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l008com · 05:11 PM

This isn't a question, I'm just sharing with the world how I game. For years, I've basically only played Vice City and San Andreas. Almost never play any of my other PS2 games. So I've now officially retired my PS2 and play those games on my MacBook Pro. It's a current gen MacBook, complete with audio over miniDP port. It's got a 500 GB 7200RPM hard drive, with about a 35 GB or so windows partition. I installed windows 7, the two games, all the updates, patches etc. It's a pain in the ass finding updates for apps on windows. You can't just do the logical thing and go to the manufacture's website and download updates. Thats too easy. But anyway. I got a cheap USB to PS2 adapter, which was hard to find because you always end up getting search results for USB to PS2 keyboard adapters, not the playstation controllers. So at night when I want to play, I reboot into windows, plug in the power, miniDP, and usb. I have it configured so it only uses the external video, and the laptop's own monitor isn't powered up or used. I play vice city at full quality, full draw distance and 1080p resolution. You can even turn the frame limiter off and it looks even more amazing, but the gameplay gets all broken when you do that. With San Andreas, basically the same thing, but at 720p resolution. SA has more graphical options so sometimes I switch them around. It doesn't handle 1080p super well. It is a 13" macbook pro, so it only has the 320m graphics. And my TV is only 720p so it still looks well. If you're wondering, I play vice city at 1080p because the downsampling makes the image look even better (than direct 720p, not better than true 1080p) and has a more anti-aliased look. When you get in a helicopter at your/diaz's mansion and start flying over starfish island, it really is breathtaking! Compared to vice city on PS2, its totally amazing. It could be even better, like if you could turn off the frame limiter without breaking the game. On PS2, San Andreas has noticeably better graphics than Vice City. But on the PC, they're really very close. SA is still better but VC its pretty damn good. SA looks pretty amazing too when you bump up the quality to very high, and the draw distance to maximum. It's still a bit much for the integrated graphics but if you bump it down a notch or two, it's fully playable. As far a gameplay, there is an issue where the D button keys seem to be hard coded to arrow keys, so when you're using the analog to steer, you can't change the station in SA. You also can't easily zoom in either game's sniper riffles. The analogs do work for steering, but the buttons are not pressure sensitive. And there is no rumble. And since switching to fully digital audio, the music is surpassingly better sounding. On my 9400m MBP, I was using analog audio and it sounded ok, I didn't know what I was missing. But it's great, and so portable. Last winter, I brought it with me on the plane, and played San Andreas while I flew to florida (usb/controller, on the build in display). Then when I got there, I just plugged my mac into my cousin's big tv and we played on his TV. There were tons of windowsey bugs getting it all working but now that it IS working, it totally kicks ass.

There, now this post isn't all one paragraph

l008com · Oct 1, 2010, 10:13 PM

Hey what happened to the title of this thread? It was "GTA" when I posed it

Cold Warrior · Oct 1, 2010, 10:24 PM

The boards reduce all capital letters to sentence case if all the words in a post or title are caps.

l008com · Oct 1, 2010, 10:25 PM

Lame. Well, lame in this case.

l008com · Oct 3, 2010, 03:00 AM

OK can someone with the power, change the name of this topic to "Grand Theft Auto" then at least?

subego · Oct 3, 2010, 06:36 AM

I've sorta got things flipped. I've got a Mini hooked up to the TV and have been doing some PC gaming from the couch with the Magic Trackpad.

What made me think about it was how I've also got the graphics situation flipped too. I'm playing Baldur's Gate, which is only 640x480, and I have it upscaled to 1080p. It's surprisingly workable with my combo of TV size and viewing distance. The game has some sterling sound design too, so it's nice to hear that on real speakers. Sadly, the (excellent) music is glitchy under Wine.

After I got it to work, I picked up Planescape: Torment. I'm really excited, since it never made it to the Mac, I just assumed I'd never get a chance to play it.

-Q- · Oct 4, 2010, 05:11 PM

Originally Posted by l008com

OK can someone with the power, change the name of this topic to "Grand Theft Auto" then at least?

Done.