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Steam for Mac Available Now


SUMERIAN BLOOD GOD

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Steam site.

 

Steam, if you're unfamiliar with it, is Valve's (Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress, etc.) "content-delivery" system; it's basically the PC equivalent of Playstation Store and Xbox Live Marketplace in that it allows for downloads of games and related media. Once a user creates an account all purchased content is tied to that account and allows for unlimited downloads and installations to any computer that has the Steam client installed.

 

As of right now there aren't many titles available for Mac, though Valve is promising new releases every Wednesday. The only Valve title available right now is Portal, which is free to download for both Mac and PC users until May 24th.

 

Definitely something to take advantage of.

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Steam offers many more games on it's service than just those from Valve though so pending what Steam is releasing each Wednesday there will be a lot more content at your disposal.

 

Yeah, I forgot to mention that. Each Wednesday's releases are supposed to highlight an area of Steam functionality. This week's is SteamPlay, the ability to play a game purchased on Steam on all supported platforms.

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It's out now? Is Portal 1 available for Mac?

 

EDIT: HOLY SHIT IT IS AND IT'S FREE! Sorry. Anyway. I'm downloading it right now (after 15 minutes of Steam servers being too busy) but I think my Laptop is incapable of running it. Someone online offered a potential solution (forcing the game to start on it's lowest graphical setting) but I'm going to be very, very upset if Portal is finally available for Mac and my laptop can't run it. I've wanted so badly to be able to play it freely... I don't want to have to use the desktop.

Edited by wantfastcars
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Well, whenever I try to run Portal, it says that I have an incompatible Graphics Card (Fuck Intel for making shitty graphics cards, BTW) but then it says the servers are too busy to complete my request. Going to wait till it finishes DL'ing then play it in offline.

 

Also, it looks like Steam Mac has some bugs still - it crashes every now and then but I can easily resume my downloads.

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Word to that. My Nvidia card isn't even very good. Still, my MBP's recommended settings for Portal were all on high but for a few. Native resolution too. No AA but most other stuff was bumped high. I think I'll turn some of them down to get a better FPS though; I was getting some stutters every now and then.

 

Shit runs hot too. I think it was because I still had Safari and some other things running before I launched Portal but I could feel the heat under the W key. The space where the laptop hinges was too hot to touch actually. That happens to me when I watch HD ut00b videos and Day[9]'s streams too though so it's more of a statement about how shitty my comp is than the programming for the game or anything like that.

 

I can't really tell if it's running better or worse than it did on my Windows laptop. I think the PC had better FPS but all of its settings were pretty low, if I remember right.

 

I hope the rest of the Orange Box gets ported over since all those games are still tied to my Steam account.

Edited by Gary the Tennis Coach
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Ahh fuck it. Servers are way oberloaded- Portal is downloading at freaking BYTES PER SECOND. Not kilobytes, not megabytes, BYTES. And like 2.5 at that. Since the files are already authenticated, I won't have to pay since it's sixty percent downloaded if I wait a week or two to let the servers calm down, right?
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As long as you finish downloading before May 24, you'll be fine. Read some of the things I said in the first post.

 

Just let the download run in the background. It'll pause and slow down a lot then speed back up. It's just dependent on your connection and server load and shit. Not running the downloader isn't going to get it downloaded any faster, homie.

 

Also, why were you trying to play the game before it was done downloading? Doesn't that seem like a silly idea to you?

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I thought as long as you claim your license by that time, you're fine, since that license should function like any other Steam game, unlimited redownloads linked to your account?
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There's been rumors that apple's been thinking of using some AMD processors for some of their computers-- most likely stemmed from having to resort to intel integrated graphics and cpu shortages with their new arrandale laptops, which was also a big reason why they chose to stay with core2duo in their new 13" macbookpros, because it's overall a more powerful computer with nvidia integrated gpu than resorting to i3 arrandale with just intel integrated gpu.

 

If this is true, I could totally see apple releasing some stronger gpu computers with amd processors on the lower end of their market.

Edited by TMRaven
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Fuck intel. Fuck them. Fuck their shitty processors, too. Portal finally finished downloading, and even on the lowest graphical quality my computer can't run it, JUST because of the graphics. Gonna have to ask parents if I can install Portal on the dektop.

 

Oh, did I mention FUCK INTEL?

Edited by wantfastcars
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Wow, your comp's a piece of shit's piece of shit, huh? Here, have some cake.

 

http://i40.tinypic.com/21kgr9f.jpg

 

http://i40.tinypic.com/24mzyut.jpg

I forgot how short Portal is. About 45 minutes of that 3 hours is me sitting there listening to GLaDOS talk or flinging myself around the levels. Guess it's time to start working on achievements.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey you got killed the other day when my base got invaded. It was sad really because the aliens were hopelessly outmatched. I got a little careless though and left you standing in a garage and I guess this alien was hiding in a closet, came out and smeared u with plasma then walked back into the closet.

 

He got firing squaded right after but it was too late to save you. ;)

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