Steam on Mac

[crazyrockets]

Continuing on the discussion http://edgegamers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=122519
You may have seen this on teamfortress.com: http://teamfortress.com/post.php?id=3578

Yesterday, we announced that Steam and all our Source engine games will be coming to the Mac. Sound too good to be true? Well, guess what: It is true! There are no catches! Sometimes life actually works like that. The bad news is that we've just truth bombed your hard-earned lie detector back to the stone age, and you'll probably lose all your money to the next international lottery scam that sneaks through your spam filter. Still, Steam on the Mac!

Since we're getting a lot of email asking the same basic questions, we figured we'd just answer them here:

Q: I own TF2 on the PC. Do I have to buy it again on the Mac?
A: No. If you own TF2 on the PC, you own TF2 on the Mac (and vice versa). You don't have to buy the game twice. In addition, the Steam Cloud will automatically propagate your configuration settings and custom sprays to your Mac for you.

Q: Is it just some crappy emulated version of TF2?
A: No! Also: How dare you! Mac users aren't getting a crappy emulated version of the game. TF2 will run natively on OSX, like an actual big boy game for adults.

Q: Hmm, that all sounds pretty good. But I'll bet I can't play with my friends who own Macs if I'm on my PC.
A: Mac and PC users will all play together, on the same servers. We're not creating two separate universes. We're all going to be one big, happy family with guns locked in a bloody, never-ending struggle for cap points.


Please share your thoughts!

 

[crazyrockets]

I personally love this idea. Not that its for mac, but because it is a step towards steam on linux! Linux and Mac operating systems aren't excessivly different, and having my desktop run TF2 nativly on linux would be amazing!

 

[Kawaii~~]

Yup I neither have a mac or a linux but I think this is going to be bringing in a lot more potential recruit for the tf2 division and other source games that eGO currently supports =3

 

[Passerby]

I personally love this idea. Not that its for mac, but because it is a step towards steam on linux! Linux and Mac operating systems aren't excessivly different, and having my desktop run TF2 nativly on linux would be amazing!

kinda but linux as a pain to make any commercial software for cause if they make it and package as a SuSE *.rpm it wont work on redhat, debian or ubuntu but if the package is a *.deb for debian it wont work on any other distro.

personally i love the package and dependency system that linux uses but it olny really works good with open-source software that the individual distros can compile and package for there users.

 

[boyscout]

First, I had to check the date. Nope, not April 1st.

Mac-who cares, Linux-oh yeah!!!!

Not sure if they plan to port it to Linux, but I hope they do.

 

[NUFAN]

kinda but linux as a pain to make any commercial software for cause if they make it and package as a SuSE *.rpm it wont work on redhat, debian or ubuntu but if the package is a *.deb for debian it wont work on any other distro.

personally i love the package and dependency system that linux uses but it olny really works good with open-source software that the individual distros can compile and package for there users.

Maybe they'll put the package in yellowdog update manager or apt-get :drool:

 

[Darth]

Thats cool, now people have no excuse of not playing tf2!

 

[Sgt. McAwesome]

As a player who plays on a mac, I'm excited. Maybe I can give my little thing a rest so I can run steam as a pure program without it crashing at any given moment. Hurrah!

 

[SingularPoint]

I just built my new system too. Time to sell it on eBay and get a iMac....
I wonder how many bugs/lag/issues we'll run into especially on TF2, the game has run into plenty of problems.

 

[EyelessHunter]

A lot of mac users are going to realize that their hardware isn't very robust now that they have taxing programs...... LOL

I HOPE IT WORKS ON LINUX!

 

[Dead Tom]

I cant wait now if i get a mac for college i can still play my TF2

 

[Passerby]

Maybe they'll put the package in yellowdog update manager or apt-get :drool:

that is still the same problem all debian distros based your there own apt-get repos so and every rpm based distro uses it's own rpm repos also and dependences are differnt per distro and the filesystem structure is different on all of them.

running it on linux would require a lot of work for valve to compile and package for every distro for every new release of that distro. or use a script or executable based installer and have chances that certain distros will have issues with it.

 

[Passerby]

A lot of mac users are going to realize that their hardware isn't very robust now that they have taxing programs...... LOL

I HOPE IT WORKS ON LINUX!

i wouldn't say that a lot of people with macs use them for video or audio production which is a hell of a lot more taxing than gaming.

 

[DRaGZ]

i wouldn't say that a lot of people with macs use them for video or audio production which is a hell of a lot more taxing than gaming.

It's taxing in a very different way.

A/V production software tend to load everything up, make sure there's enough of a RAM buffer to keep things running smoothly, and then start up a process, which is more dependent on sheer processing power. This because you want to watch/listen to your stuff at their best quality.

Videogames, after loading all the necessary junk, tend to run everything in real-time, which is more dependent on processing speed. This is because you want things to run smoothly and without jitters.

There are GFX cards which are geared towards either of these ends. For the PC, it's more faster GFX cards rather than meaty cards, but there's a healthy mix of both, not to mention there are many video cards now which go back and forth on the fly. For the Mac, it's almost only the meaty cards.

This is great for A/V production, not so much for games. Essentially, you're sacrificing smooth gameplay for high fidelity, which is not always ideal.

 

[Sgt. McAwesome]

It's taxing in a very different way.

A/V production software tend to load everything up, make sure there's enough of a RAM buffer to keep things running smoothly, and then start up a process, which is more dependent on sheer processing power. This because you want to watch/listen to your stuff at their best quality.

Videogames, after loading all the necessary junk, tend to run everything in real-time, which is more dependent on processing speed. This is because you want things to run smoothly and without jitters.

There are GFX cards which are geared towards either of these ends. For the PC, it's more faster GFX cards rather than meaty cards, but there's a healthy mix of both, not to mention there are many video cards now which go back and forth on the fly. For the Mac, it's almost only the meaty cards.

This is great for A/V production, not so much for games. Essentially, you're sacrificing smooth gameplay for high fidelity, which is not always ideal.

When I run TF2 on my mac, it's actually a lot smoother than when I used to play it on PC. The fps is a lot faster (I get at least 50-80, minus the pre-game lag I usually get), and also it doesn't have that slow pacing that the PC gets when I play it.

I think it runs fine on my mac, so I won't have to worry about smoothness.

My graphics card, BTW, is an ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro. It runs fine.

 

[DRaGZ]

When I run TF2 on my mac, it's actually a lot smoother than when I used to play it on PC. The fps is a lot faster (I get at least 50-80, minus the pre-game lag I usually get), and also it doesn't have that slow pacing that the PC gets when I play it.

I think it runs fine on my mac, so I won't have to worry about smoothness.

My graphics card, BTW, is an ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro. It runs fine.

All Source games should run fine. Source is an extremely efficient engine for the kinds of graphics it can produced.

But once you get to more hefty stuff, like say GTAIV or Mass Effect 2 or stuff like that, you'll get noticeable hiccups happening.

And you're probably getting better performance on you Mac than your PC because your Mac has a better setup.

 

[Passerby]

It's taxing in a very different way.

A/V production software tend to load everything up, make sure there's enough of a RAM buffer to keep things running smoothly, and then start up a process, which is more dependent on sheer processing power. This because you want to watch/listen to your stuff at their best quality.

Videogames, after loading all the necessary junk, tend to run everything in real-time, which is more dependent on processing speed. This is because you want things to run smoothly and without jitters.

There are GFX cards which are geared towards either of these ends. For the PC, it's more faster GFX cards rather than meaty cards, but there's a healthy mix of both, not to mention there are many video cards now which go back and forth on the fly. For the Mac, it's almost only the meaty cards.

This is great for A/V production, not so much for games. Essentially, you're sacrificing smooth gameplay for high fidelity, which is not always ideal.

actually when working with audio almost everything is done in real-time and done at a higher bit depth and sample rate than normal consumer audio, pretty much any modern mac book pro or imac can play even newer games maxed out.

 

[Skill/CJaZ]

ATM's get Valve games before the Mac.

http://redvsblue.com/comics/strip.php?id=1613