I've looked at wineskin/ porting websites a few times but it seems to me that it has really high barriers to entry. I don't understand what I'm supposed to do to make it work.
Looking at the portingteam.com website you mentioned: so I look up a specific game on the site and it just has a few nebulous throwaway comments about installation clearly aimed at people who already know how it works. I look on the "tutorials" tab on the site, and it only has a minimal absolute basics description of what wrappers are, lots of discussion about whether it's an emulator or not (who cares) but STILL nothing about HOW to actually do it!
Am I supposed to boot in Windows first then do something with a wineskin download there? If so, how do I then get the finished product over to the Mac harddrive partition? If not, ie if I'm supposed to run this under OSX, then why does it talk about .exe? That's a windows application surely that wouldn't run on Mac?
I'm confused, but also just really puzzled about the people behind these wrapper websites. They're supposed to be Mac people, ie surely supposed to know about userfriendliness. Which this is definitely not. I don't consider myself computer illiterate by a long shot, so if I don't get it I guess it's only for 16-year old computer wizz kids.
Wine is a project created long ago, initially on linux platform that allowed users to execute windows applications.
The wineskin is a great front-end management application for mac that allows you to hold many versions of wine engines, since some applications/games work better under X engine and others with Y engine. It also allows you to create wrappers, install new wine engine versions etc.
So, it is clear that this is a work of many people or teams (wine, wineskin etc), that - when put together - allow you to easily run windows games/apps on your mac (yes, it is super easy, given the fact that if you don't use wineskin, you'll have to do a lot more work). They do require a minimum basic computer knowledge, though, since you need to be at least familiar with some basic concepts.
The whole idea is to be able to create a bottle (or wrapper as it is called by wineskin) that will allow you inside its workspace to run the installer, install and then run the windows game/application without modifying anything on the application itself (so, yes, that's the whole idea, running the .exe file).
Sometimes, mainly because of compatibility reasons (as this is constantly a work in progress) you'll have to install the game in a real windows OS (or a virtual machine if you don't want to create a bootcamp partition - that's what I do) and then transfer your installed directory inside your wrapper. Then you configure your wrapper to execute the appropriate .exe , .bat or whatever file, and you're done. Most of the times, though, the installation itself can take place within your wrapper. A typical workflow would be like the one below:
1. Create an empty wrapper using wineskin
2. Configure the wrapper to execute the install .exe (that can be on the game cd or anywhere in your mac e.g. an iso mounted on your mac)
3. Once installed, re-configure the wrapper to execute the appropriate .exe file that would normally launch the game/application
4. Double click the wrapper icon and it should execute your game/app.
That's all. Believe me, using the Wineskin you save yourself by a lot of manual work and effort plus some advantages that I won't mention now. Just keep in mind that the wrapper is the actual workspace inside of which the windows applications are installed and running, so they have a typical minimum windows disk structure. So, inside the wrapper you'll see directories like "Program Files", "Windows" etc. You can think the wrapper as a miniature windows PC. I'd also suggest to create a different wrapper for each game/application you want to install and run. Last but not least, you might have to experiment a bit with the wrapper version (using the user-friendly Wineskin) as not all games run perfectly with the same wrapper version (downloading a pre-made wrapper specifically for your game/app from portingteam is highly recommended, if there's one available).
