Running CS:Source in Parallels

Spoom182

So a friend of mine is trying to run CS source on a macbook pro, which is definitely a capable enough computer. But for whatever reason, his computer freezes whenever he tries to load it. Any ideas?

Jasconius

Is he allocating enough RAM to Windows to support the game?

I would start with making sure the proper resources are allocated and go from there.

Spoom182

There is more than enough RAM (something like 1,600 megs). We're gonna run a benchmark to see if it actually IS fast enough in the first place.

Spoom182

We just ran a benchmark, and although his computer isn't particularly fast, it is definitely fast enough to run CS:S. So we're back to square one.

Hlubocky

You are going to run a game in Parallels? I don't know much about virtualization, but I figured if you want to play games, you would have to boot into Windows natively.

Oz K. Fodrotski

Hlubocky wrote: »

You are going to run a game in Parallels? I don't know much about virtualization, but I figured if you want to play games, you would have to boot into Windows natively.

I was under the impression that Parallels and VMWare Fusion both supported graphics acceleration in the virtualized OS.

That said, booting to Windows would probably be easier.

Spoom182

How could he get Windows to boot natively on his mac?

corcorigan

Spoom182 wrote: »

How could he get Windows to boot natively on his mac?

Boot Camp.

Macs are just wintel machines now anyway, with an extra ROM chip or something so OS X runs on them.

falsedef

I haven't kept up with VMWare, but they couldn't run a lot of DX games last time I saw.

Oz K. Fodrotski

The list on Parallels' site, here, neglects to list either HL2 or CS:S as one of the supported games.

Meanwhile, on the VMWare Fusion site, I found this under the feature list;

[*]Use even more Windows 3D applications and games with experimental support for DirectX 9.0 accelerated 3D graphics (without “shaders”).

Between these two, I'm willing to go out on a limb and suggest that Windows virtualization under OSX does not yet support pixel shading, and related effects.

If your friend wants to play CS:S on his Mac, he'll probably need to fire up Boot Camp.

TychoCelchuuu

Try adding -dxlevel 7 or 8 to the launch options.

Spoom182

He told me that Boot Camp was no longer offered or something. He's not exactly a computer genius, so he could easily be misinformed. I'll got tell his ass to get boot camp.

lunchbox12682

Boot Camp is part of Leopard now, but it's no longer a free demo, I think.

But yeah 3d games under virtualization will not, in general, work.
I tried both Parallels and Fusion with limited (just short of no) success.
Dual boot is the way to go.

Oz K. Fodrotski

Mirrors of the Boot Camp Beta are still floating about.

If your friend is uncomfortable with the idea of using older beta software (and he's not running Leopard), he might also try simply re-sizing his OSX partition (via Apple Disk Utilities, I think) and using rEFIt to install Windows / recognize the multi-boot. I had a triple-boot going on my MacBook for a while, and it ran nice and smooth.