Wine on Mac: subpar experience

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HunterZ
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Wine on Mac: subpar experience

Post by HunterZ »

So I installed Ubuntu on my PC laptop over the weekend and got a couple of old games working under Wine. Having previously heard that a Mac port of Wine exists, I then decided to try to get Baldur's Gate 1 working on my wife's MacBook Pro because she'd been mentioning lately that she would like to play it again.

We found and followed these instructions: http://davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/wine-mac/

It took a long time; apparently it actually had to build Wine from source. Once it was done we tried to run the Baldur's Gate installer from a disc and found that the Mac port of Wine has no support for 16-bit Windows apps (such as the SETUP.EXE for Baldur's Gate 1) due to some obscure issue with XCode.

Next we tried just copying the BG1 install from my Ubuntu setup to her system. That only sort-of worked: the X11 window server shipped with MacOS apparently doesn't support changing resolutions for fullscreen apps. The only workaround was to run Wine with a virtual desktop, which the game then reduces to a 640x480 window regardless of the chosen virtual resolution, so we were stuck running BG1 in a tiny 640x480 window on a 1920x1200 display.

What was even worse was that the game requires being able to move the mouse to the edges of the screen to scroll around, which proved impossible because the cursor would just move outside the Wine window. I know what you're thinking, but the seemingly-related setting in winecfg has no effect on the cursor escaping the window.

In short: we gave up.


I've heard about WineBottler - does anyone know if I'll get better results with it? I heard that it might be bundled with a different X11 server that can actually change resolutions. It seems geared towards wrapping single .exe apps though, so I'm not sure how well it would work with BG1 which has ~2GB of data files.
James Mckenzie

Wine on Mac: subpar experience

Post by James Mckenzie »

It took a long time; apparently it actually had to build Wine from source. Once it was done we tried
to run the Baldur's Gate installer from a disc and found that the Mac port of Wine has no support for
16-bit Windows apps (such as the SETUP.EXE for Baldur's Gate 1) due to some obscure issue with XCode.
I hate to do this, but your best solution at this point is to purchase Crossover Games for the Mac. It has the capabilities to run these older games in full screen mode. Otherwise you are 'stuck' with the windowed version and I realize that this is very poor.

James McKenzie
HunterZ
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Post by HunterZ »

What about WineBottler, is that worth trying? http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/
James Mckenzie

Wine on Mac: subpar experience

Post by James Mckenzie »

What about WineBottler, is that worth trying? http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/
Sadly, Mike has not had the time to fix the X11 bug that Apple introduced. CodeWeavers has.

You still would have the same problem using Winebottler (I know, I test it.) Mike may find the time to do so, but it would be better to create a Native Aqua interface that would solve many problems.

James McKenzie
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Post by doh123 »

I haven't tried using BG1 in Wine.. as I run it in a Cider hack that runs fantastic you can find around the web...

but you could try it in fullscreen mode in Wineskin RC7.

I dont know if it'll work, but I have worked around some issues with using Xquartz X11, and it will change resolutions for you and run in a fullscreen mode... its currently not geared toward normal Wine usage, just bundling up and making a Mac .app for a specific programs...

wineskin.sourceforge.net

There is little Wine can do about really bad X11 on Mac OS X... besides getting a working quartz driver so that X11 wouldn't be needed....

oh.. you'll have to change the default Wine install in Wineskin down some, and not run the latest versions... run something before I think 1.1.36, as the ones before that have win16 enabled, but later ones do not, since for some reason win16 stopped building on all versions of OSX for me, when it used to build on 10.4 fine.
James McKenzie

Wine on Mac: subpar experience

Post by James McKenzie »

doh123 wrote:
I haven't tried using BG1 in Wine.. as I run it in a Cider hack that runs fantastic you can find around the web...
Remember, if you use the hack, don't come here for help.

There is a discussion on wine-devel about working with the old
winequartz drivers to get them to work again and with more
functionality. That would be the best solution, IMHO.

James McKenzie
HunterZ
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Post by HunterZ »

Solved: http://forum.portingteam.com/viewtopic. ... 97&start=0

In short, Cider hacks didn't work but Wineskin RC7 did.
doh123
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Post by doh123 »

HunterZ wrote:Solved: http://forum.portingteam.com/viewtopic. ... 97&start=0

In short, Cider hacks didn't work but Wineskin RC7 did.
Glad it worked for you... gaming is the major goal of why I created it in the first place :-) Still buggy of course, but always working on it.
James McKenzie

Wine on Mac: subpar experience

Post by James McKenzie »

doh123 wrote:
HunterZ wrote:
Solved: http://forum.portingteam.com/viewtopic. ... 97&start=0

In short, Cider hacks didn't work but Wineskin RC7 did.
Glad it worked for you... gaming is the major goal of why I created it in the first place :-) Still buggy of course, but always working on it.

Doh123:

Do you plan on putting your code back into Wine (that is the stuff that
is acceptable to Alexandre)?

James McKenzie
doh123
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Re: Wine on Mac: subpar experience

Post by doh123 »

James McKenzie wrote: Do you plan on putting your code back into Wine (that is the stuff that
is acceptable to Alexandre)?

James McKenzie
I'm using stock unmodified Wine... its not what the package is for. The only modified Wine versions I put together for people are with specific patches they find on the internet... I haven't modified anything that I've kept that would be useful to anyone in Wine.

Wineskin is just an easy way to package up a program and make a Mac app out of it, using Wine with a built in X server that handles having a Dock Icon and top menu bar and such...

Wine on OSX is such a pain because X11 sucks so bad on it.

The game worked on Wineskin because of my X11 work arounds for fullscreen and resolution switching, nothing to do with Wine itself.
James McKenzie

Wine on Mac: subpar experience

Post by James McKenzie »

doh123 wrote:
James McKenzie wrote:
Do you plan on putting your code back into Wine (that is the stuff that
is acceptable to Alexandre)?

James McKenzie
I'm using stock unmodified Wine... its not what the package is for. The only modified Wine versions I put together for people are with specific patches they find on the internet... I haven't modified anything that I've kept that would be useful to anyone in Wine.

Wineskin is just an easy way to package up a program and make a Mac app out of it, using Wine with a built in X server that handles having a Dock Icon and top menu bar and such...

Wine on OSX is such a pain because X11 sucks so bad on it.
Preaching to the choir here...

I really would like it if someone picked up Emmanuel's old Winequartz
code and build a proper front end for the Mac.

X11 and the Mac native interface are not fully compatible and this leads
to problems...

James McKenzie
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