FERAL is porting BIOSHOCK RELEASE MID2009 Options

[UmarOMC1]

Noticed a bug in the port, at least on my 8800GT but thanksfully easy to fix and actually welcomed (1.0.1 version + 10.6.2) !
If you disable Vsync in the main menu (not in game !!!) then play as usual, the game will run a lot better : while before it was sometimes running at 40fps, now it's running 60fps every time, fully maxed, and definitely on par with Windows !

Dunno if it's a feature of Vsync, I guess maybe the game is running at 59fps, not exactly 60fps, and vsync blocks it at ~30fps... I don't have screen tearing either without vsync, so if you want a BIG fps boost (in my case almost 15fps boost in "complicated scenes) you should disable it.

EDIT : btw is there a way to force FSAA ? on WIndows you can force it via the nvidia panel, but forcing it via opengl profiler wont work

Bioshock doesn't support antialiasing from what I've read so unless ATI or NVIDIA releases OS X control panels, I'd say 'No.' The last set of drivers/software I could find from ATI was for the Radeon X1900 G5 card.

I'm not sure where you're reading fps readout from since Bioshock has no built-in way to display frames per second AFAIK... unless you're guesstimating? Correct me if I'm wrong, please.

[edddeduck]

Dunno if it's a feature of Vsync, I guess maybe the game is running at 59fps, not exactly 60fps, and vsync blocks it at ~30fps... I don't have screen tearing either without vsync, so if you want a BIG fps boost (in my case almost 15fps boost in "complicated scenes) you should disable it.

It's not a bug as you say its a feature. If the game engine cannot guarantee 60 frames per second in all cases it will drop to the next lowest fps that it both sync-able to the refresh rate and also attainable by the game engine. In your case your card can get close to 60fps most of the time but it cannot guarantee the frame rate so it drops to the next best fps.

In most cases turning VSync off will give a big boost in the frame rate as it is no longer restrained to a set fps however depending on your card and settings you might get tearing, although as you have noticed if you get lucky you get all the speed and no downside. If you don't know what tearing is here is a wiki page which describes the phenomenon and also shows an example image.

If you want/need more speed I would recommend you do as Alkar has done and disabled VSync and only turn it back on again if the tearing gets annoying on your machine.

Cheers,

Edwin

[ikir]

Yes vSync is a framepersecond killer in any game. I always play without it even on my Mac Pro.

[Linux-user]

I haven't purchased one of their games in a while, so I don't clearly remember, but I can at least verify that an internet connection is not required to play the games subsequently, as I regularly play them on my iMac when my ISP collapses. You might simply try picking the games up on GamersGate, as they do not seem to have DRM for any of their Mac games.

Those games at GamersGate are only digital downloads. I only buy retail games. I want a nice box and a disc and manual, something I can place on my shelf. This gives the feeling of actually owning a product. When buying a downloadable version, I don't feel like I own the game. When I buy retail games, I can point my friends to the shelf which is full of games and I can say: "Look, those are my games." Maybe I'm getting old, but I really don't like digital distribution and I don't like games that reuire an internet connection. I just want to buy a game, install and play the game even when my router has exploded, which means I don't have an internet connection at that moment.

[dr.zeissler]

my ati blew off after playing bioshock for 4 hours, but it is not ferals fault.
i sent it to a asp and the changed the ati 4850 and now everything is fine...for now ;-)

Doc

[Jeyl]

Ok. I want cheats. I want a chemical thrower, my swarm hand, my incinerator hand all on stage one. I want it all. Go ahead. Do it.

[jgwdoc]

Ok. I want cheats. I want a chemical thrower, my swarm hand, my incinerator hand all on stage one. I want it all. Go ahead. Do it.

Hey! Earn your weapons. And swarm hand is lame.

[Tesseract]

So, I got BioShock, but I can't play for more than a few minutes at a time without it freezing. In fact it freezes so hard that I can't even force quit, and I have to ssh in from another machine to be able to reboot cleanly.

I have emailed Feral support, and they told me that I probably had some conflicting software installed, or my graphics card was clogged with dust and overheating. So I removed all third-party software that could possibly run without being explicitly launched, gave the only slightly dusty air intake a thorough clean, and tried playing at the coolest time of the day. Still freezing.

So now their only advice is "reinstall the OS". What is this, Windows?

I'd like to gather some more data to try and help Feral and/or Apple fix this. The machine this is happening on is a MacPro 1,1 (early 2007), Radeon X1900 XT, running 10.6.2. Does anyone else have an identical (or even just similar) config? If so, I'd like to hear from you. I'm interested in both reports where this problem does happen and where it does not. Of course I'd also like to hear if you are having the same problem with BioShock on a completely different system.

[teflon]

Have you tried applying a combo update to rewrite all the stuff that the two deltas might have messed up?

Also, rebooting the mac messily might give you some crash reports that could be of use.

Finally, I assume you're not getting this in any other games?

[Tesseract]

Yeah, all other games are fine. No crash or panic reports because the game is not actually crashing and the OS is still ticking along fine, the GUI is just unusable due to the BioShock window covering everything.

This reminds me of what happened to NWN on my G5 years ago, come to think of it… only that actually was a kernel panic, and was caused by ATI Displays (which is obviously not a factor any more).