128 replies to this topic

[Homy]

Has anyone experienced any problems after installing 10.4.10 in Rosetta? I have an iMac C2D 17" and 10.4.8 and I wonder if I can update to get better performance without messing up my games. I saw in Macworld's review here that iMac 24" scored 79.3 fps in UT04 in 10.4.7. In the recent review here the same iMac scored 88.7 fps in 10.4.10. Is there a performance gain in Rosetta and classic games with 10.4.10 too? Or more important, is it safe to update if you play classic games like STEF 2, RTCW and CoD?

[Douglas]

Homy, on August 12th 2007, 06:03 AM, said:

Has anyone experienced any problems after installing 10.4.10 in Rosetta? I have an iMac C2D 17" and 10.4.8 and I wonder if I can update to get better performance without messing up my games. I saw in Macworld's review here that iMac 24" scored 79.3 fps in UT04 in 10.4.7. In the recent review here the same iMac scored 88.7 fps in 10.4.10. Is there a performance gain in Rosetta and classic games with 10.4.10 too? Or more important, is it safe to update if you play classic games like STEF 2, RTCW and CoD?

I haven't seen any drop in performance due to the update to the latest version of X, but I don't have those particular games to try out.

Douglas

[alldaveallen]

Bill Ramey, on June 4th 2007, 02:38 AM, said:

No One Lives Forever used to run very poorly on my MacBook Pro but now runs well under 10.4.9.  Whereas before even using the cursor to choose menu options was laggy at best, there is no lag now in choosing menu options.  As for gameplay, it too is much improved, and I cannot detect any lag.

I just installed NOLF on my 2.16 24" Imac (2 G RAM, 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT) and although it runs on a window in the bottom left corner of my screen, and the mouse arrow shows up at odds with the menu arrow in-game, and the crosshairs (I'm not explaining myself well, but I think you know what I mean--there are two cursors, one of which is "left over" from the system), it does run pretty smoothly.  There's no lag during the actual game, and although it seems to me that the cut-scenes and menus are a bit sluggish in loading, I have never played this game on any other computer, ever, so I don't know if that's typical.

So, I hope you add mine and Bill's comments to the NOLF listing, so people don't give up hope.

[Homy]

Douglas, on August 16th 2007, 01:34 AM, said:

I haven't seen any drop in performance due to the update to the latest version of X, but I don't have those particular games to try out.

Douglas

Do you mean that you play in Rosetta and haven't seen any drop in performance? What older games do you play?

[Douglas]

Homy, on August 16th 2007, 11:02 AM, said:

Do you mean that you play in Rosetta and haven't seen any drop in performance? What older games do you play?

I have been playing "Dungeon Siege" and it plays faster and smoother on my Mac Pro under Rosetta than it ever played on my 1GHZ iMac G4 Power PC...the game is actually enjoyable to me for the 1st time.  "Alien Vs. Predator 2" also plays very good under Rosetta...better than on any of my G4 Power PC Macs.  "TRON 2.0" plays like crap..it is basically unplayable to me...on ANY of my systems.

Douglas

[threebkk]

This really is an invaluable thread. Thanks to everyone for adding to it, and keeping it up to date. When I finally get my Intel Mac I'll know exactly what to expect from my games, and which new ones to buy.

[Homy]

Douglas, on August 18th 2007, 07:40 AM, said:

I have been playing "Dungeon Siege" and it plays faster and smoother on my Mac Pro under Rosetta than it ever played on my 1GHZ iMac G4 Power PC...the game is actually enjoyable to me for the 1st time.  "Alien Vs. Predator 2" also plays very good under Rosetta...better than on any of my G4 Power PC Macs.  "TRON 2.0" plays like crap..it is basically unplayable to me...on ANY of my systems.

Douglas

OK, then maybe I dare to update to 10.4.10 but I think I'll wait for 10.4.11 coming soon.

[alldaveallen]

threebkk, on August 18th 2007, 12:05 AM, said:

This really is an invaluable thread. Thanks to everyone for adding to it, and keeping it up to date. When I finally get my Intel Mac I'll know exactly what to expect from my games, and which new ones to buy.

I agree, although I wish that the listing for "N.O.L.F." included my own and Bill's positive comments.  I just finished playing it and had a blast.

[teflon]

bah! i just tried XIII, and its pretty broken in rosetta

oh well, ill just have to play it on my soon to be fixed cube.

[the Battle Cat]

teflon, on August 29th 2007, 11:06 AM, said:

bah! i just tried XIII, and its pretty broken in rosetta

oh well, ill just have to play it on my soon to be fixed cube.

Heck, XIII is pretty broken on my PPC.  I couldn't finish it because it couldn't remember my saves.

[Tesseract]

alldaveallen, on August 30th 2007, 03:38 AM, said:

I wish that the listing for "N.O.L.F." included my own and Bill's positive comments.

Added.

[Bill Ramey]

Any reports on KnightShift, Gates of Troy, Spartan, or Project Nomads?  Deliver2Mac is selling each one for $5, but I don't know if they run under Rosetta or not.

[alldaveallen]

electricdawn, on November 14th 2006, 11:03 AM, said:

...NOLF 2...
Plays excellent on my iMac Intel. I can max out the resolution and graphics and the performance is quite impressive.
v/r, E.

I am thinking about picking this up but I am a little scared by all of the negative reader comments about its un-useability in the IMG review of the game.  On the other hand, most of those comments are pretty dated at this point, and it sounds like you had no problems. Was the issue with Quicktime ever resolved?  Do you have to do any arcane shenanigans to get this to run?  'Cause it's not like I'm gonna install OSX 10.2 on my Intel iMac (if I even COULD) just to run a game, nor at this point does it seem like you can expect much support from MacPlay (They don't even LIST it on their site, and, well, they're MacPlay).

[Varmint]

alldaveallen, on September 12th 2007, 09:35 AM, said:

I am thinking about picking this up but I am a little scared by all of the negative reader comments about its un-useability in the IMG review of the game.  On the other hand, most of those comments are pretty dated at this point, and it sounds like you had no problems. Was the issue with Quicktime ever resolved?  Do you have to do any arcane shenanigans to get this to run?  'Cause it's not like I'm gonna install OSX 10.2 on my Intel iMac (if I even COULD) just to run a game, nor at this point does it seem like you can expect much support from MacPlay (They don't even LIST it on their site, and, well, they're MacPlay).

I just finished playing through NOLF 2 with the settings maxxed on my Quad core 3Ghz Mac Pro, 5 GB ram, Radeon X1900, running 10.4.10.  The performance was perfect everywhere in the game except that it got just the tiniest bit choppy in really large, open areas with lots of characters running around.  I only encountered 2 odd bugs, neither of which really affected gameplay. The first was that every once in a while, an enemy's upper body would for some reason get stretched off of his lower body and connect to the crosshairs in this long, thin strip.  The lower body was still normal, so it was like you had a pair of disembodied legs running around, dangling by a thread from your crosshairs.  This can't have happened more than maybe 5 times throughout the entire game, and the hit box on these oddly deformed bad guys didn't change (so you could still shoot them where their torso should be).  It was actually kindof amusing, to be honest.  The other minor issue was that I got some loud audio pops on occasion when listening in on bad guys' conversations (which are half the fun of the game).

So there were a few minor issues, but certainly no showstoppers.  Oh, and this was also using the most recent patch I could find, which I believe is 1.3. It's a great game and a lot of fun.

I'll also throw out a quick review for Stubbs the Zombie, since it looks like my hardware is better than the review in the first post.  Sadly, the performance is still just so-so.  It's playable and all, but not really that enjoyable because of pervasive choppiness.  Stubbs is a pretty recent game, and I'd really hope that Wideload would make a Universal patch for it.

[the Battle Cat]

Varmint, on October 5th 2007, 10:46 AM, said:

I'll also throw out a quick review for Stubbs the Zombie, since it looks like my hardware is better than the review in the first post.  Sadly, the performance is still just so-so.  It's playable and all, but not really that enjoyable because of pervasive choppiness.  Stubbs is a pretty recent game, and I'd really hope that Wideload would make a Universal patch for it.

Wideload coded the Xbox portions of the game, Aspyr worked consecutively on the Mac and PC side of the project.  It would be Aspyr who would be the ones to do the UB patch for it and they have already stated that they aren't going to do it.  Wish I could bring you better news on that front.

[mattw]

Although I'm a PowerPC owner at the moment I'm trying to get my applications ready for when I move to an Intel Mac. I've not yet seen any reports on whether Nascar 2003 and Virtual Grand Prix 2 will run acceptably under Rosetta (and what about Force feedback support?). Has any one tried them yet? I wouldn't worry but there doesn't seem to be much news of any newer versions coming that will run on Intel Macs under OS X. (VGP3 is on the way at some point but the website say PowerPC only at the moment).

[teflon]

the Battle Cat, on October 5th 2007, 10:28 PM, said:

It would be Aspyr who would be the ones to do the UB patch for it and they have already stated that they aren't going to do it.

yes, it would require an extensive rewrite of the code, effectively re-porting the game, just like Halo did. Stubbs wasnt as good a seller as Halo, and so there wasnt really as much incentive or plausibility to doing a UB. sad, cos it was a great game, but not too surprising.

[the Battle Cat]

teflon, on October 14th 2007, 11:56 AM, said:

yes, it would require an extensive rewrite of the code, effectively re-porting the game, just like Halo did. Stubbs wasnt as good a seller as Halo, and so there wasnt really as much incentive or plausibility to doing a UB. sad, cos it was a great game, but not too surprising.

I bought a very nice PPC for just such a contingency.  It only cost me a year's delay into the Mac Intel market.  Time where they can get all of the more serous wrinkles ironed out before I buy in.

[Varmint]

Something I was just pondering..  Do you guys think that games which run poorly under Rosetta now will ever run well without a UB port?  Do you think that even in a few years when we presumably have much faster Intel processors that there'd be enough horsepower to get them running smoothly?  Or is there something fundamental with the translation process that slows things down regardless of processor speed?

And another thing: how long do you all think Rosetta will be around?  I would imagine that Apple will keep PPC support in the Intel version of OS X for a 4-5 year legacy period, beyond which it just won't be reasonable any longer since everything of use will have been replaced or ported.  It's just sad to think that we'll most likely lose a lot of very fun older games as the OS goes through more and more revisions.  Rosetta is basically the new Classic, you know?

[Janichsan]

Varmint, on October 16th 2007, 07:42 PM, said:

Something I was just pondering..  Do you guys think that games which run poorly under Rosetta now will ever run well without a UB port?  Do you think that even in a few years when we presumably have much faster Intel processors that there'd be enough horsepower to get them running smoothly?  Or is there something fundamental with the translation process that slows things down regardless of processor speed?

There are a few programs that do not run well or even at all in Rosetta due to fundamental problems. That won't change. Apart from that, the programs will profit from faster processors. Some already do.

Quote

And another thing: how long do you all think Rosetta will be around?  I would imagine that Apple will keep PPC support in the Intel version of OS X for a 4-5 year legacy period, beyond which it just won't be reasonable any longer since everything of use will have been replaced or ported.  It's just sad to think that we'll most likely lose a lot of very fun older games as the OS goes through more and more revisions.  Rosetta is basically the new Classic, you know?

No, Rosetta is basically the new 68k emulation that came up with the advent of PPC Macs. And that was around until the very end of the PPC age. It's reasonable to assume that Rosetta will do so, too - or at least for many years to come.