PLaying PC Games on the Mac

[CowardlyPaladin]

I am a long time PC gamer, but I"m currently in Europe and long story short, I had to borrow a mac for a semester, however not gaming is driving me entirely insane. So I'm wondering, if there is anyways I can play my Icewind dale games on my mac (I have the physical copies, which I accidentally packed)? I don't want to do anything shady or illegal, as again, I have the physical disks, any advice? I have highly limited funds os something that doesn't cost anything would be great

Thanks

[Brother Oni]

Have you thought about using WINE (http://www.winehq.org/)?

[factotum]

Alternatively, there are things like Parallels Desktop which is designed to allow you to run Windows on your Mac--no idea what the associated costs are, though. Given the age of the game we're talking about, though, couldn't you just invest in a cheap old laptop from eBay?

[CowardlyPaladin]

Alternatively, there are things like Parallels Desktop which is designed to allow you to run Windows on your Mac--no idea what the associated costs are, though. Given the age of the game we're talking about, though, couldn't you just invest in a cheap old laptop from eBay?

200$ is beyond my prize range sadly :(

Bear in mind here, I am technophobic to a truely hilarious degree, I took me three years to learn to cope with a laptop basically, so assume i'm an utter moron when it comes to anything with technology


Does Wine cost me anything?

[Brother Oni]

Does Wine cost me anything?

It's free software and this information is clearly marked on the website.
If you want to know the details of it, then may I suggest reading up on the license (http://www.winehq.org/license)?

If you want to play your games but are unable to pay for help, then you're going to have to get your hands dirty and start reading up on how to use WINE. There are numerous websites and boards that can help you if you get stuck, but you have to be willing to take the plunge in the first place.

[Whoracle]

Icewind Dale for MAC (presumably native) - 30€ on Amazon (http://www.amazon.de/MacPlay-Icewind-Dale/dp/B000067NZL)

Apart from that, I second WINE. Or, if you don't want to dive into that, you could always shill out 50€ for CrossOver Games for Mac (http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxgames/).

[Lord Seth]

WINE is free, but there are two problems with it. First, it's a bit "cobbled together" so don't expect too much from it--it can run stuff like I Wanna Be The Guy or Eversion pretty well, but more advanced programs it struggles with, if it can run them at all. Second, it's not very user friendly.

As someone mentioned, CrossOver is another option--in fact, CrossOver is based on WINE, but it's far more user friendly and I believe it's a little better at running programs. On the downside, it costs money, though it's relatively cheap.

Of course, there is always the option of just installing Windows onto the Mac, as modern Macs are perfectly capable of having Windows installed onto them. Or just trying to find out if the games you want to play have a Mac version...

Alternatively, there are things like Parallels Desktop which is designed to allow you to run Windows on your Mac--no idea what the associated costs are, though. Given the age of the game we're talking about, though, couldn't you just invest in a cheap old laptop from eBay?
If my understanding is correct, that's not quite what Parallels does. What Parallels does is it allows you, if you have Windows on your Mac, to be able to run both simultaneously, giving you significantly greater synergy between the two (e.g. you can have a Mac program and a Windows program open simultaneously). Without Parallels, I believe you have to just boot up with one or the other, meaning if you want to go to Mac OS from Windows you have to restart the computer, and vice versa.

So you can use Parallels to run Windows programs on a Mac more easily, but you have to have Windows installed on the Mac to begin with for it to work.

[Ailurus]

Of course, there is always the option of just installing Windows onto the Mac, as modern Macs are perfectly capable of having Windows installed onto them. Or just trying to find out if the games you want to play have a Mac version...


On this note, you could use something like Boot Camp (http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/) to run both windows and mac software, if you've got a copy of Windows.

However, there are other solutions. If you have a steam library, a bunch of games there can be played on Windows and Mac without having to buy a second copy. Granted, its much less than the full Steam catalog (list of mac steam games here (http://store.steampowered.com/browse/mac/)) but there's still a lot of good ones there - I honestly wasn't aware XCom and Bioshock Infinite had mac versions.

Second, if you've got a GoG library, there's plenty of directions floating around on the GoG forums for what games work on macs, and how to make them work. And, being older games, many of them play very nicely with WINE and related software.

Plus, there's a bunch of open source games out there that are both free and (quite often) have Mac versions. One possible list here. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_video_games)

[GloatingSwine]

Just install Windows via bootcamp.


Both my Macbook Pros (old one and new retina one) are dual booting Mountain Lion and Windows 8.

[Ogremindes]

Just install Windows via bootcamp.


Both my Macbook Pros (old one and new retina one) are dual booting Mountain Lion and Windows 8.

I found boot camp to be very finicky when I set it up on a couple of iMacs recently. I had problems getting the win8 installer to recognize the partition's formatting and with graphic card drivers not installing. With the former you have to do everything exactly as boot camp expects, I'm not sure what was with the latter, but do not install non-boot camp drivers. Unless you like system crashes. Find the boot camp driver on the boot camp disk.

Once it's set up, though, it works perfectly. Well, as perfectly as Windows on any other device.

[OracleofWuffing]

If my understanding is correct, that's not quite what Parallels does. What Parallels does is it allows you, if you have Windows on your Mac, to be able to run both simultaneously, giving you significantly greater synergy between the two (e.g. you can have a Mac program and a Windows program open simultaneously).
For what it's worth, no, Parallels can make a virtual machine for Windows even if you don't have a Boot Camp partition (but, yeah, if you do have one, Parallels can launch that partition as a virtual machine). However, one does need a valid Windows install disk and license no matter which way you use Parallels.

That said, though...

200$ is beyond my prize range sadly
Parallels should set you back $80 (http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/). VMWare Fusion, typically considered an inferior product but usually the inferiority just comes in supporting 3D games, goes at $60 (http://store.vmware.com/DRHM/store?Action=DisplayProductDetailsPage&SiteID=vmware&Locale=en_US&ThemeID=2485600&productID=285051300&src=WWW_eBIZ_productpage_Fusion_Buy_US). I think the free trial of VMWare Fusion is 30 days, so if you don't mind just being able to play it for a month, you could work off of that. Though, as above, you still also need a license and install for Windows.

Outside of those options, there's maybe DOSBox (which is free) but I can't confirm if that game works for that.

[GloatingSwine]

I found boot camp to be very finicky when I set it up on a couple of iMacs recently. I had problems getting the win8 installer to recognize the partition's formatting and with graphic card drivers not installing. With the former you have to do everything exactly as boot camp expects, I'm not sure what was with the latter, but do not install non-boot camp drivers. Unless you like system crashes. Find the boot camp driver on the boot camp disk.

Once it's set up, though, it works perfectly. Well, as perfectly as Windows on any other device.

I've been using manufacturer's reference drivers for years, never had any problem. If you let bootcamp assistant make the partition for you there's no problem with that either.

Hell, my old MBP was so rock solid not even Vista could bluescreen it.

Vista!

[factotum]

Outside of those options, there's maybe DOSBox (which is free) but I can't confirm if that game works for that.

Icewind Dale is a Windows game, so no, DOSBox won't help.

[CowardlyPaladin]

Wait you can install windows on mac?

[The Rose Dragon]

Wait you can install windows on mac?

Intel based ones, yes. Not the older, PowerPC based ones, but it is unlikely you have one of those.

[GloatingSwine]

PS: The way to not give yourself away as a time traveller is remembering not to show incredulity at old things as if they were brand new and surprising.

It's been possible to install Windows on Apple hardware since 2006 when they switched to Intel chips, and there's specific support in the OS to set up partitions in a way that the Windows installer's tiny little brain can cope with (since Windows didn't switch to UEFI until Windows 8, but macs have been using it since they went to intel).