7 replies to this topic

[Marvin_Arnold]

Am I the only one who does this? Or did I miss a thread for it?

Just wanted to let you people know that you can run Mass Effect on an Intel Mac without the need to dual-boot, by using Wineskin. (Which is basically a customzied WINE environment with GUI for easy install and troubleshooting of Windows programs. And it turns your game into a clickable app, which not only looks cool...)

The only disadvantages are

– dialogue audio drop-outs after a certain amount of time (usually about one hour), which are fixed by quit and restart (and are, apparently, also a "feature" of the Windows version),

– rather "flat" instead of dynamic lighting, (and dynamic shadows not rendering correctly) and

– mouse not wrapping correctly (which means you cannot turn your viewpoint 360° in one go, but you have to move the (mouselook) camera until it doesn't go further (about 60-90°), then move the mouse quickly in the other direction, and then you can move the camera further.) This gets a while to get used to, and can be annoying in combat, since you have to hit "pause" a lot just to turn around.

Apart from these disadvantages, you get the whole game running flawlessly, without the need to install Windows...

If you are interested, I could post the whole procedure here (doesn't require the terminal, as Wineskin has a GUI)

[Wumpus]

Have to say those flaws aren't worth running it in OSX for me. I would much rather have the regular game in bootcamp. I've played the game twice in windows, never had any audio issues as you mention.

[Hansi]

Most of the issues other then the lighting are fixed in this Wineskin wrapper: http://forum.porting...php?f=45&t=6284

[Eric5h5]

Marvin_Arnold, on 14 October 2011 - 04:02 AM, said:

Apart from these disadvantages, you get the whole game running flawlessly, without the need to install Windows...

So...aside from the game not actually working, it runs flawlessly.    You might need to look up the definition of "flawless"....  Looking in the CrossOver Games database, it seems to have some issues, but apparently can be made to run better than what you describe with some tweaking.  Don't have the game and haven't tried it though.

--Eric

[Smoke_Tetsu]

Just a note here that UE3 engine games tend to be problematic at least when it comes to graphics on WINE engines from WINEHQ or Crossover. I have to use a certain other WINE based wrapper for those.

Also the kind of problems this game has isn't true of all games running in wineskin some run "flawlessly" (by the true definition of the word) and others like this don't.

The sound situation on most WINE versions from the WINEHQ builds tend to be because they are overhauling the audio subystems in WINE. The 1.3.x branch is a dev branch and as such things may fix\break from version to version. Any version past 1.3.24 has quite a few audio problems depending on game which may or may not be fixed somewhere down the line. This is because that's when they really started overhauling the audio in WINE.

They are up to 1.3.30 but the audio situation hasn't settled yet it seems to me. Like for example with Wolfenstein (2009) I ended up downgrading it to 1.3.24 for the best audio... any version in between that and 1.3.30 has not been giving me good audio support and 1.3.30 lets the audio go out of sync after a while.

[Frost]

Wumpus, on 14 October 2011 - 09:31 AM, said:

Have to say those flaws aren't worth running it in OSX for me.

No kidding. Those minor issues sound major enough to make me want to stop playing if I had to deal with that.

[Hansi]

The customized one I linked to above works past most of those flaws. I'd say it's relatively decent I still played it in a normal Windows install (bootcamp).

[Marvin_Arnold]

Whoops, had completely forgotten about my post...

Eric5h5, on 14 October 2011 - 11:11 AM, said:

So...aside from the game not actually working, it runs flawlessly.    You might need to look up the definition of "flawless"....  Looking in the CrossOver Games database, it seems to have some issues, but apparently can be made to run better than what you describe with some tweaking.  Don't have the game and haven't tried it though.

--Eric

Hmm... maybe you should look up the definition of "not actually working"... and the definition of "apart from". And the "some tweaking" section on CX means patching and compiling the WINE source code. Which last time I tried ended in a string of error messages. Because these patches only work with Linux, anyway. However, those flaws aren't worth bothering with either gcc or sacrificing several GB for a Windows installation.

Which was the whole point of my post.

Hansi, on 14 October 2011 - 11:05 AM, said:

Most of the issues other than the lighting are fixed in this Wineskin wrapper: http://forum.porting...php?f=45&t=6284

Hansi, thank you for your helpful post! I'll check it out. (Although there are people in that thread complaining about the same issues I have... we'll see...)

M:A:

EDIT: Tried a similar wrapper from that site, which explicitly fixes the mouse and audio issues, and just requires copying the Program Files/Mass Effect folder from my own wrapper.
The mouse wrapping is working well, although I got so used to handling the unwrapped mouse ("don't lift it when moving back") that it doesn't make much difference now. The graphic glitches, however, are worse than with my generic Wineskin wrapper. (Characters look as if they were wearing lo-res masks with different lighting properties. I'm trying to contact the coder in oder to work out a solution) Audio seems to work well. Will try your recommended wrapper as well. (which, unfortunately, requires a fresh installation).

Thanks.