Steam For Mac Is Here!

http://store.steampowered.com/news/3818/

Sadly, Valve hasn't released all of it's source games yet. We will have to wait.

 

Portal is free though!

 

free til the 24th.... nice

 

I've installed it; being a pc steam user for years, I love it so far, have yet to launch any games though, will see how they perform. Can't wait till they get half life on the platform, will be good.

 

its a bit buggy...

I've never used steam before in any fashion...

Creating account stuck a window that kept saying "creating account" even though it was done and let me keep going on the other window...

this stopped all other pop up windows from showing up. CLosing it all and opening it again solved that problem.

I purchased Civ 4 complete and its trying to download 2 different copies of Civ4:Colonization hat are different sizes. I assume one is the Windows version, but it wont tell me which is which... must be another bug.

 

I've already bought Portal on the PC side. IIRC, all the Valve games that I bought on PC should be free on my Mac, were I to buy an MBP.

fyi to those who've bought The Orange Box on PC Steam.

 

Until Impulse is made available to the Mac OS, Steam will suffice. Awesome news!

 

Tried portal; works a treat and blisteringly good on my mbp; better than windows version and making it native to osx is much cooler.

 

Hopefully this is the start of a whole new line of games for Mac.

If the port is good then you guys should love Steam, it's brilliant!

 

portal definitely does NOT run better than the windows version. i've used both, i could even run the benchmarks to prove it.

that said, i'm not using windows anymore. GO STEAM MAC!

 

Really? I didn't notice a difference.

 

Graphics were good and I could run it at native res. Loading times were quicker than the windows one also I found.... using os x 10.6.3 and win 7 bootcamp. I love it, now I can go for a game of portal anytime, without having to stop what I'm doing and boot into windows.

 

Well I played Portal all the way through... cool game.. way too short and easy... but still cool.

Ran it with max graphics options, at 1280x800 on my MBP 13" 320m and no issues...

 

There were no issues on my end either, just that the performance didn't match up to windows.

That said, the performance was "fine" and the game is awesome. It just won't run at the same settings + resolution while maintaining the same frame rate as in windows, but it still looks great and runs great. The slight performance difference is worth not installing windows. Otherwise I would be trying to run it in Wine or something anyway (not for the feint of heart)

 

The AF is not as good, the detail looks washed out compared to Windows.

On ATI GPUs the portals don't render correctly - big black hole. I also don't like that the game files are stored in User/Documents. In a multi user enviro, multiple steam libraries could get huge.

Some tweaking will fix these things and probably the performance too.

This is an amazing first step. Every Mac owner should download Portal.

 

I'm new to Steam although I've played Portal before (a long time ago on Windows). I installed Steam and downloaded Portal (3+ GB) but do you have to start up Steam every time you want to play Portal? Also Steam seems to download a ~20MB update on each start-up (daily), is that normal?

BTW, I love Portal. Although I've played through it all before I'm enjoying going through it again. Very cool game.

 

Yeah I noticed that update too. Get's annoying.

You can create shortcuts to steam games, but when you run then steam will automatically run.

My MBP seems to have wake from sleep issues with Steam running.

 

I'd be happy about the numerous updates, it means Steam is actually trying to tweak itself so it quits the random issues from popping up. Failing to install games and or download, etc.

 

So how is the Portal on Mac so far? I'm still on Windows at the moment and also please let Valve knows if you have issue. This is still like the first era porting popular games over Mac. aka I meant still in test.

There is no reason to flame about being buggy and bad this early.

 

Nah it ran great for me on my Macbook Pro. I only briefly had an issue on launch and Valve has subsequently fixed it with one of their recent updates. I was just pointing out that all the update are not a bad thing.

Plays fully maxed out no issues. Not sure about the FPS, it plays flawlessly and I don't care about meaningless FPS numbers if it looks good. Also Torchlight plays fully maxed with no issue as well. I can not wait for Steam to add more games. I really can not stress buying the Indie Steam Pack enough. Just for buying World of Goo it is worth it plus the other fun games are included as well.

 

be glad you're seeing frequent updates. it means Valve is serious and the Mac version will be well supported in the future. everyone could/should have expected some glitches. STEAM is a huge undertaking for Valve.

 

mm what's you guys' temperatures while playing portal?
I know source games are a CPU hog.. and I've noticed my gf's (shes the one playing it) temperatures can go from 88C to 92C..

Sometimes the game starts to lag and to me that sounds like it's getting too hot in there .. and it gets unbearable enough for her to stop playing..

Is that cause of over heat you guys think?
Would you guys recommend SMC fan control?

 

the constant updates are happening because the software is just released and they have a lot of manpower behind steam for the mac. so, problems are getting reported and they are being fixed. it will definitely calm down with time.

 

i'd say SMCfancontrol is a must with gaming.... stick those fans at 6000RPM if you need to, keep the temp under 90ºC

 

I hope every mac user downloads Steam and Portal. It would really help Valve justify the decision to support the Mac.

Even non-gamers should give Portal a try. It is such a wonderful experience.

 

I agree.. I knew nothing about what Portal was like... I assumed from a couple screenshots it was just some FPS game, but its more like a puzzle type game, but in a first person type format. Its way too short, but its very fun.

 

6000rpm and portal I was staying under 70c

 

Yeah, portal is a puzzle game, it's really a game for everyone, hell, I could probably get my mom to play it. Yes, Every Mac user that can should download it to support Mac gaming.

 

mmm I always thought the MBP's have automatic fan control now a days and it would make it go to 6000rpm if it goes over a certain temp :/ ..

Is there a program for the fan to automatically spin at 6k rpm when it hits a certain temperature? or is SMC fan control the only thing that can control fans?

 

The first time i saw Portal i thought to myself "What a dumb game"

After trying it myself, i knew i was dearly mistaken.

"Supports Portal for Mac"

 

many MBPs are slow to react to temps... its like Apple assumes a big temp increase is temporary.. and it only spins the fans up if its sustained. Often temps can hit 100º before the machine is like... "oh I guess its going to stay hot..." and starts spinning the fans up faster. I prefer, if I know its going to be hot, to be proactive and just make them spin faster before it starts heating up... so it never gets that hot.

 

sooo, did you get your cake?

 

There really was a cake after all... i thought it was a lie.

 

The cake is a lie.

 

LIES!

the cake was delicious.

 

there really is a cake at the end after you blow up everything... or maybe its just a dream your having.

I loved my companion cube... but in the end I had no friends cuz I killed it :-(