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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.

People keep saying that and also that the problem is with Apple's graphic drivers in Mac OS X.

What I find strange is that for me, Call of Duty 4 and World of Warcraft run just as well in Mac OS X as in Windows.
Also I didn't see any performance problem with Torchlight on the Mac.

Portal on the other hand is quite sluggish on the Mac (although it seems the latest update did improve things).
You'd say Portal is a more demanding game than Call of Duty 4? I don't think so.

I can imagine there's a lot for Apple to take care of when it comes to the graphics drivers in Mac OS X, but it's obviously still possible to get game somewhat on par with Windows (FPS wise).
 
I've got something that may interest some people:

I got an email back from the steam dev team. The folder will be moving to /App Support/!

May of be some interest...
 
Not that I distrust you but post a screenshot of the email :D.

It's hardly something major to lie about to be honest, and no I won't be posting a screenshot.

Besides, the devs etc probably get annoyed when people email them and then make it public, I would to be honest.

Quote: "working here to move the content to Application Support"
 
Dorky question, probably already answered

But I didn't see it when I scanned the thread...

Installed PORTAL on my 2008 iMac. Can move with the ASDW keys, and look around with the mouse, but can't interact with anything. Is this a one button mouse problem? I'm also not hearing any sound, but it may be because I'm bumbling about inside my containment pod or whatever that is.
 
I've got something that may interest some people:

I got an email back from the steam dev team. The folder will be moving to /App Support/!

May of be some interest...

It should be user-definable. For those of use who know how to symlink I guess it is, but it should be easier for the typical user.
 
OK, I have a question. Probably a dumb one, but I have to ask.

I'm waiting for my new MacBook Pro to arrive, within a few days. When It arrives, I'll give Steam a try, download Portal, etc.

In the mean time, I've looked through the games, and found three that most interested me: Torchlight, World of Goo, and Osmos. I see that all three games can be bought directly from the maker. So, I'm wondering: What's the advantage of getting these through Valve, with Steam, instead of just getting them directly from the makers? What is the value that the middleman is bringing to the table?

Thanks.
 
OK, I have a question. Probably a dumb one, but I have to ask.

I'm waiting for my new MacBook Pro to arrive, within a few days. When It arrives, I'll give Steam a try, download Portal, etc.

In the mean time, I've looked through the games, and found three that most interested me: Torchlight, World of Goo, and Osmos. I see that all three games can be bought directly from the maker. So, I'm wondering: What's the advantage of getting these through Valve, with Steam, instead of just getting them directly from the makers? What is the value that the middleman is bringing to the table?

Thanks.

Nothing to be honest, I have world of goo anyway and I just added it to the steam window.

@grue, well I don't remember it being user definable in windows either? But it's alot of work for devs to make things userdefinable, and to be honest if your moving the folder your already an advanced enough user to use symlinks, probably best if we made them spend their time on more useful things like black hole portal fixes and performance eh? ;)
 
ok, am I the ONLY one that cant get this to work at ALL?! I try downloading it, it downloads, I place it in my app's folder, I open it, installs update, then crashes, EVERY TIME! Haven't even been able to run steam at all yet. I have tried rebooting, reinstalling, everything.

Any ideas?? Anyone else having same problem!?

Oh, and there isn't really a way to contact them either, so this whole "now on a mac" thing is crap.
 
ok, am I the ONLY one that cant get this to work at ALL?! I try downloading it, it downloads, I place it in my app's folder, I open it, installs update, then crashes, EVERY TIME! Haven't even been able to run steam at all yet. I have tried rebooting, reinstalling, everything.

Any ideas?? Anyone else having same problem!?

Oh, and there isn't really a way to contact them either, so this whole "now on a mac" thing is crap.

Are you on OS X 10.6.3?
 
Nothing to be honest, I have world of goo anyway and I just added it to the steam window.

@grue, well I don't remember it being user definable in windows either? But it's alot of work for devs to make things userdefinable, and to be honest if your moving the folder your already an advanced enough user to use symlinks, probably best if we made them spend their time on more useful things like black hole portal fixes and performance eh? ;)



Oh for sure, there are bigger things to worry about first, but they should fix that later. I've got it symlinked off to a different drive already anyway, but I like to bitch and moan about minor things a lot.
 
...I've looked through the games, and found three that most interested me: Torchlight, World of Goo, and Osmos. I see that all three games can be bought directly from the maker. So, I'm wondering: What's the advantage of getting these through Valve, with Steam, instead of just getting them directly from the makers? What is the value that the middleman is bringing to the table?

Thanks.

Nothing to be honest, I have world of goo anyway and I just added it to the steam window.

Thank you.

In that case – I still don't quite understand.

If the answer is "nothing", then why are so many people excited about Steam servers for Mac? People are saying "Hooray!" and proclaiming how this is one of the biggest things to happen in the Mac world in a long time, etc. There must be something more to it than "The middleman has arrived!" So, what am I missing?

Again, thank you for your patience.
 
People keep saying that and also that the problem is with Apple's graphic drivers in Mac OS X.

What I find strange is that for me, Call of Duty 4 and World of Warcraft run just as well in Mac OS X as in Windows.
Also I didn't see any performance problem with Torchlight on the Mac.

Portal on the other hand is quite sluggish on the Mac (although it seems the latest update did improve things).
You'd say Portal is a more demanding game than Call of Duty 4? I don't think so.

I can imagine there's a lot for Apple to take care of when it comes to the graphics drivers in Mac OS X, but it's obviously still possible to get game somewhat on par with Windows (FPS wise).

WoW was written initially for both PC and Mac. CoD4 is based on the ancient Quake3 engine so I would expect Portal to be on a par with that game. WoW and CoD were both written with OpenGL in mind. Portal was written with DirectX in mind. This isn't a very good excuse for the poor performance but it does explain why CoD4 runs as well as Portal.
 
In that case – I still don't quite understand.

If the answer is "nothing", then why are so many people excited about Steam servers for Mac? People are saying "Hooray!" and proclaiming how this is one of the biggest things to happen in the Mac world in along time, etc. There must be something more to it than "The middleman has arrived!" So, what am I missing?

Again, thank you for your patience.

Well, the game is the same, no matter where you buy it, but other than that it's easy to see the benefits. It's a platform that gives developers visibility, so they may be more interested now to port games on mac than before, and the users have a place to browse available games that they might have missed otherwise. They put on frequent special offers that let you buy single games or bundles at discounted price. And then there's the service, which gives you automatic patch updates, an online social network like the one you find on consoles, your games only in one place without multiple logins on different sites and licence keys to remember, the the option to download your game on any pc you want, while your savegames are saved on their servers and you don't have to move them from pc to pc. What's not to like? :D
 
Well, the game is the same, no matter where you buy it, but other than that it's easy to see the benefits. It's a platform that gives developers visibility, so they may be more interested now to port games on mac than before, and the users have a place to browse available games that they might have missed otherwise. They put on frequent special offers that let you buy single games or bundles at discounted price. And then there's the service, which gives you automatic patch updates, an online social network like the one you find on consoles, your games only in one place without multiple logins on different sites and licence keys to remember, the the option to download your game on any pc you want, while your savegames are saved on their servers and you don't have to move them from pc to pc. What's not to like? :D

Thank you, KinSlayer.

As for the benefits being "easy to see": perhaps "easy" if you are already familiar with the system, or if someone shows you what those benefits are. It's not so easy for someone on the outside to see, someone who has no familiarity with Steam, who knows nothing about it except for having heard "Steam is here; this is big".

But your answer is exactly the kind I was hoping for, giving a more concrete explanation, so that the benefits are now easier to see. I appreciate that.

Now that I better understand, I have to say that my initial impression is that none of those reasons make me feel compelled to patronize Steam. I'll give it a try, and see if I change my mind. At least, now, I know what to consider, in seeing if this is for me.

My impression is that I'd rather do things directly than through a mediator, and I'd rather have stuff local than in the "cloud". But we'll see.
 
Well I just got done playing through Portal and didn't have any issues as far as graphics performance was concerned, on a 9400m of all things. Maybe at my age, I care more about gameplay than graphics or something.
 
Thank you.

In that case – I still don't quite understand.

If the answer is "nothing", then why are so many people excited about Steam servers for Mac? People are saying "Hooray!" and proclaiming how this is one of the biggest things to happen in the Mac world in a long time, etc. There must be something more to it than "The middleman has arrived!" So, what am I missing?

Again, thank you for your patience.

It's more the steam games themselves.

World of Goo etc arn't made by steam. They are in these cases, middlemen.

Half-life, Portal, Left 4 Dead, Counterstrike, etc are "Valve" games (Who make steam).

All the fuss is about the valve games, anything else is just a bonus :p
 
It's more the steam games themselves.

World of Goo etc arn't made by steam. They are in these cases, middlemen.

Half-life, Portal, Left 4 Dead, Counterstrike, etc are "Valve" games (Who make steam).

All the fuss is about the valve games, anything else is just a bonus :p

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks. I didn't realize they were makers, as well as distributors.

I just looked up those games; first-person shooter games are not generally what I prefer, but I'll check them out on one of Steam's promotional free weekends, and see what I think.

Cheers.
 
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.

back in the late 1990's when DirectX first came out John Carmack was one of the last holdouts to use OpenGL. Almost every game was DirectX but he kept on using OGL for Quacke. Forgot when he switched over.

OpenGL was written as a workstation graphics API. DirectX was written for games. it also has a faster development cycle and adds new features as Nvidia and AMD add them to their cards
 
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