Now, I don't have a Mac, and my apologies if this is useless to you, but did you try this?
Oh good god Darwinia just crashes!
This is an odd bug at first look, you'll have this bug if when you start darwinia, the menu loads fine, but the levels die on you rather quickly (some people don't make it as far as the menu though).
The solution is simple.
Open your prefrences.txt file, and add this line:
Code:
RenderLandscapeMode = 1
The reason you are doing this is simple:
In Darwinia, there's three ways it renders the terrain. The setting of RenderLandscapeMode allows you to switch between the three. The outline of the effects is this:
* 0 - uses Vertex Arrays. This was found to be slightly faster on some ATi hardware, and thus should be considered when testing out which setting to use
* 1 - uses Display Lists. This setting emulates the way Darwinia rendered in 1.0
* 2 - uses Vertex Buffer Objects. This is the default setting that Darwinia uses in v1.2 onward.
Basically it appears that Intel cards (that are not Extreme Grahpics) have a problem with VBO's, which is the default mode in 1.2 onwards (thus including the steam version). Setting it to use 1 emulates the original behaviour, and setting it to 0 is an alternative mode using Vertex Arrays.
This can also apply to other cards than just Intel cards. Some laptop computers use ATi's IGP or S3, SiS, or other graphics cards which just can't cope with VBO's. If you have this card type, you'll want to fix it ASAP by using the above line Smile
I realize the trick is meant to fix a different problem, but it does change the way the landscape is rendered, and I thought it might be worth it for you to try.
:):)
