Team Fortress 2 Forum

I have to say most of you haven't played the game on pc.

There are still many bugs.

One, ingame steam does NOT WORK.

Two, changing from fullscreen to window mode requires restart of Team Fortress 2 for correct display.

I suggest it stays at silver for now.

In-game Steam is a Steam problem rather than a TF2 one, IMO.

And I've not had any issues at all with graphics, changing modes and options at will, not even a crash.

For me, every single option works as intended.

Yup, I got both of those problems here. And I agree that it's a Steam problem and not a TF2 problem. I think there was someone talking about how the way team works it wouldn't be easy to do. :(

And the in game chat is as annoying as Steam chat. Random caps lock, random periods of the space button not typing, and randomly typing symbols instead of numbers is not fun. D:

Well, I personally don't switch between the two windowed options often, though I do get that problem. But can't you edit that in the launch properties before you launch the game? Sure, it's a little annoying, but it beats loading the game and having to restart it again.

Also, my graphics display well, with no problems, but my sprays are screwed up. Also, loading time is slow (I haven't played this on Windows so I can't compare, and to tell you the truth my internet is kinda lame sometimes). And I don't know if this is supposed to happen, but popping up something like the achievements window in the pause menu almost always makes the game freeze for a few seconds, repeat the last second of audio that was played constantly, and then open the window as expected. Besides, this IS a very important game to CrossOver, they're trying their best, and more of this stuff will probably get fixed.

I haven't got the random caps since CXG 7.0

I'm not having a ton of luck either. I'm finding it very crash-happy on my 2009 Mac Pro + GTX 285 on Snow Leopard. When it does work the water reflections in 2Fort are black.

The most likely reason for it to crash is that it's running out of memory. Although we've made some improvements in this area, a program running under CrossOver has less free memory available to it than when it's running under Windows. Your best bet it to turn down the Texture Detail setting in TF2's advanced video settings.

We don't have a GTX 285 to test with. You can try experimenting with the game's graphics settings to see if something clears that up. Also, you can try run it with GLSL and without. In regedit, under the key [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\AppDefaults\hl2.exe\Direct3D], create a string value named "useGLSL". Try the values "enabled" and "disabled", relaunching TF2 when you make the change.

Quick question, the cpu and ram usage of TF2 and other CrossOver tasks would show up as wine something in Activity Monitor, right?

Yes. On the Mac, the processes are named "wineloader". There's also one process called "wineserver" for each bottle in which something is currently running.

Ok, thanks.

The wineloader processes take up much more memory then I exspect. Even when not in game.

how much does it take for you Noah?

Well sometimes it takes up all my ram with no other applcations open.

I have 2 GB of ram.

Where do you see this? Unfortunately memory management is a pretty complex topic, so without details how you read the used/free memory its hard to comment on this.

With highest settings, TF2 uses about 1.2 gigs of RAM. On Windows its around 900-1000 MB, so CrossOver is a bit less less efficient. This also depends on the map - my usual test map is ctf_2fort. If you add in another few 100 MBs for OSX, you can get your 2 gigs of ram filled up pretty quickly. Steam also needs 50-150 MB, depending on the situation.

There's no problem with using all ram per se. Problems arise when the system slows down due to excessive swapping.

I have no idea what the problem was, But I fresh installed my OS; I got the same problem but I only got it once. It's best not to think about it. Only happened once on my new OS install, and no one else is encountering it. As I am not anymore.

I decided it was gold only after running it on Windows.

I also have those problems you mentioned, but #1 is a Steam problem and #2 is even worse in Windows. In my Windows install, it won't even load in full screen, so I have to manually change the start-up arguments. In Linux, it loads in full screen well enough to change the options to windowed. Performance problems are about the same in both operating systems and reflect driver issues and throttling due to overheating (I'm on a laptop).

The fullscreen problem isn't on windows. I have a windows and fullscreen to window works perfectly without having to restart.

Don't forget gold is for applications that run as well as they would on windows xp. So that means if the windows with the same specs as the macs are having the same problems, then it is gold. But I have used a computer with the same specs as mine (windows), yet my mac in crossover games still has major issues. Much slower, bugs here and there. No multi processor rendering without crashes. So I say we keep it at silver until we all have this straightened out.

But I don't see those problems. I can flick from Fullscreen to Windowed at will, I have multicore rendering enabled, indeed I have every single option in the graphics turned on and it's at a playable level on every map I've tested with it.

I have Linux x86_64 on one hard drive and Windows XPx64 on the other, and apart from perhaps a very slightly lower framerate they are performing exactly the same each other.

The facial animations work, the guns are shiny, dust kicks up if I fire at a wall; I've got it cranked to the max and I've not seen a problem yet.

Now, that could well be because I'm on Linux and you're on a Mac, but if you've got a crash or a problem that can be reproduced I'll be happy to try it out and see if I can replicate it.

My specs are :

AMD x2 @ 2.8Ghz per core
2GB RAM
8800GT with 512MB RAM
Audigy 4

Running the game fullscreen at 1440x900 on Windows XP 64 Bit Edition and Linux Mint 7 64 Bit.

I just realized a good amount of these problems are caused by geforce m graphics cards. Normal geforce graphics cards seem to be fine. Just goes to show you that nothings perfect -_-'

I assume 'm' is a mobile chipset? It's quite likely, then, that it's sharing RAM with the main system, which would link in with Stefan's theory that it's crashing because of RAM.

2GB - 0.5GB for graphics card = 1.5GB

Take away OSX and Steam, and you're not looking at much for TF2 to play with.

Never having used a Mac, is there some way you can change how much RAM the graphics chipset can use?

@ Noah
Ugh, I have a GeForce 8600M GT :|

@ Carl
Uhh, how about virtual memory? That would be too slow, right?

Actually I have one of the graphics cards we are talking about and has 256 MB of video ram. Any chance it could be a driver issue or does crossover games already use the drivers?

I think I am talking dumb now.

Does it have 256MB of it's own, dedicated RAM? Or it just just sharing the common pool?

AS I just mentioned the Geforce 8600M GT has 256 VRAM. So I don't think the issues are video ram. It's more likely a compatibility issue. Or possibly crossover mac.

Yes, it does have it's own ram. Not sharing.

If you'd used up all your RAM to the point where it was using a swapfile, it would be almost intolerably slow, I'd imagine. You'd see constant hard drive usage and hiccups in your game. Bearing in mind I only really know about such systems in the Windows world, I don't know how it relates to the Mac - I've not had to deal with virtual memory since the Win9x days, every other OS has just taken care of it.

I feel my issues will only get worst when I upgrade to 10.6 . But by then I might be using boot camp. But of course I will still test crossover stuff as well. So I could compare.

Hmmm, I kinda feel like an idiot when it come to understanding the different types of RAM, but I could pop open Activity Monitor (Mac program to monitor any processes) and record it's results while I play. If you wouldn't mind looking at the, that could help us figure out what exactly is the problem.

Dingus wrote:

I feel my issues will only get worst when I upgrade to 10.6 . But by
then I might be using boot camp. But of course I will still test
crossover stuff as well. So I could compare.

To be fair, I wouldn't expect a game like TF2 to cope that well with only 256MB of Video RAM. Have you tried knocking it down to DirectX8, were cards of that level were common?

Nick McCurdy wrote:

Hmmm, I kinda feel like an idiot when it come to understanding the
different types of RAM, but I could pop open Activity Monitor (Mac
program to monitor any processes) and record it's results while I
play. If you wouldn't mind looking at the, that could help us figure
out what exactly is the problem.

Well, it can't hurt! 😀

Team Fortress 2 requires no more then 128 VRAM to play fairly well. Left 4 Dead isn't much more either. So it must be CXG...

Ok then. :)
Uhhh would a log file be too much?
And in case it affects it, which it probably would, my internet isn't that good.

Macbook Pro running 10.5.8 Leopard, Intel Core Duo, CrossOver Games 8

Honestly, I have no idea of the logging or monitoring capabilities you have available. As much information as you can get, really, I guess...

Noah, have you used Activity Monitor before?

Team Fortress 2 runs pretty ok at highest texture settings with 128 mb video RAM, even though cards with 128 MB VRAM usually don't have the processing power to run it fluently at high resolutions. I get around 30 fps on my first gen iMac, radeon X1600 GPU at 640x480. Increase the resolution and it gets pretty slow. dxlevel 81 helps a lot on cards like these.

Regarding fullscreen-window switches, this is a known problem on OSX. Linux should work fine. The problem is that on OSX you can't switch on the title bar on an existing window on and off, while on Windows and Linux you can. If the game switches to fullscreen and wants the title bar gone, it would have to recreate the window without the title bar. TF2 obviously doesn't do that. This is a limitation in quartz_wm, a binary blob from Apple, or even further down in OSX, so we can't fix it. We were thinking about trying to recreate the window ourselves as a workaround, but didn't have time to implement this so far.

Hmmm, ok, thanks for the info. :)

Mac graphics cards are upgradable, right?

Hmm, is there such a thing as a native Mac app that CAN switch to or from windowed mode without crashing or restarting? If so, there might be a workaround. :|

Sure, there's a workaround: Destroy the window and recreate it.

Unfortunately, to do this properly Team Fortress 2 would have to do it. Since it doesn't care about OSX limitations it doesn't. We are thinking about recreating the mac window that represents the windows window behind the back of the game, but this is tricky because this sends a lot of signals the app doesn't expect and we have to catch and handle ourselves. So far we've decided that there are more important bugs to fix :-/

Hmmm, ok. Now I know this is a really weird idea, but what if we managed to get Valve to cooperate? There could be a variable change passed to it if it's not running under Windows (under Wine, and this would work with Wine, not just CrossOver), and then if the game (this goes for other games, too) detects the variable is set to true or something, it'll use a different method of switching. The problem is we'd have to convince Valve it's a good idea. Then again, Wine probably does raise their profits.

Like any of us could contact valvE. I have been trying for the past 3 months to get a reply about why the xbox version's updates of tf2 are being delayed. I haven't gotten a singe reply once. When I sent the email they also had a auto reply saying it could take 6 - 10 months before we get to your email. As we receive 1000's of emails a day.

Ouch. D:<
Ok then...

Would there be a way to, instead of having CxG change the windowed mode using however Windows does it, have CxG detect the change and change it the OS X way instead? Like can you make a workaround like that?

I have been trying to pass -dxlevel81, as suggested in this thread and others, but with CXG 8.0, it doesn't stick, and launches as DX9 everytime. Anyone else having these problems?

I added that to my launch options in CxG 8.0, and it says my hardware is running DX 8.1 and my software is running DX 9.0. It also made my game full screen (default) and set the resolution off (default), even though I have it always launch windowed at a smaller and wider screen res normally.

So am I running 8 or 9? I'm a little confused.

8. The dxlevel command also sets the resolution by default - once you've passed dxlevel you can (and should) remove it from the command line and it should 'stick'. You should also notice the graphics lose some of the shinies.

Oh, ok. And why is that better, performance?

Effectively, yes. In basic terms, DirectX9 introduced lots of shader effects and the like, which can stress your card. The dxlevel command is overriding the normal probing and telling TF2 you have a DirectX8 level card, which makes the engine only use DirectX8 level features. That basically means it'll drop the complex shaders as DirectX8 cards can't do those. As your card then doesn't have to concern itself drawing all the 'advanced' features, it can concentrate on churning out fast framerates of slightly less complex frames.

In Windows, you'll only ever really need to do such a thing if you bought a really weak card, or one of the first generation of a card (it happened with DirectX10, as well, the first DirectX10 cards were a bit underpowered and didn't run DX10 games all that well, so people forced it back to DX9 to get some speed back).

Be thankful Valve have such a scalable engine - most modern games just tell you you're using DirectX9 and liking it! 😀

Lol, ok, thanks for the info. That makes sense. And I'm guessing this goes for any Valve game? Or at least Source games?

Now that I actually have a decent internet signal, I'll stick to 9 for a little bit and see if it's only my network that's lagging me. Though I might switch back to 8 later.

Every Source game I've played, yeah. Not sure if it works for Left4Dead, as I've never played that.

Awesome, ok. I'm guessing it should. Oh, and I'm guessing this works for third party Source games? Have you ever tried it on a non-Valve source game?

I've never tried it, no - the engine is capable of it, but if those third party developers didn't code in a DirectX8 path it won't work. It's down to each individual game.

Hmmm, ok, that makes sense. If I ever get one I'll test it out. Thanks.

EDIT:
Should we sticky this?

Brian wrote:

I have been trying to pass -dxlevel81, as suggested in this thread
and others, but with CXG 8.0, it doesn't stick, and launches as DX9
everytime. Anyone else having these problems?

There should be a space between "-dxlevel" and "81".