Dota 2 Forum

Hey everyone,

I have a 2012 Macbook Air HD4000 running 10.8.2. I've been able to successfully run Dota with minimal effort by adding the usual launcher options that I've seen in the forums such as -novid -nod3d9ex. However, the only real problem I'm experiencing in the game is a halo effect around certain objects like the balls of flame from towers, or anytime I hover the mouse over a spell and the screen shows the effective range I get a large blob effect on the ground instead of the layered art effect which I'm accustomed to seeing from my other Bootcamp install.

Other than that it's hard to tell the difference between the Crossover Steam version and Bootcamp!

Any Launcher options that will help with the halos or should I just live with it until the next Crossover update?

Hello. I used to have this halo saturation bug with Crossover 11.x.x for Linux, too. It was fixed with Crossover 12.0.0.

Best regards.

Thanks for the input! I'm hoping a future update to Crossover will address this. How often do they roll out updates? I've only had my copy since the Election giveaway and I think I've seen two so far?

Also, do you think that a different machine may have different results? I also have an imac which I was thinking of putting Steam/DOTA on since that machine doesn't have a windows partition and it has a discrete graphics card.

As far as I know, your Crossover 10.8.2 is VERY outdated. I am using 12.0.0 for Linux, but I just checked my downloads page and I can see 12.1.0. Also, in the codeweavers home page, they have a photo of version 12 for Mac.

Best Regards,

David Ellis wrote:

Also, do you think that a different machine may have different
results? I also have an imac which I was thinking of putting
Steam/DOTA on since that machine doesn't have a windows partition
and it has a discrete graphics card.

It MAY happen. But about this saturated halo bug, I tested in my oldie-cheapo Core2Duo notebook with GeForce 8200M and Crossover 12.0.0 fixed it. It also fixed my not-so-new Core i7 notebook with Geforce 285M. Both run Linux Kubuntu. The first, version 12.10, the second runs 12.04 LTS.

Best regards.

I should clarify - the 10.8.2 refers to OSX. I'm running Crossover's latest version which is 12.1.1.

Would the fact that DOTA/Steam is running in a winxp bottle have any effect?

I'm going to try installing it on my iMac this evening and see if the graphical glitches also exist for me there.

David Ellis wrote:

I should clarify - the 10.8.2 refers to OSX. I'm running Crossover's
latest version which is 12.1.1.

Would the fact that DOTA/Steam is running in a winxp bottle have any
effect?

I'm going to try installing it on my iMac this evening and see if
the graphical glitches also exist for me there.

Oh, sure, the OSX version! 😊

I run mine in a winxp bottle, too.

I guess the main problem is the Intel Graphics, more than the fact that you are running DotA in a Mac. Intel HD is reasonable, but not good enough. Crossover comes from the wine project that is mainly developed on Linux machines. Most Linux gamers use nVidia GeForce cards, because their hardware is as good as AMD and their drivers have a good history of maturity. Some are buying AMD because their Linux drivers are getting better. So there are not many serious Linux gamers using intel chipset, yet. This leads to more maturity in the development for AMD and, especially, nVidia. This may be changing, however.

Nevertheless, as you can see, wine / Crossover does work with Intel, too. But some glitches still need fix, as we can see. Let's hope the programers will find a fix soon. Please, vote for DotA 2 to become one of their priorities.

The problem with the Intel GPUs and drivers is their support , or rather lack of support, for OpenGL which is the bread and butter for wine. It needs a proper OpenGL implementation in order to translate the direct3d stuff into something that can be "painted" on your Linux or Apple machine's screen.

It's interesting because I tried installing DOTA today on my 2010 imac with an ATI Radeon HD 5750 and the menus are completely washed over with two large green and red boxes even though I'm using all the same launch options as on the Intel HD4000 card. So it's effectively unplayable on the iMac setup. Funny it worked pretty much "right out of the box" on the Intel powered Air.

Hopefully the next Mountain Lion update brings newer drivers with it that may help!

Intel hardware and drivers may not be on par of those from nVidia or even AMD / ATI, at least for Linux, BUT Intel drivers have a great positive side: they are Open Source! This leads to a much faster and solid development! This also means that Apple possibly copied lots of good code to their Intel drivers. That can't be done with ATI drivers that are being opened, but still mostly closed source... We can only hope that ATI (or nVidia) and Apple will do a good job, together... Possibly you could make some attempts playing with other startup options? Have you tried to run the game in a window? Good luck!

Hi - thanks for the good information! I have tried different launcher options as well as the windowed/fullscreen changes and all have resulted in the same messed up interface.

My hopes were momentarily spurred when I noticed the "Experimental Mac Driver" option for the bottle - but even that had no noticeable affect.

I will wait patiently for either Apple to update drivers in a future OSX update, or Valve releasing the Mac/Linux Steamplay client inevitably (but who knows how long that will take).