Mac Client Issue 17 Notice

After some investigation, I've come to the following conclusion:

- If you're using one of the most recently released Macs, the current Live client should work fine.

- If you're using a Mac with an ATI 1600, nVidia 9400, nVidia 9600, or Intel GMA 1300 or 950 video TURN OFF Shadow Maps and Environmental Reflections until the next server publish.

- Those two features, with the current Live build of the Mac client, can cause graphics to become irrecoverably corrupted, and can cause the Mac client to start up with a black screen and remain that way.

- The current Training Room build of the Mac client does not exhibit those behaviors - hopefully it will publish to Live soon.

I did turn off those things and I *still* get a black screen on startup

Which MacOS version are you using? I'm not sure how much variance there is yet, but from what I've been reading there's a possibility the black screen is more common with Leopard than Snow Leopard.

You might have to turn those options off and THEN reboot. The graphics corruption issue can be caused by those options, but it can also occur randomly too.

A secondary cause is if the game crashed once, wineserver may still be running. Launch Activity Monitor (in Applications > Utilities) and sort the list alphabetically by Process Name. If you see "wineserver" listed, click it and use the Quit Process button in the toolbar, then select Force Quit.

I tested this issue on an nvidia 9400 and an nvidia 9600 (with Snow Leopard 10.6.3), and on both the black screen did occur once - a reboot fixed it. The issue seems to persist because it gets the video processor stuck in a state that it can't recover from without a reboot.

I've been working on something that might fix things temporarily, but only for the bravest and most careful of Mac users - it involves messing with things a bit. Unfortunately because of that fact I can't post any details of it without permission. I can't even *use* it myself without permission.

Most likely (hopefully) the fix is a waste of time, since the newer Mac client may publish as early as Monday or Tuesday. If it can't, for some reason, I'll see if the devs will allow me to post the temporary fix with lots of warnings plastered all over it.

I can confirm iMac i5 processor fully updated is running with no troubles.
Env reflect is on I may have shadow off I don't remember it's been over 12 hours since I logged into the game.

I am running 10.6.3 on a 2.4Ghz macbook (black) usually through a 19inch monitor. GMA X3100 graphics with maxed ram.
CoH has crashed my computer twice today. Not just the program, the whole computer just shut down without warning after about 5 minutes of gameplay. I had Enhanced GFX turned off - actually I had it set to minimal graphics as I always play. I have been working all day on the same set up (external monitor) and no issues with other programs.
Did i17 kill the GMA X3100 graphics set for macs?

Try running it in windowed mode and see what happens (if you aren't already).

Windowed mode? That seems like something I should know. Could not find it within the "options" menu. Little help?
Thanks for the reply, btw.

Cmd-Return switches to windowed mode and back.