Crossover for Mac

Anybody use this program for running Windows apps in Mac OS?

I downloaded the trial version of Crossover Mac for games, used it to install Portal and Half-Life 2 Episode Two from my Orange Box disc. I have an Intel Mac with Vista installed, but for obvious reasons, I prefer not to use Vista at all. I only really use Vista for games, and I don't play a lot of games on my computer. I'd much prefer to play games under Mac OS, so I thought Crossover would be the perfect solution. Portal runs a little laggy at times under Vista on my computer, and Episode Two runs way too laggy to even be playable.

After installing and running Portal, I was pleased to see it it ran perfectly with absolutely no lag at all, even with the graphics setting turned up. I played it for a good while until it froze and crashed, since then it always freezes up on the first load screen and crashes. I tried playing Episode Two, and the graphics were so garbled it was impossible to play.

Not sure why Portal worked so well before, then completely stopped working, I had really thought this would work great

So, anybody else used this program before with better luck than myself? From browsing around on the web, it seems like most people get this to work without too many problems.

Valve games are notoriously difficult to run through Wine (what Crossover essentially is).  The game may run, but it'll likely be pretty unstable.  Not only that, but none of the Steam features will work (Steam friends, community stuff, etc).

If you have Vista installed, you're much better off just booting into that when you want to play games.

So why on earth did you get a Mac if you wanted to play Portal and HL2:EP2?  You'd save a ton of money by just building a PC with good quality parts and installing Vista on it.

sean wookie said:

He said he doesn't play many games. Why would you get a computer just to play 2 games?

Yet he got a Mac (which is a computer) and now he wants to play games on it.  Newsflash, most current games don't run natively on OS X.  There are a few exceptions.  Some older games will run on it natively, but they're probably several years old.

What are the hardware specs of the Mac?  Does it have a discrete (add-on) video card or is it built in?  List all your specs and the version of crossover you're running.  More than likely, it's just not going to work again.

It is a MacBook. Obviously I didn't buy to to play games on. Its specs running under Vista more than meet the minimum requirements of the Orange Box, and like I said, I Episode One and Portal worked fine, just a little laggy at parts. Episode Two was so laggy it was unplayable, so I gave up on the idea of getting to play it long ago. Just a couple of days ago I heard about Crossover, so I thought I'd give it a go. As I said, Portal played beautifully, no lagging at all even with the graphic setting on high. Kind of strange it should work fine one moment, and consistently fail to load the menu screen later on. I was just curious if anyone else had had any experience with Crossover (or Wine) with games. For a while there I thought it was going to be a incredibly cool app., it doesn't support many games, but The Orange Box was one it claimed it could run quite well on most systems.

What I'd really wish I could do is run classic mac applications, unfortunately, Leopard doesn't support the classic environment. I'd really love to be able to play Escape Velocity: Override again.

It's a Macbook?  Does it have an Nvidia or ATI card built-in?  Because if it doesn't, I'm surprised it was even able to play Portal.  Every person I've ever talked to on the Steam forums that tries to play portal on a Macbook (or a PC with integrated video) has trouble.  Most of the time it's because of crappy integrated Intel graphics chips that support DX 9.0c, but don't support shader model 2.0 (I think that's what it is) in hardware.  Software rendering simply won't do it for Portal.

HL2 and HL2:Ep1 technically have slightly lower requirements than HL2:Ep2, even though they're all in the same box.  So it wouldn't be a surprise if you could run those and not Portal.

It is just a crappy Intel graphic card. Yeah, I played Portal from start to finish on it (through Vista), it got a little laggy sometimes, but nothing unbearable. And like I said, though crossover it worked (when it worked) perfectly, even with the graphics settings maxed out. HL2: Episode Two ran smoothly as far as load times and movement went, the graphic and textures were just glitchy enough to make it not any fun to play.

HL2: Ep2 has huge outdoor environments, the requirements for HL2 and HL2:Ep1 are considerably lower.

C3PX said:

It is just a crappy Intel graphic card. Yeah, I played Portal from start to finish on it (through Vista), it got a little laggy sometimes, but nothing unbearable. And like I said, though crossover it worked (when it worked) perfectly, even with the graphics settings maxed out. HL2: Episode Two ran smoothly as far as load times and movement went, the graphic and textures were just glitchy enough to make it not any fun to play.

HL2: Ep2 has huge outdoor environments, the requirements for HL2 and HL2:Ep1 are considerably lower.

 

It's not really the outdoor environments that kill the speed in HL2:Ep2.  There's a graphics hardware feature that's utilized, especially in Portal, that must be hardware accelerated in order for Portal to run.  It simply will not work through software which is how the Intel cards do it.  That's why I'm kind of surprised you even got Portal to get as far as you did.  Most people have it crash the moment they step through the first Portal.

sean wookie said:

I have enjoyed playing GTA:SA on my Macbook this summer during the time at night when I was in my camper and couldn't acces the internet. I used a Windows XP Pro that I got off of The Pirate Bay that I run on bootcamp.

You might not want to talk about using illegal software on the forums sean.  I know you're not providing links, but you're essentially telling people where to get it.  You're suppose to buy a license, even for bootcamp.

lordjedi said:

It's not really the outdoor environments that kill the speed in HL2:Ep2.  There's a graphics hardware feature that's utilized, especially in Portal, that must be hardware accelerated in order for Portal to run.  It simply will not work through software which is how the Intel cards do it.  That's why I'm kind of surprised you even got Portal to get as far as you did.  Most people have it crash the moment they step through the first Portal.

Using Vista I played through the entirety of Portal on my MacBook with a software accelerated Intel graphics card. Obviously it is not that big of a problem, even with the resource hog that is Vista. It is just Episode Two that I can't play on this thing.

That's interesting.  What Intel card is it exactly?  Supposedly, the Intel GMA cards couldn't play it at all, even on XP or Vista.

GMA X3100.

Got Half-Life 2: Episode Two to run under Vista on my MacBook. I had to turn down the resolution to 800x600, which sucks since it is not full screen now, but it runs really smoothly. Feels good to be playing some Half-Life again.