Parallels 3.0 and game compatibility...

What OS/specs are you running for your VM? I got Thief 1 to run great on a Windows 2000 Pro VM with only 128Mb RAM allocated.

 

Andrew,

Where is this checkbox? I've got the latest build and it's nowhere to be found.

 

Whooops! Found it! Never mind...

 

Cannot get a single game to wrok

I think the DirectX support in Parallels is only for certain specific apps right now. I've not been able to get a *single* one of my games working, and all for different reasons:

Chessmaster 10th Edition - Graphics are all screwed up and get drawn incorrectly

Neverwinter Nights - The menu screen is completely black so you can't see or select anything.

It's like this for everything I've tried, so I'm pretty much writing off DirectX support until a later release.

John

 

ffxi works now

ffxi now works in the latest July 17th build, needs lots of graphics memory though, I run it on my ATI x1600 128mb with graphics artifacts when I allocate 32 megs to parallels for D3D. but it does work sorta. I wouldn't run up the graphics settings at all but runs well other than that on 2gigs of system memory(absolutely necessary).

 

Parallels v3 is a joke as far as 3D gaming (or any gaming) is concerned. I'm on holiday and bought some games to have fun. No Mac games were available and I'm on a lousy cellphone dialup connection so I can't download anything either.

Rise of Nations: Installs and plays. Graphics are messed up (lots of white areas in place of buildings). The mouse pointer goes all over the place and after 10 minutes I realized it was impossible to play the game.

Civilization 3 Complete: Installs but refuses to launch because it is unable to verify that the original disc is inserted. Great.

Civ 4...no dice of course (same as other people have reported).

MacBook Pro 2Ghz, 2GB RAM. 1GB RAM for Parallels. DirectX enabled.

 

Guild Wars, I thought this was a hot game?

Parallels.com states:

So I assume Guild Wars is a hot game.. So I try to install it with a MBP C1D 15" 2GB RAM X1600XT 256MB.

Obviously GW must not be a "popular" game.. I mean ONLY 1+ million registered users.. what was I thinking?? I guess popularity must mean 1.3 million users or maybe more.. who knows...

Well this is what it did. See picture below...

GW started upsidedown and has 4 squares in the bottom left corner..? 2 black and 2 white. As far as I am concerned the Parallels team can play some 4 square on my machine.. now that would be an entertaining 3D game

 

Civ3 Complete works OK here. I seem to recall I had to turn *off* the DirectX checkbox, though.

 

Another game that doesn't work

Every time I try to start "Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind" under Parallels, it says "Unsupported desktop resolution. Change windows resolution to "True Color (32bit)"". Of course, I've already set it up for the correction resolution and for 32-bit. This happens whether windowed or full screen.

But finally I was able to find *one* game that worked -- kind of: Syberia. If, after running, you hit the Windows key to bring up the menu, then click on Syberia to select it again, the graphics will finally get drawn correctly and things work.

The DirectX support is just Not There. It should be advertised as a beta feature, or just plain not for gaming, the way it is on the website.

John

 

Two other games I tried:

jDoom works fine; the graphics are very smooth, but the character animations (meaning: the time it takes to switch weapons) is oddly slow.

Descent 2XL crashes on startup.

 

Not quite, this is what I get when I try and run it on a 15" SR MBP with 256Mb of VRAM:

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~layte/pics/ffxi1.png
or (with windower)
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~layte/pics/ffxi2.png

Also the game loses its connection with my PS2 USB adaptor once I get past the very first login/logout screen inside the game.

Such a shame as well, FFXI is the only reason I have a bootcamp partition.

 

Video inversion and 2d panels scewed. The image you see for FFXI Online is simple to explain, that is a 2d render frame on top of a 3d render scene. The 3d Render scene is working but the 2d render frame is fubar do to the bit flip. Same thing I experienced in my 2d game programming, about the exact same bit flip to boot.

 

Ok, I want to make sure that I understand correctly...Do you have to have Parallels 3.0 to play even the Free Cell game that comes on Vista properly?

 

Empire Earth CD not recognized

I got Empire Earth II Platinum Edition to install Just fine. However, when I put the disc in to start the game I get this popup message to insert the original disc instead of a backup. It is the original. I have 2 games and both get the same popup request. The main reason I got Parallels 3.0 was to play Empire Earth and ther games on my Apple. I'm supposed to be at a LAN party right now where they are mostly playing EE and Starcraft. I can't go and play if I'm gonna sit there looking like an dummy staring at my Apple. It's a MacBook Pro 2.33 and I did turn on Direct 3D. My guess is it has something to do with the imulation thing. I'm hoping someone can get to me before it's too late to go to the LAN party. I also can't upgrade Windows Media Player from 9.0 and I can't play DVDs while Parallels is on. Other than that, I love it.

 

I finally got civ 4 to work - I had to install directx9 first make sure direct x is checked and have xp running at 1024mb with 64mb of video. I have not checked it at lesser amt of vid ram or memory. I am using build 5060 beta. Also make sure you have the latest patch for civ 4 (http://63.236.94.185/2kgames/civ4/civ4patch_1.61_zip.php)

 

Been able to play Command and Conquer Tiberian Wars (not sure if this is 3) but, upon occasion it just stops and goes back to the windows screen. Have the same issue with Star Wars Empire At War.

 

(* completely edited)

Diablo II and LOD Expansion Set: Works (some have noted that it does not and it not only works, it looks just like it should graphically). I did a full install of the original Diablo II and then installed LOD. I downloaded the latest patch 1.11b from blizzards website at applied that. I was getting a couldn't find CD error message so I took care of this by downloading a no-cd crack file from gameburnworld.com. To note, I do have a legal copy of both of these pieces of software but went this route as otherwise it didn't seem to work. You do have to make sure that the crack you download matches the patch you have applied. You can download an earlier patch but as 1.11b was the last patch they did well over a year ago, it is the one I went with. Part of getting this to work from here was copying a file from the LOD CD to the folder housing Diablo II. (file name: d2xvideo) Then you move the file containing the crack called game to the Diablo II folder and either replace the existing file else move your original to another location to test it. From here when you run the game, it asks for the CD but, if you hit cancel a couple of times it runs without using the CD. If you have just the original game and not the expansion, you can get the crack at www.d2sector.net/downloads/index.php?act=view&id=137. Again, you have to have the original game but, this gives you a file you can drop in the Diablo II folder and can play without the original CD.

Finally, to note, when I loaded LOD the game worked fine with the CD in the tray. For some reason loading Diablo II alone gave the load the CD error. As I did this a couple of times to be sure it all worked correctly, one of the times I loaded Diablo II and checked it did run if the play CD was inserted in the drive which is the second CD in the set.

Again, I know I said it before, I am not condoning downloading software illegally etc. I have actual copies of the games and, this is how I got it to work. Also, if anyone can help with the issues I previously posted regarding Empire At War and Command And Conquer Tiberian Wars I'd appreciate it. Got those cracked as well for no-cd and they still just quit without notice. I've played for hours before and had it go out for no apparent reason. Thanks.

 

That's very interesting! From all the other feedback I assumed it was a non-starter unless you are prepared to run Bootcamp, which I am not, so I haven't even bothered to get hold of the Windows version. But if this is real, it makes Beyond the Sword and DLL-based mods on a Mac possible.

So, please, do tell ...
- What Mac hardware are you running on?
- What's the performance like?
- What graphics settings are you using?
- Are you able to compare it with the Mac version of Civ4 running on the same machine?

 

comparison to VMWare Fusion?

Has anyone here tried playing games with VMWare Fusion? I was generally happy with Parallels, but this whole game compatibility issue has got me down, especially after the Parallels marketing machine hyped up Parallels 3.0 as actually being able to play popular Windows games - a claim which I have not seen personally with any of the games I have tried installing. If VMWare Fusion is decent with games (i.e. can actually run a fair number of them, even if they're older games), I might very well make the jump.

Anyone have first-hand experience with VMWare Fusion's game compatibility?

 

Fusion has the same root problem (it's not native DirectX) but different results. Some games that don't run in Parallels will run in Fusion and some that run in Fusion don't run in Parallels. For example, comanche 4 will cause a windows BSOD in Fusion whereas in Parallels there is servere missing textures and lag.

Different implementations causing different issues but one core problem, it's not native and/or it's not a comprehensive implementation.