Helpful IMG readers and our friends at ATI have revealed ways to "work around" the initial bugs of Apple's Mac OS X while waiting for updated versions of the existing Carbon or Cocoa apps. One game many of you are eager to get running is Quake 3 Arena, specifically the Cocoa version ported by Omni Development. Though many reported a crash or quit on launch and blamed OpenGL, it turns out that the sound code is what is interfering.

Several forum and article comment posters suggested a solution. First, boot into Classic and throw away your .cfg file from the baseq3 folder. Then launch the game, and quit it. Open the config.cfg file in a text editor (you may have to change the type/creator to get SimpleText to open it) and add the following line to the end of the file:

seta s_initsound "0"

Save this file and then reboot into OS X. When you launch the Omni version of Q3A, point it towards the Quake3 directory and Q3A should run fine -- without sound, of course.

4x4 Evolution can also be coaxed into running by similar means. Open the 4x4 folder and then the System folder, then the "render.ini" file. At the end of the list add the following line:

allowFrameBufferLocking=0

Then just save the file and launch the game under OS X. There are still issues with controls and you can't resize or move the game window, but frame rates are excellent and quite playable. We haven't tested networking yet, but we'll let you know our results. Be sure to post your tips and tricks in our Mac OS X forum!

IMG's Mac OS X Forum

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