I was wondering if anybody knew of a way that I can play PC games on a Mac without using bootcamp or switching to Windows.. I bought a copy of GTA IV thinking that it would work with the WINE app but that didn't work at all, so I'm not sure what I should do. Thanks in advance.
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Is there any way to play PC games on a Mac?
- Thread starter SPLIFFONLINE
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No. The only way I know of to play a Windows game on mac without Windows is WINE, which doesn't work.
If you insist on using WINE instead of boot camp, I suggest you check a game's WINE compatibility on their website before buying the game. So few games are compatible that I think it is crazy to blind buy a title intending to use WINE.
Or you can wait for a Mac native version. GTA trilogy was released recently, I assume GTA IV will be forthcoming unless the trilogy doesn't sell well.
If you insist on using WINE instead of boot camp, I suggest you check a game's WINE compatibility on their website before buying the game. So few games are compatible that I think it is crazy to blind buy a title intending to use WINE.
Or you can wait for a Mac native version. GTA trilogy was released recently, I assume GTA IV will be forthcoming unless the trilogy doesn't sell well.
Bootcamp. Installing Windows on your Mac is not so bad. Windows is completely separate from the Mac environment so no chance of any Windows nastiness leaking over. I'd recommend a good Windows Utilities suite to keep Windows running without issues. I use System Suite 11.
Wineskin.... (http://wineskin.doh123.com/)
gaming is the main focus.
It still uses Wine, so it can still be difficult to get games working at times... you might have to do a lot to get it all set up right, and of course it still cannot run everything.
If you want the best way with a supported (and not free) way to use Wine, go with Crossover Games (http://codeweavers.com/)
that said... I don't think GTA4 is one of the games that runs very well even when you do get it working.
gaming is the main focus.
It still uses Wine, so it can still be difficult to get games working at times... you might have to do a lot to get it all set up right, and of course it still cannot run everything.
If you want the best way with a supported (and not free) way to use Wine, go with Crossover Games (http://codeweavers.com/)
that said... I don't think GTA4 is one of the games that runs very well even when you do get it working.
Bootcamp is only a solution for playing PC games on Mac hardware... a Mac booted into Windows is no longer a "Mac" as its just a Mac hardware Windows PC....
the term "Mac" means an actual Mac computer, which includes Mac OS X.
SO if you want to play the latest Windows games the best/easiest, you either turn your Mac into a Windows PC, or buy a Windows PC... yes...
the term "Mac" means an actual Mac computer, which includes Mac OS X.
SO if you want to play the latest Windows games the best/easiest, you either turn your Mac into a Windows PC, or buy a Windows PC... yes...
I think everyone who pushes bootcamp in this thread is referring to Windows on Mac hardware. The OP is looking for a way to play PC games on his Mac without using Windows. The response has been the best choice is to resort to Windows. A less adequate method is to use some kind of Windows emulation.
Some people have had luck by using 'Cider' which is basically a proprietary fork of WINE that some games developers use to port their titles to OS X on the cheap or with minimum legal issues I think.
You can find tutorials on how to do it on youtube etc, however I am unsure as to the legality of it and how well it works. I imagine the cider ports released by publishers are specially optimised/implemented for their title or something. Even then, like WINE; cider ports don't give the same level of performance you'd get running a native client, seeing as it's translating a Windows .EXE.
Like the others above, if you want to game on a mac then the only practical choices that you have are,
1) Use Windows under Bootcamp.
2) Stick to games that have also been released for OS X.
I recommend the first option under any circumstance for best compatibility and performance.
You can find tutorials on how to do it on youtube etc, however I am unsure as to the legality of it and how well it works. I imagine the cider ports released by publishers are specially optimised/implemented for their title or something. Even then, like WINE; cider ports don't give the same level of performance you'd get running a native client, seeing as it's translating a Windows .EXE.
Like the others above, if you want to game on a mac then the only practical choices that you have are,
1) Use Windows under Bootcamp.
2) Stick to games that have also been released for OS X.
I recommend the first option under any circumstance for best compatibility and performance.
Hacking another game apart to use Cider out of it to run a different game is completely illegal... no gray areas there. It does work very good in some cases (like Oblivion) though. Running a .exe in Wine doesn't really lose any performance... the major performance loss in any game on anything Wine based is the DirectX->OpenGL translation... Cider has a big step up on Wineskin, and Wine in general on Mac OS X, in that Wine only has an X11 driver, and Cider has a driver to use the Mac quartz interface directly.. this helps Cider to have a better frame rate, losing yet another extra layer to go through. I've been slightly looking into, and working on, making a quartz driver for Wineskin (not general Wine cuz they don't allow ObjC code), but its mega complicated...
this isn't always a +.... there are "native" ports of games that are very poorly done that the Windows versions in Cider or Wine can actually perform better. If a porting house ports the game natively and correctly.. it'll be better, but its usually a rush job.
Steam and source games are just as bad... they are not truly "native" 100% as the major slowness part in Wine (DirectX->OpenGL) still exists in Source games, as Valve just made a translation layer for graphics like Wine uses built in... while everything non-DirectX Graphics runs native.
I'm pretty sure Rob Barris debunked this somewhere...maybe he'll cone out of the woodwork and reply. Edit: here we are, http://netkas.org/?p=435
GTA IV was an awful port that needs a quad core to run effectively, even in Windows. So bootcamp is definitely the way to go--you need all the performance you can get.
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thats not a debunking.. its him simply saying it doesn't matter, he thinks the performance is the same.