Mac OS X Demo Now Available: Version 1.0.679 (Beta 2)

[Architect]

Ack! I just took another look up-thread and found this admin reply:

"doing this
"go to ~/Library/Preferences/Frictional Games/Penumbra Overture/Episode 1/ and open the settings.cfg file in TextEdit and locate the entry "UseThreading" by using find(cmd-f) and change True to False. Save the file and launch the game again and it should not crash anymore."

is a temporary solution for solving the intro and random crashes."

Does this solve the issue in my first post above? Thanks.

[Black Smurf]

OK, Maybe you guys can help me. The main issue I have now is I don't have an ATI card to do testing. And I went down to the local Computer store (Fry's) and they have a plethora of cards, but only "one" labelled with Mac support (an ATI 9200 128MB and for $200). As I can't seem to find must useful information on apple's nor ATI/AMDs website, I am wondering will buying an X1650 WORK on OS X? I'm going to be calling up apple tomorrow to see if I can get a straight answer out of them, (also my mac mini died it's not been my weekend.. fan on my graphics card died on my main linux box too!!!)

AFAIK the firmware on a graphics card needs to support Macs i.e. you cannot slap any graphics card into a Mac. I read in some Mac related forum you can flash most cards for use in a Mac (if you get the adequate firmware), but since I never owned a Mac with exchangable hardware, I never looked further into this.

[DsurioN]

I just downloaded this and it looks like a great game. But there are many graphical glitches. Once again I am using an ATI Radeon x1600 on an intel iMac 2.0 ghz with 1 gb of ram and 256 mb video ram.

The first time, the game froze during the intro cinematic right here:



Then when i restarted the game, but shadows were still off, it looked like this:





After turning shadows off, things improved but there are still a few glitches like offset lighting:



And weird artifacts on the edges of the screen:



Another main problem is that the "grab" buttons are offset from the actual object, like you can see here:



And here:



But all in all, making great progress!

[Christian]

I forgot to mention, it went black for me too when I went down the ladder the first time.
I had to force quit the game, but the second time it worked. I think I pressed escape to
skip the "audio cutscene".

[jens]

I post this again

This will most likely make all crashes/freezes stop

"go to ~/Library/Preferences/Frictional Games/Penumbra Overture/Episode 1/ and open the settings.cfg file in TextEdit and locate the entry "UseThreading" by using find(cmd-f) and change True to False. Save the file and launch the game again and it should not crash anymore."

And hopefully a more solid fix is part of the next beta

[bj0ern]

Any thoughts on if I'd have any luck just slapping in "any old ATI video card" into my mac pro would work woudl be helpful, as I want to get this working on the ATI cards, since it seems a majority of the macs come with ATI rather than Nvidia.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/ma...o-buy.html
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/ma...sfire.html
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305346
http://ati.de/products/mac.html (english info though the address is .de)

[Secutor]

you can FLASH a normal PC Card into a Mac version. Maybe that helps you, if you have a normal PC card

ill gonna try it with an ATI 9800 Pro this week. The easiest card to flash and the PC version isn#t so expensive.

[Armoured]

Hello there!
First of all that you for bringing this game to Mac OS.
We need new mac games

On to the bugs:
1) The game's resolution tops out at 1280 x 1024, this is rather unacceptable, This leaves plenty of macs' screens' at less then their native resolution, and looks ugly in effect. The current lineup:
17" MacBookPro = 1680x1050
17" MacBookPro = 1920x1200 (built to order)
15" MacBookPro = 1440x900

17" iMac = 1440x900
20" iMac = 1680x1050
24" iMac = 1920x1200

20" display = 1680x1050
23" display = 1920x1200
30" display = 2560x1600

Similarly, the game does not appear to be widescreen able, i.e. only takes up the 4x3 area of the screen, no the full 16x10. (Like watching a standard TV series on a widescreen TV)

2)Horizontal line bug
This is a bug that does not appear in any of the sceenshots, im afraid.
It is a block of the screen with that appears shifted from the rest of the view, kind of like when you have Vsync turned off, but this is not realted to vsync, it appears both when it is turned off and on.

3) Shader bug.
This is the allready documented bug, having shaders turned up from the lowest grade produces the blue walls, disappearing objects and so on.

4) Shadows do not appear.
Shadows do not appear regardless of how I have set the shadow setting. However, if I set the shader setting up, the shadows do appear correctly.

5) Post effect bug.
If I enable post effects, I get this bug:



6) Flashlight works poorly.
I dont know if this is intentional, or if this is a bug, but in either way, it looks suspisius. The flashlight only lights up certain parts, and is almost unusable.
I have a attached two screenshots, showing how a glowstick, and the flashlight work, aimed at the canvas cover. Note that despite being aimed straight at it, the flashlight does not light up the canvas.


I should note, taht this is with shaders turned all the way up.

My system spec:
PowerMac G5, dual 2GHz, 2.5GB RAM
ATI Radeon X850XT
Mac OS X 10.4.9

Hope it helps!

[Black Smurf]

Similarly, the game does not appear to be widescreen able, i.e. only takes up the 4x3 area of the screen, no the full 16x10. (Like watching a standard TV series on a widescreen TV)

No, it is widescreen able. Just choose a widescreen resolution (e.g. 1280x768) and the full 16x10 screen is used (worked for me, at least).

[Kenny]

You can change the resolution to 1440x900 or higher.
Go to ~/Library/Preferences/Frictional Games/Penumbra Overture/Episode 1/ and open the settings.cfg file with TextEdit. Now search for "Screen Width=" and type the width you would like to have. Do the same thing with "Height=".
Worked for me