149 replies to this topic

[Janichsan]

A few more:
Codename: Panzers – Phase One
Works, but is unplayable: the game runs too fast! A pity, since apart from that I didn't see any errors or glitches.

Resident Evil 3
Starts, but unplayable: characters are invisible (you only see the backgrounds), most of the sound seems to be missing.

Dino Crisis 2
Doesn't even start.

Battlefield 1942 (1.61b)
Does nothing.

[Brad Oliver]

Janichsan, on March 31st 2008, 03:46 AM, said:

CrossOver Office and Games are actually not that different.

IIRC (and I'm not sure I do) Crossover Office 6.2.1 uses Wine 0.9.39 and Crossover Games uses Wine 0.9.55 - you can check in the winecfg control panel in the bottle management. One of the main areas of change is actually in the D3D code, so I can see why they're releasing a separate games-focused app on a purportedly faster development cycle.

[Spike]

My tests on a MacBook Pro, GeForce 8600M GT with all 3 PC games I own:

Pacific Storm Allies
Does not work, black screen

Silent Hunter 4
Does not work - error loading mission, then quits

War In the Pacific
Does not work

[zuqbu]

Since I still have the Half-Life GOTY Edition, I entered my CDKey via Steam and tested the following games. Steam installation is easy and works as expected.

Half-Life (the original one)
Runs flawless. No problems with audio or video, support widescreen resolutions for my MBP (1440x900) and my 24inch screen (1920x1200). framerate is constant, don't know how much, though. probably the same as Counterstrike, see below.

Counterstrike (1.6)
No flaws with audio/video as well. Displayed fps (via net_graph 3) are 99.9 (cl_maxfps 100) and no drops whatsoever. Online play works great, even on cheat protected servers. It may be odd, but I am somehow glad I can run a basically 10 year old game on a brand new machine

The only thing that left me confused is that while in offline mode (Steam) I can start up CS but it won't let me play HL Singleplayer. Where's the logic in that?

Tested on: MacBook Pro Penryn 2,5 Ghz, 4 GB RAM, Geforce 8600 GT 512 MB

[Janichsan]

The last ones from me:

Fahrenheit
(That's Indigo Propecy for you stateside) I can't even install it: the installer opens that New York quiz, and as soon as this runs, the installer hangs.

Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (GotY Edition)
Runs and is playable. Rather slow in outdoor areas, though, and ugly glitches on water surfaces.

Neverwinter Nights
Runs well and very smooth – actually better than the Mac version under Rosetta. But movies don't play, and the game hangs for a second or so every other moment. This can get very enervating.

Crysis
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA... no – seriously, what do you expect? It doesn't even start.

Okay, that's it from my side. That was each and every Windows game I could get hold of (most of those came from magazine CDs, in case you are wondering). My trial is expiring tomorrow and if I have to see the InstallShield™ Wizard just one more time in the next weeks, I'm gonna puke.

Time for a conclusion, I think. Let's start with the positive: sometimes I was impressed how well some games did run and how much CO's compatibility has improved since version 6.2.1 (which is the still available version of CO Office) in some cases. Guild Wars and Silent Hunter III were basically unplayable under the old version, but run pretty well now.

On the other hand, of the 30 games listed here until now, only 13 ran and where (theoretically) playable – controller problems aside. Only two of those did not have any glitches. The rest had problems that were at least ugly, but sometimes jarring enough to make playing those games very unpleasant. That is really far from impressing. And most of the games tested here were even pretty old or based on quite ageing technologies like the Source enginge – I doubt that any of the popular modern games like CoD 4, The Witcher or Bioshock would run.

So, can CrossOver be an alternative to BootCamp? Definitely not – at least not for the foreseeable time.

Does it live up to Codeweaver's promises?

Quote

Now gamers can play the games they want, on whatever platform they want! With CrossOver Games, you can run many popular Windows games on your Intel OS X Mac … .

No, definitely not. At least not when the games you want to play are either quite old, drawn from a very limited selection or both.

Would I recommend COG? Depends. If you only want to play some of the few games that are officially supported or listed here as working, you might be quite well off with COG – especially since it's not too expensive. In other cases, you basically have to have a lot of luck.

[dr.zeissler]

if anyone is able to run:

- OUTCAST (Appeal)
- DUNGEON KEEPER I

please post it here.

Thx
Doc

[Nostromo]

AVP2 works great! multiplayer too! theres only a glitch in the TAB menu it inverts the screen...(well in my MBP at least)

MBP 2.16 C2D, 3GB, RadeonX1600 128meg, OSX 10.5.2

[Brad Oliver]

Nostromo, on April 8th 2008, 01:36 PM, said:

AVP2 works great! multiplayer too! theres only a glitch in the TAB menu it inverts the screen...(well in my MBP at least)

MBP 2.16 C2D, 3GB, RadeonX1600 128meg, OSX 10.5.2

As good or better as the Mac AvP2 port under Rosetta?

[Janichsan]

I actually succumbed and bought COG – the idea of running Guild Wars without rebooting was pretty enthralling. And maybe I get around to play HL2 Ep1 and 2 now.

However: I can report on some games, and the results are rather promising.

Trackmania Nations Forever (which is completely free)
Flawless. On highest settings and resolution absolutely smooth. The only problem I encountered was that I couldn't create an online account, but I'm not sure if this is COG related.

Dawn of War (Demo)
Very well. No glitches, mostly smooth, slight stuttering when there's a lot of action.

Prey
Very well. Some problems with wide-screen resolutions and a tendency to slow down and stutter now and then– not completely sure what causes this, but it doesn't seem to be related with action or spacious surroundings.

Civilization IV (including Beyond the Sword)
Excellent. Only problem is that most of the leader portraits are missing most parts. Usually, you only see eyes and teeth, which is... disturbing.

Psychonauts (Demo)
Runs, but very ugly graphic glitches.

Enemy Territory Quake Wars (Demo)
Doesn't run.

[Carl Atkinson]

Janichsan, on April 28th 2008, 04:51 PM, said:

Civilization IV (including Beyond the Sword)
Excellent. Only problem is that most of the leader portraits are missing most parts. Usually, you only see eyes and teeth, which is... disturbing.

Have you tried disabling anti-aliasing for the portrait issue?  Even on the mac version on my macbook pro (nvidia 8600 gt), I have to disable that option, otherwise I have the same issue with portraits that you described.  I'm curious to know, since I might try going this route, as it appears we'll never see BTS on the mac.

Carl

[Janichsan]

Carl Atkinson, on April 30th 2008, 03:13 PM, said:

Have you tried disabling anti-aliasing for the portrait issue?  Even on the mac version on my macbook pro (nvidia 8600 gt), I have to disable that option, otherwise I have the same issue with portraits that you described.  I'm curious to know, since I might try going this route, as it appears we'll never see BTS on the mac.

Not yet. I'm not sure if it is enabled in the first place, but I'll check.

EDIT: Okay, I checked – anti-aliasing is off as by default. Really appears to be some actual Crossover DirectX API problem. Anyway: however weird this looks, the game plays flawless so far.

[mattw]

Brad Oliver, on April 9th 2008, 11:40 PM, said:

As good or better as the Mac AvP2 port under Rosetta?

I can't speak for Rosetta as I'm still on PPC but the Mac version of AVP2 doesn't work at all for me under Leopard. It was fine in Tiger.

[Cobra]

I use to use CrossOver the short time I was using Linux, although haven't touched it for Mac since all the Windows games I was trying to run under it on Linux have Mac ports anyway.

The games that did run for me back then (so should still work)

Space Colony
ran fine
Ghost Master
runs but the cursor was locked to the centre of the screen, hopefully it has been fixed
Obscure
no Mac port sadly, but the game ran fine except the pre-rendered backgrounds wouldn't display making it impossible to play

[Carl Atkinson]

Carl Atkinson, on April 30th 2008, 09:13 AM, said:

Have you tried disabling anti-aliasing for the portrait issue?  Even on the mac version on my macbook pro (nvidia 8600 gt), I have to disable that option, otherwise I have the same issue with portraits that you described.  I'm curious to know, since I might try going this route, as it appears we'll never see BTS on the mac.

Carl

Yes, I finally got around to installing it, and I noticed the same thing.  It's just odd that it's exactly the same problem I had with the mac version when I had anti-aliasing on.  When I turned it off, all was fine.  I would like to figure out a way to fix it on this version, if possible.

Other than that, I agree.. the game runs quite well, and it's nice to have Beyond the Sword without having to reboot with bootcamp.

[Naman]

Sins of a Solar Empire
runs surprisingly well, once you figure out how to do it. For those interested, you need to create a link to the main application in the Programs list of Crossover by choosing "Programs > Run Command..." and browsing down to the Sins of a Solar Empire.exe file, selecting it, and adding it to Programs. The start menu item loads the launcher, which doesn't work in Crossover. As for how it runs, the fonts are a little too big, but readable, the dust clouds don't work, and it will stop zooming briefly at times when using the mouse wheel to zoom, but other than that, it runs pretty well, though there is something I should warn about: it froze once, and when it did so, it locked me out of the OS X GUI. I could move the cursor, but I couldn't activate any other windows. Neither control alt delete or command option escape worked, so I had to do a forced restart.

[macpete]

BlackMoon Chronicles (an old, revived, French MMO that's based upon a French graphic novel) works perfectly but sometimes it doesn't start at all. I've discovered that some games that fail to start may be lunched using the STEAM client ...

[Felix Saturnus]

OK, here's my list. This is with the demo version I downloaded 5/14/2008. It lists itself as version 7.0.0. See below for my conclusions. One note - I used Advanced Install/Install Unsupported Software/Continue/Create Bottle and Continue/Create (New Bottle-x.

Works
1. Secret Files Tunguska. The Adventure Company. used Express Install. Have played several hours.
2. Deus Ex special limited edition. Eidos. (Used Advanced Install/Install Unsupported Software/Continue/Create Bottle and Continue/Create (New Bottle-x). runs in safe mode. with sound. Limited playing time so far.

Doesn't Work
1. Caesar IV. Sierra. Didn't install. Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library Runtime Error.
2. The Lord of the Rings The Battle for Middle-Earth. EA. Didn't install. It opened a Mac window, which I let set there for 20 minutes (7:40 to 8:00). On closing that window (red button) another window opened with a progress bar for installing and the CD made noise. It went for a few minutes, then asked for disk 2 - it wouldn't let me unmount disk 1.
3. Journey to the Center of the Earth. Via Adventure. Didn't install. Got to Install screen, entered code, entered Typical User, then nothing.
4. Thief The Dark Project. Looking Glass Studios. Windows 98. Installs fine, crashes in training session.
5. Far Cry. Ubisoft. Didn't install. Install stops with message Run setup32.exe on 32 bit Windows, or run setup64.exe on 64 bit Windows.
6. School Tycoon. Take 2 Interactive. Install, starts to run. During introduction, screen flips (and remains) upside down.
7. Rome: Total War Sega. Install splash screen. InstallShield Wizard. Would you like to install GameSpy Arcade? (no). Goes through all three install CDs. When start game, it asks for the CD to be input, then nothing.

Conclusions
You're free to draw your own conclusions, but I was extremely unimpressed. I appreciate Code Weaver making a demo available, but this is one demo that convinced me to stay away from the retail product. I will keep an eye on this and retest if they release a new demo, perhaps in several months.

If anyone has any hints on how to get the above games working, I'd be glad to listen.

[Janichsan]

Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy)
I already tested this before and failed at the installation. I found a way around this problem: when you install the game under Windows – e.g. BootCamp, Parallels or VMware – (and apply a NoCD patch) you can simply copy the game folder into one of your CrossOver bottles. Then you can start the game via the "Run Command..." option.

And lo and behold: the game runs perfectly! You'll have to disable the fullscreen postprocessing effects, because the game would look like an overexposed picture, but apart from that you can crank up everything and it runs completely smooth. There are some very minor graphical glitches (like some weird shadows), but those don't spoil the game in any way.

If you missed on one of the best games in the last couple years, this might be a feasible option to finally play it without re-booting.

[Janichsan]

Codeweavers have released COG 7.1, which changed a few things: Portal works now and the leaderheads in Civ IV now look completely fine! Yipieh!

In addition, Steam and all Steam games load much faster.

[Pluto]

Some PC games that I've tested successfully under CrossOver Games 7.0 (iMac 2,4 GHz (ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO), OS X 10.5.4):

Max Payne 2
Runs flawless, really amazing, all levels tested. No problems with audio or video, support widescreen resolutions (1920x1200).
Also works  - Max Payne 2 MODS (single-player, standalone): Sprut. There are many MP2 mods on the Net but somehow I can't launch any of three tested mods from inside the game (through startup menu).

Hitman 2 Silent Assassin
It works but I have tested first level only.

Prince of Persia (first)
It works but I have tested first level only. Rare graphics bugs.

Legacy of Kain
It works but I have tested first level only.

Armed and Dangerous
It works but I have tested first level only.

Command & Conquer Renegade
It works but I have tested first level only.

Half-Life 2 MODS (single-player, standalone): Metastasis, Penetration, Ravenholm
Work flawless, all levels tested.

Brothers in Arms Road to Hill 30
Graphics and audio seems OK, most levels tested. There were some problems:

- annoying limited rotation movement by mouse - about 200 degree of full circle only - tweak .ini files
- occasional crashes - see log
- permanent crash on Rommel level loading - use cheats (saved games) to open all levels and skip it
- tested resolution was 800x600 (default) - I can't set 1920x1200 from menu - try to tweak bia.ini directly

Brothers in Arms uses modified Unreal Engine 2.0 so you can try usual Unreal tweaks to solve problems.

All tested games (besides mods) were Russian PC licensed versions - seems does not matter but you can check original versions also. Some games require NoCD patches.