In a nutshell... what up last year or two for Mac users?

[Eden Smallwood]

Guys, hi.

I'm wondering what has changed in the last year (two?) since I was here. I've got a wimpy old Mac, I bought CMBB and played the poop out of it; never got CM Afrika Corps...

I remember talk and talk and talk about "CM Next Gen" or "CMx2" when I was here, and I looked forward to it, although knowing that my old Mac wouldn't run it anyway, (good excuse to upgrade? Yes, probably).

But now I come back, and, to the best I can figger it, CMx2 HAS in fact been released, but it runs PC only ??!? It took a whole lot of poking around and following links-- Ok, I'll say it-- as unspeakably awesome as these CM guys are, there's one thing they've always been really terrible at, and that's at describing the *System Requirements* for these games. I had to go around the iWorld six times before seeing that CM "Marine-Something" was PC only.

Well, fine. Although I also remember back then, one of the moderator guys, ("MadMatt"?), saying, and this is a very close quote, "If there is ever a platform we abandon, it won't be the Mac". Ok, so things change.

Er, right? Sorry, here are my questions succinctly:

1) The NEW combat mission stuff, "CMx2" stuff, is PC only-- right?

2) As far as the "old" CM, specifically the last one, "Afrika Corps" or whatever-- what is the *pragmatic* minimum Mac OS/CPU/Etc needed to run it?

Thanks for reading if you got this far...

[Michael Emrys]

Y'know, Eden, I've been wondering if you'd ever turn up again. It's true. In the last two months I must have thought of you at least five times. But then, I lead a very quiet life.

I remember talk and talk and talk about "CM Next Gen" or "CMx2" when I was here, and I looked forward to it, although knowing that my old Mac wouldn't run it anyway, (good excuse to upgrade? Yes, probably).

I was slightly screwed on that deal. That is, about three years ago I bought a top-o'-the-line G5 Quad thinking that it would handle anything that BFC could throw at it. Then a couple of months later Apple switched to the Intel chip and that was all she wrote. The Quad is still a great computer and I use it nearly every waking hour it seems, so it was worth the money. But until quite recently, game playing went out of my life almost entirely.

But now I come back, and, to the best I can figger it, CMx2 HAS in fact been released, but it runs PC only ??!?

Don't quote me on this, but from what I recall reading on the CMSF part of this board, it WILL run on an Intel Mac, but only under Windows (icky!).

Well, fine. Although I also remember back then, one of the moderator guys, ("MadMatt"?), saying, and this is a very close quote, "If there is ever a platform we abandon, it won't be the Mac". Ok, so things change.

That line was in someone's sig and it was attributed to Steve. But I don't recall seeing the original. I do recall Steve expressing those sentiments on several occasions though in the early days.

1) The NEW combat mission stuff, "CMx2" stuff, is PC only-- right?

See above.

2) As far as the "old" CM, specifically the last one, "Afrika Corps" or whatever-- what is the *pragmatic* minimum Mac OS/CPU/Etc needed to run it?

I ran it on a G4, but neither BB or AK were entirely happy with that. After a certain number of units (small in fact) were in action on the screen, the graphics would slow way down. Like to maybe six frames a second. Painful. That was in spite of the fact that I had spent $400 on a graphics card that was supposed to do everything but turn water into wine. I have come in later days to wonder if the problem didn't lay in having only 512MB RAM, although I thought at the time it should have been plenty. Maybe other Mac users here can give you better ideas on the requirements than that. One thing to keep in mind is that you are going to have to go with an older Mac that can boot up in OS 9.2. My G5 doesn't, so I can't even play the older games even though my present setup surely has enough power to handle the job.

BTW, the old Mac flight sim ng seems to be pretty dormant even though it is still up. Not surprising in that I don't believe anybody anywhere is making flight sims for the Mac any more.

Michael

[Wicky]

1) The NEW combat mission stuff, "CMx2" stuff, is PC only-- right?

As Mike confirmed CMx2 is currently PC and Intel Mac (PC bootcamped) - There has been vague talk of a CMx2 WW2 native mac OSX conversion for Intel Macs but that there was no guarantee for it to be coded to work for PPC G5s (2 - 2.5Ghz) Macs, as to much work for small market :-(

2) As far as the "old" CM, specifically the last one, "Afrika Corps" or whatever-- what is the *pragmatic* minimum Mac OS/CPU/Etc needed to run it?

G4 400Mhz-1+Ghz, 512RAM, Bootable OS9.2.2 - As for best graphics card there is a sweetspot for ATI cards - OEM Rage cards too low - ATI Radeon AGP 32mb Sweet spot for smoke and fog effects - Higher cards esp the ATI 9*** series need driver cludges to get it semi-workable. Nvidia cards less fussy

A secondhand e-mac works a treat, or a lowly G4 tower with graphics card upgrades (see above) or Quicksilver.

Mike

Have you tried Warbirds or Flightgear

[Michael Emrys]

Mike

Have you tried Warbirds or Flightgear

Thanks, Wicky, no I haven't. I thought about Warbirds for a while, but realized that without pedals I wouldn't be able to get it to work right.

Flightgear I hadn't heard of. I may look further into it.

Michael

[edgars]

I just can't let this topic sink to the second page.

Bootcamping is not an option for me, but i still visit this board from time to time in hope of seeing some oficial Mac news someday.

[REVS]

I'm in the same boat as Edgars. Rarely come here now, either, apart from trawling through occasionally to see if there's any Mac news, and also in the folorn hope that the GF might get interesting again. Meanwhile, I'm gaming CMAK and CMBB on my eMac quite happily all the time, and I have an old iBook that can do duty as a backup while I hunt around for a replacement eMac, should the current one ever cark it.

I do have an Intel iMac as my work rig, but I just don't want to go anywhere near PC land ever. And besides, CMSF looks pretty buggy and boring to me so it's of no interest. The only thing that will bring me out of the woodwork as a customer is a better WWII game that can be played on OSX.

[Eden Smallwood]

Y'know, Eden, I've been wondering if you'd ever turn up again.

It's not my fault!!!

When Mac OSX first came out, there was a bug for some machines, (including, but not limited to, mine)-- when you chose to boot up in 9.*, that was fine, but when you chose to go back to OSX, it would refuse to make the jump.

You wound up having to *reinstall* OSX (over your perfectly functioning previous install), to get back to the future.

Well!!

The problem was apparently in the "Startup Disk" control panel; Apple released a new version which allegedly fixed that bug.

I heard, I saw, I downloaded.

But... it STILL doesn't work on my machine-- if I ever choose to boot up in OS9, I will have to reinstall OSX to get back. This particular iBook won't reboot back in OSX, not for love or money. The upshot, you see, is that TO PLAY CMBB REQUIRES RE-INSTALLING OSX EVERY DANG TIME.

Kind of a drag. But I guess the inference is clear-- I need to get me a used Mac with the right powers, pick up CMAK and just count my blessings.

Thanks Wicky for the specifics, it looks like I have to do some pre-shopping homework.

[Wicky]

What version of OSX is on your ibook? same for for OS9.

There was a problem with OS9 and OSX10.1 but updates are still available to get OS9.04 to 9.2.2

Secondhand OSX10.4 Tiger install disks are cheap on e-bay.

Is your iBook G3 or G4?

I had a G3 (800MHz 32 VRAM) ibook that happily ran OSX10.4 & 9.2.2, and played CMBB & CMAK perfectly okay.

List of OS9 bootable macs

[REVS]

Re the iBooks, mine is a pretty old blue clamshell early one which has OS 9.2.2 installed plus OSX 10.2.8 (can't go no higher due to the lack of firewire socket I think is the limiting factor there). No probs switching from one OS to the other, so that problem definitely should be fixable.