Electronic Arts hasn’t released any of the Battlefield franchise games for the Mac since Battlefield 1942, the original. Electronic Arts skipped over Mac releases of Battlefield Vietnam and Battlefield 2, but the latest in the Battlefield franchise, Battlefield 2142 was released shortly after Apple and EA announced games for the Mac. This article will cover what you can expect from Battlefield 2142 for the Mac if you purchased and installed it today. To get started, we’ll cover how it runs and what current Macs will run it, then we’ll dive into some technical aspects of the game (how it runs on the Mac), some support issues and gameplay vidoes.

Battlefield 2142 runs alright on my Mac Pro, but not perfect and not as well as the PC version runs under Vista in Boot Camp on the same Mac Pro. Just for clarification, my Mac Pro is a “2006 model,” which has two dual-core Xeon processors, each running at 2.66Ghz and with a total of 4Gb of RAM. I have played the game with multiple video cards, the stock 7300GT, an add-on X1900 and the 8800GT, the X1900 had the best performance (see my previous post about the 8800GT performance issues in OS X). Unfortunately I do not have benchmark results from any video cards except for the 8800GT, which achieves around 25fps playing in windowed mode at 800 x 600 with all the settings set to their maximum (see the screenshot above).

Battlefield 2142’s frame rate goes way down when you start to enter into some action, like when your shooting at an enemy, something explodes or there is a lot of movement. The game will go from acceptable frame rates to unacceptable frame rates when this happens. If it were not for this glitch I would say the game has good performance. I suspect that having the effects cached on the hard drive contributes to this issue, while the game runs it uses only 1.5 Gb of RAM of the available 4 Gb. This is most likely a Cider issue and not a Battlefield 2142 problem. This problem seems to be amplified when the effects are close to the camera (point of view).

I have played Battlefield 2142 on a 15″ MacBook Pro with the X1600 integrated video card and it played with severe lag when FileVault was enabled but improved significantly after FileVault was disabled. If your having frame rate lag on your Mac, or have FileVault enabled with Battlefield 2142 read my earlier article on Battlefield 2142 performance lag.

The Mac version of Battlefield 2142 is being emulated using Cider, created by TransGaming. The actual application file contains the windows executable, game files and Cider, which is used to run the Windows executables on OS X. The game is playable in Windows if you copy the folders from the Mac DVD version of the game to your computers hard drive. This only works with single player, the required registry entries to play online are missing because the installation was not run. 

Since Battlefield 2142 is being emulated the performance between the native Windows application in XP or Vista and the the Mac version are substantial. In single player mode in Vista the game will achieve good frame rates at high resolutions and at maximum settings, whereas the Mac version has difficulties even being played. For this reason, if you have XP or Vista installed I would recommend purchasing the Windows version of the game instead of the Mac version, although I like the idea of more games being developed for the Mac, using Cider to emulate the Windows executables is not what I consider a real Mac game.

Hidden away inside the Battlefield 2141.app application file are the Windows files. The exact location is Battlefield 2142.app/Contents/Resources/Battlefield 2142.app/Contents/Resources/transgaming/c_drive/Program Files/Electronic Arts/Battlefield 2142 (yes, there are really two Battlefield 2142.app files, one is inside of the other). As for some of the settings and cache files, you can locate these in your home folder at ~/Library/Preferences/Battlefield 2142 Preferences/

Electronic Arts has not provided the best support for Battlefield 2142 on the Mac. When a new patch is released, like 1.4 or 1.5 (as of writing this article 1.5 for the Mac has still not been released), it takes EA weeks before it is made available for Mac gamers. When a new patch is released, all the Windows gamers and servers will update to the new patch, leaving Mac users of the game stranded. The number of servers currently running 1.4 are very low, but until 1.5 is out for the Mac thats all Mac gamers can use. The 1.5 patch was released for Windows gamers on May 30th, as of June 26th the patch is still not out for the Mac, I had a similar wait for the 1.4 patch.

My personal opinion about emulated games is bad, I don’t like the idea and I think its a lazy way for EA to make money. Until some more native games for the Mac are released I’m sticking with Windows as my primary gaming OS. I don’t expect titles like Crysis to be ported to the Mac, but when games are made available to Mac owners I feel they should be native applications.

I have prepared some videos, which are screen captures of Battlefield 2142 being played. These are at the full resolution, 1280 x 960 and shot at the best frame rate possible. As you watch one, notice the current frame rate in the upper-left corner of the video, this is the actual frame rate being displayed by Battlefield 2142. Each video is encoded in H.264.

• Screenshot of the settings used in all captures - image
• Some effects and running around - video (24.6MB)
• Distant shooting and effects - video (36.7MB)
• Fast action and close effects - video (27.5MB)
• Distant and close shooting - video (17.2MB)
• A little if everything plus system specs - video (92MB)

For those out there who have EA’s Battlefield 2142 for the Mac, you might want to know this. It offers the option to toggle the following settings:

• Full Screen Mode - Tells BF2142 to start in Fullscreen mode, unchecked it will open in Windowed mode (enabled by default).
• Use FBO for Backbuffer - No idea, but it seems to have little no affect on performance (also enabled by default).
• Fixed Function via Vertex Programs - No idea but it seems to help, and its enabled by default.
• Show FPS - Displays the current FPS in the top-left corner of the window or screen (disabled by default).
• Display this on subsequent starts - Do you want this settings window to open next time you launch the game (disabled by default).

The settings window also has two buttons, Play which starts the game and Quit which closes the settings window.

To get this window, navigate to ~/Library/Preferences/Battlefield 2142 Preferences/. Open the file config with a text editor and find the line “DisplaySettingsDialog” = “N”, replace the N with a 1. Save the file and start the game.

I’ve been a big fan of the Battlefield series since BF1942, and one thing I was disappointed about when I switched to the mac was the lack of games. So when Battlefield 2142 came out for the Mac I got it, but I was expecting my MacBook Pro to play Battlefield 2142 a little better than it did. BF2142 would lag so bad it was not playable, primarily when lots of stuff was going on, or when I needed to shoot at something. I started looking for a fix (and the cause) and just today came across (while browsing through BF2142’s files) that BF2142 keeps a cache of effects stored in your home folder under (Your Short Name)/Library/Preferences/Battlefield 2142 Preferences/p_drive/My Documents. I then put two and two together and figured FileVault (OS X’s home folder encryption) was causing the game to lag. So I turned off FileVault and launched the game once that was finished, it runs a lot smoother now with FileVault off. Sense Battlefield 2142 for the Mac isn’t native (its actually emulating the Windows .EXE’s) I wasn’t expecting performance to be that good, but how it played with FileVault enabled was unacceptable.

So if your installation of Battlefield 2142 is lagging try this:

1. If you’ve got FileVault enabled, disable it.
2. BF2142 uses around 1Gb of RAM, make sure you’ve got that much or more.
3. I suspect the speed of the hard drive has a lot to do with this, get the fastest drive possible, like a 7200RPM drive (my MacBook Pro came with a 5400RPM drive).