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mcs37 · Mar 26, 2003, 04:54 PM

Can someone take screenshots of Warcraft 3 on the 17" alubook? I want to see

a) how beautiful it looks
b) how blizzard handles the 17" widescreen look -- does it give more battlefield look or does it make a square?

Please post here! How are the framerates and overall play with the 1 GHz G4 17" powerbook with 1 MB L3 cache?

Mike

gururafiki · Mar 26, 2003, 04:59 PM

b) how blizzard handles the 17" widescreen look -- does it give more battlefield look or does it make a square?

Good question, I was wondering the same thing. And what about Civ3, can you see more of that map also?

badnewsblair · Mar 26, 2003, 05:05 PM

Originally posted by mcs37:
Can someone take screenshots of Warcraft 3 on the 17" alubook? I want to see

a) how beautiful it looks
b) how blizzard handles the 17" widescreen look -- does it give more battlefield look or does it make a square?

Please post here! How are the framerates and overall play with the 1 GHz G4 17" powerbook with 1 MB L3 cache?

Mike

Darnit! All of you are asking my questions before I remember to post them! Arg!

I believe that Warcraft III version 1.5 (the most recent) adds full widescreen report. Before it was just black borders on the sides. I am not sure if the 17-inch is fully supported given the increased resolution (though I think it shoudl be, Blizzard is very Madc friendly). I've seen it played on the GigaTiBook and it was beautiful! And so smooth! I wanted to know because I play as well and haven't gotten my 17 yet. We shall see.

BattleNet alias: TheCursded in the East Server... look me up sometime!

PS- By the way, my other question was about sleep and turning off. how does leaving the computer on and sleeping it affect its life as apposed to turning it off completely. Which is better for you computer?

tanhauser · Mar 26, 2003, 05:08 PM

Originally posted by badnewsblair:
PS- By the way, my other question was about sleep and turning off. how does leaving the computer on and sleeping it affect its life as apposed to turning it off completely. Which is better for you computer?

I can speak from experience that on Macs, it is absolutely OK to leave them on all the time and put them to sleep whenever not in use. It is actually suggested to do that instead of constantly turning it on and off all the time. In other words, Macs are designed to work great leaving them on and putting them to sleep.

F

mcs37 · Mar 26, 2003, 05:13 PM

Originally posted by badnewsblair:
I believe that Warcraft III version 1.5 (the most recent) adds full widescreen report. Before it was just black borders on the sides. I am not sure if the 17-inch is fully supported given the increased resolution (though I think it shoudl be, Blizzard is very Madc friendly). I've seen it played on the GigaTiBook and it was beautiful! And so smooth! I wanted to know because I play as well and haven't gotten my 17 yet. We shall see.

Find out find out!!! I must know this. Someone take pics now!

BattleNet alias: TheCursded in the East Server... look me up sometime!

My alias is Shafe. I used to run a web site called Shafe's Starcraft Source (www.shafe.com). Perhaps with my powerbook some day I will return with a new set of Blizzard pages. Right now my 850 MHz box makes war3 hard to play smoothly sometimes.

PS- By the way, my other question was about sleep and turning off. how does leaving the computer on and sleeping it affect its life as apposed to turning it off completely. Which is better for you computer?

As I see it, with OS X sleeping keeps the RAM chips active and shuts down essentially everything else--this is why sleep will drain your battery after, say, 8 hours on a full charge. Powering down is probably worse for the machine though, since powering down machines is always bad for them. I leave my desktops on as much as I can! But of course with the Windows machines that means a day or two between reboots.

Mike

tanhauser · Mar 26, 2003, 05:18 PM

Originally posted by mcs37:
As I see it, with OS X sleeping keeps the RAM chips active and shuts down essentially everything else--this is why sleep will drain your battery after, say, 8 hours on a full charge. Powering down is probably worse for the machine though, since powering down machines is always bad for them. I leave my desktops on as much as I can! But of course with the Windows machines that means a day or two between reboots.

Mike

No, no. no... when on Sleep mode, OS X powers down essentially everything but the ROM memory (NOT the RAM), which is why waking up from sleep is so fast. This means that you can put your PB to sleep and the battery WILL NOT be drained after 8-9 hours. In fact the PB can remain asleep with the battery for over a day... I've tested this.

So it's entirely ok to leave it asleep...

Edit:

Here's the info from Apple's PB17 Tech Note:

Power Managment

The power management protocols on the PowerBook G4 17-inch computer support two power-saving modes: idle and sleep.

Idle: The system is idling with the main processor stopped in a halted, low-power state. All clocks are running; the system can return to running code within a few nanoseconds. Cache coherency is maintained in this state.

Sleep: The system is completely shut down, with only the DRAM state preserved for quick recovery. All processors are powered off with their state preserved in DRAM. All clocks in the system are suspended except for the 32.768 kHz timebase crystal on the PMU99 IC.

The computer automatically enters idle mode after several seconds of inactivity. If the computer is attached to a network, it is able to respond to service requests and other events directed to the computer while it is in idle mode.

While it is connected to an AC power supply, the computer can also respond to network activity when it is in sleep mode. The user can enable this feature by selecting Wake-on-LAN in the Energy Saver panel of System Preferences.

When operating on the battery in sleep mode, the computer consumes less than 1 watt of power, meeting the Energy Star power-saving standard. When operating on the power adapter in sleep mode, the combined computer and adapter consume 3 to 4 watts of power.

F

Buzzfish · Mar 26, 2003, 05:24 PM

The demo looks great on my 17, takes up the whole screen. I'm still waiting to get the fuller version from my buddy but i can tell you that You will be impressed.

sorry, no camera so no pics.

baglunch · Mar 26, 2003, 05:34 PM

Originally posted by Buzzfish:
The demo looks great on my 17, takes up the whole screen. I'm still waiting to get the fuller version from my buddy but i can tell you that You will be impressed.

sorry, no camera so no pics.

Full screen, and beautiful. I jacked up all the various video settings (res, lighting, etc etc etc..) and it still ran without a hitch through the single player sims. I'll post screen captures later tonight when i get home.

mcs37 · Mar 26, 2003, 07:01 PM

Originally posted by baglunch:
Full screen, and beautiful. I jacked up all the various video settings (res, lighting, etc etc etc..) and it still ran without a hitch through the single player sims. I'll post screen captures later tonight when i get home.

Good good please hurry up with those pics! Thanks a lot I can't wait to see them.

Mike

mcs37 · Mar 26, 2003, 07:02 PM

Originally posted by tanhauser:
No, no. no... when on Sleep mode, OS X powers down essentially everything but the ROM memory (NOT the RAM), which is why waking up from sleep is so fast. This means that you can put your PB to sleep and the battery WILL NOT be drained after 8-9 hours. In fact the PB can remain asleep with the battery for over a day... I've tested this.F

Thank you for the information. My sources were erroneous. I didn't want to believe that the 17 PB could only remain in sleep for 12 hours before draining the battery. Is it true that the iBook can remain in sleep for months and still return instantly?

Mike

JohnM15141 · Mar 26, 2003, 08:17 PM

Originally posted by gururafiki:
Good question, I was wondering the same thing. And what about Civ3, can you see more of that map also?

I'm running Civ3 on my 17 inch PB. It scales out to 1440X900 resolution and looks great! You have a bigger playing field and it plays faster too!

mcs37 · Mar 26, 2003, 08:51 PM

Originally posted by Buzzfish:
The demo looks great on my 17, takes up the whole screen. I'm still waiting to get the fuller version from my buddy but i can tell you that You will be impressed.

sorry, no camera so no pics.

Wait, I thought you can take pics just by hitting PrintScreen? I remember in Starcraft you could do that and it would notify you (Screenshot captured to 00001.JPG at the top of the screen). Can't you do that in War3 to grab shots on the 17"?

Please?

Mike

MaxPower2k3 · Mar 26, 2003, 09:37 PM

Originally posted by mcs37:
Thank you for the information. My sources were erroneous. I didn't want to believe that the 17 PB could only remain in sleep for 12 hours before draining the battery. Is it true that the iBook can remain in sleep for months and still return instantly?

Mike

i doubt its months. my powerbook 12" uses about 1% of the battery per hour in sleep mode (put it to sleep and woke it up ~16 hours later and i think 18% of the battery was gone)

Buzzfish · Mar 27, 2003, 10:04 AM

Originally posted by mcs37:
Wait, I thought you can take pics just by hitting PrintScreen? I remember in Starcraft you could do that and it would notify you (Screenshot captured to 00001.JPG at the top of the screen). Can't you do that in War3 to grab shots on the 17"?

Please?

Mike

hmm, I tried to use grab and get a shot but the picture came out all nasty and scrambled. Works fine on desktop shots but not warcraft 3. Is ther another way i can grab a screen?

(i guess you could call me a "switcher" BTW, the last mac i really got into was my father's original mac 512K)

mcs37 · Mar 27, 2003, 11:42 AM

Originally posted by Buzzfish:
hmm, I tried to use grab and get a shot but the picture came out all nasty and scrambled. Works fine on desktop shots but not warcraft 3. Is ther another way i can grab a screen?

I am unfamiliar with the Mac keyboard, but is there a PrintScreen key? That's how you take shots with War3 on Windows.

Mike

Buzzfish · Mar 27, 2003, 11:47 AM

nah they're isn't a printscreen key, anyone else know?

waxcrash · Mar 27, 2003, 12:03 PM

Originally posted by Buzzfish:
hmm, I tried to use grab and get a shot but the picture came out all nasty and scrambled. Works fine on desktop shots but not warcraft 3. Is ther another way i can grab a screen?

Try SnapzProX from Ambrosia Software.This program is the best for taking screen captures.

mcs37 · Mar 27, 2003, 02:30 PM

Originally posted by waxcrash:
Try SnapzProX from Ambrosia Software.This program is the best for taking screen captures.

Will someone please use this and take some screenshots of War3 on the 17" PB???

Mike

elmer · Mar 27, 2003, 02:46 PM

Originally posted by tanhauser:
No, no. no... when on Sleep mode, OS X powers down essentially everything but the ROM memory (NOT the RAM), ...

Sleep: The system is completely shut down, with only the DRAM state preserved for quick recovery. All processors are powered off with their state preserved in DRAM. All clocks in the system are suspended except for the 32.768 kHz timebase crystal on the PMU99 IC.

Uhh... looks like you're contradicting yourself here. I don't think ROM == DRAM.

There's no way you can save the processor's state in a Read-Only-Memory. If anything, a ROM would be the first thing I would turn off, as it is obviously going to be persistent.

A DRAM, such as DDR SDRAM, needs to be powered to keep it's state. Unless they were caching everything in RAM to the hard drive (which they are not - that takes time) they must keep this powered/refreshed.

Buzzfish · Mar 27, 2003, 03:10 PM

Tried SnapzPro and it locked the machine up when i tried to take to bring it up while playing warcraft, twice. Its the only time the machine has locke dup since i got it so i'm going to not try it anymore.

Sorry man, looks like you'll have to wait to get yours. It's worth it

mcs37 · Mar 27, 2003, 03:35 PM

Originally posted by Buzzfish:
Tried SnapzPro and it locked the machine up when i tried to take to bring it up while playing warcraft, twice. Its the only time the machine has locke dup since i got it so i'm going to not try it anymore.

Dammit! I refuse to believe that Blizzard included screenshot capabilities in Starcraft but not Warcraft 3. I will get to the bottom of this.... to be continued.

I will contact Blizzard and get word for you all. I can't wait because I will not be getting my PB for at least a month!

Mike

baglunch · Mar 27, 2003, 04:38 PM

I tried to get snap shot of the warcraft screen, but there's some lines and artifacts that pop up in the snapshot image that aren't seen in game play. I used [apple]+[shift]+3, [apple]+[shift]+4 takes a snapshot of a selected window.

jia_zhuang · Mar 27, 2003, 04:40 PM

actually the system switchs everything off and only keeps the RAM in a power saving mode by passing a very low voltage/current through it to preserve all information on the RAM when it awakes from sleep mode, the system switches back to full power and the ram is used at full speed. So sleep = everything apart from the RAM been powered by a low voltage/current. How is the game play of warcraft? I want to get that game, what are the graphics like. I'm waiting for my 17" too, should be here by the end of next week.

baglunch · Mar 27, 2003, 04:50 PM

If you're into warcraft-like games, then this one is a must have. Game play is good, no delays or on default settings with max (1440x900/32) resolution.

mcs37 · Mar 27, 2003, 04:54 PM

Originally posted by baglunch:
If you're into warcraft-like games, then this one is a must have. Game play is good, no delays or on default settings with max (1440x900/32) resolution.

But what does it look like with that resolution? I must see screenshots.

Mike

baglunch · Mar 27, 2003, 04:57 PM

But like I said, the screen shots have pixelation running through the center, if you don't mind that, i'll post the screen shots i have so far.

mcs37 · Mar 27, 2003, 04:59 PM

Originally posted by baglunch:
But like I said, the screen shots have pixelation running through the center, if you don't mind that, i'll post the screen shots i have so far.

Sure, that's good enough to start. Someone on this forum or MacRumors was posting images from Quake 3 I think....it had the same pixelation through the center. God knows why that's there! It's even weirder that Bliz didn't put built-in screen capture like they did with Starcraft.

Mike

Xtraz · Mar 27, 2003, 05:44 PM

Here's a fun video for you guys for comparison... this is War3 in a 6-player game on my Ti/500...

Movie 1 Movie 2

phobos · Mar 27, 2003, 05:59 PM

Hello to all of you.
I used to play warcraft 3 some months back on my Ti DVI 667MHz with 512MB of ram. It uses the resolutions the system allows so you will have no problem playing it at 1440X900. I had all the textures and lighting at full detail and on the largest resolution and at 32 bit it slowed only when the screen was extremely crowded like 60 or something sprites. So I guess that on the 1GHz Ti will run extremely well. don't forget that this powerbook has double the graphics memory I have on my machine.

baglunch · Mar 27, 2003, 06:00 PM

damn, crazy teleportations happening there.

sonoronos · Mar 27, 2003, 09:39 PM

XTraz,

Dang, you must be patient to play War3 with that kind of processing latency...

Just watching your videos made me want to go into a bloody rage.

mcs37 · Mar 27, 2003, 10:30 PM

Originally posted by Xtraz:
Here's a fun video for you guys for comparison... this is War3 in a 6-player game on my Ti/500...

That was painfully slow! How can you play a game that slow? Luckily an extra 500 MHz and double the video RAM might help in the 17" model.

Mike

mcs37 · Mar 29, 2003, 10:44 AM

OK everyone I got word back from blizzard. This is how you take screenshots in Warcraft 3 on Mac OS X:

The Finder Screen shot option works in all the versions of the Mac OS our games support, including the versions of Mac OS X our games support. To take a screen shot, hold down the Command Shift and 3 keys on the keyboard until you hear the shutter click sound. The screen shot file will appear on the Desktop.

To view a screen shot in Mac OS 9.x, use the SimpleText application. To view a screen shot in Mac OS X, use the Preview application.

Someone take screenshots of War3 on the 17" PB now!

Cheers,

Mike

baglunch · Mar 29, 2003, 11:26 AM

everyone knows how to take a screen shot, the problem was taking one without artifacting through the center of the screen. But here it is anyway.

mcs37 · 05:25 PM

Originally posted by baglunch:
everyone knows how to take a screen shot, the problem was taking one without artifacting through the center of the screen. But here it is anyway.

Ah... I figured it was just some glitch in whatever program you all were using. It doesn't really make sense why Blizzard's built-in feature wouldn't work.

Edit: Damn, except for the pixel problem along the horizontal, it looks great! It would be sweet to have that much real estate.

Mike

ghost_flash · Mar 29, 2003, 05:14 PM

I'm no gamer but can you still use the

Command + Shift + 4 key? then release the shift so you can just crop any size? and then release both the Command and 4 key to take the picture.

Here, I'll do it in this message.... click*

Oh, it's not letting me post an image.

hmm.

-ghost

waxcrash · Mar 29, 2003, 10:08 PM

To take a screen capture in Warcraft III you hit the F13 key. Warcraft III saves the screen capture as a tga file in the Application/Warcraft III Folder/Screenshots folder. This is Warcraft III on a 22" Cinema Display.

mcs37 · Mar 30, 2003, 09:42 PM

Originally posted by waxcrash:
To take a screen capture in Warcraft III you hit the F13 key. Warcraft III saves the screen capture as a tga file in the Application/Warcraft III Folder/Screenshots folder. This is Warcraft III on a 22" Cinema Display.

Good shot! Thank you!

Mike

parsec_kadets · Mar 31, 2003, 01:51 PM

Originally posted by waxcrash:
To take a screen capture in Warcraft III you hit the F13 key. Warcraft III saves the screen capture as a tga file in the Application/Warcraft III Folder/Screenshots folder. This is Warcraft III on a 22" Cinema Display.

One problem. I don't think the 17" has an F13 key. I don't have one myself, but the specs say it only has 12 function keys.

Buzzfish · Mar 31, 2003, 05:33 PM

you're right, not f13 key on the 17".

darn! almost thought we had it.