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Dragon Age:Origins announced for Mac!

mabaker said:
Thanks for the tips, JackAxe. I finished ME2 not so long ago but while it's certainly a good game some of its essential aspects are really dumbed down - it's as if I'm playing a console version on a mac. Hope ME1 would be better? I heard it was actually as far as the depth is concerned. The best thing is I don't even have a thing for dragons and prefer some dark futuristic titles like Deus Ex or System Shock but Orgins just got me with its characters, hands down.

And System Shock is such a classic. There wouldn't have been Half Life without System Shock but that is a topic for another thread indeed! :p

Dragon Ago remains for me one of the best games recently, even despite its limitation (especially no free roaming like in Fallout series). And of course - it's playable on a mac mini! Kinda unbelievable.
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Mass Effect is better than the second and really worth playing. For being a console game originally, the PC port turned out quite good. It's less dumbed down than the second, which is kind of sad. It feels like a Bioware game, where as ME2 drank too much Gears of War kool-aid and took all the wrong advice. They surveyed the younger guys that don't like to think, just shoot...

The biggest difference between the two, is that Mass Effect is more so an RPG with continuity and a feeling of everything being huge, where as ME2 is a more so a shooter, which feels linear, somewhat arcade-ish, and confined. In Mass Effect, there's talking, there's background interaction. Things that are in Dragon Age, or other Bioware game, but dumbed down in ME2, or few and far.

Anyways, it's only about $15-20 retail.

I couldn't agree more about System Shock. Half-life was good, but it was just a FPS when compared to SS, which for me was a terrifying, but fulfilling experience. :eek:

I'm somewhat similar, as in I prefer sci-fi to fantasy. Looking back, my favorite games have all been futuristic. I'm a huge fan of Deus Ex and older games like the Starflight series, Star Control 2, and even Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday. I really enjoyed Dragon Age and it's one of my favorites, but I bought it because I enjoyed Mass Effect so much. Then when I started Mass Effect 2, all I could think about, besides what was missing or moved from the first one, was why can't I get a version of Mass Effect that plays similar to Dragon Age.

And on the note of dark and futuristic, Dead Space is worth playing IMO. It's a console game by design, so if you've never played a game like Resident Evil 4 it will be a bit weird to get into. Th developers were heavily influenced by games like the Shock series and old movies like The Thing and Alien. It's controls by default are quite poor, but fixable on the PC and it will definitely run on your Mini. Anyways, I really liked it, but I also liked Resident Evil 4 on the Wii. It's also under $20 now days.

And one last ramble to throw out a fantasy title, The Witcher Enhanced is a GREAT game once it gets going. It's built on the Bioware engine, so you'll find it very familiar to Dragon Age. It will also run on your Mini. :)
 
Huntn said:
I only played SS2 which really impressed me. I assume the original SS had retro graphics big time.
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Pixelated vomit by today's standards, but for me, it's still the most convincing game I've ever played, where as I felt like I was part of its pixeld world and that my life was actually in danger. :)
 
JackAxe said:
Pixelated vomit by today's standards, but for me, it's still the most convincing game I've ever played, where as I felt like I was part of its pixeld world and that my life was actually in danger. :)
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Playing it recently in DOSBox for Mac I had no issues with the graphics, but then I am very tolerant of those things ...
 
txa1265 said:
Playing it recently in DOSBox for Mac I had no issues with the graphics, but then I am very tolerant of those things ...
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Awesome. May Shodan scare the crap out of you and haunt your dreams! :D

I tried it under DOSBox on my G5 the other year, it ran great. I played it on a Pentium 90@100 with a Mach 64 video card originally. I still have my CD case for the game, but no box and no CD. :(

Anyways, later in the game, the visuals improve quite a bit and for that time they were really impressive, but that's not why I liked the game. It's still by far the scariest game I've ever played, but I was probably a wuss in my early twenties. :)
 
txa1265 said:
Yeah, this isn't my first time ... but it has been several years. Replayed SS2 a couple years ago as well ... such great games.
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Oh, cool. :) You're up on me. I haven't played through it since it was released. The labs and the area with the invisible sting-rays traumatized me. :eek:

I still have SS2 in the box, but I can't get it to run without crashing under XP64, even with the user made patches. I haven't tried it on my i7 rig though, so should probably give it another go. 16-bit legacy code doesn't play nicely with 64-bit. Bleh.
 
I have the game on xBox but since Direct2Drive was running 50% off right now I bit the bullet to support Mac Games. It was a little of a shock to me how different the two versions play.

I've got a iMac
2.16 Ghz Core 2 Duo
128 MB x1600 (I think not having the 256 meg card is my limiting factor)
20" 1680x1050

I've been running it at 1280x800 on low settings and for the most part it's reasonably smooth. Some more intense parts are defiantly chopping out (outdoors are worse) but it's relatively playable.

I was going to install it on my MacBookPro but I've heard there are issues right now with DA and the 9400M

Aside from the performance. I think I enjoy the tactical capacity of the PC version more than the action oriented controls of the xBox version. But there is something "visceral" about the console builds. I'm not unhappy to have both versions now.

This may entice me to look into buying a new iMac since the graphics are not real great with everything turned down to low.
 
Sorry if this has been answered earlier in this thread but I was wondering if anyone could tell me how big the download is for DA:O?

Coming from Australia I have to be wary of big downloads as we get capped and slowed to dial up speed if we go over our limit which is quite low sadly. I was going to buy this for the 360 but I'd love to give it a shot in OSX - providing the download isn't too big that is.
 
DoctaKrafty said:
Sorry if this has been answered earlier in this thread but I was wondering if anyone could tell me how big the download is for DA:O?

Coming from Australia I have to be wary of big downloads as we get capped and slowed to dial up speed if we go over our limit which is quite low sadly. I was going to buy this for the 360 but I'd love to give it a shot in OSX - providing the download isn't too big that is.
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I just downloaded it and it was about 8.5GB

One question, and this might seem nit-picky, but I've noticed graphics tend to be somewhat blurry, like not ultra crisp...

screenshot20100307at113.png

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/7728/screenshot20100307at113.png

...is this a product of too high a resolution or the frame buffer? (My two biggest guesses).

Regardless, game runs pretty smooth, not really any lag but the occasional frame lag when I walk into a bloom effect.
 
kaltsasa said:
I was going to install it on my MacBookPro but I've heard there are issues right now with DA and the 9400M
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The PC version runs well on my MBP (see signature), but it's not a speed demon by any means. My frames run in the high-teen to low 20s and that is on 800x600. I imagine the Mac version might be a little slower.
 
Can anyone tell me how Dragon Age runs on a Geforce 120 GT? I am getting a 09 Mac Pro with one and I am trying to get a sense of how it will perform. Hoping I can max out the settings at 1920.
 
s.m.t. said:
Can anyone tell me how Dragon Age runs on a Geforce 120 GT? I am getting a 09 Mac Pro with one and I am trying to get a sense of how it will perform. Hoping I can max out the settings at 1920.
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The GTX 120 only has 32 stream cores and this is a CIDER port, so that would be a no. :eek: For reference, the old Mac 8800 GT has 112 cores. My GTX 275 has 240 cores and I run the game on at 1600 x 900 maxed out under Windows.

There's always the option of putting in a better GPU, but it's still best to play the PC version under bootcamp. 3D performance under OS X isn't as fast as the PC side and for nVidia cards, Apple's current drivers still need work.
 
Ok will have to see how it runs, but sounds like i am going to need to upgrade the video card.
 
Ok, got my Mac Pro in today and did some testing to see how it does on this new hardware...

You were right, this GT120 doesn't do much better than the 9400M... The only thing I gained was being able to run at 1920 and maintain about 25FPS. That is with all the settings at the lowest level, no AA or Frame Buffer effects... Im a bit bummed, but at least now I have the ablitiy to upgrade. So I just need to figure out now if the 4870 is the best route or go with the GTX285...
 
Cool deal. :)

On the Mac side, for $350, the 4870 is currently a better deal than the 285, mainly because the drivers for nVidia are poor.

Now technically, the 285 is a better card in all cases, at least under windows. It's almost 30% faster than ATI's 4870 on average and outperforms all single 4xxx ATIs, and in some cases even a 2x4870.

So, unless 10.6.3 performs magic with the nVidias drivers, and if you're not going to game under Windows, the ATI is the better option for OS X gaming IMO. But, if you go to the darkside for gaming, and Apple fixes these dam drivers, $100 more for the 285 would be worth it, since you want to game at 1920 x 1200. :) It also supports physx and CUDA.
 
Well I probably have a month before I can buy a new video card, so maybe 10.6.3 will be out by then and know for sure.

But I defiantly want more 3d power in OS X. I can always buy a standard pc card for boot camp use.

I know you said the 4870 is the better deal, but does that mean the 285 does not do as good as the 4870 performance wise?

I guess I might be willing to spend the extra $100 if I knew it wouldn't be worse than the 4870, with the hopes that at some point it will see it true potential latte down the road.

I would hate to get a card, then need to upgrade again in a years time...
 
The benchmarks I've seen on the Mac side, show the 285 performing about the same as 4870 -- and even slower in some cases, which is a shame, because it's clearly a better card all around under Windows.

Here are some benchmarks on the PC side(It's the fastest single GPU.);
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/bfggtx285/

If they can work out the drivers on the Mac side, there will be absolutely no question that from the current crop of Mac video cards, the 285 is the fastest, but that's an if.

I personally stick with nVidia though, because for years, ATI has cut corners for gaming(Using 24-bit floats instead of 32-bit), which in turn has caused display issues in the 3D apps I use.
 
Thanks for the info.

Yes i am leaning towards the 285.

Would like to find some who has ran dragon age on a 285 to see if it does worse than the 4870, which from what i found runs dragon age full settings.
 
Bioware Forums thread regarding installing mods on the Mac version of DAO. This info has been added to the MacRumors DAO:Q&D. It's unverified. Backup any files prior to altering!!

A few posts ago in the Dragon Age Origins thread in the Console forum, we talked about "debug scripts". I ran those on the PC version of the game. I'm curious if anyone has enabled the console and run a script on the Mac version of the game?

In addition, the Mac version of the game does not include a "daupdater" application which allows you to automatically install mods such as the "respec mod". However the Bioware Forums link listed above includes info on installing mods on the Mac version.

So if anyone has enabled the console and run a script on the Mac version of DAO or if anyone discovers that the Mac version does indeed include a DAUpdater application or has verified this manual method of installing mods in the Mac version of DAO, please give a shout. I'll add any new info into the Q&D.
Thanks!

-Dave
 
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