Any experienced Mac users here? Trying to figure out if pitboss is possible...

[sunrise089]

As I've been posting in my pitboss IT threads, I'm planning on a new permanent server PC to provide more performance and let me use the computer for more than just serving pitboss games and emergency web/email. Some more info which may be useful but isn't vital to my question follows in spoiler tags.

My goals for the new server include...

*Serving up to six civ games and their civstats uploaders
*Running Plex Media Server for video content, including transcribing HD content for mobile devices
*Running iTunes to play audio, manage it on my mobile devices, import photos from phones, and sync photos via photo stream
*Running a web browser and Bittorrent client
*If the Roku 3 ever enables its pseudo-AirPlay functionality, the program for that
*All of the above will happen simultaneously, and at minimum the system needs to be responsive enough for me to mess with each of the programs running without stopping the others. Preferably the system will also serve as a second computer for light web browsing if a family member or guest is hanging out in the office
*All gaming, office productivity, and web-based content consumption however will happen on my primary, soon-to-be-faster PC

My plan was to cobble together a new server with some parts on hand plus some new purchases, something along to line of:

*Sandy Bridge 2500k/Ivy Bridge 3570k plus motherboard, basically whatever people who want to upgrade to Haswell are selling
*8 gigs of memory
*80gigs of SSD storage for the OS and programs
*1TB of HDD storage for media (this PC won't be used for long-term video storage, just a lot of audio plus some download->watch->delete video)
*On-board processor graphics

However a trusted friend of mine who likes to own nice Mac hardware is selling his server box, a 2008-era Mac Pro with some upgrades...

*Stock 2xQuadCore 2.8ghz Xeon Penryn-era processors
*(upgraded to) 8 gigs of weird/expensive fully buffered memory
*(upgraded to) ~1.05TB of SSD+HDD fusion drive
*(upgraded to) Geforce GT120 512mb GPU, 9500GT equivalent and not guaranteed to be faster than modern on-board video
*The prettiest computer case known to man

The Mac Pro would cost me $450. Net, either option is about the same cost after accounting for selling some spare parts. But because the Mac Pro is already assembled, and because it's quiet and so darn pretty, I'm leaning towards it. However that's only true IF I can run pitboss on it without jumping through crazy hoops.

I probably have more experience running pitboss games than the vast majority of civ players, but that's all been done on the PC. The master CFC pitboss thread has people mentioning how pitboss is PC-only, but that info is 5-7 years old.

So my question is, for a person with little Mac experience but decent PC experience, is there a workable Mac option here? Either using a Mac or Steam version of BtS, or boot camp, or a VM, or something else? Anyone have any experience? Anyone willing to try it out? Anyone able to give me ideas for what to try out on my friends Mac when I see him this weekend?

Thanks!

[scooter]

Why not just get the Mac Pro and run straight windows, ignoring OSX? Sounds like your needs for this machine is pretty much just the need for it to be on and running all the time, so it's not like you would be swapping between OSX and windows either way.

[Krill]

Why not just get the Mac Pro and run straight windows, ignoring OSX? Sounds like your needs for this machine is pretty much just the need for it to be on and running all the time, so it's not like you would be swapping between OSX and windows either way.

This would have been my question, plus I wouldn't know about the effectiveness of the fusion drive compared to the SSD drive.

[NobleHelium]

Well I don't think running Pitboss in OS X is viable because non-xml mods can't be run under Mac, and includes EitB and Krill's mod.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Do you want to count on five year old hardware if you're going through the trouble of setting all this up? Granted, some of it is newer/rebuilt, but the age on the equipment is something to think about.

As for running the pitboss server, I assume you'd have to do it in a Windows VM to get it running.

[sunrise089]

Thanks for the replies.

Why not just get the Mac Pro and run straight windows, ignoring OSX? Sounds like your needs for this machine is pretty much just the need for it to be on and running all the time, so it's not like you would be swapping between OSX and windows either way.

No reason I absolutely can't. The 'fusion' drive setup works on Mac only, and I could receive the computer with a clean install of OSX while I'd have to install Windows 7 myself (I have a license, so the cost is time only). Windows is also more familiar to me, though I think OSX has a more useable desktop environment when lots of stuff is running at once.

This would have been my question, plus I wouldn't know about the effectiveness of the fusion drive compared to the SSD drive.

I'm a huge SSD advocate and have been using them for many years, but for the purposes of this system the fusion drive will be more than sufficient. In my main system where I crave responsiveness it would be a different story. I do need to check and see how the fusion setup works with loads from a backup disk image.

Well I don't think running Pitboss in OS X is viable because non-xml mods can't be run under Mac, and includes EitB and Krill's mod.

This would be a software only issue, right? Would a VM [i]inside[/]OSX have this issue?

Do you want to count on five year old hardware if you're going through the trouble of setting all this up? Granted, some of it is newer/rebuilt, but the age on the equipment is something to think about.

True, but new hardware isn't in the picture for a secondary PC. Disks are a wear-and-tear item, but the storage in the Mac is only a year or so old. For the CPU and motherboard it's a matter of premium 5 year old parts I know have been well taken care of (not overclocked, good ventilation) versus 2 year old parts from a random, which may be a wash.

[TheHumanHydra]

Hi sunrise,

I play pitbosses on my Mac and it works fine. Some people can't connect to me, but that might be for reasons other than operating system, I don't really know. As Noble said, many mods can't be run on the Macintosh version of Civ IV, but I think running the Windows version on a Mac would be fine (but slower). Due to the performance costs of running Windows programs inside of OSX, though, I'm not sure you'd want to host games this way. Macbooks are great computers, and definitely worth that price, but I'm not sure for this application they're exactly what your looking for - to play, fine; to host, maybe not. All this said, though, I have little actual technical knowledge; this is all just from personal experience or general hearsay.

Don't know how helpful that was, but there you are!

Good luck,

THH

[sunrise089]

Thanks for your thoughts THH. In terms of performance inside a VM, fortunately the pitboss client is pretty light compared to full BtS. One clarification - the potential Mac is a Mac Pro (their large tower computer) and not a MacBook Pro (their performance-oriented notebook).

[TheHumanHydra]

Oh, sorry, I misread! So the pitboss client is a different program from BtS? You may be fine then, but it's hard to know. Would your friend let you test it - you know, use your other computers to try and connect to it?

[spacetyrantxenu]

The pitboss server program is different from the game program:



This is what it looks like when the pitboss program is running on the computer acting as the host/server:



And this is the configuration screen when you're preparing to host a game:



Random old information about pitboss: http://www.civiv.com/pitboss.htm (I'm sure there are better articles out there).

I'm going to guess that the pitboss software was never ported over to Mac, I think it requires some .DLLs, right? But I could be wrong and I don't have a Mac to test it on, so I'm really no help.