Mac OSX Version of X2: First Impressions

General discussions about the games by Egosoft including X-BTF, XT, X², X³: Reunion, X³: Terran Conflict and X³: Albion Prelude.

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HelgeK
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Mac OSX Version of X2: First Impressions

Post by HelgeK » Fri, 22. Jul 05, 23:31

VP finally sent me the serial.

OK, I installed X2 on my Mac Mini (1,42 GHz, 1 GB RAM, Radeon 9200 w/32 MB) I've also downloaded a tool from ATI to adjust the Radeon's 3D parameters: I set the first slider completely to the left (speed as opposed to quality); set FSAA to 2x, anisotropic filtering to 2x as well, and v-sync off.

In the game, I used a resolution of 800x600 (my video beamers native resolution) at a color depth of 24 bit ("millions of colors", as Apple puts it), and I turned all the gfx options on, including caching of 3D data, lighting, bumpmaps, particles, and so on, except ACQ, which I turned off.

Intro and cut scenes are painfully slow, but Low and Behold: ingame, everything works reasonably smooth and reasonably good-looking! (if anisotropic filtering is turned off in the ATI Radeon tool, the game still looks good and it practically flies!)

The sound is played back through my 5.1 breakout-box instead of the normal stereo output, which is very nice indeed, and as far as I can see (at 1 hour of playing around with it), the game appears pretty stable.

As it is, graphically, I don't see much of a difference to the PC version that I had on my PC (which should have had much better specs than the Mac Mini in almost all respects). Except that the PC quite oftenly crashed, BSoD'ed, or exited to the desktop, which the Mac OSX version doesn't seem to be doing so far (I keep my fingers crossed - perhaps this is still coming).

All in all, the conversion seems to be quite fine, and is certainly worth the 24 Pounds for the d/l version.

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The Great Stonk
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Post by The Great Stonk » Sat, 23. Jul 05, 00:00

ive never had a bsod or crash with x2...
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Brianetta
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Post by Brianetta » Sat, 23. Jul 05, 01:23

The Great Stonk wrote:ive never had a bsod or crash with x2...
Jammy sod.
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HelgeK
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Post by HelgeK » Sat, 23. Jul 05, 01:49

The Great Stonk wrote:ive never had a bsod or crash with x2...
That's good to know!

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|M|
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Post by |M| » Sat, 23. Jul 05, 01:53

I've had the odd lockup...i think, but never a BSoD...
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HelgeK
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Post by HelgeK » Sat, 23. Jul 05, 02:00

|M| wrote:I've had the odd lockup...i think, but never a BSoD...
I don't mean to be rude to anyone, but this thread isn't about the Windows version of X2 :-)

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Post by pjknibbs » Sat, 23. Jul 05, 08:25

HelgeK wrote: I don't mean to be rude to anyone, but this thread isn't about the Windows version of X2 :-)
To be fair, it was you that mentioned the Windows version first...
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HelgeK
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Post by HelgeK » Sat, 23. Jul 05, 15:33

pjknibbs wrote:To be fair, it was you that mentioned the Windows version first...
I just knew someone would notice that :-D

However, I'm going to install the game on my PowerBook tomorrow. It's a bit slower than the Mac mini (1.33 vs 1.42 GHz), but has more RAM. I don't know about the gfx chip, I believe it's a Geforce something (got to look that up). We'll see...

I only wish I'd find my USB GamePad. It works alright on the Mac, but I don't know where I put it. Holy chaos :-D

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