It seems to be somewhat common that people ask here on how to use MapleStory on their shiny new Macs so I thought I would shed a bit of light by making this guide. There may be some typos or slight errors, if you notice any, feel free to point them out and I'll get right on fixing them..
PS: While it's technically a Guide, and could find its way to the Guides and Tips section, it makes much more sense, and fits in Technical Support as this is where Mac support questions are asked.
yes, a very good guide indeed...hope it gets pinned
and I'm curious on how you do that (making the picture like that), do you use a program to do that?
if yes, could you please tell me if it is pretty easy or kind of advance
sorry, but I just have the intelligence 6 on a scale of 1 to 10 about computer technology...just the simple stuff...like know the neccessities to keep the computer in good condition, anything else is just googling
First, thanks everyone for the feedback so far.
darrick:yes, a very good guide indeed...hope it gets pinned and I'm curious on how you do that (making the picture like that), do you use a program to do that?if yes, could you please tell me if it is pretty easy or kind of advancesorry, but I just have the intelligence 6 on a scale of 1 to 10 about computer technology...just the simple stuff...like know the neccessities to keep the computer in good condition, anything else is just googling
For the screenshots of the actual application window, this comes as a part of the screenshot options on a mac. You can select to save your whole screen, a part of your screen, or isolate a window with a transparent outer area. For making the guide fit together in one place, I simply used Photoshop. Perhaps I should start using InDesign as it's more for layouts but, for now Photoshop works quite well. ;D
xgrantwallx: First, thanks everyone for the feedback so far. darrick: yes, a very good guide indeed...hope it gets pinned and I'm curious on how you do that (making the picture like that), do you use a program to do that? if yes, could you please tell me if it is pretty easy or kind of advance sorry, but I just have the intelligence 6 on a scale of 1 to 10 about computer technology...just the simple stuff...like know the neccessities to keep the computer in good condition, anything else is just googling For the screenshots of the actual application window, this comes as a part of the screenshot options on a mac. You can select to save your whole screen, a part of your screen, or isolate a window with a transparent outer area. For making the guide fit together in one place, I simply used Photoshop. Perhaps I should start using InDesign as it's more for layouts but, for now Photoshop works quite well. ;D
darrick: yes, a very good guide indeed...hope it gets pinned and I'm curious on how you do that (making the picture like that), do you use a program to do that? if yes, could you please tell me if it is pretty easy or kind of advance sorry, but I just have the intelligence 6 on a scale of 1 to 10 about computer technology...just the simple stuff...like know the neccessities to keep the computer in good condition, anything else is just googling
is it possible to do it on windows?
as for the making the guide fit together, do you photoshop the multiple pictures into just one?
Hmm, not sure about the screenshot isolation on Windows, there may be some program someone else has made to do this, but I haven't seen or heard of anything of the sort yet.
The one built in to Mac works because of the Core Animation in OS X, basically, animations are done in real time and windows count more as layers that can be screenshotted on their own.
In Photoshop, I basically bring each image into the project as a layer, and just work from there arranging and adding content as needed. Then I simply save the final project as a PNG and it becomes the one image you see above.
Grant you should also look into Sun's VirtualBox. It's basically a freeware/opensource version of VMware. I would probably recommend VMware more due to stability, but VirtualBox will run on just about every OS.
As grant said with Parallel operating systems (using a virtual machine or compatibility kit such as WINE) isn't always the best option as you will not get very good performance out of it. I am curious however regarding WiNE's offshoot of CrossOver which is more supportive of games as well as Cedega. I would probably be concerned with how Hackshield would operate under WINE, Cedege, and CrossOver (though Cedega has MapleStory listed but unconfirmed).
Sadly, MapleStory doesn't work with WINE (Mac edition) nor Crossover/Crossover Games, in both of them an error box pops up immediately with unreadable text except for one mention of a driver error.
What would be amazing, is if Cider/Cedega actually worked with Nexon and created an actual Mac Client of MapleStory. These are the people who adapt all of EA's games to be Mac compatible. Though the problem comes in cost, as their general business model is to take a portion of sales, which would make things weird in this micro-transaction based free game.
This is an excerpt from TransGaming's website about Cider:
"TransGaming's Cider™ Portability Engine is a proprietary technology that allows PC games to be enabled on Apple's Intel Macs without the traditionally expensive and arduous need to redevelop a game from the ground-up. Cider acts as a "wrapper" around the PC game dynamically translating PC API calls to the Mac OS X operating system. As such, games can be enabled with Cider in a matter of days to weeks as opposed to the typical man years that traditional development takes."
Sticky, please. XD
Very impressive.
Even a UNIX port (covering Linux and Mac) could be placed in a self-contained binary, or be a self-extracting/installing executable shell-script (similar to what is used to install Adobe Acrobat Reader). There would literally be no real changes needed other than API calls changed from DirectX to SDL/OpenGL, executables changed from .exe files to .bin, .sh, or other UNIX executable listings.
The UNIX port would not even have to require a license change or going open source.
I seriously wish I could get off Windows. Windows 7 is nice, but I still prefer UNIX based operating systems.
I know the feeling, it's kind of sad simply to have to switch over to Windows just for MapleStory. I'm able to play my Steam games using Crossover Games, so really, once/if MapleStory ever becomes a Unix application, I'll be able to finally ditch Windows. Only then will it truly be "A life without walls" ;D
But for now, BootCamp at least works pretty decently. Apparently with Snow Leopard, the Boot Camp 3.0 Software is out, which allows you to read your Mac Partition from Windows.
Excellent job Grant!
This is going to help a lot of Mac users around!
Again,
Excellent job Grant!!
Wow nice dude
