Team Fortress 2 Forum

TF2 works great, but you need to set
-novid -dxlevel 80
On the launch properties for the game.

There is also an issue on the Mac, GUI fonts are not currently displayed properly. This is something we are working on for 6.2. This bug does not effect Linux.

I'm using these settings with good results on a Mac Pro: -gl -windowed -console

And yes, the missing fonts are somewhat annoying, but they don't interfere with gameplay (assuming you can type console commands blind, or don't mind randomly clicking on a server to join.)

Is there any way to get the fonts into place before 6.2 is released?

We are working on it. It is currently a blocker bug for 6.2 release.

I am not familiar with the -gl option. What does it do?

-gl uses Open GL for rendering. On my Mac Pro I've found it provides better visuals and better performance than using the -dx option.

Also, regarding fonts, if you open TF2, then HIDE/MINIMIZE the entire window or the entire application, when you bring it back the fonts are readable. This allows you to configure settings, find servers, etc. Once the game begins, however, the fonts are gone again. Its weird.

Similar results, found that -gl indeed seems to yield better in-game performance than using directx, but both are very playable on a Macbook Pro.

The loading screens and GUI fonts are a total mess though, sometimes the whole screen doesn't update for 30 seconds and running in fullscreen mode and triggering Exposé totally messes the GUI up.

You can also "restore" the GUI fonts by changing your video resolution in the in-game options , but they still break when joining a game.

Also, changing video options (redrawing the TF2 window) causes massive audio stutter.

Once more, as you get into a game, gameplay is actually pretty decent!

My commandline options at the moment are: -windowed -novideo -w 1024 -h 640 -gl

Now that I got into "playing" it a bit I noticed that the fonts are also messed up in-game. This is more of a problem than the menu GUI fonts.

We are well aware of the font bugs. We have a fix coming in 6.2 that will fix the font issues on the Mac. Linux users do not seem to have this issue.

DarienK wrote:

-gl uses Open GL for rendering. On my Mac Pro I've found it provides
better visuals and better performance than using the -dx option.

I was unaware that there even was a gl render in the Source engine. I've always assumed it was DirectX only.

Good results when using -gl -windowed -console on macbook pro. I can get into a server and choose a team/ observe but I cant seem to choose a class and actually play. I haven't played TF before so is there something I have to press or do to actually start playing?

You just click on one of the classes along the top of the screen.

Try hitting , or . to bring up the class selection screen. I swear I sat there for five minutes figuring it out, so don't feel too bad. :P

Does this mean Half-Life 2 can also now be run at -dxlevel 80? I've been running the main game and all its spin-offs at -dxlevel 70, and I think from the info I've found in the Compatibility Centre that 70 was the highest level supported in Crossover, so with 6.2, is 80 now the highest level supported?

dxlevel 80 and 81 are supported as well, but it depends on the features of your graphics card. Anything from a geforce 5000 and radeon 9500 upwards should do dxlevel 81. Unfortunately dxlevel 80 and 81 do not work on geforce 4 and radeon 8500-9200 cards, although the hardware is capable of this. This is a problem with the GL_ARB_fragment_shader specification. It is the simplest form of pixel shaders in opengl, and it is SM 2.0 level, and not available on SM 1.x cards.

dxlevel 70 used to be a usual workaround for problems in Crossover 6.0, but in 6.1 and 6.2 80/81 should work much better.

By the way, that "-gl" makes the Source engine use OpenGL is an untrue myth. Run any Source based game with +d3d9 and +opengl logging channels enabled("run command", run steam that way, and then the game from steam), and it will show only d3d9 calls, appart of some Wine-specific initialization.

I think the "-gl" switch indeed exists in the engine. It could be a leftover from old Half Life 1, or from a never publically released port to OpenGL(e.g. for the Playstation 2 and 3). Wether it does anything has to be tested, for example with a timedemo, and by comparing screenshots. I'll do some tests when I have time.

tf2 runs like a dream now (aside from some small audio issues in the main menu) with v6.2 of crossover. just another reason why crossover rules.

I don't know why but I am not having as much luck as you guys! I am running a brand new iMac 2.4 GHz w/ 1GB Ram, and it is lagy and really doesn't even come close to its performance in bootcamp. I tried setting the -gl flag as well as a few of the others suggested in this thread but still no success.

Any ideas why? I'd love to get this working, as booting into Windows just to play TF2 is a pain.

If any additional info is needed just let me know.

Thanks!
Jordan

PS - I'm also having the chat text issue outlined in the other thread.

Try setting the shaders to low. Also, make sure you don't have things running in the background. TF2 uses quite a bit of memory, running low on memory causes virtual memory swapping.

There are also a few issues with performance on Tiger. Leopard will fix some of these issues. I've noticed better stability on Leopard as well.

The chat text issue will not be fixed until 7.0 unfortunately. We had to make some special workarounds in 6.2 just to get the text in the state it is in now.

Ok cool, thanks for the quick reply. I'm off to class, but when I get back I'll give your suggestions a try.

Bummer about the chat text.

Thanks again,
Jordan

Yeah so I've got everything turned down and it is still, in my opinion, not playable. Maybe it is a memory thing, I do only have 1GB of memory, but I'm sad to report I can't play TF2. Perhaps once Leopard and the new version of Crossover come out I'll have better luck. I just got so excited that I could play TF2 in OS X that now I'm just a little disappointed.

Keep up the work, hopefully you'll have something soon.

Thanks!
Jordan

Strange, I can get 15fps on my MacBook with the crappy Intel chip, and we get 30+ fps on our iMac with an ATI chip. Not sure what is causing your slowdown.

I'm not sure either. I've got the Radeon HD 2600 vid card w/256 on board memory, but I can't get anything higher than 17 fps while playing. Most times I am at or below 15, which makes for less than desirable game-play.

I do appreciate all your help though. I think what you guys are doing is great, I just wish you didn't have to. Great games like TF2 and HL2 should just run natively. On well.

Thanks again,
Jordan

I keep getting this error when launching it. Tried rebooting, restarting Crossover, messing with DirectX options for Crossover, both -gl and -dxlevel 80 and all the other launch options listed here, nothing. Same error each time.

I don't know if steam updated something and broke the emulation or what, but it will not launch.

edit: Oh yes, for hardware I'm on a Mid-07 MacBook. 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo, 1gb RAM, piece of crap integrated Intel graphics.

If you run TF2 in windowed mode at a lower resolution, do you get better performance?

When TF2 is windowed, you can open Activity Monitor. Is your CPU usage pegged at near 100%? If so, I assume that it's due to wineloader and wineserver processes. If that's not right, then what process is it?

What about the "Page ins/outs" value on the System Memory tab? Are those values increasing rapidly (hundreds per second or more)? How is Disk Activity?

Bingo, is this with a bottle that you created with CrossOver 6.2, or with an earlier version? Earlier versions of CrossOver had a bug which could result in incompletely-configured bottles. That's my best guess as to what might be causing this problem.

You can create a new win2000-type bottle, install Steam into that, log into Steam once, exit Steam, copy the .gcf files from your existing Steam bottle into the new one, and then try starting Team Fortress 2 with the new bottle. Copying the .gcf files avoids the need to re-download them. They are located in ~/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/<bottle name>/drive_c/Program Files/Steam/steamapps.

I notice from your screenshot that you're using CrossOver without quartz-wm. I can't think of any reason why that would affect the ability to run TF2, but I suppose there's a remote possibility. You might try digging up your install discs and letting CrossOver pull quartz-wm from them.

-gl forces it into dx 81 mode. mat_dx etc. :)

Is there an update on the correct launch properties for TF2? This thread seems to include some differing opinions. I'm running CrossOver 6.2 on a MacBook Pro.

Thanks!

You just have to try and see what works for you. I'm using:
-novid -dxlevel 81

If 81 doesn't work you can try 80.

escapedturkey wrote:

-gl forces it into dx 81 mode. mat_dx etc. :)

I tried -gl instead of -dxlevel 81 but that didn't work for me. Either I misunderstood him or -gl doesn't equal -dxlevel 81.

You don't need to keep "-dxlevel 81" in your options. You should use it once and then remove it. TF2 will remember the last -dxlevel used. If you leave it there, it causes TF2 to forget whatever video settings you might have saved on your previous run. (It's a safety feature of sorts, to force the game back to known "safe" settings.)

I have an ATI X1600 graphics card running on an intel imac. TF2 is having issues launching would i just have to set it to (novid-dxlevel 80)? also how do i set it to that? i am a little lost . thank you for your help.

You set launch options for a game in the properties dialog. You access a game's properties from the Steam games list.

The launch options for TF2 should be "-novid -window" by default. "-novid" causes it to skip the Valve logo video on startup. CrossOver has problems playing that video. "-window" tells TF2 to start in a window. There's a weird bug that we haven't identified such that if TF2 plays in full-screen mode, but at a resolution different from your normal desktop resolution, then the game screen is displayed off-center, making it hard to use. To avoid that, we have it start in windowed mode. Once in windowed mode, you can configure TF2 to use full-screen at your normal desktop resolution, exit TF2, remove "-window" from the launch options, and relaunch TF2. Then, it will start up in full-screen without the weird off-center bug.

You should not need to specify "-dxlevel 80" or anything like that. TF2 should automatically detect DirectX level 8.1, which is appropriate.

We have had good results with an iMac like yours, with ATI X1600 graphics.

What problems are you having launching TF2?