Running MMF2 on a Mac

[amaire13]

Hey all,

I just got a new Macbook Pro and I want to install MMF2 on it so I can build games on it.

I've researched a few different options and so far the best choices I've heard is to either run a Windows-Mac Application converter such as Crossover or to dual boot my computer with windows using boot camp.

Dual booting my computer seems like a gigantic hassle and I feel as if it would be easier to just use a converter program such as crossover, but I've heard that it has a few bugs. Does anyone have any experience with this / suggestions?

[Game_Master]

From personal experience, I'd recommend Parallels 8 for doing it. I've tried VMWare Fusion 4, and it was much slower than Parallels (took longer to start up or resume the system, used more RAM etc etc). With Parallels, you could get away with 8GB of RAM in your MacBook Pro. When I upgraded from 4GB to 8GB, it was about £40, but it's a little less now. I've never used Crossover, but I read someone's post the other day that said they couldn't export to Flash or HTML 5 with it. Parallels does have a feature called Coherence, which lets you run Windows programs in the Mac OS X dock, which is pretty much what Crossover does. Likewise, I've never used Bootcamp; it would be a pain to keep having to switch systems each time you make a new build.

So, all in all, I'd recommend buying Parallels 8, and 8GB of RAM (2x4GB modules). I'd then configure the Parallels virtual machine to have a 2GB share of RAM. That's what worked for me.

[amaire13]

Can you install extensions such as iOSExporter with parallels8?

[Game_Master]

Yes, that's what I use, and I haven't had any problems with it.

[James]

If you do end up using CrossOver, it'd be great if you could let me know how well it works. I'm still using VirtualBox to run MMF2, but running a virtual machine is a pretty big waste of resources for the sake of one application.

[amaire13]

Crossover seems to work pretty well with no problems. I still am trying to figure out how to install extensions such as iOS Exporter to it so I haven't really been able to use it yet. I've heard of a few different bugs with it but I haven't experienced any of them yet.

It seems as though the top recommendation from people would be to dual boot your mac using bootcamp and then to run parallels 8 by loading it off bootcamp. That way you have both the option of using Parallels 8 or just booting windows completely separately in a different partition.