Mac Help?

[UnkoMan]

Sayyy... how would I go about getting FFvsTR to run on my mac? And maybe character tool too... and nifskope. All those ones. I was testing parallels but cannot seem to get it running 3d for some reason. Boot camp? Something else entirely? Or should I just go back and get parallels and figure out how to use it?

I'd also like to be able to play other games, such as Guild Wars, City of Heroes maybe, Champions Online. Heck, that DC game too.

Is this possible for me?

[Tomato]

Yes, sort of. Though Freedom Force will not technically work on a Mac, you can either set up a secondary OS, or run a Virtual PC of some kind. I'm not too familiar with how either would work on a Mac (aside from the usual "I assume because it works on a PC..."), but I do run a virtual Windows XP so I can mesh on my Vista.

[Epimethee]

Bootcamp works, but it requires rebooting. Parallels should work too, at least version 4 does for me (3 didn't really, as the video emulation was just too limited), and does very well (YMMV depending on you video card etc.) I also had success with the vmWare Fusion demo, but there were a few visual glitches. Note that you can use your Bootcamp partition as a virtual machine, but it has some limitations vs. a pure virtual machine (disk speed, convenience of pausing the VM, restore points, etc.)

Your last option is Crossover Games or the open source Darwine. (I almost got it to work, but not quite – try the other options very hard before going this route.)

[UnkoMan]

So Parallels is cool? I must have done it wrong. I couldn't get 3D acceleration to work. Granted, I don't know what I am doing. I thought I installed DirectX9 on it. Should I be doing this? Or perhaps I didn't do it correctly. I know that in the diagnostics I can't test Direct3D. It's unavailable.

[Tomato]

make sure you have the drivers for your card too. My 3d acceleration won't run unless the drivers for it are installed.

[Epimethee]

DirectX? Drivers? This is a Mac, guys.* More seriously, I simply popped the XP (SP2 or SP3) CD and Parallels (or vmWare) took care of the rest. If you've got the latest update of OS X 10.5 and of Parallels 4 and it doesn't work, I suggest heading to the support pages and forums.

*They probably cover all the video cards available for Intel Macs with half a dozen drivers.

[UnkoMan]

Oh... Maybe it's because I only installed SP1 and didn't update it yet?

Which, by the way, how did I miss that? Okay, I'm going to mess with it more then hunt down parallels specific forums. Thanks a lot for the help, though! At least now I know it technically SHOULD work.

[Tomato]

DirectX? Drivers? This is a Mac, guys.* More seriously, I simply popped the XP (SP2 or SP3) CD and Parallels (or vmWare) took care of the rest. If you've got the latest update of OS X 10.5 and of Parallels 4 and it doesn't work, I suggest heading to the support pages and forums.

*They probably cover all the video cards available for Intel Macs with half a dozen drivers.

*sigh* he was running a version of Windows on it. Windows barely does anything unless you tell it to.

[Epimethee]

> *sigh* he was running a version of Windows on it. Windows barely does anything unless you tell it to.

But Windows is installed through a Mac program!* Actually, whether you're setting things through Bootcamp, vmWare or Parallels, if using a recognized guest OS (which XP SP2 is), the video driver should** be installed automatically. At least that has been my experience in every case so far.

*[Add lengthy legal disclaimer here.]
**[Add lengthier legal disclaimer here.]

[UnkoMan]

I found the problem. I didn't have Parallels Tools installed. Threw that in and it totally runs smooth... in full screen. Windowed mode is less good, but whatever.

Guild Wars doesn't run well though. I'm gonna have to figure that out. But the real thing is... will I be able to Champion Online? Dun dun dunnnn!

Look! I can figure things out eventually! Wheee!