Questions for Crossover users

I'm becoming increasingly disenfranchised with running XP on my Mac. Assorted random issues keep cropping up that are related to drivers and other software, but the only reason I've been keeping XP is for playing games. Now, though, most anything I do play is either done on my desktop computer or through Steam. That's why I would like to know more about Crossover.

Before anyone suggests Parallels or Fusion, I've tried both. Parallels was buggy and horribly unstable. I like Fusion a lot, but playing games with it is a dicey proposition at best, especially since you can't use shaders at all.

I've been reading about Crossover, and it seems like you can at least play Half-Life 2 in DirectX 8 mode with a modern MBP. Can anyone here confirm this? Also, what about other games that run via Steam, such as the original Half-Life, Max Payne, and/or Unreal Gold?

I'm hoping someone here can help before I invest time in fiddling around with any actual software installation. If those games do work, Crossover may be the way to go. As a bonus, I could use my old copy of Office 2003 for any document editing.

Any help is appreciated.

 

i run steam at native resolution with high settings fine with crossover on my macbook pro.

 

Good to know, thanks.

I also saw that the same folks who make Crossover have a dedicated gaming version that's $20 cheaper.

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxgames/

I think I may give this a shot instead. I'd rather run games than any office software, as NeoOffice for OS X is working just fine as an MS replacement.

 

Been playing for the last couple hours with Crossover Games. The program crashed once during the Steam install process, but a restart of the application fixed it, and it's been stable ever since. I was able to install HL2, its episodes, and Portal from my Orange Box retail CD. I tried Portal, and it does work, albeit with a few minor graphical glitches. Performance is pretty decent, too.

Half-Life 1 installed via Steam works perfectly. Unreal Gold was a little tricky. Trying to play in D3D mode resulted in audio but no video. Software and Glide modes did work, but with very slow framerates. I downloaded a 3rd-party OpenGL renderer from www.oldunreal.com (version 2.1.0.6) and was able to copy the files into the simulated c:\program files\steam directory created by Crossover. Now UG runs very well, over 100 fps according to the in-game counter.

I'm going to play around with it some more, but I think I might end up buying this software and ditching Windows on this laptop once and for all.