THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => CLIKC => Topic started by: Ozymandias on 03 Mar 2010, 17:12
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Well, "invent" might be too strong a word, but it's not that far off. Steam is coming to Macs and, with it, Valve cornering a near monopoly on Mac gaming, opening the door for other developers to follow suit.
That's fairly big news on its own. What's super awesome are the ads that are accompanying this announcement:
(http://images.macrumors.com/article/2010/03/03/145949-valve_teaser_500.jpg)
(http://images.macrumors.com/article/2010/03/03/150310-valvemac-lg.jpg)
(http://images.macrumors.com/article/2010/03/03/154425-valve_3_500.jpg)
(http://images.macrumors.com/article/2010/03/03/154550-valve_4_300.jpg)
(http://images.macrumors.com/article/2010/03/03/154953-valve_5_500.jpg)
(http://images.macrumors.com/article/2010/03/03/164023-valve_6_500.jpg)
If you can't read the fifth one:
"Introducing Steam. For the rest of us.
In the olden days, people had to go to stores to buy games. It was awful. Not many people knew how.
And not many people wanted to learn. Seminars. Wallet Manuals. Walking classes. Remembering to carry
money. It was so complicated you'd have to be a store expert to understand it all.
But then, on a bright day in Bellevue, Seattle, the people who didn't go to stores got together with the
people who make things for money to figure out a solution. After half an hour nobody had come up with
any ideas, and tempers were running high. Then somebody had an idea: they should get into a fight.
Later, at the hospital, a doctor said, "You guys should really invent something that lets you buy games
without leaving the house." Everybody told him he should shut up if he didn't want a fat lip. "Man, I
don't want a fat lip," the doctor thought, so he didn't say anything more about it.
A couple of days later, though, everybody agreed that mouthy doctor might have been onto something,
and so they built a thing that let them buy games on their computers without leaving the house.
"There's different types of computers, though," said one guy. "We'll figure that out later," said another guy.
And, years later, they did."
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Of all the companies to monopolize Mac gaming, I'm OK with it being Valve.
As long as I can still play Starcraft 2, when it comes out in 2016.
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Those are some clever ads
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I'm wondering how they'll get over the OpenGL hump. A Steam platform for the Mac is all well and good but Steam isn't what a Mac OS needs to play games, ultimately.
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Somewhere Blizzard sheds a tear for deeds unremembered.
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I knew that's what they were doing when the steam ui beta switched from ie to webkit. Still, is it Steam coming to osx or Steam bringing games to osx?
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Both. I imagine this also represents the Orange Box coming to OSX.
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I'm wondering how they'll get over the OpenGL hump. A Steam platform for the Mac is all well and good but Steam isn't what a Mac OS needs to play games, ultimately.
Well if they do somehow make all of those games run on OpenGL that means we can play them on other Unix based systems.
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Oh man this would be so fucking awesome if the GPU in my Macbook wasn't a fat pile of dogs bollocks
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David_Dovey took the words straight out of my mouth. I wish he'd put them back.
But yes, my GMA 950 can only handle Warcraft III on Medium. (It can run Neverwinter Nights on maximum, but that's not saying much.)
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Somewhere Blizzard sheds a tear for deeds unremembered.
I still like Warcraft II more than III.
This is going to be pretty bitchin'. My computer's like 10 years old, though...still running a G4 model from 2000. We'll see how everything matches up.
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I came to post this news in the thread asking about Mac games, but I see it's already been posted. My laptop is pretty excited about possibly getting Portal.
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Sweet.
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My laptop is pretty excited about possibly getting Portal.
Hopefully it runs okay.
I hear those emotion generators take up a lot of RAM, or something.
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Not sure if I'm the only one wondering this... but wasn't the solution to Mac gaming Boot Camp?
And since this is gonna be for games of the Half Life 2- era (Portal, TF2, ect), won't you need decent specs to play on it? IE: the later Intel based compys?
I suppose a powermac g5 could run this stuff pretty well. But I can't think of anything below that threshold that'll have enough power to run modern games.
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You don't really need a hog to play Source games, seeing as the engine's so old. It might've needed a formidable rig like 6 years ago. I think the Macbooks at the very least should be able to handle it.
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I'm wondering how they'll get over the OpenGL hump.
Well part of any OpenGL hump is Microsoft propaganda, like how they tried to use propaganda about DirectX 10 to get everyone to switch to Vista. Or who knows, maybe Apple is bribing them to care about Mac all of a sudden.
won't you need decent specs to play on it? IE: the later Intel based compys?
I suppose a powermac g5 could run this stuff pretty well. But I can't think of anything below that threshold that'll have enough power to run modern games.
This is kind of an odd point, since it's not like PC gamers expect to run modern games on 5 year old computers. Most hardcore PC gamers have a ridiculous obsession with cutting edge hardware that leads them to consider videocards obsolete after 1 year.
Anyway I would doubt Valve is planning to port Source to G5 chips. I can't think of many software developers going to the trouble of building universal binaries these days because, well, there's not much value in supporting 5 year old computers unless you're writing software for schools to use.
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Sorry if I wasn't clear Joe.
I'm just confused, because I have a first gen and second gen Macbook... and via bootcamp neither runs counter strike source well at all (even with an overtly modified exec file).
What would be the point in having valve port their games over to open GL when they could just ask us to use boot camp? As you said this isn't going to be for people on old power pc chips. The people that CAN play games (like portal 2 that's been announced for os x) will or should or can have boot camp. Is it really that inconvenient to restart your computer and hold the option key?
I mean, Catfish Man made an excellent point, Blizzard and even Bungie released games for the Apple crowd. But the point I'm trying to make is: with the advent of Intel Chips aren't we blurring the lines between how accessible these games are? Aren't these games easily accessible already?
But all in all, I'm not COMPLAINING. And I know I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth. I'm just so confused over why someone would spend money on porting these games over?
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Wait, isn't the steam platform for OSX just going to be like a habitat for windows-game associated files removing the need for people to have to use Bootcamp/Parallels + a MS OS inorder to play games on their Mac?
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They haven't said what it actually is. That seems pretty hard though since (almost) all modern computer games run on Direct X which is a Microsoft platform and not in OSX.
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Gizmodo had some scans of the new Game Informer that showed Portal 2 was coming out for Macs. Just puttin' that out there.
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You don't really need a hog to play Source games, seeing as the engine's so old.
Remember, they've been constantly working on the Source engine since it was released. Left 4 Dead 2 doesn't run on the same exact version of Source that Counter-Strike does (or even TF2 for that matter). My laptop can run Half-Life 2 just fine, but it chokes on TF2 and can't run Left 4 Dead 1 at all. (Its Radeon x200m doesn't fully support DirectX 9.0c.) Granted Source is nowhere near as demanding as CryEngine, but it's not the same engine it was in 2003.
As far as I remember, the newer Macbooks should have GeForce 9400m graphics and Core 2 processors; they should be able to run these games fine. (According to YouTube, they do under Boot Camp.)
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It's been confirmed that all Source games are being ported (Half-Life 2 to Portal 2), that they're native ports, and that Steam Play will allow anyone who bought the PC version to also have the Mac version free of charge (and vice versa).
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Looks like i'll keep having to emulate.
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It's been confirmed that all Source games are being ported (Half-Life 2 to Portal 2), that they're native ports, and that Steam Play will allow anyone who bought the PC version to also have the Mac version free of charge (and vice versa).
Three words: fucking awesome
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(http://www.teamfortress.com/images/posts/tomorrow_large.png)
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That is a very shiny hat
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TF2 Mac Update is Live and Fucking Awesome (http://www.teamfortress.com/macupdate/)
Watch the video! Read the comic! Get some earbuds!
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TF2 Mac Update is Live and Fucking Awesome (http://www.teamfortress.com/macupdate/)
Watch the video! Read the comic! Get some earbuds!
The visual history comic is amazing.
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So how do these free weekends work? I just went to Steam and I don't see any link to download the game, only purchase.
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Go to your library, it should already be there. Just double click it and it'll download.
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sweet, thanks
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PROPERTY DAMAGE!
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BRAVE PRESS!
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Also did you see that bitching shotgun the red engie had?
It has a scope
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I HAVE EXAMS :x
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BUT IT IS MINE AND AAAGGHH IT IS ON FIRE
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They limited mat_picmip to -1 and made the interface godawful. :x
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What'd they do to the interface? I haven't had it installed for a while so I can't check on mine.
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Before:
(http://i48.tinypic.com/ka5rpx.jpg)
After:
(http://i50.tinypic.com/9iby9z.jpg)
(Minus the chat notification and Fraps counter)
However it only took a couple hours for someone on the Steam forum to make the menu much nicer:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1302097
And a short while after that, an emulation of the old menu:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1303356
EDIT: It puts up all the help bubbles by default, and I don't see an option to disable them at the moment, so the only way to get rid of them is to go through the entire interface closing them individually. :\