Portal for OSX now FREE! (until May 24th)

seanstar

http://store.steampowered.com/freeportal/

Go. Now. The servers are crying, but I got in on the 2nd try.
(also, for the curious, my actual payware Portal license for PC Steam? Perfectly good on Mac!)

menace690

Anyone else unable to figure out how to download this?

(Nevermind: Quit and relaunched Steam and it worked)

seanstar

Download instructions for reference: Go to the Library section, you should have a complimentary copy (otherwise you can search it in the store). Once it's in your Library, you should see a small-ish Install button under the game name in the right pane. Click it, and be prepared to repeatedly right-click->Pause -> right-click->Resume the download in the left/list pane when it auto-pauses you. The servers... were still kinda sad last I checked.

menace690

Once I figured out I was having a problem with Steam app and not Steam servers, I got over a meg a second downloading Portal.

IUG

So one of the benefits of computer gaming is the hacks, of course. Here is an extra set of maps, based off of the flash Portal.

http://portalmaps.wecreatestuff.com/

The install directions are the same on a Mac as they are on Windows. Just the folder you start out in is in your User's Documents folder. That's where Steam likes to hide itself (much to the white hot hatred of some people, I just put a simlink there and hid it in my Apps/Games/ folder). I've been playing these maps longer than I've been playing the regular campaign, and I don't know when the end is in sight.

seanstar

And not that it's not pretty much the first google hit, but- http://www.recipezaar.com/recipe/Cake-from-Portal-264919
I've made it once. It's pretty good, although prepping the icing is hell. Also, I garnished with swedish fish, since that's clearly where the trailing lines of the in-game ingredients were going :D

jack59splat59

I hate how it doesn't work on Intel machines. My friend, who has a brand-new and very powerful laptop, couldn't use it on his Windows machine either, for the same reason.

menace690

huh?

dickmedd

jack59splat59 wrote:

I hate how it doesn't work on Intel machines. My friend, who has a brand-new and very powerful laptop, couldn't use it on his Windows machine either, for the same reason.

What do you mean by Intel machines?

Mucx

Um, I am running Portal on a 9month old Intel MacBook here... not sure whats going on if you cant run it? (Graphics card issues? Driver?).

jack59splat59

dickmedd wrote:

What do you mean by Intel machines?

I have an Intel GMA 950 Graphics Card that can run WoW, but not portal. Is that jacked up or what?

CrispyXUK

Can't be much of a laptop if it has an Intel integrated GPU, they're bloody awful for 3D gaming.

Anyway, there's plenty of launch options to get it to run, but it won't be pretty for a slide show.

Squirrel

When you say "Intel", Are you talking about just the graphics cards?

When the rest of us say "Intel", we are talking about the processor. If you aren't aware already, Apple used to use PowerPC processors in Macs. It wasn't until 2006 that they moved to Intel processors.

Steam only runs on Macs with Intel processors.

Intel graphics chips do suck when compared to even the cheap offerings from both ATI and nVidia.

dickmedd

I figured that it was the graphics being referred to. My X3100 Macbook makes a hash of most of the games your try and run on it, especially Portal. However it's not always been too bad, RTS games including AOE3 and C&C Generals run perfectly well and older FPS games are ok, I play Urban Terror quite a lot with friends.

Don't forget there are plenty of games available that aren't graphics intesive either. I've seen them offering Machinarium, a great indie point and click adventure that's actually Flash based!

jetboy

jack59splat59 wrote:

dickmedd wrote:

What do you mean by Intel machines?

I have an Intel GMA 950 Graphics Card that can run WoW, but not portal. Is that jacked up or what?

On the Windows side:
WoW
Intel Pentium 4 1.3 Ghz or AMD Athlon XP 1500+
512MB RAM
Any 3D graphics card with 32+ MD of VRAM

Portal
1.7 Ghz CPU
512MB RAM
Any DirectX 8.1 level graphics card

I dunno... built-in graphics is rubbish... nobody will refute that, but yeah... maybe Blizzard is a better porting house? I dunno... this is Valve's first Mac game ever, whereas Blizzard's been with the Mac for aaaaaages + has a good Mac team. Wouldn't surprise me if Portal was a shoddy port.

Personally I don't have built-in Intel graphics, but I think there's a lot of b/s regarding graphics. My hunch is that a lot of things COULD work, but developers don't have the time/resources/need to make slower chips work. OpenCL is an example! My card's not even supported, although a friend who is an Apple engineer assures me that it's technically possible. Sometimes companies just have to focus on the future I guess :)

As for the guys complaining Steam only works on PPC Macs... booooo... hissssss... get an Intel Mac! ANY PowerPC Mac you have is at least 5 years old by nature (that's if you bought it knowing that Intel Macs were the future as Apple announced the Intel Macs a while before shipping them.) Users of far more modern Intel Macs are complaining about performance... PPC is a totally different architecture, and the PPC chips are oooooold now... 'sif you'd get good performance anyway.

jack59splat59

The thing is, though, that it isn't even slower. My intel can run faster than most normal computers (such as comparing my parents' computer running WoW to mine), but I think that developers are too lazy to make it available because less people have Mac Minis.

IUG

Hell yeah, Half-Life 2 to OS X. Now I just need Half-Life 1 so I can say that I've played it. Plus, homage trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yqx8YO0Fgow

zweitplatzierungsboy

i love valve for their trailers alone. would have hoped for l4d today, but i also wanted to play through hl2 again for a long time now. :)

menace690

I've never understood the Half Life craze. They were ok. Just generic FPS's. Am I missing something?

Portal was a lot of fun the first time I played it. 3 drunk guys chillin at my friends new house trying to figure out the puzzles. Still managed to do it in one night, and considering our state, kind of impressive.

CrispyXUK

jack59splat59 wrote:

The thing is, though, that it isn't even slower. My intel can run faster than most normal computers (such as comparing my parents' computer running WoW to mine), but I think that developers are too lazy to make it available because less people have Mac Minis.

Not really, Portal has a much more advanced engine (Portal rendering isn't easy you know) and uses features of OpenGL that the intel graphics chips don't support because they're crap at OpenGL.

It's similar to asking why Super Mario World doesn't run on a NES. :D