Thursday, May 13, 2010

Portal is free! Portal 2 is cooperative!

JOY.



Even a Wilhelm scream. ^_^

46 comments:

kamapuaa said...

Runs quite well on my macbook pro. Makes me wish there was a better upgrade path for the mac pro's video though (Stuck on the GeForce 7300 GT).

kamapuaa said...

Whoops, spoke too soon. Looks like today's update hosed it. Not being able to see through portals = bad.

Mr. Pony said...

I think we have the same problem. You have the Mac Pro1,1? I'm looking into the 8800. It's an old card; maybe I can find a deal. Know of any other upgrade options?

I know it seems insane to have a game I've already played trigger thoughts of an upgrade, but I'm just psyched to finally have a computer that doesn't feel sluggish, even after two and a half years.

Mr. Pony said...

Hey, all right!

And yeah, I was wondering about that. I played a couple of levels on my Mac Book Pro this morning, and the portals were dark. I noticed because there's that mind-blowing moment in the very beginning where you see yourself in the cell, in profile. I was kinda sad about not seeing that.

Mr. Pony said...

On Steam, I am "misterpony", if you would care to join me.

kamapuaa said...

@Mr.Pony: There was one official upgrade card for the original mac pro - unfortunately there were two revs of it. One (that I acquired) was crashtastic. The later ones were apparently better.

Also, I have a fix for the black portals. Right click on portal in the Library->Games menu, and select "properties". Go to "SET LAUNCH OPTIONS" and add -windowed. This will launch portal in a window instead of full screen. Once it's launched, you can set it back to full screen in the options. This appears to sidestep the black portal bug. (From the steampowered forums)

kamapuaa said...

Also, added you to my friends - I'm blacklodgebob on steam and xbox live. Too bad there's no co-op portal.

FAKA! said...

Hey I just added both you guys to my steam friend's list... just a heads up when you see an invitation from "ufakefe" ;) I've been on steam way too much since my BF BC2 addiction so you will most likely see me on every night LOL.

The 8800gt is a great card for gaming and im sure the price is down by now. I know in a few Mac forums there are guys that flash the firmware of PC 8800 cards to be Mac compatible. There is also this " http://store.apple.com/us/product/TW387ZM/A " which would make your systems fly I'm sure.

As for Portal 2, I read up a few months ago and Valve was saying how Portal 2 is an actual game vs the first portal. They said the first portal was just a test... basically they had the technology but no idea how to really utilize it which is why portal is so short and just thrown in with the orange box. They said that Portal 2 is a fully developed game.. should be fun =)

Mr. Pony said...

Kamapuaa, is this the card you're talking about?

Found it here for $300.

Also, a review of this doohickey for cooling it off.

I can see why you guys like building your own computers. It's kind of like outfitting fake spaceships in space combat games, but one level down.

kamapuaa said...

Ah, no - that's newer. The option card was the ATI Radeon X1900 XT. That's the one I was talking about that had the rev.1 issues. Nice to see there are more options available.

Mr. Pony said...

Also, thanks for the info, FAKA! I saw somewhere about people flashing these cards, but it looks like NVIDIA made a Mac version.

All this has me thinking about heat, because it's clearly important. Looks like I might have to clear out some of those nonessential PCIe cards to help with heat dissipation.

My question is this: Do they make walk-in closet-sized, refrigerated PC cases?

Mr. Pony said...

I hope we can all play Portal 2 together.

Mr. Pony said...

Hi.

kamapuaa said...

Damnit, I might have to get that 8800 if for no reason other than to be able to take advantage of OpenCL.

Mr. Pony said...

I looked up OpenCL, but couldn't understand any real-world benefits because I know so little about these things. What can OpenCL do for me?

kamapuaa said...

Video cards have processors that are very, very fast for certain types of operations. The OpenCL framework (included in Snow Leopard) lets the operating system pass these types of calculations to the chip on the video card. Theoretically, it should improve system performance.

Also, having no impulse control whatsoever, I have ordered the 8800. I'll let you know how it goes.

Mr. Pony said...

Wow, that is potentially very awesome. I often have to move huge numbers of files around, and sometimes even my Giant-Alcohol-Induced-RAM-Purchase falls short.

Also, while I am not currently drunk, I have also ordered the 8800. We should compare notes. I'm worried about cooking the inside of my computer.

kamapuaa said...

Yeah man. I'm hoping it doesn't overwhelm my AC and sent the box into thermal shutdown.

Fugu said...

Hey guys! I'm fugu_v on steam. Also, Portal is still working fine on my 3yo MBP… *shrug*

I would just die if they port over the entire orange box. Man, what I wouldn't give to play 1/2 life again. And i could finally get rid of my Windows partition!

Fugu said...

Oh hey. They changed the ending.

kamapuaa said...

Wow, that was quick. I got my new card in the mail today. I'll be installing tonight.

kamapuaa said...

Ok, finally got a chance to install the new card and play some Portal. It's great! I have all of the video settings cranked to maximum, and it's not even breaking a sweat (In this case, I mean the rather noisy fan on the card isn't going nuts).

For some reason, the game started in 1024x768, so it didn't look great initially. I was worried that this might be the "recommended" setting, but after switching to 1680x1050 I didn't notice any problems.

The jury is still out on the OpenCL stuff. I guess to get good data I'd have to A/B the video cards and run a bunch of performance tests.

tl;dr: I'm very happy with this upgrade so far.

Litcube said...

http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_gtx_295_us.html

Hi guys. This is my card.

Mr. Pony said...

Just got back from a long long trip (which kind of explains my absence of late; even before I was traveling, I had to prepare to travel...). Installed this card just now, and everything seems to be running fine, aside from the initial hair-dryer smell the card gave off, which was nerve-wracking. It seems to have subsided. Is that normal?

Portal is is fast as I need it to be at 2560x1600, and Age of Empires runs fast with everything cranked up. I had no idea this was possible, guys. I'm going to install that copy of Black and White 2 Fugu lent me later. I may get lost again, is what I'm saying. Goodbye, maybe.

Fugu said...

Playing Portal again gave me a serious FPS bug. I just did Half-life 2 all the way through again, then went out and bought Bioshock, which I'm interrupting to bring you this message. It's good, but not 1/2-life good.

Also, I'm on my 3 year-old laptop so the best I've ever been able to do is medium on the settings. If I ever get a better computer I'll probably have to play them all all over again.

Also, I looked around to see if episode three for half-life is near to coming out and it looks like not. The latest I could find is that it might be 2011 now, or not at all, and they'll just mix it in with Half-life three. Anyone know differently?

Playing Bioshock in 3… 2… 1...

Mr. Pony said...

That seems like a pretty neat card, Litcube. How does one tell, though? Video cards from 10 years ago use exactly the same adjectives in their marketing, from what I can see (although "jaw-dropping" seems like it might be a little more recent. What numbers does one look at when comparing video cards?

(Since I have a Mac, this discussion probably doesn't involve me, since we tend to have exactly two options, and no one can ever agree on which one is better.)

Litcube said...

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-cards-charts-2009-q3-high-quality-1st-release/3DMark06-v1.1.0-3DMark-Score,1468.html


That's one chart. Tom's has all sorts of VGA charts for different applications. Vid cards are mostly just horsepower.

FAKA! said...

Man Litcube you make me want to upgrade my aging 9800GTX+. It’s still a great card though... been playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 @ 1680x1050 with everything cranked just fine, but 1920 will chug a bit when there are tons of explosions.

Pony that burn smell is normal... =/ Your case looks like it must have serious airflow, but if you have doubts you can always monitor your temps via software. For the Mac you can try something like http://www.atpurpose.com/atMonitor/ or search for “GPU monitor” software in your favorite Mac forum. My 8800GT ran pretty hot when gaming too, but was way cooler than my piece of crap 7800GTX SLI setup from years ago.

Fugu I am so glad to hear of your FPS bug… So does this mean there is a chance of a Mac FPS LAN anytime soon? I have not tried this game yet but if any of you Steam Mac guys pickup Killing Floor http://www.killingfloorthegame.com/ I’d pick it up just to play some co-op with you guys ;) I believe it supports 6 player co-op and is cross platform Mac/PC compatible… And last I checked it was like $19 bucks or something like that… I’m not sure how good the game is but killing zombies with friends can’t be that bad right? We can always skype/teamspeak as well =) Maybe get some big island 8800 card swinging faka to join in too? Anyway just a thought…

Litcube said...

CPUs are now the bottleneck. We haven't seen pure horsepower gains in the CPU front for about 5 years, despite popular belief.

Throwing 8 dies into a CPU doesn't make a game run any faster, and we're still running at a 3.0 clock speed, which is some old school shit.

Mr. Pony said...

Thanks for the info, dudes! I think I need to fiddle with ATMonitor a little, as my GPU is reading at 0°, which seems unlikely.

I was running Portal at full res, but once I left the early levels and started looking down long hallways, I had to dial it back a bit. Still, this is awesome.

Also, Killing Floor for Mac is on sale at $13.39, via Steam!

kamapuaa said...

I'm always down for some co-op gaming. Pretty sure I set up a skype account too. Should I go ahead and buy Killing Floor? Is this a plan?

FAKA! said...

You know I'm down... I'm thinking skype may not be as great an option come to think of it. Since someone has to host the skype call it could affect that person's game/packet lost. Let me setup a teamspeak server and will update everyone when its working... everyone got a headset with a mic?

Mr. Pony said...

I bought the game, and it's downloading. I'll probably have some time to try it out later tonight. I have an extra USB Headset if someone needs to borrow one.

I imagine all we'll hear, though, is all of us swearing at FAKA! as he shoots us in the faces.

kamapuaa said...

Shit, now that I think about it, I've only got a headset for the 360. I'll work on that.

Litcube said...

Faka, is this game for Mac only?

FAKA! said...

Nope Lit... its cross platform PC/Mac... if you buy it from Steam you own it on either platform, pending which OS you log into Steam with which is pretty cool.

BTW Pony and Kamapuaa I went ahead and bought/installed it as well, the sad part is I won't be home til after 9pm =/

By the way if you haven't already grabbed TeamSpeak go to http://www.teamspeak.com/ and download your client (PC/MAC/LINUX). Just finished setting up a TeamSpeak3 server which is quite a bit different than the old TeamSpeak2 I use to run back in the day. After you install it go ahead and connect to: mutherfucker.net with the default port of 9987. I'm leaving it open/ no password for now... let me know if you have any problems getting in.

And Kamapuaa I'd highly recommend a USB headset as well ;)

Fugu said...

I downloaded it. Looking forward to my face being melted off. Also, I'd totally like to borrow your extra mic, Pony.

FAKA! said...

I haven't played the game yet but its suppose to be Co-op guys... so we (up to 6 fakas) melt the zombie's faces off. Unless one of us *cough cough* gets too drunk and starts shooting teammates ;)

Litcube said...

When are you dudes playing? I would like to play. How many can play? Can I play too? Even though I'm not real life frems with anyone?

Mr. Pony said...

Dude, this IS real life and we ARE friends so join us on Steam!

This message brought to you by Steam™

Fugu said...

Bioshock is a long game! And strangely organized. I'm seriously free every night for the rest of this week. I've said this repeatedly, but I still find myself drinking alone. You all suck. On the plus side, I've gone through two journals and started crafting.

FAKA! said...

Hey Fugu can you craft this for me?
I can get you the mats...

Fugu said...

Wait, is that a joke? Is that supposed to be some kind of fucking joke?!? I QUIT that stuff, man! Cold turkey and I'm never going back! WTF are you trying to do to me?!?

Plus, I'm sure I'm on a different server. Let me install everything again and I'll check.

Galspanic said...

OMGZMZ. Veiled Ametrine...OMGZMZ.

Fugu said...

wtf. Half-life 2 for mac now out for $7. That's completely insane.

Fugu said...

So this is what it's like to have games available for your computer. It's terrifying. I don't know how you PC guys get anything done.