StarCraft II Mac Client Beta Available 123
An anonymous reader writes "Blizzard has released the Mac client of the StarCraft II multiplayer beta. If you already have an invite for the PC beta, the Mac client is available under your Battle.net account."
A recent patch also added a map editor to the StarCraft II beta, which has already led to some interesting projects.
Yay! (Score:3, Funny)
I'm pretty sure all 6 mac gamers will be very delighted that this happened.
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Re:Yay! (Score:4, Funny)
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Not Doom, but Quake. Here it is [google.com].
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Pay twice for half the performance and 1/1000 of the games!
Woohoo! (Score:1, Funny)
Hell, it's about time.
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Yeah, cause according to the 2010 list of best selling laptops, there's 6 mac gamers out there...
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No, that was a typo.
It was supposed to be "lamers" not "gamers".
13's mac have only core 2 and on board video at pr (Score:2)
13's mac have only core 2 and on board video at prices where you can get i3 i5 with better video cards that have there own ram with other systems.
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13's mac have only core 2 and on board video at prices where you can get i3 i5 with better video cards that have there own ram with other systems.
That's why they must be outselling them.
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Hey! You forgot to count me!
I know what I'll do this weekend anyway... :) I didn't play StarCraft that intensively, but somehow StarCraft II still managed to excite me. Although I do expect to get defeated repeatedly by people who had months of training in the beta already.
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Although I do expect to get defeated repeatedly by people who had months of training in the beta already.
The nice thing is, due to the way they have the "leagues" set up, you play 5 placement matches, then after that, you primarily compete against people of your own skill level. So if you suck, you'll also play against people that suck.
The idea being that you actually have fun NOT get defeated repeatedly. So far, from my experience, it works quite well.
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Yeah, anyone believing Blizzards success comes from only releasing good games should really have their brains checked in for service.
Macs where it's at.
"Omg, have you seen this new game? It's amazing! It runs on OS X!", though, if said by a mac user I guess one can understand his excitement no matter what crap title it would be said about. Atleast it's a game, for a mac! ..
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When the hell is Blizzard going to support all four of us Linux gamers? HUH?
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Always hilarious that comment.
Meanwhile here in the current century this will make another great addition to Mac gaming, just as Mac steam recently announced will.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/04/29/valve_sets_public_mac_steam_release_for_may_12_2010.html [appleinsider.com]
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I'm pretty sure all 6 mac gamers will be very delighted that this happened.
Wow, imagine if they supported Linux... they'd almost double that number!
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No because Apple fail in making macs a viable gaming platform. Or well, guess one could simply conclude they just fail at large I suppose.
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is such a typical do nothing, patch nothing, PR-only marketing beta, NOT an actual beta test.
Do you even understand what a beta is? It's a feature-complete build that has known issues. It's not a demo, nor a "You get to play for free" build. It's BETA. B-E-T-A. I.e., understood to be broken.
Sheesh. Kids today.
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Google keeps everything in beta for perpetuity, even though most of their services doesn't deserve that label. Google uses beta as an excuse to their users, not as an indicator of service status. The whining you replied to is the result.
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Do you even understand what a beta is? It's a feature-complete build that has known issues. It's not a demo, nor a "You get to play for free" build. It's BETA. B-E-T-A. I.e., understood to be broken.
Well, thank Google for that. BETA as in Gmail, that was in Beta for years while being both reliable and (compared to webmail in general) functionally complete.
So to the google generation, beta means free and no support, but finished never the less.
Sir, there is a bug in your signature. (Score:2)
SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Dude, your SELECT is broken. I never get any search results at all. And when I search for "good" your server seems to crash.
I guess could file a helpful bug report... But heck, I'll rather just rant about it on Slashdot instead.
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Seriously, Parallels 3 is 2 generations old. What cheap drugs were you on that you though 3D gaming would work at all in a 2 generation old virtualization engine, when there have been constant articles on the continual progress that has been made in each generation even to make that marginally possible, and especially since you read /. and should have seen those articles!?!
Also, running 2 OS on 1GB of RAM? i don;t even recomend running EITHER separately on less than 2GB of RAM.
Finally, the specs alone ind
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Shameful plug (Score:2, Informative)
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Linux ? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Not strictly.
StarCraft/BroodWar are supported through WINE with Blizzard's tolerance on BattleNet.
The NoCD patch (official, not a crack) for SC/BW (currently at 1.16.1) works OK in Linux.
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=21149&rhtml=true [blizzard.com]
Of course, it there were to be an "official" native release of SCII for Linux, I would probably drop my current boycott of the title for lack of LAN play.
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StarCraft/BroodWar are supported through WINE with Blizzard's tolerance on BattleNet.
Really? Because the wineHQ database [winehq.org] and my personal experience would disagree...the game plays fine in single-player mode on wine, but battle.net doesn't work. I had better luck installing a windows 98 vm and running it in that. Of course, you have to have a windows 98 license laying around, but once I did that, it worked great for me.
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My Starcraft CD has a Mac version on it. Only problem is it is for OS9
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IIRC, you can download a patch from Blizzard's website to allow you to play it on OS X.
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All you have to do is go to their website, create an account, enter CD key, download OSX client.
Seriously. I just got done destroying Aiur in the final Zerg mission. Works fine on my MBP.
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Linux as a desktop operating system is growing in popularity every day, and has come a long way since Blizzard's last game release.
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I'm hoping OpenGL support means better Wine performance. I'm sure with such a large community, Linux gamers will be able to play this game one way or another.
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I'm hoping OpenGL support means better Wine performance.
Don't get your hopes up. SC1 was also running on OS X via OpenGL and the WINE performance was quite poor by most accounts. It would be nice if Blizzard supported Linux as a primary platform, but I don't think the business case is really there. Maybe Canonical will make them a deal to sell a version via the Ubuntu store when it is up and running and that will make the business case solid enough.
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We're at, what, 1% now? And before you get all "Yahbut, you could get 100% of 1% of the market!!!!1!!", that's only significant if you're churning out 2D RPGs from your garage and every sale counts. It's a rounding error to Blizzard, especially as many Linux users will have XP partitions as well.
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Not to forget it's already a better gaming platform than macs :D
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If Blizzard's policy remains, Linux will simply be an unsupported platform. You can use wine to emulate^H^H^H^H^Hrun it, and even play in rated games online (without risk of getting banned for using an unacceptable OS), but if you break it you keep both pieces.
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Re:Linux ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I've found that for pretty much any program with a Mac version, the Windows version works perfectly in Wine. I'm guessing it's a side effect of not being able to make Windows-specific assumptions.
Keep in mind that many Mac games are simply the Windows version bundled with a Wine fork [transgaming.com], so it may be less a matter of making Windows-specific assumptions and more a matter of intentionally coding for Wine support.
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Actually, Blizzard has a long history of supporting OpenGL, and if I recall correctly, they are on the board (Kronos Group) http://www.khronos.org/about/ [khronos.org]
It's not necessarily because the games are Wine friendly, but because they use open standards to ensure Mac compatibility. Wine compatibility is more the end result of using open standards, not the root cause. DX10 is a nice to have on Blizzards newest games, but certainly not a requirement, and they went with Havok physics (from Intel), rather than Physx (
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Korin wasn't talking about Blizzard, and neither was I. Blizzard's games' Wine compatibility may be caused by their use of open standards, but I was speculating that most [other] Win+Mac games' Wine compatibility could stem from their usage of Transgaming's Cider engine.
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I was speculating that most [other] Win+Mac games' Wine compatibility could stem from their usage of Transgaming's Cider engine.
Certainly there are a fair number of games that make use of it, but I don't think it would be the majority. For one, Cider has only been in use for about 3-4 years, whereas Mac games have been increasing in number for much longer than that. It is sort of a double edged sword in the Mac market, making it easier for some companies to make cross platform games, but at the same time moving some franchises that used to do proper ports to less functional, poorer performing (quick and dirty) ports that encourage t
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Unfortunately its gotten popular enough that I've become skeptical whenever I hear of a new "mac port" these days. I do feel its not too far off to say that the majority of big budget games in the past 2-3 years have used Cider. I have no facts to back up this claim of course, its just what I've experienced. Warhammer Online, EVE Online, Dragon Age, Spore, Call of Duty, Command and Conquer, and City of Heroes, would be a few. Blizzard seems to be one of the last companies that still develops natively for Ma
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Except Blizzard games isn't cider "ports."
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Not at all. Blizzard has been supporting Mac since SC1 over 10 years ago.
Heck, it's been longer than that. The earliest title Bliz made for the Mac (that I know of) is Blackthorne (1994). And the earliest one that anyone cares about (Orcs and Humans) was still all the way back in '96.
Mac OS != Mac OS X (Score:2)
Not at all. Blizzard has been supporting Mac since SC1 over 10 years ago.
Except that, over 10 years ago, Mac OS X hasn't even been anounced. The official OS for Macs was System 8 back then. i.e.: something that doesn't even remotely look like anything else on the market. So the Mac-port was targetting System 8 and as such was a completely separate port. Meaning that making a Linux port would have required even one more separate port. Which would have been worth it.
Today, the official Mac OS is Snow Leopard. An OS which heavily draws from its BSD Unix roots. Most of the API aren'
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The N64 version of Starcraft notwithstanding, I wouldn't hold your breath here. SC is not exactly a game that's amenable to the console, especially since none of them let you use mouse/keyboard in-game. I'd be quite surprised if we see console port of SC2.
Your other arguments are decent, but I don't think that one would have been much more than a "eh, it wouldn't hurt
Have you been following the consoles lately ? (Score:2)
I wouldn't hold your breath here. SC is not exactly a game that's amenable to the console, especially since none of them let you use mouse/keyboard in-game.
Well, probably you haven't been following the news in console kingdom lately, but pointing inputs are all the rage since Nintendo introduced them as a standard feature with the DS's touch screen and the Wiimote (prior they where specially purpose device bought separately)
To the point that currently, point'n'click adventure games see a lot of DS and Wii ports.
Playing StarCraft with a wiimote instead of a mouse doesn't sound that much weird. (And the console has USB ports if you really need the real stuff).
So
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Playing StarCraft with a wiimote instead of a mouse doesn't sound that much weird. (And the console has USB ports if you really need the real stuff).
Maybe because I'm looking at it from more of a hardcore standpoint, but it definitely does to me. I mean, my APM is pretty bad (only like 60-70) compared to people who play a lot, but I can't imagine getting anything close to that with a Wiimote.
As for the touch-screen type things like the DS: I've tried it on my convertible tablet, and while it's playable, you
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My impression was that you can only use the keyboard for text-entry fields, and that their SDK prohibited keyboard/mouse for games. (Same with Sony.) Is this not the case?
Ok, just did a search. Are guy said that this was true of the XBox 1, but not the 360. I send corrected.
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I do believe Mac OS 8/9 supported OpenGL. Furthermore, Quickdraw is still part of OSX. Yes, its deprecated, but its still there. Some software and well used graphics libraries, such as the current stable version of SDL, still use it.
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It's all pretty convoluted to me. According to the wiki [wikipedia.org], apparently the Windows version is fully DX10 supported whereas the Mac version uses OpenGL. I'm sure there are good reasons why, but doesn't it make more sense to just use the same OpenGL for both? Less to develop and easier to port between other OSes IMO
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There are a lot of Windows games out there that support both OpenGL and DirectX. Most of the successful Cider ports are games that support both DirectX and OpenGL on Windows.
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...doesn't it make more sense to just use the same OpenGL for both?
Depends on what they're doing. For example, geometry shaders have been available in DX10 for years, but only available in pure OpenGL for a few months. (Though they've been available as an extension for quite some time too.)
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I bought everything they did, yet... (Score:1, Offtopic)
I still have my original "Orcs and Humans," in fact. And yet, not only did I not get in on the beta, but no one I know did either (which means, they couldn't invite me or whatnot).
Bah.
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Like the AC that also replied to you said, Amazon and GameStop had (may still have?) promotions where they give you a beta key if you preorder the game. That's how a lot of us got in.
It should be noted... (Score:1, Informative)
It should be noted that the map editor is not yet available in the Mac beta.
Performance Issues (Score:2, Informative)
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In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
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Still not buying it. (Score:2)
Let me point out something important - no LAN play means that you are dealing with a lighter form of the same DRM that Ubisoft is using. It starts with "no LAN play" and then goes to "Must always be connected to Battlenet." and ends with "My game won't play because I can't authenticate every 10 minutes."
Stand up and put your money where your mouth is or these companies will
Re:Still not buying it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is the difference between what Ubisoft and Blizzard are doing.
Ubisoft is putting this stupid "connected all the time" stuff in Single-Player Games. There's no Multi I know of in AC2. So it's somewhere that server connections are completely inappropriate. It's just a complete waste to include it.
Starcraft II is meant to be Multi-Player, that is what the primary focus has always been, its what the Beta is testing (exclusively, no campaign testing in the Beta). Sure there is going to be a campaign, and you might even play through it more than once, but the many hours most people are going to burn on this is going to be Multi.
So I for one will be buying the game, because just about the only thing I care about at all IS Multi-Player and I don't have people local to play on a LAN either. The game could come with absolutely no single player features at all and I would still be buying it. If the game did not come with Multi-Player I would need to seriously reconsider if it was worth buying. The "must be connected to battle.net" thing is redundant to me, I'm going to be there anyway.
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You don't get to play the game unless the company in questions ALLOWS you to use what YOU ALREADY HAVE PAID FOR AND OWN.
The longer people let companies get away with putting in DRM like this the more restrictive it will g
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Yes I do, I'll buy two copies even because i don't give a shit about DRM or not. I buy the game cause its fun.
BTW you don't need an active internet connection to play single player at all according to Dustin Browder. There is one internet validation of your game as you install it, and other than that you don't ever have to connect to the internet to play single player.
You need internet to play multiplayer, which makes sense. The only thing they've disallowed is people playing a private LAN in the middle of
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Yes I do, I'll buy two copies even because i don't give a shit about DRM or not.
Why buy two copies of the same game? That seems pretty silly to m...
I buy the game cause its fun.
Oh I see. You enjoy spending money. In that case, you are really going to love the state of games in 2-3 years when you get to buy it for full retail (just the license of course, you won't actually own anything) and then get to pay a monthly "server access and maintenance fee" to continue to play your DRM crippled games.
On a more serious and less sarcastic note, requiring constant internet connection for LAN play is ridiculous, and will
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Just because you don't want LAN play doesn't mean others don't want it.
So I'll buy it, and they won't. I'm not about to boycott a product I want because it doesn't have a feature I don't want.
The longer people let companies get away with putting in DRM like this the more restrictive it will get. Until you have...rentalware.
When a product comes out that doesn't let me do what I want, I'll refuse to buy it. Not before. Slippery slope arguments don't carry a lot of weight with me.
Do you really want rentalware?
Do you really think you know what I want better than I do? Voting with your wallet means not buying a product you don't support. It doesn't mean trying to force other people to conform to your wishes.
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Clearly games aren't important to you. It is just espousing Slashdot group-think to gain karma or have l
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The stuff Blizzard did in the past was completely reasonable if you look at the reality of the situation rather than the polarized slashdot group-think that is shoved down your throat. And even if you count that, how old is Starcraft? Right...and they are still supporting it today. So your analogy with Ubisoft fails in so many ways.
No, not having LAN play isn't a lighter version of that DRM, and no, it does not lead to always be connected. You sound like a stupid gun
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And even if you count that, how old is Starcraft? Right...and they are still supporting it today.
Do you think they would support it if it wasn't profitable or convenient for them to do so? Do you think that maybe, just maybe, supporting a product which has a huge userbase might be beneficial to the company when they release the followup for that product? Supporting Starcraft is nothing more than an investement that they are making with the expectation that they will be able to capitalize on that investmen
Now apple needs a better desktop system to play it (Score:2)
Now apple needs a better desktop system to play it.
$1200 get's you a AIO with core 2 laptop cpu and 9400m on board video.
$1500 to go up to ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics with 256MB
$600 - $800 for a mini with a slower laptop cpu less ram at $600 and the same 9400m on board video.
or $2500 for mac pro with a weak base video card and less ram then the imac. NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB at $2500?? add $200 for 4870 512MB?? makeing it a $350 video card?
We need a real desktop with a desktop cpu and mid-range or b
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What you want is a PC (or a Hackintosh). There's no way Apple is going to release a reasonably priced "game system".
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Actually, Apple is highly focused on gaming, as well as video editing, on their entire line. Blizzard has comitted to releasing all future games for both Mac and PC (simultaneously when possible). getting dedicated GPUs in all Mac desktop systems should happen with the next release when i5 becomes the default processor across the entire line (excluding the Mini, which should at least get the 9600M anyway assuming they keep that model, rumor is they are).
The most basic mac in each line likely won't include
apple still needs a NON AIO system under $1500 (Score:2)
apple still needs a NON AIO system under $1500 that is not a low end system with crap video.
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I agree, but currently, that is not a market they seek to compete in. 95% of people only ever upgrade memory or a HDD in a PC anyway. A small few might replace a video card in a generic PC. (and you CAN get aftermarket vid cards for most of the iMacs, its just not easy, but the mini card standard is becoming more of a standard, and the newest macs should have newer cards available in about a year).
The real modders who care about customizable PCs are less than 1% of the market (yes, really), and they're n
Re:Now apple needs a better desktop system to play (Score:2)
Now apple needs a better desktop system to play it.
People still buy desktops? How retro!
I'd much rather Apple came out with a homer server that I could use to run intensive applications remotely.
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Still needs good video cards!
If the beta is buggy, slow, and unstable... (Score:2)
Oh look, a Starcraft II story... (Score:2)
New prey! (Score:1)
Can't find it on EU battlenet (Score:2)
I've logged on to my EU battlenet account and the mac client option is still greyed out. Guess they are doing a staggered roll out.
(Yes, I am a mac user from Europe. I also like cappuccino, think universal healthcare is great, and am convinced global warming is caused by human activity. I fully expect a response from crazed right-wing americans)
As for those irredeemable cretins, attracted to any thread that mentions macs and games, who snark 'dont buy a mac for games' - there is a fairly simply response. I
Re:requirements? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:requirements? (Score:4)
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Re:requirements? (Score:5, Funny)
First fight and reconciliation right here on
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You can point and laugh if you like, but Slashdot really is the home of people who can never possibly be wrong no matter how much solid evidence has been provided.
This place would be so much nicer if we could get a little more humility like those two showed. Instead most of the comments are posed to earn moderations. We could all (especially me) stand to be a little classier.
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Will you two just get a room?