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Will Return to Castle Wolfenstein run well on a new black MacBook?

Moo-Boo

Moo-Boo

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 24, 2004
109
0
Beerburrum, Queensland, Australia
My dear clever friends,

Has anyone tried playing RTCW on a new black or white MacBook? And, if they have, what was the experience like? Frustrating or pretty edifying? In the next couple of months (October actually) I need to purchase a MacBook or MacBook Pro. MacBook would be cheaper and lighter, not to mention happier with AirPort, but, if it won't play RTCW, I might have to stick with a MacBook Pro, either new or refurbished. I know it sounds silly, but RTCW is the best game I have played since the good old days of Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle.

Your wonderful advice, as always, is greatly appreciated.

Matt and the cat
 
Probably not - MacBooks are not all that good for 3D games, most people here would tell you that it's unplayable.
 
I don't know, but I have a suggestion.

Look around for benchmarks of the game with nVidia's 8400M (likely the lowest that they'll test, but if Intel's X3100 is marked you're in luck). The current MacBook will perform far worse than that. The next update to the MacBook should perform near the level of the 8400M.
 
Thank you so much for your wonderful advice. It seems that the MacBook, even with the bumped graphics quota, is still pretty deficient for playing RTCW. As for the new nVidia card, the upcoming MacBook could be dicey, too. I guess a refurbished MacBook Pro might fit the bill then.

Thank you all once again for taking the time to reply and for your sage advice. You have saved me from making a costly mistake.

God bless,

Matt and the cat
 
It ran okay on my Oct '06 MacBook (1.83GHz, 2GB RAM) graphic settings were set to minimum and it was relatively smooth with the occasional slow down.
 
It ran OK on my G4 550MHz TiBook and now runs fine on my 12" G4 1.5GHz.

Great game. I still play it and enjoy it so many years later. The single player campaign is ace.
 
Chundles said:
Probably not - MacBooks are not all that good for 3D games, most people here would tell you that it's unplayable.
Click to expand...

Sounds like non-sense to me.
I play World of Warcraft on a 2 year old macbook, with 2gb Ram. Runs perfectly, and for a game with 1000s of people playing with you at the same time, I still don't suffer from lag (I did when I only had 512mb Ram). Not only is TTCW 3 years older than WoW, its system requirements are far lower.

So I'd say ignore the above comment, and the game should run perfectly well, although best to have atleast 1gb Ram.
 
Chundles said:
Probably not - MacBooks are not all that good for 3D games, most people here would tell you that it's unplayable.
Click to expand...

Nonsense. Your giving the MacBook a horrible reputation.

You honestly are telling me that the MacBook isn't capable of running a game from 2001 with these kind of requirements?

RTCW Minimum Requirements said:
Pentium II 400 MHz
128 MB RAM
Windows 95/98/ ME/2000/ NT4/ XP
1100 MB hard drive space
3D hardware accelerator with 16mb vram with full OpenGL support
56.6 kbps modem for multiplayer
Click to expand...

MacBook Specs: http://www.apple.com/macbook/specs.html
 
tsice19 said:
Nonsense. Your giving the MacBook a horrible reputation.

You honestly are telling me that the MacBook isn't capable of running a game from 2001 with these kind of requirements?
Click to expand...

Amen, my friend. Well said. I haven't tried it, although Oni (remember that great game) runs pretty well on my 900 mhz iBook G4, so I think you're probably safe.
 
Have a 2.16 C2D Blackbook with 2GB RAM and it works fine. Don't worry. It's an old game. Works just fine. Just keep something underneath your lappie before u play. My legs get baked even with my fans going full blast! :D
 
Ah, maybe I'm not as doomed as I thought. Thank you for the welcome feedback, especially those intrepid souls who are playing RTCW on their MacBooks. This is very much food for thought. My brother wants me to buy a HD camcorder, but editing on the MacBook might not be optimal. I told him I can't afford a 17" MBP and a HD camcorder, it'd have to be a MacBook and camcorder if he shuts up. Food for thought indeed. Pity it didn't taste like chocolate or doughnuts.

Thanks again, God bless,

Matt and the cat
 
My brother wants me to buy a HD camcorder, but editing on the MacBook might not be optimal.
Click to expand...
Why not? The only differences between the MB and the MBP are:
a) graphics card
b) bunch of small features like backlit keyboard
None of these affect video editing performance. It only depends on the CPU, memory and hard drive, which means a MacBook with a 2.4 GHz processor, 2 GB of ram and a 250GB hard drive will perform EXACTLY the same as a MBP with identical specs.

It's funny how there's a general belief MacBooks Pro are somehow magically much more powerful.

Not to be off topic - RTCW will run very well if you're planning to run it in Windows. I wouldn't go playing the OS X version though, since it doesn't have Intel support and will be much slower because of Rosetta.

I find this also depends largely on people's demands. I've played some online FPS games in my time and I can't play RTCW through rosetta because of low FPS and OS X general mouse lagginess.

But on the other hand - I have friends who game much more casually and can enjoy a game at 20-30 FPS which is completely unplayable by my standards.
 
I agree the MacBook is pretty powerful and did impress me when I played with one a couple of years ago. But for HD editing, the graphics card might let it down. Plenty of RAM is obviously a crucial player in this technological ballet, and I have still much to learn. Integrated graphics are much better than they used to be, but for editing HD and playing RTCW, I am still undecided. As for playing RTCW on Windows, I want to keep far away from that as possible. I deal with the evil things at work, and it really is depressing. I bought my copy of RTCW in June 2005, the Mac version. It worked perfectly on the 2005 iMac I had, and even works pretty well on my old 1.25GHz eMac and MacBook Pro (2 years old now). Ah, I guess I will have to be patient and do my homework and just wait and see until September. I have to do two Apple exams between then and now...how much fun will that be?! Yes, exactly. No fun whatsoever!
Anyway, thank you for your contribution, I am thinking furiously.

God bless,

Matt and the cat
 
It's a common misconception that the graphics card is important in every application that has to do with graphics. This is only true for 3D applications. Photoshop, for example, doesn't have ANYTHING to do with the graphics card.

Video editing in the strictest terms (cutting and pasting recordings, adding music...) also doesn't rely on the graphics card, even when you're dealing with huge resolutions. Software like Final Cut Pro requires a dedicated graphics card because of different 3D effects (e.g. fancy fading) you apply to the video, NOT because the video you're editing is HD and as such more demanding to display.

Of course the 3D effects can be a very important of the video editing process, so don't get me wrong, I just wanted you to know it's not as simple of a problem as it may seem at first :D.
 
You are certainly very knowledgeable in this area...are you a FCP Master or professional videographer? What you have just added makes perfect sense, and is very logical. It just hadn't been pointed out to me before. It's still going to be tough to decide between the two, but at least the MacBook, through your recommendation, would be a neat little powerhouse for editing HD video. The next iteration due in September (or so I'm led to believe) will only be more powerful than the last. I will just have to be patient and wait and see.

But thanks for your terrific advice, I am indeed very grateful to you,

God bless,

Matt and the cat
 
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