Wow, am I bummed - Tiger Woods '08

[jasdelta]

He he. If you check the posts there, you might recognize one of the UserID's...
Yep, I did. And, I think I'll wait a while before I actually ask for a refund, I really want this game to work.
I'm going to call that number though...

Rich

Ok, let me know what you hear. I didn't actually look at any of the posts in detail. I'll have to go back and look.

I'd like to see you get it working too. I think I'll go ahead and take a chance and order it today from Amazon.com along with Leopard and see if it will work on my Mac Pro, knowing I can get a refund if needed.

Jim

 

[jasdelta]

He he. If you check the posts there, you might recognize one of the UserID's...
Yep, I did. And, I think I'll wait a while before I actually ask for a refund, I really want this game to work.
I'm going to call that number though...

Rich

Rich,
I just looked at your post in the General Discussions board for TW08 I wonder if you'd get any better response if you posted also in the Mac specific forum for EA Sports Games? Maybe one of the EA guys might look at it there.

Jim

 

[merc669]

Here is the link to the EA-Sports for Mac. You have to create a Persona and jump a couple of hoops (Its Confusing). I have registration issues with Madden but thought you Tiger users might want this;

http://forums.ea.com/mboards/index.jspa

About 3/4 ways down is a Mac Spot.....

or

http://forums.ea.com/mboards/category.jspa?categoryID=134


Bill.......

 

[mazilis]

After doing some more searching in the EA Support area, I found a specific reference to the Black Screen freezing issue us iMac users are having:

***
Question
Why does Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 lock up with a black screen when playing on an iMac 7.1 that has the ATI 2600 HD video card?

Answer
We are aware of a graphical issue that occurs with an iMac 7.1 that uses the ATI 2600 HD video card. This is caused by a driver issue with the video card that will be addressed in the next system update by Apple later this month.

To receive an update via e-mail when more information regarding this issue is available, please click the Notify Me... button at the bottom of this article.
***

Here's a link to it:

http://support.ea.com/cgi-bin/ea.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=18271&p_created=1192727261&p_sid=hBf-KvOi&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MiwyJnBfcHJvZHM9MzQ0OCwzNTczLDM1NzQmcF9jYXRzPTU2Niw3MTUmcF9wdj0zLjM1NzQmcF9jdj0yLjcxNSZwX3BhZ2U9MQ**&p_li=&p_topview=1

 

[Virgil-TB2]

EA does not make Mac games

I think the problem is that EA is not developing native game apps. I am staying away from games developed in this new sneaky way. They are just Windows games with a wrapper to run on Macs.

Shame on you EA! The Mac is big enough to focus on native apps with it's much larger home / school marketshare. I wish when I buy a EA game for the PC, there was a way to communicate back to EA that it will be running on a Mac and not a PC.

Yeah, they really should not have let this product out the door.

I would not buy it AT ALL, just for that crap about filling up the Applications directory with excess junk. That just shows they have no idea about Mac apps at all and that it's just a crappy port. If they don't even know enough to put it in a folder of it's own, (let alone the preferred "application bundle" method), then they are not even trying.

EA does not make Mac games.

They just force a few of their Windows Games to work (badly) on a Mac.

Totally different thing.

 

[Virgil-TB2]

Contact # Directly from TW '08 manual - 1 650 628 1001.

I contacted them about this problem, and see their response below. BTW, I had already tried this, and it didn't work for me.

"Thank you for taking the time to contact EASPORTS Technical Support regarding the issue you've been having with black screen crashing in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 for the Mac. Sometimes, if you have a variety of programs running in the background on your computer, they may be using a considerable amount of system resources resulting in a crash similar to the one you've described. Closing these unnecessary background processes will help boost system performance in your game, as well as free up system resources which may be conflicting with the game.
1. From the Finder menu open the Go menu and select Utilities.
2. Open the Activity Monitor program.
3. In the top right cornor, make sure the My Processes option is selected from the pull down menu.
4. Highlight the programs listed one at a time and click the Quit Process button in the top left.
5. When the confirmation window appears select Force Quit to close the program.
6. Repeat those steps until only the following four are listed:

Dock
Finder
LoginWindow
Activity Monitor

Note: there will be other programs that either will not close, or will re-appear after being closed. Those processes can be skipped.
7. Close the activity monitor and attempt to run the game.

Be aware that this is only a temporary change, restarting the system will restore it to the default state. If closing these programs helps resolve performance issues you may want to go through them one by one to narrow down which program is causing the conflict."

Let me know if anyone else has success with this!

Man! EA doesn't seem to have a clue.

I don't play a lot of games, but every single game I have ever played on my Mac has *one* icon in the Applications folder, and you click on it to play.

Are they actually suggesting you have to fool around with Admin tools (that most Mac users don't even know exist), just to get the game to play? They have no concept of the Mac customer at all.

What a joke EA has become. They are so lost in the Windows world they don't know what they are doing anymore. Mac gamers will not buy games that you have to set parameters, edit files, track processes, etc. to make work. What a stupendously bad "entry" into the Mac gaming market.

 

[RichardI]

Thank you Jim, Mike and everybody else that have helped. Looks like it's definitely a driver issue rolleyes that will be resolved rolleyes with a new vid driver later this month? LOL . I've heard that one before for sure.
Anyway, I'd say that if you have a Mac Pro you can likely play the game no problem. Jim, let me know how it works for you will you? My next Mac will likely be a Mac Pro anyway.
I signed up to get notified if they update that post too.

Rich

 

[jasdelta]

Thank you Jim, Mike and everybody else that have helped. Looks like it's definitely a driver issue rolleyes that will be resolved rolleyes with a new vid driver later this month? LOL . I've heard that one before for sure.
Anyway, I'd say that if you have a Mac Pro you can likely play the game no problem. Jim, let me know how it works for you will you? My next Mac will likely be a Mac Pro anyway.
I signed up to get notified if they update that post too.

Rich

Hi Rich,

I will. With Amazon's free shipping I probably won't have it until next week, but I'll post a note here and let you know.

At least now you know for sure it's a driver!

Jim

 

[jdubzz]

Tigers Woods 08 NO PROBLEMS

My MBPro has the GeForce 8600GT w/256 MB VRAM

 

[AOA]

Also got the black screen of death trying to run Tiger Woods 08 on my new aluminum 24" iMac. However, it worked fine on my Mac Pro. Hope Apple gets the video driver update out soon.

 

[jasdelta]

Also got the black screen of death trying to run Tiger Woods 08 on my new aluminum 24" iMac. However, it worked fine on my Mac Pro. Hope Apple gets the video driver update out soon.

Hi Tom,
I also have a Mac Pro, 2.66 4 core with 7300 GT Nvidia and 5G. I ordered TW08 from Amazon, but due to their slow shipping for free (can't complain too much) I won't get it until next week. Based on your results, I'm sure it will run ok on my system too. Are you using any kind of external speakers? I use a Bose Companion 5 system, and have read EA's post on problems with them.

Otherwise it the game play good, graphics display, motion etc.?

Jim

 

[Moof1904]

I've had a couple of friends who worked at EA. They describe it as an oppressive pit of hell. Employee abuses abound. They used the term "sweatshop" and described incredible abuses.

After hearing their stories, I vowed I'd never give EA my money.

 

[supertramp2k]

Free C&C3!

After having numerous frustrations trying to get this to work, EA is sending me a free copy of C&C3! Didn't even ask for anything, they offered it up for me. Plus, Apple replaced my copy of TW with credit on a gift card (pretty nice considering it was open software!). I'll probably hold onto the credit until they post the patch and see how it's working for people before I get it again.

 

[AOA]

Hi Tom,
I also have a Mac Pro, 2.66 4 core with 7300 GT Nvidia and 5G. I ordered TW08 from Amazon, but due to their slow shipping for free (can't complain too much) I won't get it until next week. Based on your results, I'm sure it will run ok on my system too. Are you using any kind of external speakers? I use a Bose Companion 5 system, and have read EA's post on problems with them.

Otherwise it the game play good, graphics display, motion etc.?

Jim

Jim,

I have the exact same speakers with my Mac Pro. So far I haven't had any issues with these speakers when playing TG08. The game has been playing well on my system. No lock-ups so far; graphics are decent and smooth, especially ball flight. If you play with the camera view, and get a close-up of the crowd, you'll get an occasional strange looking spectator (face on back the the head, etc). I bought the game for my kids, but have to admit, it's becoming a little addictive.

 

[jasdelta]

Jim,

I have the exact same speakers with my Mac Pro. So far I haven't had any issues with these speakers when playing TG08. The game has been playing well on my system. No lock-ups so far; graphics are decent and smooth, especially ball flight. If you play with the camera view, and get a close-up of the crowd, you'll get an occasional strange looking spectator (face on back the the head, etc). I bought the game for my kids, but have to admit, it's becoming a little addictive.

Tom,

Many thanks, I was hoping that you might have them or similar. Glad to hear that you've had no trouble playing. Enjoy! I've been playing the Windows version running it on my Bootcamp partition and its run great. I'll look forward to now being able to play it on the Mac side.

Jim

 

[curtispalmer]

same problem

I am having the same problem, but I have been able to play a couple PGA events, trying to go through online gaming or to the Tiger Challenge, etc. I get the black screen...

EA doesn't even have the game on their site yet.

Let me know as well if you get a solution or bug fix, thanks.

 

[kresh]

I think the problem is that EA is not developing native game apps. I am staying away from games developed in this new sneaky way. They are just Windows games with a wrapper to run on Macs.

Shame on you EA! The Mac is big enough to focus on native apps with it's much larger home / school marketshare. I wish when I buy a EA game for the PC, there was a way to communicate back to EA that it will be running on a Mac and not a PC.

I'm with you on this. I paid way too much money for my Mac for me to have to use a cludge like this.

If EA, or any developer, wants my money it's going to have to be native OS X and not that Cider junk.

I wish Apple was more aggressive on the gaming front. It would be awesome if they were to start their own gaming division and buy an existing gaming house, it's not like they don't have the cash. Why not buy Electronic Arts? They almost have enough cash to buy them outright.

I don't play a lot of games and it's never been a consideration for the specs I need in a machine. I know Apple is the new cool, but if Apple was more aggresive on the gaming front I think it would boost the under 25 age group appeal even more.

 

[jasdelta]

Thank you Jim, Mike and everybody else that have helped. Looks like it's definitely a driver issue rolleyes that will be resolved rolleyes with a new vid driver later this month? LOL . I've heard that one before for sure.
Anyway, I'd say that if you have a Mac Pro you can likely play the game no problem. Jim, let me know how it works for you will you? My next Mac will likely be a Mac Pro anyway.
I signed up to get notified if they update that post too.

Rich

Ok, Rich, Tom anyone interested here goes.

I just got TW 08 Mac today from Amazon.com and installed it on my system.

First the system: Mac Pro 2.66 Dual Xeon with 5G System Ram Nvidia 7300 GT Video Card. AD 24" Bose Companion 5 USB Surround Speaker system.

The install went well until I tried the online registration and no surprise there, they EA don't have a listing for Mac on the pull down menus.

After install I set up my player using the game face feature with no problems. I then started the game and set the video at 1280x800x32. All went well with the game starting normally just as it has in my Windows version on my boot camp partition.

On initial startup with the EA Sports screen, I noticed right off ,that the sound was garbled ( the same as it was when I tried NFSC which I returned), but not too bad, so I went on ahead. After establishing my player, I started with the games new Tiger Challenge mode. Game play so far is smooth and for the most part the sound on my Bose speakers is ok, but still with some garbling of certain deep tones during game play. On ball strikes and other ambient sounds so far its ok. As of now I have completed just one section, but not played the pro yet. During play so far graphics are good, trees moving in the wind, etc.

I also tried using the Command-Return feature to go from full screen to windowed and it works fine so far. In doing so the program goes to a normal Mac window and the dock is fully visible at the bottom of the screen. I also tried to run Firefox with the game running in a window and Firefox started up fine.

So far I've had one small freeze-up which occurred while in full screen mode at the end of a hole, during the normal scoring and displaying the next hole. While my screen was frozen, I tried the Command-Return function and the program went to black then to the windowed mode and I was then at the next hole. Not sure what might have happened yet. More to come.

Overall so far its running as well as my Win XP version on bootcamp. I am going to put in a ticket to EA on the sound issue, as this is a known issue so far with these releases and so called third party speakers.

BTW: My Windows version running on boot camp runs flawlessly using my Bose speakers. Maybe a sound patch will be coming who knows.

For those who have the new Imacs with HD 2600 card, I hope EA or Apple will be coming up with a patch or new driver for all of you.

BTW: If you watch the video of the tour of Leopard now on the Apple web site, you'll notice the host uses a new Imac 24" and in his demo of the new "Spaces" feature of Leopard, he's got TW08 running in one of the "spaces" along with 3 other programs all at the same time.

Jim

 

[jdubzz]

Controls for TW08

Hi All: I get a bit frazzeled when trying to play, any one have any good walk troughs? I'm using only the keyboard commands.

Jerry W

 

[jasdelta]

Hi All: I get a bit frazzeled when trying to play, any one have any good walk troughs? I'm using only the keyboard commands.

Jerry W

Jerry,

Why are you using the keyboard commands instead of the mouse? Try using the 2 or 3 click method with the mouse. What system are you playing on?

Jim

 

[AOA]

Ok, Rich, Tom anyone interested here goes.

I just got TW 08 Mac today from Amazon.com and installed it on my system.

First the system: Mac Pro 2.66 Dual Xeon with 5G System Ram Nvidia 7300 GT Video Card. AD 24" Bose Companion 5 USB Surround Speaker system.

The install went well until I tried the online registration and no surprise there, they EA don't have a listing for Mac on the pull down menus.

After install I set up my player using the game face feature with no problems. I then started the game and set the video at 1280x800x32. All went well with the game starting normally just as it has in my Windows version on my boot camp partition.

On initial startup with the EA Sports screen, I noticed right off ,that the sound was garbled ( the same as it was when I tried NFSC which I returned), but not too bad, so I went on ahead. After establishing my player, I started with the games new Tiger Challenge mode. Game play so far is smooth and for the most part the sound on my Bose speakers is ok, but still with some garbling of certain deep tones during game play. On ball strikes and other ambient sounds so far its ok. As of now I have completed just one section, but not played the pro yet. During play so far graphics are good, trees moving in the wind, etc.

I also tried using the Command-Return feature to go from full screen to windowed and it works fine so far. In doing so the program goes to a normal Mac window and the dock is fully visible at the bottom of the screen. I also tried to run Firefox with the game running in a window and Firefox started up fine.

So far I've had one small freeze-up which occurred while in full screen mode at the end of a hole, during the normal scoring and displaying the next hole. While my screen was frozen, I tried the Command-Return function and the program went to black then to the windowed mode and I was then at the next hole. Not sure what might have happened yet. More to come.

Overall so far its running as well as my Win XP version on bootcamp. I am going to put in a ticket to EA on the sound issue, as this is a known issue so far with these releases and so called third party speakers.

BTW: My Windows version running on boot camp runs flawlessly using my Bose speakers. Maybe a sound patch will be coming who knows.

For those who have the new Imacs with HD 2600 card, I hope EA or Apple will be coming up with a patch or new driver for all of you.

BTW: If you watch the video of the tour of Leopard now on the Apple web site, you'll notice the host uses a new Imac 24" and in his demo of the new "Spaces" feature of Leopard, he's got TW08 running in one of the "spaces" along with 3 other programs all at the same time.

Jim

Jim,

Sorry I've missed your post; been out of town a few days. I've played a fair amount of TW08 and have not had the issues you described above (even tried to replicate the same situations) with the sound or video on my Mac Pro. I did install Leopard on my 24" iMac and the game now works well without going to a black screen and locking up the computer. I hope for those who decide not to ugrade to Leopard that Apple still comes out with a patch for this bug.

I also noticed that Apple was running TW08 in SPACES in one of the video tutorials. I tried this with 3 other programs as well and it ran great!

 

[jasdelta]

Jim,

Sorry I've missed your post; been out of town a few days. I've played a fair amount of TW08 and have not had the issues you described above (even tried to replicate the same situations) with the sound or video on my Mac Pro. I did install Leopard on my 24" iMac and the game now works well without going to a black screen and locking up the computer. I hope for those who decide not to ugrade to Leopard that Apple still comes out with a patch for this bug.

I also noticed that Apple was running TW08 in SPACES in one of the video tutorials. I tried this with 3 other programs as well and it ran great!

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the note. I'm glad that you are able to run it with no problems, using the same speaker system. Are you running Leopard on the Mac Pro yet? I plan on installing it this week, but keep a good back up of 10.4.10 on one of my internals just in case

I wonder if you might have a few minutes to compare notes on how your speakers are set up etc, so that I might be able to do some trouble shooting? There's got to be a glitch someplace on my system, if your sound is normal and we have the same systems for the most part.

Are your Bose connected to one of the USB ports in the back of the CPU?

Jim

 

[AOA]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the note. I'm glad that you are able to run it with no problems, using the same speaker system. Are you running Leopard on the Mac Pro yet? I plan on installing it this week, but keep a good back up of 10.4.10 on one of my internals just in case

I wonder if you might have a few minutes to compare notes on how your speakers are set up etc, so that I might be able to do some trouble shooting? There's got to be a glitch someplace on my system, if your sound is normal and we have the same systems for the most part.

Are your Bose connected to one of the USB ports in the back of the CPU?

Jim

Jim,

I did hook up the speaker system with the provided USB cable to one of the ports in the back of the computer. This shouldn't make that much of a difference, but did you try disconnecting all other USB peripherals to see if you get improved performance?

I know that these speakers require a 5.1 sound decoder which should be included in most DVD decoders and games. I know for a fact that Vista automatically includes this driver, not sure about OS X but I haven't had any issues with my system and have not purposely downloaded any additional drivers. I also run Vista via bootcamp and the performance from the speakers sound the same as when I use them in OS X. I doubt it's your system. If you do a google search on these speakers, many people have been having issues similar to yours. I may have just gotten lucky.

No, I have not installed Leopard yet to my Mac Pro. I have converted all of my kids' Macs and my MacBook Pro to Leopard to see how they would run, and so far so good. I've been very happy with this latest operating system from Apple. I'm toying with the idea of converting my four hard drives on my Mac Pro to a different RAID arrangement before upgrading to Leopard, so I want to figure this out first. I also did a back-up of my current system on an external drive just in case there are any "misadventures". I can't wait to install it because it is suppose to take advantage of multiple core CPUs. I've heard from some of my friends that their systems are running faster with Leopard. Admittedly, my kids' dual-core iMacs do seem to run with more zip.

Good Luck!

 

[jasdelta]

Jim,

I did hook up the speaker system with the provided USB cable to one of the ports in the back of the computer. This shouldn't make that much of a difference, but did you try disconnecting all other USB peripherals to see if you get improved performance?

I know that these speakers require a 5.1 sound decoder which should be included in most DVD decoders and games. I know for a fact that Vista automatically includes this driver, not sure about OS X but I haven't had any issues with my system and have not purposely downloaded any additional drivers. I also run Vista via bootcamp and the performance from the speakers sound the same as when I use them in OS X. I doubt it's your system. If you do a google search on these speakers, many people have been having issues similar to yours. I may have just gotten lucky.

No, I have not installed Leopard yet to my Mac Pro. I have converted all of my kids' Macs and my MacBook Pro to Leopard to see how they would run, and so far so good. I've been very happy with this latest operating system from Apple. I'm toying with the idea of converting my four hard drives on my Mac Pro to a different RAID arrangement before upgrading to Leopard, so I want to figure this out first. I also did a back-up of my current system on an external drive just in case there are any "misadventures". I can't wait to install it because it is suppose to take advantage of multiple core CPUs. I've heard from some of my friends that their systems are running faster with Leopard. Admittedly, my kids' dual-core iMacs do seem to run with more zip.

Good Luck!

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the info. I figured that you had connected your Bose just like I did. Yesterday, I moved the USB cable on the speakers, disconnected other peripherals that I had connected, worked with the system preferences sound controls in OS X, worked with the volume controls within the program, nothing seems to make a difference.

What is really frustrating is that on my XP Home Bootcamp partition and playing the Windows version of TGW 08 the speakers work flawlessly, just great sound, and of course connected through the same USB port. The game also plays much smoother under Windows than under OSX as far as overall speed and graphics display, and as mentioned the sound is great. All other programs that I run on OSX using the speakers also run with no sound issues either. Something wrong with this picture someplace. I'll have to google also and see what I find. I've tried to work with EA leaving notes on their forums, but get no response yet. I'm going to put in a support request today, to see if I can get them to respond to that.

Anyway on a positive side note, have you gotten any "Aces" yet? I got my first yesterday on a Par 3 hole on the OSX version. It was great!!

I get Leopard today, and will install it. I'll see if that makes any difference.

 

[AOA]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the info. I figured that you had connected your Bose just like I did. Yesterday, I moved the USB cable on the speakers, disconnected other peripherals that I had connected, worked with the system preferences sound controls in OS X, worked with the volume controls within the program, nothing seems to make a difference.

What is really frustrating is that on my XP Home Bootcamp partition and playing the Windows version of TGW 08 the speakers work flawlessly, just great sound, and of course connected through the same USB port. The game also plays much smoother under Windows than under OSX as far as overall speed and graphics display, and as mentioned the sound is great. All other programs that I run on OSX using the speakers also run with no sound issues either. Something wrong with this picture someplace. I'll have to google also and see what I find. I've tried to work with EA leaving notes on their forums, but get no response yet. I'm going to put in a support request today, to see if I can get them to respond to that.

Anyway on a positive side note, have you gotten any "Aces" yet? I got my first yesterday on a Par 3 hole on the OSX version. It was great!!

I get Leopard today, and will install it. I'll see if that makes any difference.

Jim,

It always hurts to admit some things work better in Windows, but I have to confess that it is still easily ahead of OS X as a gaming platform. Goodluck with your speaker issue. It doesn't surprise me that you've had issues with getting help from EA. Their customer support is about as good as their programmers write code.

I have yet to get an Ace, but what is more frustrating is the fact that each of my 7 and 5 year old sons have one to their credit! And they haven't logged too many more hours playing than I have. It's just amazing how quickly kids pick up on these video games and how good their eye-hand co-ordination is.

Good luck as well on the Leopard installation. I already love it. Most of the improvements are definitely "under the hood". But it has been the most stable operating system upgrade experience I've had (Windows or Mac). On 2 of my computers I did an erase and clean installation. A third I just simply did the standard update. All three have been very stable and seem to work equally well. Again, I'm still deciding on what RAID configuration I want on my Mac Pro before I do the upgrade on that system.

Tom