More Awesome Than You!

Yes, yes, I know search is my friend, but the pool is tainted because there are a ton of mac threads by morons like Boobzilla.

So, if I am succumbing to Pescado's nagging and putting the Pudding on my mac, tell me the 3 things I most need to know.

1. The biggest one is bypassing the launcher, which is not quite as straightforward as it is under Windows.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=16483.0

(Tweak the directions in that thread to reflect the game running from the latest EP or stuff pack, not the basegame executable.)

2. ???

3. PROFIT

(I dunno, I jumped ship to running this game under Windows after about a month of molasses slow horribleness, and I can't remember much about the Mac experience besides the launcher business.)

Yeah, I dumped the Pudding the first time because the second patch fucked the game completely. If'n I had the cash to buy a PC purely for playing games, I would do that.

I use Bootcamp on my Mac. It works flawlessly. Well, except that you're using Windows.

Having tried the game on both sides with boot camp, I've noticed that for whatever reason, the performance under Windows is better than on the Mac side even though all the hardware is the same. Also, CC hair is majorly fucked up on Macs and it doesn't look like it will be fixed anytime soon, so that's something to be aware of if you're a CC addict.

I SEE WUT YOU DID THAR.

Imagine I don't for whatever reasons, want to do the Bootcamp thing. Is there mac advice, apart from "don't bother"? Because, believe me, "don't bother" is pretty much my preferred position.

Aside from the launcher thing, be prepared for custom hair to not work most of the time. Other than that, it's pretty straightforward and uses the same files in the same places, except some of them are virtual file paths inside your .app.

I play pudding on my non-bootcamped mac book pro, and I manage all right, so unfortunately there are no excuses, rohina. As has already been mentioned, cc hair is fubarred, but meh, I dnw weird Peggy abominations wandering around anyway. Also, I've noticed some cc clothes don't seem to work properly either, but that might just be me. You will probably have to play around with the graphics settings a bit, and I've noticed that my sims can take eons just to walk across the sodding room, but again, that might not be a universal problem. I frequently raeg at the stupid tossers, standing there for years in between actions, as if they are marking each of my directions with a reverent two minute silence. Sweet of them if so, but really, hurry the fuck up. However, despite all this, I refuse to listen to stupid jez and his 'macs aren't for gaming' crowing. I WILL PLAY GAMES ON MY EGG, AND I WILL ENJOY THEM GODDOMIT.

It's connected to the hair issue, I think. I used to have specific clothing and shoes that would go invisible at the same time my CC hair went bald.

1- Follow the instructions for putting in the mods folder and the framework and you'll be fine.
2- Place links to your download folder and packages folder in your finder window. That will save you a ton of time when updating mods.
3- Make sure you have your RAM fully upgraded and don't run any other programs while you run pudding.

I play on a MacBookPro like sooze and have no issues. I don't go for a lot of CC, just about 10 or so mods.

Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of my Sims sprinting across the screen like gazelles, eager to obey my every whim in my smooth-running TS3 on my gaming PC.

That happened to me, too, no matter what graphics settings I used. First time in Windows, none of that happened. At all. Actually thought it was behavior EA had coded into the game before that.

Still, it's a huge pita to switch back and forth between partitions just to play with puddings, and if I found out that the newer EPs were running better now on Macs, I might be tempted to switch back.

I'll have to second/third/fourth the advice to play under Windows/Bootcamp instead of OS X -- I've done both (on the same machine) and the difference is really like day and night. The rebooting is a hassle, but having a useable game makes up for it IMO. For me the lagging under OS X got worse and worse with every patch (1.2.7 still ran fine, 1.7.11 was terrible and 1.8.25 completely unplayable), so I doubt that this will ever change for the better.

Other than that, there's this thread (http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=366580) in OS X Halp at mts which outlines various ways to get various modding tools to run.

For doing anything on a Mac (or with a Mac keyboard) under Windows, I can also recommend getting something like SharpKeys (http://www.randyrants.com/sharpkeys/) and remapping cmd and crtl, so as to avoid your finger memory frying itself.

What you should also know: EA always only keep the current OS X patch online (unlike with the Windows ones), so you need to make a backup of the patch and/or your entire oldversioned game if you ever want to be able to roll back to an older version. Best if you do this immediately after patching, the patches are stored in a temproary directory and will be nuked by the OS after a while (there's a small how-to in OS X Halp at mts if you need instructions). Fortunately, it's very simple under OS X to run multiple versions of the game in parallel -- basically just duplicate the app before patching --; not everyone needs this but it can be useful for testing and stuff.

But, yeah .. the most important piece of advice re. playing under OS X is still: don't. EA clearly have no idea how to write stuff for OS X.

Oh, nice. That ctrl/cmd switcheroo has been driving me insane.

Another recommendation for those who do decide to go the boot camp route: using a program like BootChamp (http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/28468/bootchamp) gives you the option of restarting in Windows from the menu bar. You still have to restart the computer, but at least you're not mashing the damned option button every time.

I found a long list of instructions on the mts mac help forum for avoiding the bald hair, one of which (delete caches, start game, exit at main menu and restart without deleting caches again) seems to be working so far for me after 18 months of lovely no-baldness running without having to do anything. It was a bit frustrating when it turned up.