All-New Guide to running CoH/CoV on a Mac

The question of whether City of Heroes and City of Villans can be run on an Apple Macintosh (Mac) has come up many times in the Technical forum. I've answered questions about it quite a few times, so I thought I should finally get around to writing a basic guide.

This new guide applies the changes introduced with MacOS X 10.5 (Leopard).

The first step is to make sure your Mac will be able to run CoH/CoV:

If you're thinking of purchasing a Mac, any newer Intel-based model can run CoH. But keep in mind that certain models will run CoH *better* than others. The Mac Mini and lower-end Macbooks, for instance, have integrated Intel GMA graphic processors that aren't really designed for gaming. If you're getting an iMac, a Mac Pro, or a Macbook Pro you're in business - they have either ATI or Nvidia dedicated video depending on the model (some of the Mac Pros are custom built with higher-end video).

If you already have a Mac, most of the time the name is a dead giveaway. If yours is a Macbook, Macbook Pro, or Mac Pro, you most certainly have an Intel processor (the PowerPC equivalents are called Powerbook and PowerMac). An iMac or Mac Mini takes a little more checking. Select the Apple Menu and About This Mac and it should tell you which processor you have.

Once you've verified your Mac can run CoH, the second step is to select the Apple Menu and About This Mac and make sure you're running at least version 10.5 (the first version to include Boot Camp). If not, it's time to upgrade.

Apple's Boot Camp software used to be downloadable as a beta, but now it's only included in MacOS X 10.5 (Leopard). If you wish to run CoH/CoV on your Intel Mac, you need to upgrade the operating system. If you've previously installed the Boot Camp Beta in Pre-10.5, it won't stop working - but you won't get driver updates from Apple, and the Boot Camp Assistant will expire.

A small warning as you run Boot Camp for the for the first time: If your hard drive is pretty full, Boot Camp won't be able to partition it for Windows XP and will fail with an error. Your data will be safe but you will have to back up everything, erase the hard drive, reinstall MacOS X, then run Boot Camp and partition, and then restore everything.

When you first run Boot Camp, it will ask you to repartition the drive, allocating part of its capacity for Windows. You'll need 15 to 20 gigs for Windows XP, or 20 to 32 for Windows Vista.

The next step is to reboot with the Windows XP or Windows Vista install CD and install. I used to recommend only Windows XP, but you can use either with the new Boot Camp. Keep in mind, though, that many hardware providers have stopped providing up-to-date drivers for Windows XP, and Microsoft's support of XP will be ending soon in favor of Vista.

Once the Windows install is done, insert the MacOS X 10.5 (Leopard) DVD and wait for the Boot Camp drivers to install - they're on a special partition on the DVD. You will have to restart after it's done. When Windows is restarted, eject the Leopard DVD and run Apple Software Update in Windows to make sure you have the latest drivers and software. You may have to restart after that too.

Next make sure to run Windows Update and get all the latest patches and fixes. There's no sense in finishing up your CoH/CoV install only to get slammed by spyware or viruses and have to start over again. Another restart is likely after that.

If you plan to go wireless make sure you select your wireless base station and enter the correct password, and verify it's working by opening a web site in your web browser. This is important because CoH and CoV will want to try and update when it's installed.

Install City of Heroes or City of Villains next. Install first from the CD or DVD, and if you have access to another computer with an up to date install, copy that on top of the CD/DVD install. That makes for a faster install, so you don't have to download a massive update from the CoH/CoV update servers.

Once CoH/CoV is installed and updated, take the time to download software that will protect your computer from viruses and spyware. If you're running Windows XP, download Spybot (Windows Vista has its own anti-spyware tool). Good antivirus software is helpful too.

If you're running Windows Vista you'll have to right-click the City of Heroes icon and select Properties. Find the name the shortcut links to, CohUpdater.exe, and add a space and -compatiblecursors 1 AFTER the quote mark. You might have to do this again after CoH or CoV updates, as it replaces the shortcut sometimes.

At this point you're ready to run City of Heroes or City of Villains. It takes a little effort to adjust the display settings just right. The first time you run CoH or CoV, the display settings will be at a very low resolution. Go to Options in the game, and then click Display and Sound. Right at the top you can set the display resolution. The best and cleanest resolution to choose is the one that says "(desktop)" next to it. You'll have to quit and restart CoH/CoV to see the changes take effect.

Now you're ready to play! If you want to tweak your display settings for better gaming, check out the advanced section below.

Advanced section:
<ul type="square">[*]If you have a Macbook Pro, iMac, or Mac Pro that comes with ATI video (check that in the Windows Device Manager: Right click My Computer, select Hardware, and Device Manager) follow BillZBubba's ATI Settings Guide, and it will help improve your gaming experience. To follow them you might need a special driver from Omegadrivers.net or Laptopvideo2go.com that isn't stripped of the ATI control panel like Apple's driver is (NOTE: Omegadrivers.net doesn't seem to be updating anymore).
[*]If you have ATI video and are running Windows XP, turn off the Water Effects, Bloom, FSAA, and Asiotropic Filtering in CoH. Turn Antialiasing and Asiotropic filtering on in the Catalyst control panel. To do that you might need a special driver from Omegadrivers.net (NOTE: Omegadrivers.net hasn't been updating) or Laptopvideo2go.com that isn't stripped of the ATI control panel like Apple's driver is.
[*]If you have ATI video and are running Windows Vista, the newer Vista driver somewhat fixes the FSAA problem in CoH/CoV. You still can't use Bloom, Water Effects, etc, but you CAN use FSAA and Asiotropic Filtering with only a small speed penalty.
[*]If you have Intel GMA integrated video you may have to turn your CoH/CoV display settings to Recommended to get decent performance. To to avoid using Minimum as it takes all of the graphics work off the video processor and onto the main CPU, slowing things down a bit.
[*]Nvidia video? No adjustment necessary. It's performance video and can easily handle CoH/CoV. If you get an error that says your video drivers are too old, it's not a driver problem, and that bug will be fixed in Issue 11.
[*]While Windows XP is more compatible with CoH/CoV, Windows Vista seems to be more stable on Intel Macs. It may also be difficult to locate a retail copy of Windows XP these days. Don't be afraid of installing Vista on an Intel Mac - in some cases, the Mac is *more* compatible with it than the average Windows PC.
[*]The Macbook Pro, Macbook, iMac, and Mac Pro are multi-processor. To take maximum advantage of it, you may want to right click the CoH/CoV shortcut, select Properties, and at the end of the command (beginning with CohUpdater.exe) add a space and -renderthread 1.
[*]While using a Macbook Pro or Macbook be careful to make sure it's well ventilated while playing. Do not play on a bed or carpet.[/list]

Great guide. I sooo want a new iMac.

I have a new imac. CoX works great on it!

According to multiple benchmark reports, the new Santa Rosa MacBook with GMA X3100 is 30-40% faster for 3D games than the old GMA 950 model. Should be pretty playable if you have 2 (or 4) GB of RAM in a matched pair.

Also, rather than call out particular models, it would be easier to say that all of the Macintels are multi-core, except for a handful of 2006 low-end minis (which are not good choices for gaming).

I've been having random crashing problems on my MacBook with XP SP2 running via Boot Camp. Same symptoms as some people reported on the 'old' thread - BSoD or (less often) a complete reboot.

When you write that Vista is more compatible with a Mac but less copmatible (that XP) with CoH, what do you mean exactly? Will I likely have more crashes because of CoH or less because of the higher stability of Vista in general if I upgrade?

Any tips besides repairing the partition and all that? I have tried most everything I have read, and whatever else I could think of.

EDIT: Does anyone know how much space on the HD CoH actually needs for temp files? 15 - 20 G for XP and CoH seems excessive on this small MacBook HD.

If you're only using BootCamp for CoX (not including Test), then you should be able to get by with a 10GB partition.

Have you run the Apple Hardware Test from your system DVD? Maybe you have a corrupt bit in your RAM somewhere.

Random crashing: Sounds like a bad driver. The new Leopard generation drivers are more stable than the beta ones ever were. Install the new ones from the Leopard DVD.

Vista is more compatible with Mac because a lot of the new-generation hardware Apple uses has outdated or non-existant Windows XP drivers. Companies like nVidia have stopped updating their XP drivers in favor of migrating their new products to Vista. CoH, however, hasn't been updated for Vista and requires a few tweaks to work properly (this may change come Issue 11).

I recommend at least 20 gigs for the Windows XP or Vista partition...*IF* you're not using the Training Room. Worst case scenario, if you use the Training Room and Vista, you should have at least 32 gigs in the partition. That's plenty of room for CoH/CoV, the Training Room client, Vista, and some sort of antivirus.

Updated to Vista and all my crashing problems are solved. Even with a meager 15 G partition - eep!

I only use Windows to play this game on my Mac Mini, works very well XD

Adding a side-note:

Apple recommends not using Upgrade versions of Vista or XP to install in Boot Camp. The Upgrade version asks you to insert the CD for the old version you're upgrading from, only there's no way to manually eject the Upgrade CD from the drive. Stick with full versions of Vista or XP to avoid that problem.

Hey CuppaManga,

Thanks for the guide. I was really helpful in making my decision to go from PC (Dell Inspiron) to Mac.

Got a refurbished Macbook Pro 17" (1920x1200, glossy). Somehow they included 4GB of RAM, instead of the 2GB they had in the specs - oh well, who am I to complain.

Anyway, set up Boot Camp (XP) today and COX runs beautifully on it. Very pretty.

Couple of questions you did not touch on in your guide.

What harddrive format did you choose in the set-up. Fat32 or NTFS? I chose NTFS for the bigger file size, and because someone mentioned that Apple is working on a driver that will allow both read AND write of NTFS volumes, but I was wondering if either file format actually performed better for games.

And what did you do in regards to the video drivers. Compared to what is available from NVIDIA the Apple drivers seems kind of old. Did you keep them, or did you upgrade (and if so what did you use)?

Thanks.

I've only ever used XP on NTFS, so that's what I put on my Macs as well. A little annoying about write access, but in theory it's safer than FAT. If you're feeling adventurous you could try installing MacFUSE and NTFS-3G, then set a custom boot script to mount it as writable.

Regarding Nvidia, do you have the latest update from http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306891 (v167.44)? I'm going to try it tonight when I boot Windows. Or you can continue adventuring into 3rd party kexts at http://omegadrivers.net or http://laptopvideo2go.com - some people say they work great, others had problems.

The Windows hard drive format is irrelevant, except that Vista only supports NTFS and hard drives larger than 32 GB require it too. The Mac side can only *read* NTFS unless you install something like Paragon NTFS for Mac (the name is just a coincidence).

I upgraded to the latest video driver available from Apple (someone else in this thread has a link to it) but that's it, because I haven't had issues. If you really want the latest-and-greatest there's a site called laptopvideo2go.com (I think) that has custom-made nVidia laptop drivers, a lot like omegadrivers used to for ATI.

Thanks for the feedback on NTFS format. Pretty much echoes what I thought.

Frank, I'd love to hear how the new nVidia drivers work out. I am not having any problems with the Apple drivers (I am really impressed how good everything looks), but if "even better" is an option...sign me up!

I installed the updated Apple driver and it works fine. I haven't done any major performance testing yet, but it definitely isn't slower than the older BootCamp driver. Going to try re-enabling a couple graphics features that I previously turned off and see if it can take the strain now.

This is Virtual Machine, or a dual booting, and not straight emulation. It seems that anything that works in XP/Vista will be fine, as you ARE in XP/Vista. By the way, I have used 120 GB partitions in XP SP1 just fine.

I believe including the following things will help:

www.guru3d.com
www.tweakguides.net

There are other odds and ends, like windows Defender being suspect in some crashing, etc.

I compliment you on taking the time to move Mac users back into playing happily.

Macfuse is worth the trouble, it also lets you do nifty things like mount sshfs volumes, mount disk/disc/drive images, and use encrypted filesystems.

Why not use it and move your (Mac) swapfile to the ntfs volume? You can reclaim some of that space you're dedicating to Windows.

Keep up the good work!

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If you're on the techy side and looking for a cheaper option, you can do what I did and dual-boot ubuntu on your macbook (pro).

Some things you should be aware of if you go down this path:

This is not for the faint of heart, command-line usage will be required as well as many hours of reading the forums and wiki.

Things like audio, wireless, etc do not work out of the box (the audio was a pain as the fix in the wiki does not work, but it is doable).

Also running CoH through Wine is doable, but currently has it's own set of issues as outlined here.

Now, you might be asking why, since there's a wine version for mac osx, don't we run it natively?

According to my research, there's currently an OpenGL linker error between Xcode and Darwine (the wine version for osx). While this may be fixed in the future, it's not an option currently.

discaimer: I have a pc that i normally play CoH on, only using the ubuntu option for when i'm away from home.

CuppaManga,
Thanks for the great information. Is there anything we need to know regarding the different keyboards?

There should be no keyboard issues, other than that the Command key on the Apple keyboard becomes the Windows key, and of course that laptop keyboard lack the numpad, home, scroll lock, etc. There are freeware keymappers for Windows if you really need one of those.

A quick side note: I'm now using the Nvidia 169.21 drivers from laptopvideo2go.com on my Macbook Pro with nVidia video. It works about as well as the Apple drivers, but there also aren't any issues.

Be careful when installing laptopvideo2go.com drivers, and make sure you're not on the bleeding edge, to make sure you get a decent working set.

Also keep in mind that if Apple releases new Boot Camp drivers you may have to uninstall the laptopvideo2go.com driver first to make sure it doesn't screw up the install.

I've also installed the updated Apple video drivers that FrankNospam had mentioned. During the install process it pretty much looked like I was updating using the regular nVidia drivers, so I am not sure how much customizing Apple actually did on those.

Anyway, they do work great and took me from I believe 101.xx (the Bootcamp 2.0 version) to 167.44.

So far this CoX on Mac has been a great experience.

I have a macbook pro with leopard on it and will also be getting an IMAC soon. Personally I love macs and don't want to go back to a full on windows computer just yet. So during my xmas break I tried your guide. I don't know if it was because I had leopard on the computer beforehand or what but when my mac would start up for windows it was a black screen and said something like error and i wasn't able to get to the actual opening screen for windows. I used windows xp and i partitioned to give it 20 GB on my macbook, can you tell me what I did wrong because I want to try it again myself without having to take it somewhere and have someone do it for me. If I didn't give enough information about the problem let me know.

Hey Solar,

I can't tell you what might have gone wrong, but I did have Leopard installed on my MacBook Pro before I set up Bootcamp/COH, so that should not be an issue. Actually Boot Camp now is officially only supported under Leopard anyway.

Solar, it sounds like the Windows install went wrong (it sometimes does that and then reboots pretending everything is fine). Try to install it again either by starting Boot Camp with the Windows Install CD in the drive, or by running Boot Camp Assistant and telling it to start the installer.