Can hear but not see game

[barrycaro33]

So this is weird... got a new laptop (Macbook Air with M1 running Big Sur), installed the game and tried to launch it. I can hear the audio playing in the background, but the game itself does not appear on screen. Any suggestions?

[Deviswo]

Is it available for Mac? When I check It says windows only, so how were you able to download it on Mac through Steam?

[Vonryan425]

I think that it's because the latest apple update (Big Sur) dropped support for 32 bit applications which Rome 2 is because I also have this problem. you can hear the title screen but not see any of its functions

[jim]

You can run the Windows version of Rome 2 on Mac OS using Porting Kit. It's free at portingkit.com. Download and start Porting Kit and Install the "Steambuild 64bit/D3d11" port; it gives you the Windows version of Steam on your Mac. After installing, run Steambuild, and install the Windows version of Rome 2. Run Rome 2, but immediately go into the Advanced Graphics settings and choose "Shader Model 3" and keep anti-aliasing off. (On my iMac, those two settings seem to be critical; the frame rate will plummet otherwise.) Install mods, whatever. Enjoy.

[TheOrangeBox]

Originally posted by Devan01:

Is it available for Mac? When I check It says windows only, so how were you able to download it on Mac through Steam?

You can still install Rome 2 on an OSX 32BIT version to run on Mojave or early systems.
Though the mac version will not include Rise of the republic, Empire Divided and Desert Kingdom DLC.

Some users reported that they were able to run the game using Patch 16 with the 64BIT OSX (not sure how reliable its is).

[spotnik63]

Apple actually dropped support for 32 bit with Catalina. However, a version of Rome II was released to run on Catalina, which I did just fine until I received my new M1 iMac 24" last week. the Mac version no longer runs, but whether this is due to Big Sur or the silicon processor doesn't seem to be clear. The Mac version of Rome II doesn't even give me a splash, just audio. I did install the porting kit and installed the windows version--that got me farther along, but now it crashes when I try to run the Prologue. Up to that point it seems normal. I have not experimented with Win10 on Parallels yet, but since that's only a beta copy of the ARM version of Win10 it doesn't seem to want to run any Steam games. At least I haven't found one that runs yet.

I would be happy if someone could suggest how I might get it running on porting kit, since I seem to be almost there--is there a different build that I could try?

[jim]

You might try Porting Kit's "Steambuid 1". That's what I initially used with Rome 2.

[spotnik63]

Okay--I tried Steambuild 1 and that got me further along, but it still crashes at some point early in the campaign. In fact, I can't even really get into the first battle in the grand campaign I changed the shader model like you said; anti-aliasing was already off by default. On my iMac 24 M1, RTW 2 is reporting that I have an Nvidia 8800 or some such, which is interesting because the CPU and GPU are integrated so there is no 3rd party GPU actually listed in the system summary.

By comparison, Napoleon TW runs just great as a Mac game--best graphics I've ever seen it on.

Where do I find "Patch 16"? I remember I had to install some different patch when I ran TRW 2 under Mojave a year or so ago. That was before Steam fixed it to run on in Catalina.

Thanks for suggestions. Hopefully we'll find some kind of a fix.

[TheOrangeBox]

Originally posted by spotnik63:

Where do I find "Patch 16"? I remember I had to install some different patch when I ran TRW 2 under Mojave a year or so ago. That was before Steam fixed it to run on in Catalina.

Just go into your STEAM game property and look for the beta tab and from the submenu you should be able to choose the patch

[jim]

I'm sorry you haven't had as much success as I've experienced. The difference may be that I don't have an M1 iMac. Mine is an Intel Core i5. Porting Kit is probably still fixing bugs for the M1 code.

[Alexglav]

I have Macbook pro 2019 with Intel processor and I have exactly the same problem with Porting kit and Rome 2 as spotnik63 described. The game crashes a lot, moreover, for some reason I have a black sky in battles.

[Alexglav]

Patch 16 is working ! But for some reason there is no sound in game :(

[IGX]

The store page does not show compatibility for mac anymore. Why are people so persistent to play it on a mac when it barely runs properly on Windows? If you have the money to buy a mac you can buy a half decent gaming pc or laptop with twice the power and half the price.

[spotnik63]

Originally posted by IGX05:

The store page does not show compatibility for mac anymore. Why are people so persistent to play it on a mac when it barely runs properly on Windows? If you have the money to buy a mac you can buy a half decent gaming pc or laptop with twice the power and half the price.

Buying a new computer for just one game is off the table. This is a discussion about the Mac version of Rome 2, not whether Windows is better.

The only reason I still have a Mac version is because it was on the backup my Catalina machine that I restored to my new iMac. I was unaware that Steam had removed Mac from the system requirements for Rome 2. But that happened with Catalina too—then they fixed it and it ran great, so apparently they know a way around the 32 bit limitation. Chances are they’ll figure this out too—hopefully before Monterey is released.

[BRAN MAC BORN]

This is a Windows game so play on windows Christ Almighty.

[TheOrangeBox]

Originally posted by BRAN MAC BORN:

This is a Windows game so play on windows Christ Almighty.

This is an OSX game - runs fine on my Intel PC for the sake of the almighty Steve