Hi,

Just wondering if anyones has managed to get Settlers - Rise of an Empire to work on either a macbook or a macbookpro.

I've tried loading it on my Macbookpro and it says "unable to initialize graphics engine"

System:

Macbook Pro - 2.4ghz intel duo core
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT - 256MB
2GB Ram

Running windows XP through VM Fusion virtual machine.

I know that the laptop models of these graphics cards aren't offically supported, but was wondering if anyone has managed to make it work. If not, i'll put the game on the shelf and be VERY disappointed!

Any comments or help would be much appreciated!

The main problem with trying to run the game on any virtual machine, is that they don't use the actual video card's hardware, in your case, a perfectly good 8600M GT, instead they only emulate a basic, video card, which is unable to display games that make hardware calls to the card in Direct X, and are usually limited to a lower ram size than this game requires too.
Which means that a virtual machine, whether it be on a Windows PC, Linux PC, or in your case, a Macbook, cannot display the game's graphics, it would probably play older games that needed lower versions of Direct X and didn't need things like hardware Vertex Shaders, or Transform and Lighting.
Your best chance of playing RoaE, is to create a dual boot Windows XP setup on your Macbook, that way, Windows would have direct access to the video card, that's usually what Linux users do in order to play newer Windows games.
Your hardware, although not officially supported, being a laptop, should be easily capable of running the game.

I am currently running on a Macbook Pro with the same credntials, but with 4 GB of RAM and a Windows dual boot. As BTOG46 has said, doing a partition will make the game work. Your graphics card needs the memory.