CuppaManga

You could patch using VMWare for Linux or something similar, and then launch CoH using the command line between patches.

It all comes down to contract, really, which is something only the Paragon lawyers get to see. I've actually been worried that the contract has expired, meaning there will be no more updates from Transgaming and Paragon is going to have to stretch the life of Cider as long as it can until either (a) its programming staff has the time and skill to rebuild CoH natively on Mac, (b) they get approval to pay a ton of cash out to Transgaming for an update, or (c) a better solution comes along that's the best of both worlds.

I would personally favor (a) but I do agree it would probably keep the coders on the team busy for far longer than might be viable to keep new game features coming regularly. Then again, considering the NC Launcher for Mac in the short time they had to do it...you never know...

The launcher is fairly young and immature on both platforms, it's bound to have hidden issues from time to time until it gets as mature as the old patcher.

And the memory leak problems with the Mac client (not counting the game ones) is with the way Cider uses memory handles. It's up to Transgaming and the Wine team to fix those.

I use a Macbook Pro Core i7 2010 model with Nvidia graphics. Performance is about the same between Boot Camp and Mac client. Boot Camp isn't good enough to deal with the aggravation of rebooting, stick with the Mac client.

Contact NCSoft Support at help.ncsoft.com, they can help you troubleshoot internet/network problems that would cause a patch download to fail.

FYI, as my new guide says (in signature) the old patcher is going to stop working entirely soon, requiring the NCSoft Launcher.

What coding language and database type does Mids use?

There are lots more problems than that with Crossover 10 - I tested it recently.

I wouldn't say it would be a mint. I've worked on officially licensed apps before. They're very difficult to make a profit on with an unlimited audience, and CoH players are (sorry, but it's true) a limited audience.

I'd only be tempted to support such an iOS app if a) I had direct cooperation from the devs for data, because I'm terrible at math and I'm unwilling to do hundreds of hours of reverse-engineering; and b) if I knew how many Mids/suckerpunch users there are, how many have iPads/iPhones, and how many are willing to pay for an app and use them instead. Plus, that information from (b) is what would probably be needed to get (a).

Note that this is a very long shot anyway, because if Paragon even has a whisper of a hint of wanting to make their own iOS hero builder someday, the answer would be a definite and firm NO.

P.S. (a) above is kind of a cheat as far as maintenance - the smart way to maintain a hero builder app is to have it nearly use a format of data the devs can provide directly.

P.P.S. Out of $1.99 in the app store, 66 cents goes to Apple, leaving you $1.33. Licensing often is a 10% arrangement, which is another 13 cents, leaving $1.20. As for how many copies would sell, who knows...but keep in mind that only a fraction of CoH players own an iPad.

Is it actually the download re-starting or is it starting a smaller download (the parts you missed last time)?

City of Heroes Mac Edition Guide (version 6 - Issue 20.5)

There may be separate guides dealing with installing the Windows version of City Of Heroes on a Mac via Boot Camp (Dual Boot), Emulation (Parallels, VMWare), or Crossover Games. This guide deals specifically with the Native Mac Client and the companion NCSoft Launcher.

NOTE: This guide is receiving a mid-issue update because the old-style patcher no longer will work with City of Heroes for Mac after Issue 20. All references to it have been removed, in favor of the newly required NCSoft Launcher.

Before you begin, keep in mind that City of Heroes Mac Edition has the following requirements:

- Leopard (MacOS X 10.5.x), Snow Leopard (MacOS X 10.6.x). Snow Leopard is recommended. Tiger (MacOS X 10.4.x) is not supported.
- An Intel-based Mac - PowerPC is not supported.
- While the Intel GMA 3100 generation and beyond is supported, a discrete video processor by ATI or nVidia is recommended for performance reasons. Older Intel GMA video processors may work at low settings, but they aren’t officially supported.

NOTE: Lion (Mac OS X 10.7) has not yet been tested with City of Heroes for Mac. It is architecturally similar to Snow Leopard, so there should not be any serious problems. This guide will be updated again after Lion’s release.



A Note About Ultra Mode Performance

Ultra Mode is fully supported on the Mac platform. However, there are some performance issues with certain features of the Ultra Mode settings. FSAA (Full-Screen Antialiasing) uses up a large amount of CPU and swap file space, so if you can live without it, you can dramatically increase your frame rate. The same is true for Ambient Occlusion. Shadow Mode does fine all the way to its maximum setting, as does Environmental Reflections and Water Effects.



A Word About Geometry Buffers

It is recommended at this time that you turn of the Geometry Buffers feature, as that seems to cause an excess of Video RAM allocations, which creates lag in certain areas such as Supergroup Bases, Arachnos Maps, and the Rikti Warzone base.



The City of Heroes for Mac Client

The NCSoft Launcher is now the only supported way to download, install, and access City of Heroes for Mac. It is available from http://www.cityofheroes.com/account/...of_heroes.html as a single download. Once downloaded, drag the NCSoft Launcher to your Applications folder, or the folder of your choice to install it.

- It is highly recommended to place the City of Heroes game application files in the same folder as the NCSoft Launcher, such as Applications, or if you choose, “Games”, or “NCSoft”.

- Placing the NCSoft Launcher or its files in a folder with a space in the name has been known to cause patching issues.

Once the NCSoft Launcher is appropriately installed, upon first launch you must either allow it to search for the locations of existing legacy City of Heroes for Mac clients, or locate them yourself by clicking Browse. It is recommended you locate them yourself, if you can, because it’s quicker and less prone to errors.

- If you have City of Heroes installed in a Boot Camp partition for Windows, or if you have Crossover Games installed, this may cause the NCSoft Launcher to locate incorrect files. This will cause patching issues. It can be corrected by double-clicking Properties below the appropriate game client listing and locating the correct file yourself.

- BUG ALERT: While using Browse to find the current client is recommended, this feature is currently bugged. You may have to use Search the first time, and then double-click Preferences, check if the path to the client is correct, and then use Browse if needed. Using Browse the first time may cause the NCSoft Launcher to ask you to locate the game client each time you start it.



The Standalone Mac Client

The Standalone Mac Client will be deprecated very soon. Please use the NCSoft Launcher to install City of Heroes for Mac.



A Word About Aliases

In order to access files within the City of Heroes for Mac application such as screenshots, demorecords, Architect files, costumes, etc, it is recommended to create an Alias of the files within the City Of Heroes application. This saves time, and prevents possible accidental damage to the application later on from moving important files by accident. To create an Alias of of the internal files:

1. Right-click the City of Heroes application and select "Show Package Contents".

2. Open the Contents, then Resources, then transgaming, then c_drive.

3. Open either "coh", or "Program Files" and then "City of Heroes". If neither of those are in "c_drive", run the updater or Launcher once but quit before the download completes.

4. Chose the Make Alias command from the Finder’s File menu.

5. Drag the Alias (the folder icon with the black arrow in the lower left corner) to convenient place, like your user folder.

Any time the steps 1 thru 3 are shown in this document, you can skip those and go directly to your newly created Alias!



Installation Shortcut

If you have another active install of City of Heroes, you can skip much of the update download by doing the following:

WARNING: Tampering with the files within the City of Heroes application may render it inoperable, requiring you to reinstall it from the DMG and re-download all the game files.

If you used the trick in the “A Word About Aliases” section above, you can skip steps 1 thru 3, and double-click your Alias instead.

1. Run the CoH application or Launcher once to allow the client to update itself if necessary. Once you see it "Fixing Files" you can quit and move on with the next step.

2. Right-click the City of Heroes application and select "Show Package Contents".

3. Open the Contents, then Resources, then transgaming, then c_drive, then either "coh", or "Program Files" and then "City of Heroes". If neither of those are in "c_drive", run the updater or Launcher once but quit before the download completes. From now on that folder will be referred to as the Client Folder.

4. Copy the contents of your Windows City of Heroes "piggs" folder into the Client Folder (credit: Ghost Vision). You may also copy your wdw.txt (saved windows) and the folders named like your accounts (saved preferences), and the Costumes, Missions, and Player Created Souvenier (those are your Mission Architect files). Do not copy the other files, as that has been known to cause a corrupted install.

5. Delete the coh.checksum file (credit: Ghost Vision).

6. File > Get Info on the Client Folder and make sure your user account is the owner, and has Read and Write permissions. Apply the permissions to enclosed folders even if they look okay. This step varies whether you're using Tiger or Leopard, so please check the Apple help if you're unsure of how to do it.

7. Double-Click City Of Heroes and let the updater verify files and patch. It will take very little time.



Screenshots and Demorecords on the Native Mac Client

Screenshots and Demorecords are both stored in an unusual place in the native Mac client. It will take some practice to reach them, but as long as you're careful you can do so safely.

First, however, you might want to give some attention to the different types of screenshots and demorecords available.

1. Basic in-game screenshot: Usually created by pressing Print Screen. If you're on a laptop, however, you'll have to remap that key since there is no Print Screen. In-game, go to Options and Keymapping. Down at the bottom is the Screen Shot option. Click where it says Print Screen, and hold down a replacement key combo. I picked Ctrl+~. This method will create a screenshot free of UI elements. The screenshot retrieval process is unusual, however - instructions are below.

2. MacOS screenshot: Pressing Cmd-Shift-3 captures the entire screen, UI display and all. It's the same as typing “/screenshotui 1” before doing the above, and will put the screenshot on the desktop. Cmd-Shift-4 (regional screenshot) is not available in-game.

3. Basic Demorecord: Typing “/demorecord filename” in-game will start recording a command set for creating a full-motion simulated game-based movie (“/demostop” stops the recording). It's proprietary to City of Heroes, and requires some typed commands to play it back. The retrieval process is described below, but playback will be covered in a separate document.

4. Third-party screen recording utility: You can either use one of these to record the game live, complete with UI elements, or to capture a played-back Demorecord to make a Quicktime movie. There is a wide variety of these available, so there are no specific instructions to make one work.



Retrieving Screenshots and Demorecords

WARNING: Tampering with the files within the City of Heroes application may render it inoperable, requiring you to reinstall it from the DMG.

If you used the trick in the “A Word About Aliases” section above, you can skip steps 1 thru 2, and double-click your Alias instead.

1. Right-click the City of Heroes application and select "Show Package Contents".

2. Open the Contents, then Resources, then transgaming, then c_drive, then either "coh" or "Program Files" and then "coh".

3. The screenshots are stored in the "screenshots" folder, the demorecords in "client_demos".



Playing Back Demorecords on a Mac

There are now two ways to play back Demorecord files. The NCSoft Launcher now provides a method for playback to be done quite easily.

To play back Demorecord files, you will first need to learn the name of the file you wish to play back. This can be accomplished with the steps shown in the Retrieving Screenshots and Demorecords section above.

Using the NCSoft Launcher, double-click Properties. There’s an entry called Extra Command Line Parameters. To play back your demorecord files, you will enter one of the following in there:

If your City of Heroes data files are located in City Of Heroes > Contents > Resources > transgaming > Program Files > City of Heroes:

-demoplay c:/Program\ Files/City\ of\ Heroes/client_demos/*demofile*.cohdemo -disable2d

If your City of Heroes data files are located in City Of Heroes > Contents > Resources > transgaming > coh:

-demoplay c:/coh/client_demos/*demofile*.cohdemo -disable2d

That setting may be persistent, so make sure to remove it next time you wish to play City of Heroes regularly.

NOTE: Make sure to replace *demofile* with the actual name of the Demorecord file you wish to play back.

You will see the Launcher open, and then City of Heroes on top of it. It will seem like it's loading for a while, and then your Demorecord should play back. If you see a screen with night time clouds, that means City of Heroes wasn't able to find the file you specified.

NOTE: If your City of Heroes application is located somewhere other than Applications, replace that part of the command line appropriately. Remember that spaces have to be “escaped” with a backslash and then a space, so they look like this: “\ “.

NOTE: The -disable2d command line option turns off heal/damage text and chat text. It was added because there's a bug currently where all log text (like "You are flying!") is spoken on-screen. If you choose to have text display, you will have to edit the Demorecord file. Do so carefully, and back up first!



Mission Architect And Costume Creator Files

WARNING: Tampering with the files within the City of Heroes application may render it inoperable, requiring you to reinstall it from the DMG.

Mission Architect stores several kinds of local files inside your City of Heroes application. There are Missions, Custom Critters, Custom Villain Groups, Player Created Souvenirs, and Costumes, which is also shared by the Icon/Facemaker costume creator in-game. THESE FILES ARE NOT DUPLICATED ON ALL YOUR CITY OF HEROES INSTALLATIONS! If you have non-published Architect assets, you have to back them up/copy them manually.

If you used the trick in the “A Word About Aliases” section above, you can skip steps 1 thru 3, and double-click your Alias instead.

1. Right-click the City of Heroes application and select "Show Package Contents".

2. Open the Contents, then Resources, then transgaming, then c_drive, then either "coh" or "Program Files" and then "coh".

3. Look for folders named Missions, Custom_Critter, CustomVillainGroup, PlayerCreatedSouvenirClues.txt, and costumes.

All of the files in those folders are fully compatible with both Windows and Mac clients, and can be transferred from one to the other. Additionally, you can design missions, custom critters, or costumes and email them to a friend!



Accessing the Training Room or Beta Server

If you’re using the NCSoft Launcher, installing the Training Room client is as easy as Installing it or using Properties and then Browse to point it to your existing Training Room client. The application must be named “City Of Heroes Training Room” for the Launcher to recognize it.

Likewise, the Beta client is also installable from the NCSoft Launcher. You can either Install that, or point it to your existing Beta client. The Beta client must be named “City Of Heroes Beta” to be recognized.

NOTE: The Training Room and Beta servers are prone to having public access purposely disabled, or being down. Even if you can install and patch them up to date, you may not be able to access them.



Loading Bind Files

The City of Heroes Mac client has a "D" drive mapped to the location of your current Home folder on the Mac. Placing your bind file there will allow you to load it directly from inside the game:

1. Place a bind file, such as "binds.txt", in your Home folder.

2. In-game, type "/bindloadfile d:/binds.txt" and press Return.

3. Your binds are now available!



Unique Mac Features

1. Minimize: Pressing Cmd-Tab while in-game will minimize City of Heroes and allow you to access the Desktop. Be careful you don't press that key combo while in the middle of battle. Clicking the application in the Dock will restore it to full screen. This method of hiding CoH may cause some slowdown of the Mac because the game still thinks it's running full-screen though it's no longer visible. CAUTION: Since the game itself doesn't suspend, you still may be defeated, miss chat, or disconnect due to timeout while you can't see the game.

2. Windowed Mode: Pressing Cmd-Enter while in-game will switch City of Heroes to Windowed mode and back. This is a fairly convenient way to do it, since you can switch back and forth at will without restarting the game. You can run other applications and still keep an eye on in-game events and chat this way.

3. Self-Contained Operation: This means you can copy the City of Heroes application to any Intel-based Mac and it will work nearly the same as on your own gaming computer. CAUTION: If you use CoH on a shared computer, remove the "City of Heroes Preferences" from your Users > Library > Preferences folder when you're done. Also, you may have to manually tell the NCSoft Launcher where you moved the application by double-clicking Properties and Browsing for it.

4. Multi-touch trackpad: If your Mac has a multi-touch trackpad, City of Heroes will obey the right click and directional scroll gestures.

5. Bluetooth, wireless, or USB mouse: If you have a Bluetooth, wireless, or USB mouse it will work about as it does in the operating system, except that CoH is limited to 3-button and scroll wheel support.

6. While it has not yet been successfully tested, you should be able to run multiple instances of City of Heroes by placing the NCSoft Launcher in the same folder as the game clients, and then duplicating the folder. Each copy of the folder represents a unique instance. Make sure each copy of NCSoft Launcher points to its respective copies of the game clients.

7. The Mac City of Heroes client is capable of running from a USB Flash (Thumb) Drive at least 8 GB in size. It will operate just as the game normally does in this state. The only caveat is if you're on a public computer you may want to delete the City of Heroes Preferences in your (User) > Library > Preferences folder. NOTE: This capability may require a larger USB Flash drive in the near future.

8. Apple’s mouse/trackpad products (Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad) do not support clicking both right and left buttons at once, and don’t support holding the scroll button down. You may have to remap those features to use them in-game.



External/Secondary Monitors

For play on a secondary External Monitor or Television:

1. Start the game and switch to Windowed Mode (Cmd-Enter)
2. Plug in the External Monitor
3. Open System Preferences, select Displays and then Arrangement. Check "Mirror Displays".
4. Switch the game back to Full-screen (Cmd-Enter)

After playing, switch back to Windowed Mode (Cmd-Enter) and then unplug the External Monitor. Then switch back to Full-Screen (Cmd-Enter) and quit.

City of Heroes for Mac will support playing on an external monitor, or mirroring between two monitors, but due to video RAM usage restrictions, you cannot spread the game interface over two monitors or use the desktop on one monitor and the game on another.



Vidiotmaps/Herostats

Vidiotmaps can be installed in City of Heroes for Mac using one of the following two procedures:

The first procedure is to download the Mac installer for Vidiotmaps. However, this installer is not updated often, and it requires that City Of Heroes be in your Applications folder.

Another procedure involves extracting the files from the Windows installer and placing them manually in the appropriate location.

WARNING: Tampering with the files within the City of Heroes application may render it inoperable, requiring you to reinstall it from the DMG.

1. Download the Vidiotmaps installer that contains ONLY the maps.

2. Run the Vidiotmaps installer on a Windows computer, or in Crossover, Parallels, or VMWare. Extract the files somewhere highly visible like the Desktop.

3. Copy the "data" folder to the Mac Desktop.

4. Right-click the City of Heroes application and select "Show Package Contents".

5. Open the Contents, then Resources, then transgaming, then c_drive, then either "coh" or "Program Files" and then "City of Heroes". If there is no such folder, run the updater once to get it to create the folder.

6. Drag the "data" folder to the folder.

NOTE: There is also now a Mac installer at the Vidiotmaps web site. If you located your City of Heroes application anywhere but the Applications folder, however, you'll have to extract the "data" folder from the hierarchy of folders installed in Applications and move it.



Known Issues

1. Depth of Field and other advanced video features not yet available.

2. Native game Windowed-Mode may not work as expected (use Cmd-Enter noted above), and does not yet start automatically when you launch the game.

3. Increased lag/chop in certain zones. Make sure your World Detail is no higher than 100%, and Geometry Buffers is turned OFF.

4. If you change your screen resolution in-game, you need to restart your game client right away. If you change anything or click Apply your settings will revert without warning.

5. Periodic client crashes can occur due to a pesky memory leak. These can usually be alleviated or delayed by using the /reloadgfx chat command sparingly - approximately every third time you zone, or when you feel things getting too laggy. When you use that command, you'll experience a temporary freeze while the screen re-draws - that's normal.

6. Supergroup Base Editing icons are corrupted and hard to see.

7. Mission Architect mini-avatars do not animate.

8. The Updater version number is too long and collides with the time remaining.

9. High CPU use when FSAA or Ambient Occlusion are turned on.

10. Some Mac users report a large number of frequent “assertion failure” crashes. The issue has been reported and tracked, and is being worked on.

11. The NCSoft Launcher may ask you at each startup to locate each game client if you used Browse to locate them previously. Use Search the first time to ensure this doesn’t happen.



Common Questions

Q. Will the NCSoft Launcher for Mac and City of Heroes for Mac work just like the Windows versions for City of Heroes Freedom? Are there any differences/requirements with the new game account types?

A. City of Heroes Freedom is intended to work the same on both platforms equally. There will be no additional account restrictions if you are using the Mac version.

Q. Will the Paragon Store work with the Mac client?

A. While that information hasn’t specifically been made public from official sources, all signs point to YES.

Q. Can I use my characters on Triumph, Freedom, Virtue, etc with the Mac client?
A. Yes. You can access the Live servers alongside PC clients without limitation.

Q. Do I need a new account or can I use my existing one?
A. If you have an existing account, you can use it with the Mac client.

Q. Can I use the Going Rogue expansion with a Mac?
A. Yes, Going Rogue is part of the same City of Heroes game, and will work on a Mac.

Q. Can I use Ultra Mode on a Mac?
A. With some performance considerations, Ultra Mode works fully on a Mac. See the beginning of this document for more on Ultra Mode performance.

Q. If I have an account I started with the PC client, can I use the Mac client?
A. Yes. The two clients behave the same, without regard to what type of account you created.

Q. Can I use the Mac client with a trial account?
A. Yes, even trial accounts can be used with the Mac client. Trial accounts, however, will be deprecated with the release of City of Heroes Freedom.

Q. Can I use Herostats or Mid's on a Mac?
A. Herostats does not currently support the Mac client. Mid's can be run in Boot Camp, Parallels, VMWare, or any other emulated Windows environment. There is a web-based Suckerpunch's Herobuilder that works with Mac.

Q. How do I report bugs in the Mac client?
A. You should always start by sending a trouble ticket to help.ncsoft.com, so the issue can be tracked. You can also post them to the Mac Users forum. You can also use the in-game /bug command. If you do either of the latter, make sure you send a ticket to help.ncsoft.com first.

Q. What if I have a problem logging in, or another problem with my account?
A. Customer Support will be able to help you with either PC or Mac account problems.

Q. Can saved costumes/architect files be moved from Mac to PC and vice versa?
A. Yes, costumes are fully compatible with both clients, as are architect files.

Q. Why is Tiger no longer supported?
A. The CoH client uses Mac API's that are not completely supported by Tiger.

Q. Will my PowerPC Mac run City of Heroes for Mac?
A. No, PowerPC is not supported, and won't be in the future.

Q. How do I take a Screenshot on a Macbook, Macbook Pro, or new Apple keyboard with no Print Screen key?
A. You will have to bind the Screenshot feature in-game to another key. You can do so on the Keybinds section of the in-game options.

Q. Can I transfer my Training Room or Beta characters to the Live servers?
A. No. Due to the ability to tamper with the Training Room and Beta economies, you can't transfer those characters to Live servers.

Q. Do I need to periodically update my video drivers?
A. Unlike in Windows, video card vendors don't usually supply Mac compatible video drivers on their web sites. Most of the time, Apple supplies video driver updates as part of system updates, which are often as or more frequent than video card vendor updates.

Q. Can I buy a CD/DVD of the Mac client and avoid a lengthy download?
A. As of the NCSoft Launcher release, City of Heroes is now download-only.



Troubleshooting

Q. My Mac client won't start up again after being started previously. The icon just bounces once and disappears.

A. If your Mac game client won't start after playing it previously, try the following steps:

1. Open your Applications folder, and then Utilities.
2. Launch Activity Monitor.
3. Look for a process called "wineserver" and click it once to select it.
4. Click "Force Quit".
5. Launch the CoH game client again.


Q. I just downloaded the Mac client and it won’t launch.

A. Try this:

- Make sure you're installing using an account with administrator access (do not use the Guest account)
- Open Safari and select Empty Cache from the Safari menu.
- Open Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and type or paste "dscacheutil -flushcache" (without the quotes of course) and press Return.
- Go to Users > (your name) > Library > Preferences and throw the City of Heroes Preferences in the trash.


Q. I'm using MacOS X Tiger (10.4.x). Can I play CoH anyway?

A. CoH will refuse to launch, as it's set to require at least 10.5.8. You can work around it, but I'm not going to cover how, because it probably will crash.


Q. Should I upgrade to Leopard or Snow Leopard?

A. Snow Leopard is your best bet for future support from both Paragon Studios and from Apple.


Q. If I have a problem and I'm asked for my Console Log, how do I get that?

A. Open Applications > Utilities > Console. You can copy and paste text from it.


Q. When will Depth of Field and other special effects be added?

A. Soon™.


Q. How do I ask questions or get help with my Mac or CoH Mac Edition?

A. The City of Heroes official Forums has a separate category for Mac users. You aren't required to post there as a Mac user, but it will give your post direct attention from fellow Mac users who can help.

You can rename it to "City of Heroes Beta" but expect a lengthy download anyhow.

I will be testing the Mac client for Lion compatibility as soon as its released. Due to the architectural similarity of Lion I don't anticipate any problems save one: The supposed full-screen application mode most likely won't work at all.

The bad news is this is a pretty common bug both on Mac and Windows if you have an ATI video card. The good news is it doesn't happen all the time, and it won't damage your computer.

Try this next:

1. Delete the folder Users > (yourname) > Library > Preferences > City of Heroes, and also Users > (yourname) > Library > Preferences > Cider.

2. Delete the folder Library > Application Support > TransGaming.

This will reset all the game preferences like the first time CoH was launched (it won't re-download the game files though).

Here are my current CoH for Mac settings for reference:

FSAA - Off

Environment Reflections - High Quality
Water Effects - Ultra Quality
Shadow Quality - High
Ambient Occlusion - Off

Suppress FX When Close - Off
Particle Physics - High
World Texture Quality - Very High
Character Texture Quality - Very Hight
World Detail - 100%
Character Detail - 100%
Max Particle Count - 50000

Vertical Sync - Enabled
Mouse Cursors - Color
Use Geometry Buffers - Disabled
Anisotropic Filtering - 4x
Texture Crispness - Smooth
Shader Quality - High

Sound Playback Mode - Performance
3D Sound - Enabled

At the moment, no. I run it in VMWare.