CuppaManga

I'm tracking several causes for assertion failure messages - some currently don't have workarounds, others do. I haven't seen a single one of them myself on 10.6.4 and a Core i7 Macbook Pro. I'm currently looking for a connection to why some people get them and others don't.

Also, the Snow Leopard upgrade from 10.5 is $30.

Read this first: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=238194

Also what kind of Mac/OSX version/video are you using?

I re-read your description - sorry I thought it was something common, but it's another issue entirely.

First thing, what kind of Mac are you using?

Second, just to see if it works: Start CoH, click Next but then click the safe mode checkbox before clicking Agree. Then set up your graphics settings.

Delete your game preferences (Users > yourname > Library > Preferences > City of Heroes) and try again.

It's built like a lower-powered, lighter weight 13" Macbook. Theoretically it should work fine with CoH, but not at nearly the highest settings.

Which build of the Mac client are you using (check your version by clicking the City of Heroes application ONCE and selecting Get Info from the File menu)?

If you're using a build earlier than 4462, the newer build might solve some of your problems. You can download it from your NCSoft account page.

I actually thought the line breaks weren't an issue until I looked back and realized that the bind file *I* use was copied from my PC version of CoH.

Now I'm going to have to try re-saving it in Mac/Unix format and see if CoH still works properly with it. If not, I'll have to update the Mac Guide.

Sorry for the runaround, I saw complex binds and thought I was in over my head (I'm not nearly a binds expert). I didn't think to look at it more simply.

This isn't really a Mac specific issue (it's an issue with binds), and I'm not really an expert with binds.

You might want to try to ask the same question on the Technical Issues forum, and try your best to ignore the people who insist it's because you're using the Mac version.

If you have FSAA turned on, there's an additional issue with it and keyboard input being delayed on some systems. That may be related.

That's not really a graphics issue, more like a very large volume of data being transferred at one time. It's similar to the lag during ITF's.

Borrowed a Logitech USB headset and tried it out. You have to follow these steps in the correct order:

1. Plug in the headset.

2. Open System Preferences and select "Sound"

3. Switch both the Input and Output to the Logitech USB Headset.

4. Launch City of Heroes.

CoH is not able to switch sound sources on-the-fly for some reason, so all of that has to be set up before you launch the game.

I have USB headphones to test with, but not here - I'll test it at the end of the week when I have access to them.

SLI support will take two ingredients: Apple building SLI into the nVidia drivers (which they might have already) and Transgaming building SLI into its driver so that the Windows game in the Cider wrapper knows it's there.

Sounds like a network outage somewhere. Open Console (Applications > Utilities) and type "traceroute -I coh.com" and see where it stops. Copy/paste the traceroute into a support request at help.ncsoft.com.

Be careful with that - often ordering a branded PC and then customizing it like that can end up costing more than if you would have started out ordering a more expensive model. Dell for instance is notorious for it.

If you want a PC with similar performance and reliability to your Mac, look up the technical specs for your Mac at apple.com and compare them to the specs of PC's you're thinking of ordering. If the hardware is the same or similar, it should perform the same.

There are 4 possible major obstacles to a native client: Staffing and initial schedule time; Code portability; and Update scheduling; and Legal.

Out of those three, believe it or not, Legal is the most difficult to overcome. If Paragon Studios has an active contract with Transgaming to provide the Mac client, there won't be a native one, period.

Second most difficult, you can probably guess, is Staffing and initial schedule time. If they don't have the people, with the right training, to work on a native Mac client, or if allocating the staff would create massive delay in regular game releases, it won't be possible.

Then there's code portability issues.

Only the programmers know how much code is specialized to the development tools they use, which would make it difficult to move the code to tools needed to develop for Mac. Things like compiler instructions are easy to work around; but sometimes there are issues like memory management varying from one development environment to the next that would be very difficult to track down and fix.

And there's probably some code in there which are basically hacks to overcome problems with the game in Windows (every programmers does that sometimes) that won't even compile for Mac because it's not intended for that platform. That's not even a simple track-down-and-fix - because they were put in there for a reason. Instead, it becomes a major engineering feat to unravel why it was put there, what it does, and what can be used as an alternative. Simply leaving it out of the Mac version might hopelessly break it.

It's not all a gloomy forecast though. The work already done to support Cider more cleanly, the new graphics engine as of the last two issues, and the use of OpenGL rather than DirectX does make CoH far more portable to Mac than most games out there.

Your Mac is designed with internal safety mechanisms - it would shut down long before it gets too hot. If it's not shutting down, it's perfectly safe to use at this temperatures. So there's no rush.

If you want to eventually build a PC for gaming, keep in mind heat is an issue for those too. Make sure you take the time and budget to select a well ventilated case, and a robust video card, and don't skimp on the parts. It should cost you around $800-$1000 (with monitor and keyboard) if it's a system that will prove to be reliable. And then you'll need lots of time to put it together and get it running just right.

That's partly why I'm pushing to find a pattern - the faster *someone* finds one, the easier it is for them to publish a fix. Otherwise it's unfortunately going to take a lot of trial and error testing on the part of the devs to figure it out.

Try shutting down your Mac and then starting it up while holding down Cmd-Option-P-R. Wait for it to chime twice before letting go of those keys. I looked up your particular kernel panic type via Google and that seems to be the #1 recommended thing to try first.

The #2 thing to try is use Disk Utility and check the disk for errors.

After that, it does seem there's a rare bug with Cider and your particular model of Mac (there's also one with the Core i7 Macbook Pro) out it doesn't occur with all of them. That means there's something particular about some of them that's causing it. Hopefully me or someone else will find out what that is soon.

They're the same.

Read my guide (in the signature), it has all the info you need.

Read my first post here:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=238194