News Archive for Thursday May 13, 2010     Goto Current News Page

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Portal Update released, Civilization IV steamplay games now available
There's a new Portal update today:

"The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:
  • Fixed screen "fuzziness" caused by color correction operation
  • Fixed text not rendering in game if font Tahoma was disabled
  • Fixed startup video not playing fullscreen
  • Added optional -snd_openal command line parameter to force the engine to use the OpenAL api, can be used if Portal is playing no audio when launched normally
  • Added mac_fsbackground convar, on Snow Leopard or better you can set this to have Portal still visible when it is not the foreground application"
  • Valve also announced the Mac Civilization IV steamplay versions are available now:

    "Previous PC Owners of Civilization IV Games on Steam Get Mac Version
    Yesterday when we shipped Steam on the Mac, previous owners of the PC Steam version of Sid Meier's Civilization IV, Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword, Civilization IV: Warlords, Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization, or Sid Meier's Civilization IV: The Complete Edition did not have access to their games when logging in on a Mac.

    But as of now, upon logging into Steam, those owners will have access to the Mac version of their games, right in their Steam library."

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    Mac Steam Client and Team Fortress 2 Update
    Launching Steam this afternoon in OS X shows another update. (I'd updated it yesterday evening and saw another update today.) And there's also a Team Fortress 2 update (for Windows and Mac). Here's a steam news post on the Team Fortress 2 update.
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    Mac Steam related Articles/Reviews/Notes/Game Watchlists
    FYI on some web articles on Steam/Games for OS X.

    I added note to yesterday's post about Steam not working with "Case Sensitive" OS X disk format, although I (nor most OS X users I suspect) have never used that format option personally. And one mac owner at MU noted problems due to some (duplicate?) fonts installed by an older version of MS Office (requiring deleting the duplicate fonts). Of course like any software (especially v1.0) some have had other problems.
    And saw several posts from users upset over problems such as "steam servers too busy" to allow playing a game. (Something I've seen dozens of times in the past - and with a big increase in downloads recently (from Macs as well as the free Portal offer for both platforms), that's not surprising.)
    I've not tried offline mode yet on the Mac, but for single-player steam games you can restart Steam in offline mode to play, although in my experience you also need to disconnect from the internet as well. Otherwise I'd see steam games quit with "no steam logon" errors if a net connection was still enabled. (And personally I've always unchecked the option to load Steam at startup in either OS.)

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    Apple's MobileMe Mail Beta and related FAQ/Known Issues
    Apple's posted a page on The Next MobileMe Mail. Now in Beta.. Here's two related support docs:

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    Apple/products related News/Articles/Reviews

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    Software/App/Utility/Game Updates, Freebies and related articles
    (later added first)

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    Apple Support/How-To/Troubleshooting Doc updates

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    Other News/Articles/Reviews

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    Recent Articles and Reviews
    Listing/links to recent articles and reviews you may have missed.
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