Anarchy Online on Mac OS X

Printable View

Sep 15th, 2011, 17:04:40
Creacal

Anarchy Online on Mac OS X

So!

I'm getting sick and tired of rebooting into Windows every time I want to log onto AO. Also Boot Camp is taking up valuable hard drive space. :(

I've tried Parallels, but that is a pain in the behind to be fair. A VM is simply not good enough to run AO on a decent framerate. I ran the trial of Crossover but to be fair I don't see the added value over WINE (add to that I refuse to pay for something that is open source to begin with). And AO isn't even properly supported on Crossover too.

Which brings me to WINE. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get Anarchy Online running on this, ever. The only 'guide' which I was able to follow succesfully was this one (<3). So happily and in full expectancy of an awesomely running AO client, I get a choppy screen with 10 FPS. It's at this point I cursed my laptop.

So, if anyone could help me get AO running on my Mac that would be awesome! It's a mid-2010 MBP running OS X Lion 10.7.2 Developer Release.

Cheers! :D
Sep 15th, 2011, 21:35:14
DocJones

Heyas fellow fanboi,

search is your friend.

Ok, there are several solutions. I am personally using the custom built Macports wine-devel built (1.3.26) which requires a lot of time and work. You have to get Xcode from the Mac App Store (free), install Macports, download, patch, build and install the wine-devel package.

Next you have to configure your environment (called "bottle" in crossover or "WINEPREFIX" in wine) carefully and copy over an existing AO installation.

I can provide you with a PKG/DMG file with wine-devel-1.3.26 and recent winetricks but i havent tested if this is working on a fresh installation.

On my late 2006 24" iMac i am getting rather lowish FPS in stressy situations, but most of the time i am happily running with 15-20 FPS. Should be better on newer models.

Tell me what you want to try out, perhaps i can provide you with help.

regards
/Z

EDIT:

wine-devel-1.3.26.dmg and winetricks-20010629.dmg on my public dropbox.

EDIT2:
Actually, the posts from Lliers and Flink (posts #47 and #102) in my thread regarding the Awesomium troubles late 2010 are the most valuable information.
Sep 19th, 2011, 11:19:08
Mastablasta

Easy fix troll post: Don't use OS X!
Sep 19th, 2011, 11:32:05
DocJones

*sigh* Oh my... very constructive, Masta. Really.
Sep 19th, 2011, 11:38:20
DocJones

Oh, and another question towards the OP: Whats your GPU in the MPB? Do you have both Intel and Nvidia? If so, did you try to switch between them?
Sep 19th, 2011, 14:26:15
Mastablasta

You'll need some serious bad habbits to save up for a 240-500gb ssd in a month :p and who knows if he even has one? If it's the default 500gb hd then oh dear, dead end. Or build a luvely stationary PC for the price of that 500gb SSD :p
Sep 19th, 2011, 14:46:30
Lliers

It's not about the cost. The effort of dual-booting is annoying -- even with fast boot-ups and instant-on features. Even waiting for a VM like Parallels and VMWare to start up can be a pain. If I had to reboot or wait for a VM to come up every time I wanted a little diversion, I'd never fire up AO.

Yeah, yeah, switch to windows... blah blah blah... off topic. The point here isn't OS wars. Some of us have already chosen our preferred OS, and we'd like to stay in it..
Sep 19th, 2011, 14:53:18
Mastablasta

Think of it like turning on your Xbox :p

But if that Macbook is his only PC, then saying that "you should just buy a SSD that costs as much as a completely new system" to fix the problem, space apparently, is a lot less serious than saying you should not use OS X for gaming non-OS X games.
Sep 19th, 2011, 23:06:11
Mastablasta

Storage mediums is probably the one thing I wouldn't buy used, though.
Sep 20th, 2011, 04:10:44
Lliers

Topic hijacked. Crecal, are you up and running yet? If so did DocJones win any epeen points or something? If so I think you can close and lock.
Sep 20th, 2011, 10:38:07
Mastablasta

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marketplace

New SSD Example

Cost = a new PC :p
Sep 20th, 2011, 10:54:05
Marketplace

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mastablasta

Cost = a new PC :p

I give up.
Sep 20th, 2011, 12:01:33
Destru

Thanks for the packages, DocJones. Installed last night and running without a hitch.
Sep 20th, 2011, 12:33:48
DocJones

O.o Thanks for the feedback :) I never tried the packages without Macports myself (got it all built up from the scratch), good to know it works :)
Sep 21st, 2011, 23:12:16
Creacal

Sorry for my belated response. There was some stuff going on which meant I couldn't reply up until now. :)

Allright, after an evening of playing around with WINE I managed to get Anarchy Online running. I can run around and everything seems to work fine, even mouselook.

BUT

I still get a horrible framerate in various zones. I'm also spammed in Terminal with the following two messages over and over:
fixme:d3d:resource_check_usage Unhandled usage flags 0x8.
fixme:d3d:wined3d_buffer_preload Too many full buffer conversions, stopping converting.

So yeah, some problem with Direct3D obviously. This MBP only has an Nvidia 320M in it.

Any ideas?
Sep 21st, 2011, 23:41:01
DocJones

Heyas,

avoid the spammy messages and receive a few more FPS by switching off debugging information:

Code:

export WINEPREFIX="<directory of your bottle here>" export WINEDEBUG="-all" cd "$WINEPREFIX/<AO directory inside the bottle>" && /opt/local/bin/wine Anarchy.exe &

The FPS drops happen to me, too. Especially in the Freelancer Agency building (clam side) and in the room where you receive the BS daily mission in Borealis. There seems to be a problem with rooms with certain doors or something that has a huge impact on WINE's performance...

regards
/Z
Sep 21st, 2011, 23:44:09
Creacal

The FPS is actually quite stable overall though. I get the same FPS in Borealis, the Grid, Jobe and APF's. It's playable, but nowhere near the FPS I get offered under Boot Camp. Ofcourse, running it on a native OS will always yield better FPS rates, but I expect more from WINE to be honest than what I am getting now, based on what I've seen in the past.
Sep 21st, 2011, 23:55:16
Creacal

Quote:

Originally Posted by DocJones

Code:

export WINEPREFIX="<directory of your bottle here>" export WINEDEBUG="-all" cd "$WINEPREFIX/<AO directory inside the bottle>" && /opt/local/bin/wine Anarchy.exe &

Actually after running this I'm getting very good FPS in the aforementioned areas. Haven't checked the agencies yet but I'm glad the majority works.

There's still one major issue though. After a few minutes, Anarchy Online decides to freeze. WINE then starts taking up all the CPU it can get and I have to manually kill the process from Terminal.

Any ideas on this? :)
Sep 22nd, 2011, 14:31:24
DocJones

Ouch, sorry. I never have freezes neither on AO nor the Mac as a whole (3 panic's in 2 years, yay!)
Sep 23rd, 2011, 04:11:23
Lliers

Quote:

Originally Posted by Creacal

There's still one major issue though. After a few minutes, Anarchy Online decides to freeze. WINE then starts taking up all the CPU it can get and I have to manually kill the process from Terminal.

Couple of thoughts:

Are you using the stock X11 that comes with Mac OS X (or the Developer's Tools) or have you installed XQuartz which uses the latest version of X from Xorg. (Way better than Apple's X11 and crucial for proper wine workings.)

You might consider allowing Wine to produce all that debug output, but redirecting it all to a file so that you can browse through it after the crash to see if there are any error messages that might give you a clue as to what caused the crash:

Don't set "export WINEDEBUG=-all" and change your command to something like:

Code:

"wine Anarchy.exe > winelog 2>$1"