Personal MacBook Pro experience so far

Discussion in 'Mac and Linux' started by garat, June 20, 2013.

  1. garat

    garat Cat Herder Uber Alumni

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    Hey all - So, we've made some improvements to the Mac build, and build over all, the past few days. Good news is that I was able to get into a game twice in a row (planet loaded, building bases, etc). CPU utilization was about what I'd expect, though perhaps a bit high still.. 225% utilization, or two and a quarter of my four cores in my i7.

    This is a huge improvement. However, the bad news is we're clearly doing some BAD process things on OS/X. I have no clue what. One, I'm not technical enough, but I was getting huge hitches, and inability to keep up. However, I think I have enough info that we should be able to make big leaps forward on this in the coming days.

    If you have a late model Mac Mini, Mac Pro or iMac, you should try and hop in again. If you're on a MacBook 2011 or newer, give it a shot, but be prepared to terminate the process.

    From a gameplay perspective, most of things you expect to be able to do in Windows, you can do in Mac now.. Gameplay feels pretty good, when it works. But we need to track down what's going on here.

    Edit:
    Late 2011 15" Mac Book Pro, 10.8.x (latest), 2.5 Core i7, 16GB memory, SSD main (Where steam was running)

    Your mileage may vary. :)
  2. bwesterb

    bwesterb New Member

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    On my Retina MacBook Pro I only get a freeze when zooming out from the planet into galactic view. The rest seems to be improved a lot since the build a few days ago, thanks!
  3. byte01

    byte01 Member

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    Not on MBP, but iMac.
    This build:
    1. Start: started i landed on the mon, without textures, was like instant start.
    2. Start: again moon, but this time fully textured, looked nice, start was a bit slower but still quite fast
    3. Start: system freeze. at this point i would asume it has to do with the size of the planet and the objects on the planet. Some of the smaller planets take extremely long, but still work, whereas sometimes its just not starting.

    Byte
  4. dgoreck

    dgoreck New Member

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    Early 2011 MBP, 2.2Ghz i7 with 16GB and SSD.

    Game loads fine for ~5-10minutes and is playable. Then my mbp totally locks up, and I have to power off/on. CPU usage seems to be close to maxing out the 4 cores, and then some usage on the 4 HT cores.

    I'm using the Steam client. I tired maybe 3 times last night.
    Last edited: June 21, 2013
  5. aeonsim

    aeonsim Active Member

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    Late 2011 MacPro 2.4Ghz, 8GB, SSD, ATI 6770M 1024MB.

    The games certainly gotten abit more stable now & most of the controls work. Though I still have to switch to discrete first. I've managed to build a base for up to ~10minutes before I get the hard lock, where the OSX GUI dies, though the game music keeps playing happily. Forced power off to kill.

    I see alot of the other OS bugs reported as well such as the odd proto planet or blank moon.

    Interesting when the proto planet happened the game loaded in ~30seconds rather than the usual 5minutes.
  6. shadowmint

    shadowmint New Member

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    Just idly, the game is totally unplayable on a 2012 mac mini.

    I suppose I'm not really surprised, but even the most recent build actually kills the machine; it locks up with max CPU utilization, and if you leave it for 10-20 minutes, you eventually a get a planet loaded, but after 1 maybe 2 minutes of play the whole machine locks up, white screen, requires hard reboot.

    Seems moderately playable on a 2012 imac though. :)

    (Edit; that's a mac mini 2.7 GHz, i7 with 8 GB of ram with AMD Radeon HD 6630M 256 MB running OS X 10.8.4 (12E55))
  7. Kahdir

    Kahdir New Member

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    So far my 15" Retina (2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3; OS X 10.8.4) has locked up twice on 49900 build (too many thing running in the background) and worked well once vs 3 Ai.

    Working on magic mouse sensitivity in the game on my next few games.


    Any alternative keys for the Home/End/Page Up/Down for laptop guys?
  8. renrutal

    renrutal Member

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    MacBookPro8,2 8GB 1333 MHZ RAM, non-SSD, OS X 10.7.5

    PA build 49900 Steam version. All graphics at default/medium. Playing vs AI, at the starting screen resolution.

    Playing on a medium-sized Icy planet, after 2.2 Tris, the game hangs the entire computer for 30+ seconds if you try to look around, zoom out, or when building new units you haven't built yet. It doesn't hang as much in smaller planets.

    The game isn't even using all the available RAM.

    BTW, the game uses 100% of one core @ main/lobby screen.
  9. garat

    garat Cat Herder Uber Alumni

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    Pinbender will need to provide the details, but he's currently in the process of refactoring how we do an entire portion of the render pipeline to account for how Mac OS/X handles certain things. Specifically in the virtual texturing system, I believe he said.
  10. laseek

    laseek New Member

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    Cool - if @Pinbender needs any info or has a test harness he wants us to run to verify/test approaches - before integrating - there's plenty of us willing to help.
  11. themine12

    themine12 New Member

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    MacBook Pro 15'' late 2011 model with 8GB RAM and SSD

    Game loads (steam) to the main menu just fine, but when trying to start a game, the machine locks up and needs a hard reboot. With discrete graphics only, I can get into a game by waiting ~5mins, but has on and off lag (much under 1FPS when lagging), and eventually requires a force quit or a hard reboot.
  12. bwesterb

    bwesterb New Member

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    In 50256, the game is pretty slow: 5fps.

    The statistics (pressing P) says that allmost all time is spent in 'Other'.

    Anyone else hit this?
  13. madday92

    madday92 New Member

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    For playing on my MacBook I've been using steam as an updater then going into the library files to launch the game outside of steam to get better performance. While at the same time not having to re-download each time.

    I've been getting 10-16 fps at the beginning of games and 2-10 fps later in the game.

    MacBookPro6,2
    2.4GHz intel Core i5
    8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
    NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M

    OS X 10.8.4
  14. laustinspayce

    laustinspayce New Member

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    Upgraded my beta key to an alpha key, and, well, heh...

    When creating a single player custom game, when my commander appeared there were a bunch of airplanes shooting him - about 2 fps at this state. It seems the game engine loads long before the graphics engine. Takes about 5-10 mins-ish to get from clicking "ready" to seeing my commander.

    In a multiplayer game it was already halfway through by the time I saw the planet! (Took about 10+ mins I think).

    Was getting about 1 frame every 3-5 seconds in the multiplayer. Fortunately it was a team game and my teammates won it! (I think).

    All graphics settings on lowest in game AFAIK.

    15-inch macbook pro, mid 2009.
    Processor: 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
    Memory: 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
    Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 256 MB
    Software: OS X 10.8.4 (12E55)

    I know it's a little long in the tooth. But it's still very capable for audio mixing in Pro Tools 10/11. I've also ran Starcraft 2 acceptably on this machine (all lowest settings though). TF2/Portal/Borderlands all run fine with some tweaking to the settings.

    Any reports/stuff that the uber guys need to help out I'm happy to provide.
  15. xthefrennchmanx

    xthefrennchmanx Member

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    I can't seem to find the newest patch for mac. Is here a launcher now?
    thanks for the help
  16. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

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    Launcher for Mac not yet available, you need to use this link to download new versions:
    https://uberent.com/launcher/padownloads
  17. xthefrennchmanx

    xthefrennchmanx Member

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  18. aeonsim

    aeonsim Active Member

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    Or convert your key to steam if you don't mind steam & want autopatching.

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