over, thanks to the excellent folks at Valve.
Steam is Valves online gaming service and its just been released for the Mac (a Linux version is reportedly in the works too, so stay tuned). I couldnt wait to sit down with it and start playing some games. Frankly, Steam is just what the doctor ordered for Mac gamers!"
"Lets face it, folks. Gaming on the Mac has sucked for a long, long time. Oh sure, Mac gamers get ports of Windows games here and there. But usually it takes forever for them to appear and, in some cases, they never do. Mac gaming has been a sad, sad story that has gone on for far too long. Well those days are over, thanks to the excellent folks at Valve.
Steam is Valves online gaming service and its just been released for the Mac (a Linux version is reportedly in the works too, so stay tuned). I couldnt wait to sit down with it and start playing some games. Frankly, Steam is just what the doctor ordered for Mac gamers!"
Steam Servers to busy crap, really irritating.
Especially considering I have bought Portal, should be getting it! Yet to play a Steam game on Mac.
Especially considering I have bought Portal, should be getting it! Yet to play a Steam game on Mac.
I was really excited about Steam coming to mac, as I've only been a mac user for a few months, and the only bad thing about the move has been gaming (or lack of). When I saw that Portal was free, I was even happier about it. After downloading steam, and finally getting it to open, I was greeted with the error message below.
I am definitely connected to the internet (I'm posting this now). I'm assuming the problem is because I'm at a university hostel, and our internet is through the university network, which uses a proxy. I downloaded Authoxy about a month ago which fixed some problems with other applications. However Steam wont work either with Authoxy running or without it.
Does anyone know what I can do to get Steam working? I don't want to miss out on Portal for free
I am definitely connected to the internet (I'm posting this now). I'm assuming the problem is because I'm at a university hostel, and our internet is through the university network, which uses a proxy. I downloaded Authoxy about a month ago which fixed some problems with other applications. However Steam wont work either with Authoxy running or without it.
Does anyone know what I can do to get Steam working? I don't want to miss out on Portal for free
Attachments
I had this problem, but then I found you just had to leave it for ages (I mean ages, it took over an hour the first time, although now its only about 5 mins) and eventually it will appear and stop saying not responding. Although now that I can open it I can't log in anyway
I had this problem, but then I found you just had to leave it for ages (I mean ages, it took over an hour the first time, although now its only about 5 mins) and eventually it will appear and stop saying not responding. Although now that I can open it I can't log in anyway
good tip! works now.
update: so i got stuck again at the license agreement. lol. I'll wait...
Your system would run both Portal and Half Life 2 wonderfully ... on Windows 7 via Boot Camp.
Don't know if it's just steam dealing with the new load or the Mac client sucks; but my download speed on the Mac client blows - typically get 1-1.5 MB/sec on my PC; but on my Mac I haven't broken 300 kb/sec yet.
Well, Steam coming to the Mac platform is great news. Unfortunately, it's not without its bumps and bruises. Read on for my mini-review.
When Portal originally came out, I had the same computer I have now: an Apple Macbook Pro SR 2.2Ghz with 4gigs of ram and 128mb nVidia 8600 GS video card. I played the game on medium settings on a 1280x1024 external monitor while using Bootcamp and Windows XP. The game ran pretty silky. I never checked for frame rates but I remember the experience being pretty pleasant.
So when Portal was released for free on the new Steam for Mac platform, I had to try it out. I'm much too lazy to restart into Windows all the time just to play games! Surely, this is a godsend.
Well, not so fast. First thing's first: playing games on Windows means using DirectX, a proven and reliable gaming platform. Love it or hate it, it works pretty well. To run on a Mac, a game written in DirectX has to be re-written into OpenGL, an open-source gaming platform (also used on Linux). My experiences with OpenGL games is limited, but when comparing DirectX games to OpenGL games, OpenGL has always been the loser. I don't know any of the technical specifications, but just through my own personal experience (even when playing older OpenGL games on my old PC), OpenGL performs worse.
So the new Portal for Mac is written in OpenGL. And I've come to find the same problems I usually do with OpenGL games. On the Mac side, I was running everything on the lowest settings at a lower resolution (1024x768). Any time an open portal is visible in my character's view, the game slows to a chug. Not just portals, but it seems any particles or special effects just kill the system performance, even on low settings. I wouldn't say the game is unplayable, but it's definitely several steps down from what I experienced a few years ago. And this is the exact same computer!
One of the coolest effects in Portal is firing your portal gun, and being able to see through your fired portal the area you are about to enter into. Sometimes it's recursive and you can see yourself! Unfortunately, with the current graphics settings, all my portals are black in the center, showing nothing through them. This not only makes some parts of the game more difficult, it's a hugely disappointing pitfall in what was once a sweet graphical effect.
Keep in mind this was with a 128mb Laptop video card. Those of you with more video memory may have better experiences, but I can't say for sure. OpenGL shares a lot of the blame for poor performance, but maybe it's just a video RAM hog. I don't know. My MBP is definitely bottom-of-the-barrel for running Steam games on Mac (I don't believe integrated Intel graphics even works with Steam), but I still can't help but be disappointed. Maybe this is something that can be fixed with updates to Portal's game code, maybe not. All I know is that I'm not ready to give up Bootcamp yet.
When Portal originally came out, I had the same computer I have now: an Apple Macbook Pro SR 2.2Ghz with 4gigs of ram and 128mb nVidia 8600 GS video card. I played the game on medium settings on a 1280x1024 external monitor while using Bootcamp and Windows XP. The game ran pretty silky. I never checked for frame rates but I remember the experience being pretty pleasant.
So when Portal was released for free on the new Steam for Mac platform, I had to try it out. I'm much too lazy to restart into Windows all the time just to play games! Surely, this is a godsend.
Well, not so fast. First thing's first: playing games on Windows means using DirectX, a proven and reliable gaming platform. Love it or hate it, it works pretty well. To run on a Mac, a game written in DirectX has to be re-written into OpenGL, an open-source gaming platform (also used on Linux). My experiences with OpenGL games is limited, but when comparing DirectX games to OpenGL games, OpenGL has always been the loser. I don't know any of the technical specifications, but just through my own personal experience (even when playing older OpenGL games on my old PC), OpenGL performs worse.
So the new Portal for Mac is written in OpenGL. And I've come to find the same problems I usually do with OpenGL games. On the Mac side, I was running everything on the lowest settings at a lower resolution (1024x768). Any time an open portal is visible in my character's view, the game slows to a chug. Not just portals, but it seems any particles or special effects just kill the system performance, even on low settings. I wouldn't say the game is unplayable, but it's definitely several steps down from what I experienced a few years ago. And this is the exact same computer!
One of the coolest effects in Portal is firing your portal gun, and being able to see through your fired portal the area you are about to enter into. Sometimes it's recursive and you can see yourself! Unfortunately, with the current graphics settings, all my portals are black in the center, showing nothing through them. This not only makes some parts of the game more difficult, it's a hugely disappointing pitfall in what was once a sweet graphical effect.
Keep in mind this was with a 128mb Laptop video card. Those of you with more video memory may have better experiences, but I can't say for sure. OpenGL shares a lot of the blame for poor performance, but maybe it's just a video RAM hog. I don't know. My MBP is definitely bottom-of-the-barrel for running Steam games on Mac (I don't believe integrated Intel graphics even works with Steam), but I still can't help but be disappointed. Maybe this is something that can be fixed with updates to Portal's game code, maybe not. All I know is that I'm not ready to give up Bootcamp yet.
OpenGL vs DirectX
Here is an interesting article on OpenGL Vs DirectX. There seems to be much controversy surrounding the two. I figured some of you may like this article in argument for OpenGL.
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX
Here is an interesting article on OpenGL Vs DirectX. There seems to be much controversy surrounding the two. I figured some of you may like this article in argument for OpenGL.
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX
I'm getting similar numbers with my 8x2.26 12GB + 4890 1GB. I'm not sure if Valve sucks at coding, ATI sucks at drivers, or Apple sucks at OpenGL, or a combination thereof.
Very exciting, I am very happy that Steam is in OS X now!
As for problems running Portal or more reportedly TorchLight, I found that it was due to the downloads being corrupt, seemed like either 1. a bug, or 2. their servers were overburdened and sending fragmented or corrupt packets.
To solve the problem I had with TorchLight was simple, there wasn't anything technical to do, just right-click on TorchLight in the list, and select delete local content, then re-download. So far, all the problems I've had, had to do with a corrupt download. Deleting Local Content and downloading again solved the problem 100% of the time for me.
Games run nicely full/max settings in 1920x1080. Though honestly, seems like games run smoother "emulating directx with wine", than native with OpenGL. *shrugs*
As for problems running Portal or more reportedly TorchLight, I found that it was due to the downloads being corrupt, seemed like either 1. a bug, or 2. their servers were overburdened and sending fragmented or corrupt packets.
To solve the problem I had with TorchLight was simple, there wasn't anything technical to do, just right-click on TorchLight in the list, and select delete local content, then re-download. So far, all the problems I've had, had to do with a corrupt download. Deleting Local Content and downloading again solved the problem 100% of the time for me.
Games run nicely full/max settings in 1920x1080. Though honestly, seems like games run smoother "emulating directx with wine", than native with OpenGL. *shrugs*
keep in mind - on a mac, (afaik), your desktop is being composited using the video card and that's going to burn both texture memory and 3d performance. it's never going to run as fast as a direct x widget that isn't doing anything else at the same time.
if it's running really badly though, the first thing you should do is disable any anti aliasing.
if it's running really badly though, the first thing you should do is disable any anti aliasing.
Haven't checked all the graphics options or FPS, but, I'm running it on default settings apart from upping the resolution to native, and it seems to run really smoothly. No noticeable lag or stuttering. And the graphics look nice too.