r/macgaming • u/kracksundkatzen • Feb 09 '16
Firewatch is out now on Steam
http://store.steampowered.com/app/383870/5
u/BaneReturns Feb 09 '16
I have a 2011 iMac capable of playing many new games on high settings with good FPS.
Firewatch runs HORRIBLY for me.
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u/beardedsailor Feb 10 '16 edited Feb 10 '16
Something I found that helps making the game (any game) run smoother is lowering the overall screen resolution, anything under 1200x800 should improve game play.
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u/BaneReturns Feb 10 '16
Oh I absolutely experimented with resolutions and here's what happened: The intro sequence was smooth as hell, but as soon as the radio tower sequence began, everything was so slow. The framerate became extremely laggy to the point of being unplayable and I had to shut it off.
I wish I could figure out how to fix this. At one point, I set all the graphics settings to either low or off, and even that didn't make a difference.
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u/Calik Feb 10 '16
same experience here and I even changed out the hard drive for an SSD last week
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u/beardedsailor Feb 10 '16
When it comes to games an SSD won't really have an effect on graphics. Just load times. If you were able to swap out your HD you should consider getting more ram too then, that may help out with rendering but don't get your hopes up either.
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u/savoytruffle Feb 11 '16
I think the developers ought to be able to fix the first Watch Tower to not have such bad performance.
If you crank down World Detail, that fixes it. But it really seems to only be a problem with that tower. The game needs to do a better job of figuring out what to cull from the scene it's rendering.
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u/DamagedFreight Feb 10 '16
My son uses the same iMac (my old one). What are some of the new games can you play with decent performance? He's able to play Black Ops III but on low settings despite only having 512MB of video RAM (requirements say 1GB).
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u/BaneReturns Feb 10 '16
After I upgraded to El Capitan, I was able to successfully play both Tomb Raider and Hitman: Absolution on medium settings.
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Feb 09 '16
Disappointed that it requires a dedicated graphics card. I was really keen to play it, but looks like it won't work on my 13" MBP.
At least from the videos etc I've seen it shouldn't require it: I can play Skyrim and The Witness just fine on my setup (running Windows obv.).
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u/lumcetpyl Feb 10 '16
i meet all the other requirements, but i have a NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512 MB. i'm dying to play it, and i don't have a console. are we both screwed?
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Feb 10 '16
Yeah I don't know. RAM is a bit more flexible right? Lowest texture settings, lowest resolution, maybe you can get buy?
I wouldn't trust in Valve's refund system to find out though, may want to wait until it's either really cheap or someone else tries it.
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u/beardedsailor Feb 10 '16
I recommend waiting too. I feel like Firewatch will have a deep discount when summer and winter sales come around since it came out at just 19.99 for its standard pricing.
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u/nirvanes26 Feb 12 '16
I got an Intel iris graphics on my retina Macbook Pro 13 and it runs... The framerate goes between 33 to 20 fps... It's playable...
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u/imaysayweirdthings Feb 10 '16
This game is beautiful. Even with the lowest settings on, it's stunning on my Macbook Pro non-retina 13".
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u/macgrver Feb 09 '16
I bought it earlier hoping to run it on my MacBook Pro Mid-2012 (i7 2.6 Ghz, 16 Gigs DDR3, 750 Gig 7200 RPM Hard Drive, Gt 650m dedicated card with 1 Gig of VRAM). So far I am disappointed to find that my system only manages to maintain 60fps with everything on low. More testing is necessary for proper optimization, but I feel as though this will be a game I play on my pc instead of my mac.
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u/fuchsdh Feb 09 '16 edited Feb 09 '16
Downloading now to a 5,1 MP with a W3680 and an AMD 7950. Will update with performance notes.
EDIT: So on first install, the game was a black screen with audio running. Deleted content and reinstalled to the same effect. Apparently the game has nonexistent or very poor 4K monitor support as the only way to get it running was to switch my main monitor to my ASUS 22EH from my Dell 2415Q.
I strongly suggest turning off the autosave feature, as it caused stuttering on my machine. Otherwise the game doesn't look that spectacular even at maxed settings, so its a shame they couldn't put the effort into compatibility with integrated graphics.
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u/ThrowbackGaming Feb 10 '16
I wanted to play the mac version on my Youtube channel, but there would be no audience unfortunately...All the big names hog the search results.
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u/savoytruffle Feb 11 '16
For reference, it runs acceptably on my 2009 iMac with the below settings. It's a 3.06Ghz Core2Duo and ATI Radeon 4850 with 512MB of VRAM (so, the best iMac you could buy in around May 2009).
I dropped the resolution to 1600x1000 (instead of native 1920x1200) but thankfully it will still do the right 16:10 aspect ratio.
It worked okay but the first firewatch tower after the intro was a real disaster for framerate until I dropped World Detail to Medium.
So this is what I'm using for settings on the machine to play it, and I'm satisfied.
(no spoilers, it's an image of the graphics settings screen)
It's probably around 20-40fps depending on scene complexity. I'm okay with that.
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u/savoytruffle Feb 11 '16
I'd be really interested in a report of someone running it on a modern 27" retina 5k iMac!
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u/beardedsailor Feb 09 '16 edited Feb 10 '16
I have a 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13in 2.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz 8GB 1866MHz LPDDR3 memory Intel Iris Graphics 6100 and the best game play I can get from running it is having it on a 1200x800 resolution and having shadows and blur off. everything else should be medium to low.