Do you use Wine/Cider/similar to play Windows games?

[Hackfix21]

I got a bit off-topic in this thread as regards how to play Windows games with Wine/Cider/etc in OSX (for convenience I'll refer to these as "wrappers" though I'm sure that's not technically correct):

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1393592/

I know that the basic concept of these wrappers is to allow you to play Windows games without going into Bootcamp, which sounds great to me. but I struggle with the basics of how to make it work. So this thread is to check whether (i) others are interested in/ using this concept, (ii) whether I'm the only one who doesn't get how it works.

 

[CylonGlitch]

Might want to add, "I know how they work and use them sometimes, but it's too much work"

 

[doh123]

whats not to get.. its what it sounds like. It wraps around the Windows program/game/whatever and makes it like a Mac app.

 

[ThomasLund]

Yeh - I'm playing Legends of Grimrock that way.

Works perfectly fine

/T

 

[iMacFarlane]

Might want to add, "I know how they work and use them sometimes, but it's too much work"

Totally. I have several games I enjoy under Wineskin, but most of those are pre-formed wrappers I downloaded from PortingTeam. I've tried, REALLY HARD on several occasions, to make my own and all I end up doing is wasting time. Lots of it. Try this. Fail. Install that. Fail. Tweak this. Fail. No thank you.

Sometimes, it all pulls together the first time, and I'm good to go. Sins of a Solar Empire? Great. Might & Magic 7? Good (videos broken). Fallout 2? Can't for the life of me figure it out, although I got Fallout 1 working flawlessly. Make sense to you? Me neither.

 

[0098386]

Totally happy with Bootcamp, thanks.

 

[CylonGlitch]

Sometimes, it all pulls together the first time, and I'm good to go. Sins of a Solar Empire? Great. Might & Magic 7? Good (videos broken). Fallout 2? Can't for the life of me figure it out, although I got Fallout 1 working flawlessly. Make sense to you? Me neither.

I really don't have the time and effort to put into it like I should. I have so many other things going on that I rarely get to play games anyway, thus I don't really want to be bothered trying to find a skin for it; and / or getting it to work.

I think I've given up, either native port (or developer Wineskin is fine too), or nothing.

 

[SpyderBite]

I use Parallels for most of the PC only games I play that don't have PvP. For the more competitive games, I bootcamp in to Windows 7 and use all 16gb of ram.

 

[iMacFarlane]

I really don't have the time and effort to put into it like I should. I have so many other things going on that I rarely get to play games anyway, thus I don't really want to be bothered trying to find a skin for it; and / or getting it to work.

I think I've given up, either native port (or developer Wineskin is fine too), or nothing.

That's where I'm at now, too. Steam, Mac Appstore, or direct from developer native Mac apps from now on.

And that's plenty, really. I've got college, an impending job change, and learning enough Xcode / ObjC to be dangerous in the Appstore . . .

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I use Parallels for most of the PC only games I play that don't have PvP. For the more competitive games, I bootcamp in to Windows 7 and use all 16gb of ram.

I still haven't coughed up the dough for a copy of Windows. The last version of Windows I bought that wasn't OEM on a craptastic WinBox was Windows 95, on launch day. Been a while . . .

 

[Dirtyharry50]

whats not to get.. its what it sounds like. It wraps around the Windows program/game/whatever and makes it like a Mac app.

Conceptually it's easy to get. Where people stumble is in the execution - the actual steps to get to a working game running on OS X without errors.

So you have those who are not technically inclined confronted by a learning curve they may or may not be willing to ascend and then you have those quite capable of doing it but unwilling to be bothered. Lastly, you have those who revel in getting games to run in OS X with the likes of Wineskin and fear no learning curve or tinkering to get there.

So far, I have fallen into the lazy camp and been unwilling to bother to learn to use Wineskin or even willing to bother to use other people's wrappers. I bought a Mac wanting stuff to "just work." I bought a Windows license so I could use bootcamp to make Windows games "just work" and they do.

I have to confess though, as I have used bootcamp and Windows I have come to dislike rebooting quite a bit. I dislike the feeling I am disconnected from OS X during the game session. If I want to take a break for some reason, check the weather maybe, check email, browse a relevant Web site or article about the game, etc. I have to either use some Windows equivalent to do so which I do not like or I have to reboot. Thus, I feel disconnected from my Mac in a way when I game in Windows.

My current plan is to catch up on the existing Windows games I own and then migrate to just playing Mac native titles and PS3 (PS4?) games. Right now I actually have a backlog of classic PS2 titles to play before I worry about my next console. Given the number of games I already owned for Windows when I got a Mac, I will be playing those throughout the life of this hardware.

I am planning with my next Mac to not pollute it with Windows at all. Once I've taken that plunge, I may well feel differently about working with Wineskin to play whatever the latest, greatest Bethesda RPG is. That would be one of the very few things I'd actually miss at this point in a completely non-windows world.

 

[rampancy]

Totally. I have several games I enjoy under Wineskin, but most of those are pre-formed wrappers I downloaded from PortingTeam. I've tried, REALLY HARD on several occasions, to make my own and all I end up doing is wasting time. Lots of it. Try this. Fail. Install that. Fail. Tweak this. Fail. No thank you.

While WINE, and its Mac OS X derivatives (namely, CrossOver and Wineskin) have come a long way since their release, it's worth remembering that at the end of the day, you're still running a game coded for a completely different operating system with completely different APIs through a real-time translation environment, adding an additional level of abstraction. It's "unsupported" in the purest sense of the word.

If anyone ever gave you the impression that it was as easy as taking Generic Windows Game XYZ and running the installer in Wineskin then they were misleading you.

Sometimes, it all pulls together the first time, and I'm good to go. Sins of a Solar Empire? Great. Might & Magic 7? Good (videos broken). Fallout 2? Can't for the life of me figure it out, although I got Fallout 1 working flawlessly. Make sense to you? Me neither.

And that's where due diligence pays off. It's always worth spending some time to thoroughly research a game before buying it to run in CrossOver or Wineskin (or WineBottler, PlayOnMac, etc.), and the reasons for why a game may/may not work are never easy - and the fault may just as easily lie with the game itself. For example, in my own testing, Serious Sam is unplayable due to an graphical engine bug that for arcane reasons is a non-issue in Windows. Hitman and Hitman 2 are unplayable due to a engine bug that results in the game becoming uncontrollably too fast for normal play. Yet GOG's release of Interstate '76 (a sore point for GOG's customers) has all sorts of problems in Windows, while running flawlessly for me on OS X with nGlide in both Wineskin and CrossOver.

There are a huge amount of resources available for you to use; since WINE shares a lot in common among Linux and OS X, many troubleshooting tips for Linux users may be useful on OS X as well. The WINE AppDB, while frequently outdated, still has a lot of useful information on game compatibility and troubleshooting. The Codeweavers equivalent for CrossOver, the Codeweavers C4, also provides a wealth of info for WINE users on OS X. And there's the Porting Team Forums, as well as tutorials made by people like myself.

Getting Windows games to run on your own with Wineskin isn't easy, but it isn't impossible; all it takes is a little persistence, logic, and some digital elbow grease – and the time taken to research the game you're interested in.

(As an FYI, MM7 works out of the box in Wineskin for me using WINE 1.5.5, videos and all (as does MM6 and MM8, since they all use generally the same engine). Fallout and Fallout 2 have had a history of problems on WINE, but as of 1.5.x or so they seem to have been cleared up. If you're still having problems, update your X11 installation with Xquartz, and try setting Wineskin to use that installation of X11 instead of its own built-in X11 server.)

 

[alexreich]

I've gotten one out of the two games I've tried in Wine to work. Sonic Adventure DX worked fine, Blacklight Retribution did not. No big deal though, I have a PC for gaming now.

I'd say go ahead and install Bootcamp if you have a machine good enough for whatever game you're interested in, or build a gaming PC. It can be done on the cheap, wayyy cheaper than an overpriced Mac.

I've been an Apple fanboy for 3-4 years, but the hardware you get it just too overpriced. I bought a 2010 Mac mini (which has Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, shipped with 2GB RAM, and a 320GB 5400RPM HDD) in early 2011 as my first Mac. Though I'm happy with the machine I've got, I have come to realize that the damn thing was overpriced. I mean come on! $600 for a dual-core CPU, integrated graphics, 2GB RAM, and a 320GB HDD? Should be more like $300-350.

I've upped the RAM to the maximum 8GB, and installed an SSD to make the machine fast as possible. I'm happy with it as it is now, but wish I'd thought more when I bought it.

 

[204353]

I'm a long-time supporter of Codeweavers' CrossOver, which I'm sure some of you know as the commercial, supported version of Wine. I see it's already been mentioned in this thread and I love it.

My previous attempts to create my own Wine wrappers didn't go so well, so I just stick to CrossOver to run Star Trek Online, Evil Genius, Theme Hospital and a couple of other games that work great with it.

 

[SlickShoes]

I don't have the patience to sit and tinker with things like this in my spare time if I am being honest. Most of the games I have tried have worked to an extent, then been patched and don't work at all.

I spend all day working with dual boot macs and getting things to work in different environments, to come home and spend hours on end doing that same thing just to play a game, I find it much less hassle just to take the 1 minute to boot in to Windows 7 and play.

I spent hours the other night trying to get Guild Wars 2 to work with a wrapper but after the installer crashing many many times I just gave up and installed it in windows.

I would like to have the time to properly learn all this and I think I could but by the time I settle down at night the last thing I want to do is spend my spare time working and not getting paid for it, just to get a game working that I know I could be playing in 1 minute if I just switch OS.

 

[doh123]

I don't have the patience to sit and tinker with things like this in my spare time if I am being honest. Most of the games I have tried have worked to an extent, then been patched and don't work at all.

I spend all day working with dual boot macs and getting things to work in different environments, to come home and spend hours on end doing that same thing just to play a game, I find it much less hassle just to take the 1 minute to boot in to Windows 7 and play.

I spent hours the other night trying to get Guild Wars 2 to work with a wrapper but after the installer crashing many many times I just gave up and installed it in windows.

I would like to have the time to properly learn all this and I think I could but by the time I settle down at night the last thing I want to do is spend my spare time working and not getting paid for it, just to get a game working that I know I could be playing in 1 minute if I just switch OS.

thats why the people who actually love to "tinker" with stuff share their wrappers so you don't have to spend more than 10 minutes getting something to work the first time you want to play it.

 

[SlickShoes]

thats why the people who actually love to "tinker" with stuff share their wrappers so you don't have to spend more than 10 minutes getting something to work the first time you want to play it.

Yeah but now my situation, is wait and MAYBE someone will get GW2 to work, or just take 1 minute to boot to windows and enjoy the game now.

I understand there are many wrappers out there that work but not for the games I currently want to play.

 

[doh123]

Yeah but now my situation, is wait and MAYBE someone will get GW2 to work, or just take 1 minute to boot to windows and enjoy the game now.

I understand there are many wrappers out there that work but not for the games I currently want to play.

As far as I know people have gotten it to work... but its buggy and doesn't seem to work on all machines... I haven't tried it myself though, no real interest in the game.

If you don't mind having Windows and a dual boot (which is not something everyone is willing to put up with), then use what works for you.

 

[CylonGlitch]

thats why the people who actually love to "tinker" with stuff share their wrappers so you don't have to spend more than 10 minutes getting something to work the first time you want to play it.

Except that more than 50% of the wrappers I've downloaded are either for old versions that no longer work with the current version of the game (and it's never been updated) or the links to them are dead.

Organization is part of the failure of Wine; no central stable repository. No dedicated developers making an effort to keep things running. It's the Linux issue, everyone wants to have "their" stuff and thus fragmentation causes development issues and kills the product.

 

[rampancy]

thats why the people who actually love to "tinker" with stuff share their wrappers so you don't have to spend more than 10 minutes getting something to work the first time you want to play it.

I've considered sharing the many wrappers I've made, but the overwhelming majority of the games I've tried required only simple wrappers that anyone could make with a little info from the AppDB or the Crossover Compatibility Centre. I think the only "unique" thing I did was make custom .app files for setup/config .exe applications, and giving it a nice icon, and entering custom values for the app version and name.

Except that more than 50% of the wrappers I've downloaded are either for old versions that no longer work with the current version of the game (and it's never been updated) or the links to them are dead.

Organization is part of the failure of Wine; no central stable repository. No dedicated developers making an effort to keep things running. It's the Linux issue, everyone wants to have "their" stuff and thus fragmentation causes development issues and kills the product.

I think you're confusing the actual WINE project with the people at The Porting Team forums. The Porting Team for many years had links to various application wrappers made by the community, but last year or so did a major site redesign, which I think also involved an overhaul of their forum software. As a result, many of the links for wrappers ended up getting broken (which was I ended up just making my own wrappers anyway).

Meanwhile the WINE developers do have a central, stable repository; IIRC, the current 1.4.x branch is the stable branch of the WINE codebase (and it's what CrossOver is based on), while the 1.5.x branch is the unstable/development branch. WINE 1.4 (and CrossOver 11, upon which it was based) was a huge release as it fixed a lot of major outstanding bugs, and fixed a lot of compatibility problems.

I don't know where you're also getting the idea that there are no "dedicated developers". Alexandre Juillard remains the head project lead for WINE, and current development pace for 1.5.x gives you and idea of who's working on WINE now. And of course there are the many people at CodeWeavers who work on both CrossOver and WINE proper.

 

[mzjin]

Nope, I Bootcamp...

Can't stand OSX's mousing for gaming.

 

[rampancy]

As far as I know people have gotten it to work... but its buggy and doesn't seem to work on all machines... I haven't tried it myself though, no real interest in the game.

If you don't mind having Windows and a dual boot (which is not something everyone is willing to put up with), then use what works for you.

The CrossOver Compatibility Centre has some info on GW2; the people at Codeweavers have also pitched in too - I think they've been working on a custom build of CrossOver to help get GW2 working.

 

[Northwestern]

I am using Bootcamp, but I try to get the Mac Version of a game, because they are cheaper (watch out for sales!). I bought Darkness 2 Mac for 11,99€, when the Windows version cost 49,99€ on Steam.

 

[Hackfix21]

Having played around with it I at least understand the concept of it now, but in practice I didn't get anywhere. Tried to follow the installation instructions (wrapper for Oblivion) in every variation I could, but every time I then try to run it nothing happens, ie the wrapper starts and then crashes/quits.

So I'm going back to the "life is too short" camp. Taking a minute to reboot into Windows is the lesser evil.

 

[iMacFarlane]

Having played around with it I at least understand the concept of it now, but in practice I didn't get anywhere. Tried to follow the installation instructions (wrapper for Oblivion) in every variation I could, but every time I then try to run it nothing happens, ie the wrapper starts and then crashes/quits.

So I'm going back to the "life is too short" camp. Taking a minute to reboot into Windows is the lesser evil.

Yeah, Oblivion was one of my fails, too. I downloaded a pre-made wrapper from porting team, and the game installed, launched, and played like a dream, full detail, native resolution, max details, just . . . WOW. And then I get to the point in the game where you have your first combat. A rat. It killed me. Why? Because although the game ran smooth as butter in a teflon coated pan, as soon as combat starts the game literally throttles down to about 1 frame every 3 seconds. Not exaggerating. Known issue on the site. No fix. No thanks.

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Nope, I Bootcamp...

Can't stand OSX's mousing for gaming.

What do you mean, exactly?

 

[Madd the Sane]

I've gotten one out of the two games I've tried in Wine to work. Sonic Adventure DX worked fine, Blacklight Retribution did not. No big deal though, I have a PC for gaming now.

I'd say go ahead and install Bootcamp if you have a machine good enough for whatever game you're interested in, or build a gaming PC. It can be done on the cheap, wayyy cheaper than an overpriced Mac.

I've been an Apple fanboy for 3-4 years, but the hardware you get it just too overpriced. I bought a 2010 Mac mini (which has Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, shipped with 2GB RAM, and a 320GB 5400RPM HDD) in early 2011 as my first Mac. Though I'm happy with the machine I've got, I have come to realize that the damn thing was overpriced. I mean come on! $600 for a dual-core CPU, integrated graphics, 2GB RAM, and a 320GB HDD? Should be more like $300-350.

I've upped the RAM to the maximum 8GB, and installed an SSD to make the machine fast as possible. I'm happy with it as it is now, but wish I'd thought more when I bought it.

I was burned on integrated graphics in the past with my 2007 Mac mini; That's why I got the more expensive 2011 Mini (And even BTO'd an i7). Fun fact: the GMA 950 under OS X says it supports OpenGL 2.1, but it lacks shader support and does strange things when you try to run it with a shader program.