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☖ Forums → Discussion Forum → Grab Portal right now for free on Steam!
Grab Portal right now for free on Steam!
2010-05-12, 1:08 PM #1
To celebrate incorporating Macs with Steam, they are letting everyone "purchase" Portal for free until May 24th. There is no catch, you just need to have Steam installed and it works on Macs and PCs. If you are one of the few people that never got around to buying Portal, I highly recommend you take advantage of this.
Attachment: 23891/portalfree.jpg (242,787 bytes)
Author of the JK levels:
Sand Trap & Sand Trap (Night)
2010-05-12, 1:10 PM #2
I'm going to download it for OS X on my MacBook Pro, but only so I can see how much slower it is on OS X than in Windows.
2010-05-12, 1:11 PM #3
It's FREE if the servers let you on <_<

Plus I've already bought it once on XBox, and again for Boot Camp, but happily Steam haven't gone all evil corporation on me and made me buy it a third time for my mac.

Huzzah!
2010-05-12, 1:31 PM #4
I wonder if it will run on my macbook with integrated intel graphics card. Hey don't laugh I got tetris running on it!
2010-05-12, 1:33 PM #5
In fairness, the source engine is pretty good. It's old enough that my XBox can run it!
2010-05-12, 1:42 PM #6
Hrm, portal looks like it's on the quake 2 engine.
2010-05-12, 2:14 PM #7
Originally posted by Brian:
I wonder if it will run on my macbook with integrated intel graphics card. Hey don't laugh I got tetris running on it!


Used to run it in Windows. Make sure you turn off portal visibility and it'll be barely playable.

But really, Intel GPU sucks.
2010-05-12, 10:04 PM #8
damnit, why don't they do it with something i don't own.
Holy soap opera Batman. - FGR
DARWIN WILL PREVENT THE DOWNFALL OF OUR RACE. - Rob
Free Jin!
2010-05-13, 1:27 AM #9
:awesome:

thanks for sharing
2010-05-13, 4:20 AM #10
Originally posted by Martyn:
It's FREE if the servers let you on <_<

Plus I've already bought it once on XBox, and again for Boot Camp, but happily Steam haven't gone all evil corporation on me and made me buy it a third time for my mac.

Huzzah!


It's single player... to be fair though the Steam servers are being hit pretty hard, took me a while to get the TF2 update last night.

Oh, in TF2 it takes 33% less items now to craft a hat. :awesome:

Originally posted by Brian:
Hrm, portal looks like it's on the quake 2 engine.


Huh? It's not brown enough. Seriously though it looks fine... plus it's my favorite single player game of all time. (OF ALL TIME)

2010-05-13, 4:56 AM #11
Yeah, that's what I meant MAZZT: it took me a few minutes of (somewhat selfishly) repeatedly clicking TRY AGAIN to get it downloading presumably because all us MacTards were hammering the servers :)

Then it proceeded to download at about 15kb/s D:

I've still got 2GB to finish off tonight... I might spend that time deciding on if I can justify buying the LucasArts adventure pack :D
2010-05-13, 11:30 AM #12
[http://www.goopeg.com/img/ZsXg0uHn.jpg]

Obviously a joke, but still funneh.
My favorite JKDF2 h4x:
EAH XMAS v2
MANIPULATOR GUN
EAH SMOOTH SNIPER
2010-05-13, 11:48 AM #13
Hahaha! :D
幻術
2010-05-13, 11:55 AM #14
I downloaded both Portal & Steam for my iMac. They both work well enough. Portal is a blast.
? :)
2010-05-13, 1:23 PM #15
Wootles! I only just remembered to finish off my download :(
2010-05-13, 2:39 PM #16
No surprise here.

http://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index/3726?cPage=5&all=False&sort=0&page=1&slug=quick-look-mac-os-x-portal-performance
2010-05-13, 4:32 PM #17
The steam downloader is the most amazing piece of **** I have ever encountered.
2010-05-13, 6:49 PM #18
Are you kidding me? I get 2 megs down normally and it's easy as pie.
2010-05-13, 7:07 PM #19
Originally posted by JM:
The steam downloader is the most amazing piece of **** I have ever encountered.


lolwut

HOW DARE A SERVER OCCASSIONALLY BE SLOW DURING HIGH DEMAND TIMES.
2010-05-13, 7:26 PM #20
I'm not talking about the speed. I'm talking about the fact that it shows my download speed in different places and none of the numbers are even remotely similar. And how it can't even accurately keep track of how much I've downloaded. Oh, and, ****ing steam uses it's own stupid gui instead of win32 or winforms and wpf, so none of it is compatible with my touchscreen's gestures. Not even simple things like scrollbars.

Did you bother to notice I said DOWNLOADER not SERVER? No, you didn't, because you are dumb.
2010-05-13, 8:02 PM #21
That GUI is great you shush.
2010-05-13, 8:19 PM #22
Originally posted by JM:
I'm not talking about the speed. I'm talking about the fact that it shows my download speed in different places and none of the numbers are even remotely similar. And how it can't even accurately keep track of how much I've downloaded. Oh, and, ****ing steam uses it's own stupid gui instead of win32 or winforms and wpf, so none of it is compatible with my touchscreen's gestures. Not even simple things like scrollbars.

Did you bother to notice I said DOWNLOADER not SERVER? No, you didn't, because you are dumb.


Because it'd be the only remotely sensible thing to complain about.

A. The numbers it shows have always been accurate for me. Keep in mind it can download multiple things at the same time.
B. Seems to keep track of how much is downloaded just fine for me as well.
C. Its own GUI because it needs to run on Mac, and also I have no trouble with any gestures. Even works with my back/forward buttons. Besides, a touchscreen? Really? Ever considered its actually crappy touchscreen drivers?
2010-05-14, 4:19 AM #23
Right, the drivers are so crappy that everything else works great but steam.

Also, just because something works right for you doesn't mean it works right for everyone. You should know that.
2010-05-14, 5:54 AM #24
Originally posted by JM:
Right, the drivers are so crappy that everything else works great but steam.

Also, just because something works right for you doesn't mean it works right for everyone. You should know that.


Or I think it works opposite. Just because something doesn't work right for you... doesn't mean everyone else has problems like you.

And my side is bolstered by the fact that the only other person to really complain about Steam around here is resident groucho Brian.
2010-05-14, 6:44 AM #25
Eh, I was running into the wacky download speed reporting that JM was talking about yesterday. I hadn't seen it before then, but yesterday at one point it was saying my current rate for a game I was downloading was 6.1 MB/s (and I was just downloading one game, no other updates going on at the same time), yet my peak download rate was only listed as like 4 MB/s, and the total current download rate it was reporting was only around 100 KB/s (which seemed to be the correct rate based on how slowly the game was actually downloading).

So yeah, JM's not making stuff up there, it was definitely behaving oddly for me too yesterday. I think it was probably just a side effect of the download constantly pausing and resuming because of the heavy traffic.
2010-05-14, 6:54 AM #26
That'd be likely, since that's how /every browser/ works when it's calculating download speeds.
2010-05-14, 7:19 AM #27
Yep, every browser. Except for firefox, IE, and chrome. But other than those three insignificant browsers no one actually uses, you're absolutely correct. I mean, counting how many bytes go through a network adapter is hard. It's not like there is a windows API just for doing this sort of thing or anything.


Oh, oh, you say - Mac version? If the best way to do it on windows is to use a performance counter, you should use a performance counter. If the best way to make your UI on windows is to use winforms or wpf, you should do that. You don't make a Mac version by rolling basic OS services yourself. Then you just end up with a ****ty version on both operating systems.
2010-05-14, 10:50 AM #28
I recently rediscovered this wonderful program on 7. I think it was introduced in Vista.

[http://x.mzzt.net/2010.05.14.13.49.06.png]

Very nice if you're unsure how much bandwidth you're consuming.

2010-05-14, 10:59 AM #29
Still doesn't make sense that it would report the current rate for one download at 6.1 MB/s and the current rate for all downloads at around 100 KB/s. Not that it's a huge deal, but it is annoying.

On another note, I decided to try portal on my MBP (older one with an 8600 GT in it) in OS X and Windows just to see the difference. OS X performance was terrible relative to Windows. Settings that were still very playable in Windows were pretty horrible in OS X. I don't expect that to be a big concern with an older game like Portal, but what about when games like LFD2 (or newer non-Source games) come out?
2010-05-14, 1:21 PM #30
Quote:
Very nice if you're unsure how much bandwidth you're consuming.
That was built into task manager on xp.
2010-05-14, 4:21 PM #31
It is in 7 too, but he's talking about the really fancy one he's showing up there.
2010-05-14, 4:46 PM #32
Originally posted by JM:
Yep, every browser. Except for firefox, IE, and chrome. But other than those three insignificant browsers no one actually uses, you're absolutely correct. I mean, counting how many bytes go through a network adapter is hard. It's not like there is a windows API just for doing this sort of thing or anything.


Actually not except. All browsers you mentioned have done the same thing. Typically happens when you resume a download you paused or was disconnected in some form.

Quote:
Oh, oh, you say - Mac version? If the best way to do it on windows is to use a performance counter, you should use a performance counter. If the best way to make your UI on windows is to use winforms or wpf, you should do that. You don't make a Mac version by rolling basic OS services yourself. Then you just end up with a ****ty version on both operating systems.


Or you end up with a system that works just like everything else because it's a browser-based UI.
2010-05-14, 4:48 PM #33
Originally posted by JM:
That was built into task manager on xp.


And as said, its in Win7's as well. But that one is essentially useless. It only shows PERCENTAGE of the whole link of the network adapter, not a simple number (unless you go into columns and do by interval, which is a pain and can be inaccurate), and even more importantly, not broken down by app or location. So if you're streaming files from one PC to another, and also something from the net, you have no idea how fast that net connection is going via the Task Manager.
2010-05-14, 9:05 PM #34
Forgot about the XP one. I suppose that is nice for what I was using Resource Monitor for but the graph is useless. Resource Monitor is a lot nicer if I want to find out WHAT is consuming bandwidth

2010-05-14, 9:08 PM #35
The built in one isn't entirely useless, I just use it to see how much bandwidth I'm using when things start to lag, if it looks sketchy I go to the other thing.

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