26 replies to this topic

[UmarOMC1]

This just popped up on Steam

Pre-Order Painkiller Hell & Damnation for Mac & PC, available October, 2012.

[Smoke_Tetsu]

Yeah, I already preordered mine. I'm a fan and play the original and overdose in wineskin from time to time. This is actually a remake of the first game and if it's good enough it can replace it for me.

[UmarOMC1]

After watching some beta gameplay on YouTube I pre-ordered, too. The game has had good reviews all around.

[Smoke_Tetsu]

BTW, that popped up on Steam a few weeks back actually. When I saw the steamplay logo in the coming soon list I was like.. "Do my eyes decieve me?" I had been seeing previews of it previously though like from tradeshows and such. But there was no indication they'd make it steamplay at that point of course.

[UmarOMC1]

Availability is now October 31, 2012. I pray they don't fubar the Mac release.

[Smoke_Tetsu]

The beta isn't available on the Mac anyway. At least I still have the originals available to play in wineskin if I wanted to play them in the meantime and they don't look half bad maxed out with multisampling on.

[UmarOMC1]

Looks like it was pushed back to November 14.

[Janichsan]

November 14 came and went. The Mac version is now coming "soon".

[UmarOMC1]

I know. I'd be a lot more upset if I didn't have Black Ops I & II and Borderlands 2 for entertainment.

[UmarOMC1]

This is now a January, 2013 speculation. They're blaming a change to the Unreal 3 engine.

[Janichsan]

It's now "April/May" or more vaguely "spring".

[Trautman]

Janichsan, on 08 March 2013 - 02:37 AM, said:

It's now "April/May" or more vaguely "spring".

Toooo late

[UmarOMC1]

I've officially requested a refund for my pre-order. When I found the confirmation email I realized I paid $29.99 and the game is already down to $19.99, I find this pathetic.

[UmarOMC1]

Sorry, I forgot to follow up. This is the response I got from Steam;



Hello,

Thank you for contacting Steam Support.

Where did you hear that the game would be ported to a Mac OS?

As with most software products, we do not offer refunds or exchanges on games, DLC or in-game items purchased on our website or through the Steam Client.

As a one-time customer service gesture we can issue you store credit for the amount of your purchase into your Steam Wallet. The credit will also remove the title or item from your account.


After a bunch of Google searching and providing a few links regarding news of the Mac OS X version I was still only offered a one-time credit for my vaporware purchase. I took it. I also felt like pushing the issue but I couldn't find 100% solid leads regarding Nordic Games' Mac version announcements from said timeframe and I wasn't convinced, due to their apologetic posts, that they were being entirely fraudulent. Ultimately I call BS on the "one-time customer service gesture" on Steam's part because I paid up front for vaporware.

[Janichsan]

I hope you also referred them to their own shop page for PHD, which still claims "a Mac version will soon be available".

[UmarOMC1]

Got Link?

[Janichsan]

UmarOMC1, on 26 May 2013 - 03:11 AM, said:

Got Link?

The Steam store page. Last line before the system requirements.

[UmarOMC1]

Thanks, I looked back at my email, missed that one!

[Janichsan]

Now, that's… unexpected.



It's actually there.

[Smoke_Tetsu]

Finally, downloading it as we speak. Will update later with how well it works for me... and what kind of features I get out of it. In Parallels it ran just OK in terms of frame rate but stuttery. It had multichannel audio though.

From what I can tell poking around the partially downloaded .app file it seems to be properly native... with Mac versions of libraries like Bink (x64 version even), ogg vorbis libs much like Feral ports have. Also, game resources have been "cooked" for Mac rather than using the same ones cooked for Windows. Also, there's mac specific configuration files in the config folder.

*edit*
So far the game seems OK in terms of performance except for when you are first starting it the sound kinda pops and cuts out during the menus… and so far no surround sound…. in the options (poking around the .ini files) I see there's three different audio back ends that one can choose.. Xaudio2, OpenAL and Core Audio which is the first time I have noticed that as a choice.. however.. neither that.. or OpenAL seem to make any difference in terms of audio…. In game it seems find but I'm missing that one feature that I want... and yeah the menus sound pretty bad.

I noticed the Mac version uses MacDrv.MacClient instead of WinDrv.WinClient. So I tried making a section for that in engine's .ini  file in my user folder. But that didn't seem to make a difference either.

Also strange thing is.. it's a Steam game right? But it asks me if I want to move it to the Applications folder when I first started it.

Also, PKHD is a 64-bit game... first one apart from eduke32 that I've noticed so far.

I tried launching it without steam open and it crashes on load. However, with steam resident in the background you can launch the game directly from the .app file rather than from steam itself.

Still as far as having an unabridged version of the game I might suggest playing Painkiller Black over this game. Sure, it's more dated (not by much actually, playing it maxed out at your monitors native resolution with 6xMSAA (doesn't go higher than that for me) it doesn't look half bad). At this point it's trivial to get that to run by running the copy from Painkiller Double Dose in Wine. I have that in addition to this. They left certain sections of Painkiller Black out of Painkiller Hell and Damnation. What this has over Painkiller Black is light scattering, normal mapping and soft shadows.

The swamp level leading up to the Asylum in this was noticeably slower than other levels for me. Also, antialiasing doesn't seem to be an option in-game and setting MLAA=true in the .ini doesn't work... or at least it doesn't give me the kind of results I expect from something like FXAA. I haven't tried temporal antialiasing but I know it'd probably be too slow for me.

All in all it's an OK port but it could use some work. Even in the performance arena particularly on that swamp area.. it was kinda disappointing to me.. On the other hand the swamp boss was OK performance-wise as well as the rest of the game... and when one runs it in two channel stereo mode it could use some work there too. Particularly how it handles sounds during cut scenes. Still it's early days I suppose for them having it publicly released and hopefully they continue to patch it later.