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Valve to release Half-Life 2 for Mac on Wednesday - Page 2

post #41 of 64
5/26/10 at 3:50am
Oh happy day. Add another reason for owning a Mac!
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post #42 of 64
5/26/10 at 5:31am
This is sweet, many years ago I got a bundle from steam which included all the HL series, Day of Defeat, and a bunch more, I just happened to have my old receipt where I purchased the pack, and they reactivated my account which had been disabled since I stopped using a PC and all the games are there...

The bundle included

Half Life
Half Life 2
HL2 Death Match
HL2 Lost Coast
HL and HL Deathmatch
Counterstrike
Day of Defeat

Waiting to download... life is good.!!!
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post #43 of 64
5/26/10 at 6:06am
HL2 = Source Engine and all the games that can be made with it.

I got Killing Floor last week, that's based on the Unreal Engine so all the games that are based on that will come.

It's not about the games it's about the game engines.

Now they run NATIVELY on a Mac

"The cobbler's children have no shoes", is a saying that applies a lot to companies who provide products and services. -KDarling on Google Search.

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"The cobbler's children have no shoes", is a saying that applies a lot to companies who provide products and services. -KDarling on Google Search.

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post #44 of 64
5/26/10 at 6:31am
I love HL2.. but I really am waiting on Team Fortress 2!!! Only reason I still own a PC.. once it gets released, hello Ebay!!
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post #45 of 64
5/26/10 at 6:51am
All I want is Left 4 Dead 2. I'll even settle for Left 4 Dead. Hopefully those will come out next Wednesday... until then, I'll just continue playing Skate 3 and Modern Warfare 2 on my PS3. Haha.

I couldn't care less about Half Life and Half Life 2.
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post #46 of 64
5/26/10 at 7:09am
Quote:
Originally Posted by DJRumpy View Post

Please don't feed the trolls...
I really wish the Mods would take a more active roll to get rid of such pointless troll posts.

I can't stand posters with that attitude. Who says they're trolls? Just because you don't agree with what they say?

God forbid someone doesn't join in the circle jerk of self adoration that make up these forums.

Anyways, on to the topic at hand....

I used to LOVE playing HL2. Would spend hours just interacting with the environment. The first time I threw a crate into the water and watched it realistically bob up and down was geek heaven.

The fact that it's now available on the Mac is terrific news.
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post #47 of 64
5/26/10 at 7:48am
I have been playing portal on a Macbook Pro I bought a few weeks ago. This is probably a stupid question, but should I be worried about the long term effects of running these games on my Mac? The fans are running full bore and the system gets pretty hot.

Will playing these games a lot on this machine have any negative impact to the hardware?

I really enjoyed half-life and half-life 2 when they came out and will probably pick them up for the mac.

These games are old, but they are classics. To me, it's similar to watching a movie again that you haven't seen since it's release. As movies became available on DVD/VHS, many people purchased old films that they wanted to see again and were glad to be able to do it.
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post #48 of 64
5/26/10 at 8:26am
Quote:
Originally Posted by lowededwookie View Post

Go back to kindergarten and learn to read. It makes the statement in the article.

Ok, I'll play, despite your obnoxious attitude.

You realize that the "new" games that Valve will release for the Mac platform are ones that were released some time ago for Windows, right? These are not "new" new games. Now I'm sure that there will be some games released at the same time for both platforms in the future, but those will be relatively few and far between.

Apparently my kindergarten class was more advanced than yours.
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post #49 of 64
5/26/10 at 8:36am
Quote:
Originally Posted by gchriste View Post

If you look at the coming soon on the valve store there are a number of titles coming in late 2010 that show has both platforms.

Where is the Valve Store? I assume you mean outside of Steam because the Steam "coming soon" titles do not show any for the Mac atm. Yes, Valve is going to continue to release old titles for the Mac, but I don't see any new ones from them, or anyone else. I have a Mac and would be interested as long as some new stuff was coming.
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post #50 of 64
5/26/10 at 11:52am
Quote:
Originally Posted by debusoh View Post

I have been playing portal on a Macbook Pro I bought a few weeks ago. This is probably a stupid question, but should I be worried about the long term effects of running these games on my Mac? The fans are running full bore and the system gets pretty hot.

Will playing these games a lot on this machine have any negative impact to the hardware?

I really enjoyed half-life and half-life 2 when they came out and will probably pick them up for the mac.

These games are old, but they are classics. To me, it's similar to watching a movie again that you haven't seen since it's release. As movies became available on DVD/VHS, many people purchased old films that they wanted to see again and were glad to be able to do it.

At least you can play it on your MBP. And yes my fan is going crazy.

On My Macbook 1.83Ghz, Core Duo, 2GB, Portal blinks while loading because of the Intel GMA 950 for a graphics display. SUCKS!!!
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post #51 of 64
5/27/10 at 4:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by gotApple View Post

Didn't like this tunnel shooter back in 2004. But yeah, the GPUs in latest Macs are pretty weak thus we get just these old PC games from 2004... Where's Crysis?

the fraking building shook when you uttered CRYIS !!!!

omg
my BP 15 '3,02GHz plays many games really good
like cod and halo

but but but
now
in living mutha fraking color
i can play all the wintel games !!!!!!!

when they start to write direct direct for mac hardware/SW systems ..we will then see some incredible games come out COD 9
or halo 7

the final page of the mac world domination has just been written

if only i could spell


peca e


9
whats in a name ? 
beatles
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whats in a name ? 
beatles
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post #52 of 64
5/27/10 at 9:50am
When I saw that HL2 was available I went to go buy it immediately but then I saw that you could also buy the Orange Box for Mac now even though Team Fortress is not ready yet for Mac. Then I noticed when I went to download it all that "Lost Coast" was added to my library list (as well as HL2, Episode 1 and Episode 2) but marked as "not available" and Team Fortress is not there at all... it was there in the list to download on the purchase confirmation page but it just gives a "server busy" error.

I played HL1 on our family PC way back and it was a blast. Played a bit through HL2 yesterday and it was also a blast. Thanks Valve!
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post #53 of 64
5/27/10 at 12:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by manzanaboy View Post

At least you can play it on your MBP. And yes my fan is going crazy.

On My Macbook 1.83Ghz, Core Duo, 2GB, Portal blinks while loading because of the Intel GMA 950 for a graphics display. SUCKS!!!

I've been reading the Steam forums with interest since the release of Steam, and there seems to be no end of problems with Portal and HL2 on certain Mac setups. It's pretty depressing and kind of rains on the parade, if you ask me!

Although I congratulate Valve for committing to the Mac, I do wish they'd waited until Apple had updated their shoddy graphics drivers (if indeed that's what Apple are planning to do via the 10.6.4 update). Obviously some graphics cards just aren't supported by the Source engine, which is an even bigger disappointment for those affected.
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post #54 of 64
5/28/10 at 4:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dazzaroonie View Post

I've been reading the Steam forums with interest since the release of Steam, and there seems to be no end of problems with Portal and HL2 on certain Mac setups. It's pretty depressing and kind of rains on the parade, if you ask me!

Although I congratulate Valve for committing to the Mac, I do wish they'd waited until Apple had updated their shoddy graphics drivers (if indeed that's what Apple are planning to do via the 10.6.4 update). Obviously some graphics cards just aren't supported by the Source engine, which is an even bigger disappointment for those affected.

I played through the first few parts of Episode 1 and I'm quite happy with it. There are glaring bugs like audio dropping out, frame rate drops when there's an explosion, can't use MSAA as the menu disappears but the graphics come close to the PC version, which suggests they've done the shader translations correctly.

For first-time players, I'd recommend holding off until they fix these bugs, whether it's Apple or Valve that needs to do so.

I got the Microsoft XBox 360 wired controller ($28 on Amazon - just get the XBox model) working with it, which was nice. I used the free driver from this site:

http://tattiebogle.net/index.php/Pro...ller/OsxDriver

then I used ControllerMate ($15) from here:

http://www.orderedbytes.com/controllermate/

The profile I setup for it is here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/39308556...cmate.zip.html

so you can import it and it will work right away. This remaps the XBox buttons to keyboard keys so the left analog stick maps to w,a,s,d for example. This setup means it works in any game, you just go through the in-game menu and push the buttons to assign an action to it. The right analog stick works as the mouse movement and the triggers are mouse clicks. This way you can even use the controller to navigate the game menus.

Quit the ControllerMate app after it's setup as it uses more CPU and the controller will just always work using the background daemon even after a reboot.

edit: updated ControllerMate profile to adjust acceleration curve. Also, the XBox 360 driver may not actually be needed but it support force feedback.
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post #55 of 64
6/1/10 at 12:31am
So would somebody please post a link to this ad?
Thx
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post #56 of 64
6/1/10 at 1:07am
Quote:
Originally Posted by SailorPaul View Post

So would somebody please post a link to this ad?
Thx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8
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post #57 of 64
6/1/10 at 5:43am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

I played through the first few parts of Episode 1 and I'm quite happy with it. There are glaring bugs like audio dropping out, frame rate drops when there's an explosion, can't use MSAA as the menu disappears but the graphics come close to the PC version, which suggests they've done the shader translations correctly.

For first-time players, I'd recommend holding off until they fix these bugs, whether it's Apple or Valve that needs to do so.

Glad you're getting decent results! What spec system are you running out of interest?
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post #58 of 64
6/1/10 at 1:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dazzaroonie View Post

Glad you're getting decent results! What spec system are you running out of interest?

I'm just running a 9400M and have the resolution at 1024 x 768, 2xMSAA (they fixed the menu bug in an update) and trilinear filtering (the 9400M doesn't like AF for some reason and I found that to be the case on Windows too). Turned off color correction and VSync, which are apparently buggy just now and cause big framerate drops.

At those settings, the game looks ok to me and rivals the Windows version. The only thing left are the bug fixes to stop the audio dropping out during low framerates and the framerate drops in complex scenes (mainly explosions). If they sort the framerate drop, they should be able to stop the audio dropping out and then it'll be fine.

Oh yeah and the save games are getting screwed up which is very annoying. It seems they aren't loading up in chronological order but alphabetically or something, which is really bad and makes it nearly impossible to load your last save-point if you have lot of them.

No update has been posted yet though so I'm going to leave it for now. If you lose a save game, you can bring up the in-game console by enabling it in the preferences, hitting the ~ key and then typing sv_unlocked chapters 5 (will unlock the first 5 levels for example) and then you start from there.
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post #59 of 64
6/2/10 at 4:37pm
I don't want to troll, but it is sort of pathetic lol. I mean half life 2?... You could probably play that through a virtual machine.

And also gaming on anything but a Mac Pro desktop with a PC GPU isn't really that good. Even the 4850 on the iMac isn't something I'd call premium...

But since they did convert the game, the company has to feel theres some market of Mac gamers just waiting to be taped into.
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post #60 of 64
6/3/10 at 12:54am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Babaloo View Post

I don't want to troll, but it is sort of pathetic lol. I mean half life 2?... You could probably play that through a virtual machine.

And also gaming on anything but a Mac Pro desktop with a PC GPU isn't really that good. Even the 4850 on the iMac isn't something I'd call premium...

But since they did convert the game, the company has to feel theres some market of Mac gamers just waiting to be taped into.

I wouldn't say it's pathetic. The HL2 Episode 2 game is only 2.5 years old and the graphics in the game are still very good.

While the GPUs aren't amazing, they are still very capable at playing games. The lowest end 320M will play Crysis on medium quality, should be the same for GTA 4:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKg3fm30gpc

It plays LFD2 smoothly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX5i5qkNmqM

Same with Just Cause 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pkmIopKnig

Even low-end GPUs are hitting a quality bar where pretty much all games are playable and still look decent quality. Sure the highest end games you won't get 16xAF, 8xAA, 1080p and everything on enthusiast settings but who needs to run games at that rate anyway?

The settings that slow a game down mostly only improve the game sharpness so you just sit back a bit from the screen and you're all set.

Most of the games are going exclusively to consoles now anyway so the PC has very little going for it.

Onlive launches in 2 weeks so we'll see what that brings to the table and that has the potential to give Mac users access to a much larger library of games as a port isn't necessary.
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post #61 of 64
6/16/10 at 1:18am
While Marv' has a point about the console focus of gaming and the emerging server based gaming ie online services...reducing the need to 'buy' or even have 'ports'... (Well, he's right...here...)

...I can understand Babaloo's point. I don't think you are trolling. (A term used to silence a difference of opinion...how democratic...)

I concur with your sentiments (and yes, I own an iMac...) The 4850, a good but old, cheap ass card, isn't offered on anything but a high end iMac. And the only 'good' card is on a desktop starting at £2000 (rounded up.) So that will set you back £2300 to have a two year old gaming rig (on the PC side) with pathetic Open GL performance compared to Direct X. No hiding place now, Apple...now that Valve have entered the Mac market and dragged you guys kicking and screaming to the 21st century.

So, asides from the fact that the legendary HL2 finally made it care of Valve's valiant effort with 'iTunes' for gaming on the Mac (make no mistake, this IS a breakthrough for Mac gaming...) it is pathetic that it has taken so long thanks to Apple's lukewarm efforts.

ie in terms of overpriced hardware with crap gpus at crap prices with crap vram with crap options. At least where their desktop systems are concerned. Caveat over.

Lemon Bon Bon.
You know, for a company that specializes in the video-graphics market, you'd think that they would offer top-of-the-line GPUs...[/
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You know, for a company that specializes in the video-graphics market, you'd think that they would offer top-of-the-line GPUs...[/
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post #62 of 64
6/16/10 at 10:57am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon. View Post

While Marv' has a point about the console focus of gaming and the emerging server based gaming ie online services...reducing the need to 'buy' or even have 'ports'... (Well, he's right...here...)

Thanks for the reminder, OnLive is actually up now:

http://www.onlive.com/

It seems you just sign up to a waiting list and start getting selected from tomorrow onwards. Games list includes:

Assassin's Creed II (Ubisoft)
Batman: Arkham Asylum (Square Enix / Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment)
Borderlands (Take Two Interactive Entertainment)
Dirt 2 (Codemasters)
Dragon Age: Origins (Electronic Arts)
FEAR 2: Project Origin (Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment)
Just Cause 2 (Square Enix)
LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 (Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment) demo now full version available at official launch 6/29
Mass Effect 2 (Electronic Arts)
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (Ubisoft)
Red Faction Guerrilla (THQ)
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction (Ubisoft)

All playable on a Mac through a browser and if you get the XBox Controller along with the ControllerMate config I posted, it won't be far different from owning an XBox.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon. View Post

ie in terms of overpriced hardware with crap gpus at crap prices with crap vram with crap options. At least where their desktop systems are concerned. Caveat over.

VRAM only really matters when you play at very high resolutions, anything else, it's just extra cost they tack onto the machine:

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,6...eviews/?page=4

While Apple's GPU options aren't as good as other desktop manufacturers, they are picking them to maintain certain power levels and also to reach levels of functionality. I don't think any other company can claim that every one of their products (except the Macbook Air and entry iMac) can play Crysis but now Apple can. It may be on medium quality but it's good enough. The Radeon 4850 in the iMac is only half the speed of top end cards so in the very rare case, you'd go from 15FPS to 30FPS but you simply drop the graphics down a bit. Games just aren't made to be run only on the top end cards or there's no market for them.

I like Apple's decisions to go for lower power options because I prefer not to have a large power supply, electricity bill and cooling fan to go along with my already expensive computer. I think rather than change the options, it's the price they need to go after. The entry level sitting at £650 with a Core 2 Duo and 2GB RAM is pretty disappointing but the 320M is a decent GPU.
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post #63 of 64
6/18/10 at 2:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

Thanks for the reminder, OnLive is actually up now:

http://www.onlive.com/

It seems you just sign up to a waiting list and start getting selected from tomorrow onwards. Games list includes:

Assassin's Creed II (Ubisoft)
Batman: Arkham Asylum (Square Enix / Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment)
Borderlands (Take Two Interactive Entertainment)
Dirt 2 (Codemasters)
Dragon Age: Origins (Electronic Arts)
FEAR 2: Project Origin (Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment)
Just Cause 2 (Square Enix)
LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 (Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment) demo now full version available at official launch 6/29
Mass Effect 2 (Electronic Arts)
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (Ubisoft)
Red Faction Guerrilla (THQ)
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction (Ubisoft)

All playable on a Mac through a browser and if you get the XBox Controller along with the ControllerMate config I posted, it won't be far different from owning an XBox.



VRAM only really matters when you play at very high resolutions, anything else, it's just extra cost they tack onto the machine:

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,6...eviews/?page=4

While Apple's GPU options aren't as good as other desktop manufacturers, they are picking them to maintain certain power levels and also to reach levels of functionality. I don't think any other company can claim that every one of their products (except the Macbook Air and entry iMac) can play Crysis but now Apple can. It may be on medium quality but it's good enough. The Radeon 4850 in the iMac is only half the speed of top end cards so in the very rare case, you'd go from 15FPS to 30FPS but you simply drop the graphics down a bit. Games just aren't made to be run only on the top end cards or there's no market for them.

I like Apple's decisions to go for lower power options because I prefer not to have a large power supply, electricity bill and cooling fan to go along with my already expensive computer. I think rather than change the options, it's the price they need to go after. The entry level sitting at £650 with a Core 2 Duo and 2GB RAM is pretty disappointing but the 320M is a decent GPU.


Your comment about VRAM isn't entirely correct. Having extra VRAM makes loading and unloading textures less common. It also allows larger textures. Most games cache those textures as long as possible on the video card. A lot of the studders you see in games are from loads going on.
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post #64 of 64
6/19/10 at 3:48am
Quote:
Originally Posted by freakboy View Post

Your comment about VRAM isn't entirely correct. Having extra VRAM makes loading and unloading textures less common. It also allows larger textures. Most games cache those textures as long as possible on the video card. A lot of the studders you see in games are from loads going on.

Loads will happen at some point during the game regardless but sure, they will happen less often with more VRam. I don't think it's noticeable though. I've never seen juddering caused by the loading even in driving games where you cover huge distances. Someone here tested Crysis:

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/sh...d.php?t=679808

It used over their 512MB card VRam but not stuttering noticed during gameplay. Not that more VRam isn't better but you know Apple would jack up the price and if it doesn't have much of an impact, I think it's ok to have 512MB. The integrated chips probably use above their 256MB limit when needed in games just like the dedicated chips do.
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