iSteam

[OssK]

Because they are entirely separate executables. Someone had to develop that separate version--that is, spend time and money on it. If it were really as easy as you're making it out to be, then why would it be such a big deal that this whole thing is happening?

You could run most of the source ones on cider (1h port) and most of the small indie / a good chunk of 2D games via an emulator (say valve bought some part of a virtualization system for instance). So that's the easy way.

Thing is, there is very probably going to be a mac and PC market that are separated : Total Wars and whatnot will not want to port to mac, middle sized games neither.

On the plus side : valve will have a good idea of what the market is pretty fast so everyone 'll know if it's worth it to port to mac.

[tabacco]

As a (primarily) Mac user, this is great news, but I still have one question:

Will Steam let me install games to hard drives *other* than my primary hard drive? Because when I had Steam on PC, it definitely DID NOT, and this is why I stopped using it. I use external hard drives A LOT as my main hard drive is pretty full - if the Mac version still has this stupid requirement, I will not be a happy camper.

I'm going to bet it dumps it all in ~/Library/Application Support/Steam like every other application does with its data.

Comically overcomplicated though it may be, you could copy all of the data out, mount your other disk at ~/Library/Application Support/Steam, then copy everything back in. Then edit /etc/fstab to mount it automatically on boot and you've got your solution. Unix'd

Edited March 10, 2010 by tabacco

[toblix]

You could run most of the source ones on cider (1h port) and most of the small indie / a good chunk of 2D games via an emulator (say valve bought some part of a virtualization system for instance). So that's the easy way.

Yeah, but neither of those are free, so it would still make sense to charge separately for both versions.

[OssK]

The'yre not free that's for sure, over that, sites like http://www.gametreeonline.com/

already does that and they're not released as soon as they come out because you need to redo all the QA part with Cider.

[Chris]

You could run most of the source ones on cider (1h port) and most of the small indie / a good chunk of 2D games via an emulator (say valve bought some part of a virtualization system for instance). So that's the easy way.

Thing is, there is very probably going to be a mac and PC market that are separated : Total Wars and whatnot will not want to port to mac, middle sized games neither.

On the plus side : valve will have a good idea of what the market is pretty fast so everyone 'll know if it's worth it to port to mac.

I'm saying it's not free for developers to port their games to Mac themselves.

[Chuckpebble]

I'm saying it's not free for developers to port their games to Mac themselves.

Exactly, its a huge cost. That's why recent mac ports are so darn expensive while their PC brethren are going for peanuts.

I recently played around with demos for Bioshock and ToCA 3 on my laptop. Thats $100 for games that are at least 3 years old. Especially since these are both cider ports, I think. Why would I buy those when I could get both on steam for, if I recall correctly, under $30 total?

I think this is what you're getting at Chris, great, the legwork has been done by VALVe, source is ported. VALVe can recoup their costs for that over time. Other devs/publishers aren't necessarily going to take that risk, not every game is a Source based first person game.

[OssK]

I'm saying it's not free for developers to port their games to Mac themselves.

Yes, I'd have to check statistics here cause that "piece of info" is only coming from one company at that time but apprently, it's less expensive by a good margin to make a mac port internally during development than an external one at the end… Which seems counter-intuitive to me.

[Chuckpebble]

Go here to sign up for the beta.

http://store.steampowered.com/macbeta/

It asks some info about you're playing habits and for you to upload your system profile as a text document. Pretty straightforward, here's hopin'.

[lobotomy42]

WHAT

So, instead of my multiple hard-drive fear, I instead encountered this inane hard-drive related error:

EDIT: To clarify, this error is occurring because I had the audacity to format my Mac's internal drive as case-sensitive, rather than case-INsensitive, not the other way around. In other words, somewhere there is Steam code that looks for a file named "foo.bar" and elsewhere in the code it looks for "FOO.BAR"

[Thompson]

http://www.techspot.com/news/38933-steam-for-mac-client-now-available-for-download.html

Awesome of Valve to give Portal out for free.

[toblix]

WHAT

So, instead of my multiple hard-drive fear, I instead encountered this inane hard-drive related error:

EDIT: To clarify, this error is occurring because I had the audacity to format my Mac's internal drive as case-sensitive, rather than case-INsensitive, not the other way around. In other words, somewhere there is Steam code that looks for a file named "foo.bar" and elsewhere in the code it looks for "FOO.BAR"

Well, they'll have to fix that in a hurry if they're releasing a Linux client.

[Nappi]

Good thing they finally got it released. Now, why the fuck is my HDD root full of folders such as friends, graphics, package, public, resource, servers and steam? This is horrible.

EDIT: OK, so I just removed them. So far so good.

Edited May 13, 2010 by Nappi

[Chuckpebble]

Good thing they finally got it released. Now, why the fuck is my HDD root full of folders such as friends, graphics, package, public, resource, servers and steam? This is horrible.

EDIT: OK, so I just removed them. So far so good.

Didn't notice those yet.

I use an Applications folder in my home folder instead of the common one, I found it nice that it created my application shortcuts in the same folder and they didn't hard code it to put stuff in the /Applications folder.

So app shortcuts are just tiny <1/2MB applications that launch the actual executables. Seems nice, just wonder where said executables are. I guess they could be in Application Support, but it seems strange to have programs in there. I wonder if they're not actually in the Steam.app application bundle.

[Grippage]

Mine are in User/Documents/Steam Content

I don't think I had an Applications folder in my user folder before I installed Steam...I've used Mac for years and I still don't understand the system structure.

[Chuckpebble]

Mine are in User/Documents/Steam Content

I don't think I had an Applications folder in my user folder before I installed Steam...I've used Mac for years and I still don't understand the system structure.

Yeah, its a curious thing. If you go in your home folder and make a new folder, then give it the name "Applications" it automatically gets the default Applications folder icon, and then any program that you install in there is available for that user only. And by install I mean drag and drop.

It is kind of weird that the games go in the documents folder. I guess I'm gonna have to do some digging to figure out where to put all of my config files from TF2 when that comes out.

[Nappi]

Played through half of Portal with my Macbook Pro. It runs pretty well with the default settings but I can't seem to make it look as nice as in Windows. I wonder whether Apple will update their graphics card drivers for OS X some time in the near future now that there are games that would actually need them*.

*Yeah yeah.. there were games for Mac before Steam, too.

[lobotomy42]

Well, they'll have to fix that in a hurry if they're releasing a Linux client.

Found a work-around - mount an external drive with a case-insensitive filesystem (like, say, FAT32), create "Steam" and "Steam Content" folders there, copy Steam.app over there as well. Make symlinks from your home folder into the new folders, and everything seems to work fine.

But, seriously, WTF

EDIT: Scratch all of that.

The error messages go away, but I just noticed that the symlink'd directories aren't getting filled. Instead of putting things in "/Volumes/EXTERNAL/Steam Content", it puts them in... "/volumes/external/steam content" which is not actually on the external device. How did no one think of this problem?

Ok, I'll stop spamming the thread with my technical woes now.

Edited May 13, 2010 by lobotomy42

[lobotomy42]

Played through half of Portal with my Macbook Pro. It runs pretty well with the default settings but I can't seem to make it look as nice as in Windows. I wonder whether Apple will update their graphics card drivers for OS X some time in the near future now that there are games that would actually need them*.

*Yeah yeah.. there were games for Mac before Steam, too.

I doubt performance will *ever* approach what it is on the Windows side. Between the DirectX/driver optimizations and the fact that OS X eats a huge chunk of video memory, it just seems totally unlikely. (Haven't Linux gamers had this problem for awhile now?)

[Chuckpebble]

Ok, I'll stop spamming the thread with my technical woes now.

No, no, don't worry. Isn't that what this thread is for?

So you made a sim link. Which means that it looks like a regular folder on your internal HD (no little alias arrow badge in the corner) but when you click into it you are magically looking at a directory on your external HD. Is that right?

And what you're saying is that steam has taken this path:

/Volumes/NAMEofEXTERNALHD/Steam Content/

made it all lowercase and created a new path on your internal HD:

/volumes/nameofexternalhd/steam content/

Holy heck is my head spinnin'

It's always annoyed me how I could name a fat32 volume on my mac and then it comes back all caps after mounting it on a Windows machine. Does windows 7 still use the whole drive letter thing?

Back OT. I assume you know the difference, I've only read about it before, but is there any chance that you need a hard link as opposed to a symlink?

I'm actually off to brush up on what the difference is now. Very cobwebby up there lately.

[Grippage]

No you've misunderstood.

This thread is here so that people who can't deal with the fact that people own macs can vent their frustration!

For instance, Macs are sooooo expensive and they have never been considered a gaming platform. Therefore it's stupid to play games on macs and I'm gonna tell people they're homosexual until they realise that they suck!

[Scrobbs]

Looking forward to playing cross platform L4D2 with a mate with a MBP. Hopefully should run it....?

[MrHoatzin]

That is a crazy pile of stupid.

:/

[Erwin_Br]

I just played through and finished Portal again. The performance on my Mac was decent. Got 60 FPS most of the time, and 30 when looking through a portal. It performs better when running Windows in Bootcamp, though.

But hey, I can't believe I forgot what a fantastic game this is.

<object width="873" height="525"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDj1fYlwR00&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDj1fYlwR00&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="873" height="525"></embed></object>

[Brannigan]

That's basically the best video ever.

[Erkki]

So I just got a MacBook Pro from work and been trying to install Portal and HL2 for two days, but Steam keeps telling me the servers are too busy. No problem with other games, though. Was nicely surprised when the first game I thought to try had a Mac version (And Yet it Moves). And also Braid, Machinarium, Sammun Mak