Sick and tired of gaming issues on the Mac /cry

[palebluedot]

I am so tired of not having any good games (besides WoW and EVE) on the Mac. I converted to OS X last year yet I am a hardcore gamer. I'm sorry to bug you all so dont read this if you dont want to read a rant, but I had to sign up to vent somewhere.

I'm sick of people saying "use bootcamp" (or referring to boot-camp like its something special, its dual-booting into Windows.. thats it). Dual booting sucks. Gaming should be instant, when i wanna play I dont want to wait 3-4 minutes to boot up and join a game.

What really ticks me off is Aspyr though. I just bought Enemy Territory: Quake Wars for 50 dollars (the PC and linux versions are 30). Not only is it more expensive but it requires you to have the CD in to play (Windows and Mac versions dont). Even worse the game runs like UTTER UTTER CRAP on a new C2D Mac Book pro 2.4 with 2 gigs of ram and a 256mb gfx chip.
Laggy, slow, bad mouse motion, etc.

I have hope that gaming will get better on a Mac but we keep paying companies like Aspyr to spoon feed us buggy piles of crap and PC game companies are fighting to hold market-share against ps3 and xbox. The future of Mac gaming does not look good, and that sucks

 

[0098386]

It takes you 3-4 minutes? Maybe I'm at an advantage since I work in XP too but I don't find dual booting to play games annoying. It takes me just over a minute (and I've got an older Mac!) to reboot into XP so I can spend an hour or so playing TF2 or GTA. It's no time at all really.

 

[nagromme]

Rebooting IS a pain--unacceptable to me. Shutting down all my apps and then opening them all up again, to play a 20 minute battle? That hassle would mean I would play games less. No thanks.

The key disc IS ridiculous, since the online accounts would provide the same copy protection as the PC version without that.

And Quake Wars on OS X DOES run well on my iMac which is lower-end than yours (NVidia 7600.) Play with your settings and you'll get it smooth I'm sure. (Obviously a bad connection to a specific server will always cause lag--but I've rarely experienced that.)

As for price--that's the market reality. Mac games don't sell as many copies, so they cost more. (Mac porting companies also often get charged insanely high middleware fees.) I can accept that for the convenience of not rebooting, but I understand why some choose Bootcamp.

I'm also pretty pleased with what Aspyr has brought me over the years--including, most recently, Quake Wars, which I've played for 60 hours and am not even close to being bored with. Well worth my $50. Some people don't find much choice in Mac games, but I happen to like sci-fi games, and there are a lot of those to choose from on Mac. (UT3, Gears of War, Starcraft II, Spore and Rage are on the way for instance.)

Troubleshoot your performance problem and you'll find Quake Wars a lot of fun. Try reducing the res and/or lighting quality for starters.

 

[1ncr3du10u5]

The Mac isn't a hardcore gaming platform, never has been. Why did you get a Mac if gaming is a priority for you? Bootcamp is a great way of playing the games you want though till gaming catches up on the Mac, if it ever does! Is rebooting that much of a pain? Really?

 

[palebluedot]

Rebooting IS a pain--unacceptable to me. Shutting down all my apps and then opening them all up again, to play a 20 minute battle? That hassle would mean I would play games less. No thanks.

The key disc IS ridiculous, since the online accounts would provide the same copy protection as the PC version without that.

And Quake Wars on OS X DOES run well on my iMac which is lower-end than yours (NVidia 7600.) Play with your settings and you'll get it smooth I'm sure. (Obviously a bad connection to a specific server will always cause lag--but I've rarely experienced that.)

As for price--that's the market reality. Mac games don't sell as many copies, so they cost more. (Mac porting companies also often get charged insanely high middleware fees.) I can accept that for the convenience of not rebooting, but I understand why some choose Bootcamp.

I'm also pretty pleased with what Aspyr has brought me over the years--including, most recently, Quake Wars, which I've played for 60 hours and am not even close to being bored with. Well worth my $50. Some people don't find much choice in Mac games, but I happen to like sci-fi games, and there are a lot of those to choose from on Mac. (UT3, Gears of War, Starcraft II, Spore and Rage are on the way for instance.)

Troubleshoot your performance problem and you'll find Quake Wars a lot of fun. Try reducing the res and/or lighting quality for starters.

Thats what makes me sad though. I should be able to run Quake Wars on high with the specs I have, yet even running it on Normal produces lag.

You are spot on about dualbooting.

As for everyone else I bought a Mac because they are awesome. I'm just sad that the gaming companies, Apple, everyone all drag their feets on getting gaming to the Mac.

 

[martychang]

Thats what makes me sad though. I should be able to run Quake Wars on high with the specs I have, yet even running it on Normal produces lag.

You are spot on about dualbooting.

As for everyone else I bought a Mac because they are awesome. I'm just sad that the gaming companies, Apple, everyone all drag their feets on getting gaming to the Mac.

The problem here is that you're caught up in what "you deserve." You "deserve" to be able to run it on high with your specs, but can't.

You can play the game, you can play it without rebooting. As long as you don't go below native resolution(I hate LCDs ), I wouldn't complain. Don't need bright shiny lights to shoot people.

Yes they drag their feet, but as long as we keep buying the Mac versions of these games I think it'll get better, Mac is on the uptake. As for lack of good games, TF2 and Portal are the only good games I can think of that are on PC but not Mac. Then again, I'm extremely picky.

 

[palebluedot]

The problem here is that you're caught up in what "you deserve." You "deserve" to be able to run it on high with your specs, but can't.

You can play the game, you can play it without rebooting. As long as you don't go below native resolution(I hate LCDs ), I wouldn't complain. Don't need bright shiny lights to shoot people.

Yes they drag their feet, but as long as we keep buying the Mac versions of these games I think it'll get better, Mac is on the uptake. As for lack of good games, TF2 and Portal are the only good games I can think of that are on PC but not Mac. Then again, I'm extremely picky.

It's just frustrating because even on "Normal" settings for ET:QW everything feels sluggish and laggy. When I am zoomed in as a sniper it takes about 1.5-2 sec to move the scope properly, that = dead in any game.

I feel like im playing on a p3 633 instead of a 2.4ghz c2d lol

 

[nagromme]

It's just frustrating because even on "Normal" settings for ET:QW everything feels sluggish and laggy. When I am zoomed in as a sniper it takes about 1.5-2 sec to move the scope properly, that = dead in any game.

I feel like im playing on a p3 633 instead of a 2.4ghz c2d lol

There is a problem with your system. That is NOT normal behavior for Quake Wars on Mac, even with specs WORSE than yours. You won't necessarily be able to play with all settings on High--that's not realistic--but you can find settings that look great and play well, and in mid-battle, believe me you won't notice the difference. But if you lower your settings (and this takes experimenting because some settings look bad without helping speed, and others really help) and still the game is clearly unplayable, then there's some other issue that needs to be investigated.

Sorry you're having an issue--sounds VERY frustrating when you want to be having fun with a new game! But do take the time to troubleshoot it. Fire off a support ticket to Aspyr maybe, try re-installing the game under a new Mac user account, make sure nothing's running in the background and that you haven't hacked your OS in some odd way, check for patches (OS X 10.5.3 and QW 1.5), tweak your mouse speed, try a different mouse (or uninstall any fancy mouse driver you use--though ControllerMate is fine for me), etc.

Now, the sniper rifle in QW is realistic: it bobs around, and when you zoom in that makes things trickier than, say, Unreal Tournament. But I assume you're not just seeing that bobbing, you're having a mouse problem or system slowdown or network problem or some other issue.

Anyway take heart, your Mac CAN play that game very well. Something's wrong (hopefully not a Mac in need of warranty repair) and you just need to discover what. I hope you figure it out soon and get back to fragging!

What's your QW playername online? I play as Nagromme.

As for why you'd choose a Mac if you're into games... well, I'm into games and I chose a Mac. Because.... they're easier to use, and games are about fun, and troubleshooting Windows is NOT fun for me! And of course because I want a machine for games AND for other things--not two machines taking up space.

 

[0098386]

It might be okay for me since I don't tend to play in short bursts. After I've done all my work for the day I'll stay in XP and have an hour in TF2 or whatever, and maybe another half an hour at night. Got my games consoles and handhelds for them little breaks.

 

[nagromme]

Yeah--depends on your habits.

Still, I bet a lot of people who tend to game in big blocks, by rebooting or firing up a console, would play those same games even MORE if they were only a dock-click away.

I certainly wouldn't be playing nearly as much Quake Wars if I couldn't hop in any time without having to close down all my Mac projects.

 

[l'homme]

4 things:

-Mac's are for work, enjoy multimedia and do general stuff;
-Linux is for servers and MID's;
-Windows is for playing around with cheap machines and enjoying the fight versus evil malware;
-Video game consoles are for play great games, hassleless and almost instantly, at less cost than computers.

 

[martychang]

4 things:

-Mac's are for work, enjoy multimedia and do general stuff;
-Linux is for servers and MID's;
-Windows is for playing around with cheap machines and enjoying the fight versus evil malware;
-Video game consoles are for play great games, hassleless and almost instantly, at less cost than computers.

What? Consoles have relatively long boot times, and ridiculous loading times compared to computer versions of games, and the endless hassle of controllers. Also, most "great games" after the Super Nintendo era never made it to consoles, or if they did did so in a butchered form far too late(Half-Life for PS2 anyone?).

 

[nagromme]

Consoles are well suited to SOME types of games. Not others--including most of the games I play (FPS).

 

[martychang]

Consoles are well suited to SOME types of games. Not others--including most of the games I play (FPS).

They're really poorly suited to FPS and RTS, or games with an RTS-like control scheme: a category which includes many of the greatest RPGs of all time. The Baldur's Gate and Fallout series' in particular, the Icewind Dale series and Planescape: Torment were great too. Not to mention all of the above except Torment have Mac versions, and only Baldur's Gate 1 and the Fallout games are Classic-only, the rest are OS X native.

 

[rake_mistry]

... I'm also pretty pleased with what Aspyr has brought me over the years--including, most recently, Quake Wars, which I've played for 60 hours and am not even close to being bored with. Well worth my $50. Some people don't find much choice in Mac games, but I happen to like sci-fi games, and there are a lot of those to choose from on Mac. (UT3, Gears of War, Starcraft II, Spore and Rage are on the way for instance.)...

I'm sorry for the "noob" question, but is Gears of War really out on the Mac? If so, I honestly had no clue! Could someone please tell me where I'd be able to buy it? And if it isn't yet, would you mind telling me when it's coming out? Thanks.

 

[palebluedot]

Yeah ET:QW is just dang laggy I think. I realized its not really that long of a lag time, but being used to gaming I can see/feel the lag. Its the same kind of lag you would get if you tried to run ET:QW on a Radeon 9600 or something.

My brother has a windows box that is older (spec and age wise) then my new MBP and he can run it BETTER with the same settings.

Is ET:QW a cider port or something? Im guessing its not native

It sucks cause it will start out so so but it gets laggier then longer I play. I dont think its a heat issue though. The whole game just isnt that smooth feeling.

 

[luffytubby]

I agree. Being a recent converter to Mac, I am surprised how poorly the Mac games that I have bought work(Jedi Acdemy and Fable).


Boot Camp... It takes me 3-4 minutes aswell. its not the mac, its just vista that is so damn slow. it really does piss me off more than I thought it would.


I bought WMWare Fusion in hopes of running Windows, with Leopard in the background. But Fusion does not support 64 Bit vista out of a boot camp partition.
But even if I just made a virtual machine, Fusion would still have to boot up Vista * sigh*. I thought it worked like you would just be able to use pc applications natively on the mac, without operating vista from inside OSX.
I hate booting into vista. I really enjoy leopard even though I am only still just getting the hang of things. Itunes and VLC player runs really great, and I love stuff like Expose and the programs Transmission and iSquint!


I have Boot Camp enabled for the really heavy stuff that needs 4 Gigs of Ram and all the power, like Crysis - And thats fair. I dont mind dual booting for doing heavy applications, but when its just some small insignificant game that I just feel like playing for 5-10 minutes, it's just such a hassle.



And its just gonna suck even more with all these new free pc games coming like Battlefield Heroes and Mythos.
We got Diablo 3, Spore, The Sims 3, Rage and perhaps a few other big ones - And this is great. this is big developers starting to realise that DirectX has screwed up!
But its still small fish in a big ocean, and when even the games that where made for Mac run like crap and have poor support its a goddam tragedy.

there is no excuse for that. game or not. if the game was made for OSX, then its just another piece of software that you have paid for and you got the right to expect it to work!

 

[nagromme]

Yeah ET:QW is just dang laggy I think. I realized its not really that long of a lag time, but being used to gaming I can see/feel the lag. Its the same kind of lag you would get if you tried to run ET:QW on a Radeon 9600 or something.

.... Is ET:QW a cider port or something? Im guessing its not native

It sucks cause it will start out so so but it gets laggier then longer I play.

I really, truly, honestly think there IS something ELSE wrong for you. Which sucks! But in any case, QW is not cider, it's native, and Aspyr has ported many games with the same basic id Tech 4 engine: Doom 3, Quake 4, Prey and now Quake Wars. Never have I heard anyone report that these games have a constant lag, and my Quake Wars on OS X surely does not.

The fact that it gets worse with time could suggest a heat issue. Maybe you have a bad GPU, a bad fan, or you need to zap the NVRAM or something. Or maybe it's even a software bug (in the game? the drivers? the OS?) that makes the machine think there's a heat problem when there isn't. Or some other software running in the background could be the culprit.

I do sometimes (not often) get jerkiness that seems to be caused by WiFi interference (good old fashioned net lag). So it could be your Internet or your LAN, too. If you're on WiFi, test with Ethernet. And test with your graphics turned all the way down, too. If it still lags, that might be interesting to know. (And I do see lag for a few seconds--sometimes--when I first step outdoors from an indoor base. That's the megatexture loading I believe. No big deal. Not sure I've seen that happen since the 1.5 patch, actually.)

But whatever the mystery turns out to be, hardware or software, do NOT accept that lag. It's not "just the way it is." You own a game that can run better than you've seen, and I hope you get it working right because it's insane fun

I'm sorry for the "noob" question, but is Gears of War really out on the Mac? If so, I honestly had no clue! Could someone please tell me where I'd be able to buy it? And if it isn't yet, would you mind telling me when it's coming out? Thanks.

Gears for Mac is coming--that's official--and it's expected "some time" after UT 3--which is expected very soon. Gears for Mac, like Gears for PC, will have extra chapters and stuff that the console version lacked. But it's not out yet.

 

[eXan]

Yeah ET:QW is just dang laggy I think. I realized its not really that long of a lag time, but being used to gaming I can see/feel the lag. Its the same kind of lag you would get if you tried to run ET:QW on a Radeon 9600 or something.

My brother has a windows box that is older (spec and age wise) then my new MBP and he can run it BETTER with the same settings.

Is ET:QW a cider port or something? Im guessing its not native

It sucks cause it will start out so so but it gets laggier then longer I play. I dont think its a heat issue though. The whole game just isnt that smooth feeling.

What kind of lag are you referring to? Low framerate or connection speed?

 

[Sijmen]

Sadly I have to agree too. But luckily the games I tend to play right now are all Blizzard and so they have great Mac versions, and UT2004 which I bought for Mac some time ago.

I hope one day, can't be soon enough, the Mac market share goes beyond the magic number where developers/publishers can't afford not supporting them. Now it's too much of a chicken/egg problem. This reminds me of Firefox by the way.

 

[Veldek]

Well, I also have to agree with some comments about gaming on a Mac. I really wanted to try ET:QW, so I downloaded the Windows demo and could play on high settings without problems on the same laptop you have. I then found the game amazing and bought the Mac version. Now, the Mac version on high details is almost unplayable. I had to go down to normal and for some settings even lower. With these setttings it plays very good, although not visually as attractive of course.

I don't have those other problems you describe though, so these have to be something else IMHO.

And I just moved, so I couldn't play online yet with the full version, but I can't wait!

 

[Volante]

I just don't see why you buy a mbp if you're a hardcore gamer...

 

[palebluedot]

Heat?

First off I want to thank all of you so much, the MacRumors community is really cool. I'm glad I finally registered here, its refreshing to not deal with total fanboism or Windows "gamerz" who say "WTF MACS GTFO".

Anyways I got more info that may help to explain the problem a bit. I was just playing WoW (just launched it had been in game for about 10 min) when all the sudden I noticed that my FPS (while flying) were in the low 15s. This was consistent for a few minutes, then sped back up to 50 when I landed.

Keep in mind this has NEVER happened to me before, the Mac has always run PERFECT in WoW for hours no matter what I was doing at a consistent 55-60 fps (i have vsync on with ALL the settings on high). I windowed WoW and checked my iStat pro and it reported my CPU A at 77degrees and my GPU at 79. It said the fans were spining at 3000rpm but I could barely hear them.

Do you think this points in any particular direction? My Mac was fine this week and last week before I formatted and reinstalled OS X (my time capsule hard drive failed so I sent it in and just reformatted for the heck of it). So the problems werent happening on my old OS X install.

Any ideas? Ahhhh I'm so nervous now!

Thanks again for all the help yall! ^^

 

[nagromme]

Actually, now that you remind me it's a laptop, heat sounds increasinginly likely. Did you change the surface you are working on?

My MacBook Air (which won't be playing QW put plays older 3D games) gets distinctly slower for games--and even fullscreen video streams--after a few minutes, IF I'm playing on a soft surface like my lap or bed. On a hard desk it's fine, or goes for a much longer time before slowing down. (Sometimes I prop up the back edge so the bottom can radiate.) This is definitely a heat issue I'm seeing, since it ties in to fan noise and the feeling of being hot on the bottom.

I'm not sure how to judge the temperature numbers you report, but if you are still gaming on the same old hard surface, don't be alarmed yet--a change in temperature behavior CAN result from a software issue, especially an OS update. (Software and firmware updates can and sometimes do tweak power management--from fan usage to battery life.)

Did this maybe begin when you updated to 10.5.3? Does updating to 10.5.4 help?

There's also a fan control program (Fan Control maybe?) that some people use to customize their heat management on a Mac. You might try using that--or if you already are, try re-installing it or removing it.

By the way, when playing with quality vs. speed settings, if it seems like you have to use low settings, try playing with EACH individual setting instead (tedious though that is). For instance, I thought World of Padman needed low settings to play on my MacBook Air. Then I found I could use all HIGH Settings, as long as ONE magic setting was lowered: 16-bit textures instead of 32. In Quake Wars, on my NVidia iMac, the magic settings that make a big difference seem to be Anti-aliasing (hard to notice in mid-game so I leave it off) and lighting quality (I use the middle setting, which means fewer shadows are rendered). Screen resolution can be a big one too--try one notch down from full native. In mid-game you'll never notice the difference but it may be faster. In any case, play around to find which settings really help speed--and you may find you can leave the others on high.

EDIT: One more thing--try the Hardware Test disc than came with your Mac. It does what it says.

I just don't see why you buy a mbp if you're a hardcore gamer...

Probably because you want to carry ONE laptop, not two

 

[palebluedot]

Actually, now that you remind me it's a laptop, heat sounds increasinginly likely. Did you change the surface you are working on?

My MacBook Air (which won't be playing QW put plays older 3D games) gets distinctly slower for games--and even fullscreen video streams--after a few minutes, IF I'm playing on a soft surface like my lap or bed. On a hard desk it's fine, or goes for a much longer time before slowing down. (Sometimes I prop up the back edge so the bottom can radiate.) This is definitely a heat issue I'm seeing, since it ties in to fan noise and the feeling of being hot on the bottom.

I'm not sure how to judge the temperature numbers you report, but if you are still gaming on the same old hard surface, don't be alarmed yet--a change in temperature behavior CAN result from a software issue, especially an OS update. (Software and firmware updates can and sometimes do tweak power management--from fan usage to battery life.)

Did this maybe begin when you updated to 10.5.3? Does updating to 10.5.4 help?

There's also a fan control program (Fan Control maybe?) that some people use to customize their heat management on a Mac. You might try using that--or if you already are, try re-installing it or removing it.

By the way, when playing with quality vs. speed settings, if it seems like you have to use low settings, try playing with EACH individual setting instead (tedious though that is). For instance, I thought World of Padman needed low settings to play on my MacBook Air. Then I found I could use all HIGH Settings, as long as ONE magic setting was lowered: 16-bit textures instead of 32. In Quake Wars, on my NVidia iMac, the magic settings that make a big difference seem to be Anti-aliasing (hard to notice in mid-game so I leave it off) and lighting quality (I use the middle setting, which means fewer shadows are rendered). Screen resolution can be a big one too--try one notch down from full native. In mid-game you'll never notice the difference but it may be faster. In any case, play around to find which settings really help speed--and you may find you can leave the others on high.

EDIT: One more thing--try the Hardware Test disc than came with your Mac. It does what it says.



Probably because you want to carry ONE laptop, not two

Im pretty much using it on the same surface. Whats confusing is I wanna think that its an OS X issue but it just started up. My laptop hasnt moved so i dont think a component could have failed that quickly and even if it was WoW itself I dont know why it would just start. I havent installed 10.5.4 Im going to do that now.

All I know is its hovering primarily aroudn the mid 30s in FPS and it used to stay solid 60 with minimal fan usage... :/ This is one of those crappy problems thats hard to pinpoint but decreases the quality of gaming - ugh!

Thanks again for your sage advice and help =)

Do you think its worth the trouble to reformat/reinstall?