[Helmling]

Okay, I'm a nutjob Civ fan. Civ 5 comes out next week. I must play it. I failed to acquire a Windows license, so BootCamp isn't going to cut it.

I've tried getting Steam to run through CrossOver games, but when I download demos from Steam they say "preparing to launch..." then the box just goes away and nothing happens.

Anybody know how to tweak Wine? I want to know what I'm doing so I can try this next week with the Civ 5 demo and make sure it works before plunking down the change for the game.

[besson3c]

Why don't you try getting one of the Civ IV games to run through WINE first? I don't know why you had problems with the demos you downloaded, but I assure you, all of the Civ IV games have been working just fine here. If the Civ V engine uses the same programing languages (and not .NET or something), I don't see any reason why it won't run in WINE just fine.

[Helmling]

I think the two games are ground-up different. I THINK. Civ 4 used the Gamebryo engine...I don't know what 5's using, but I know the scripting isn't Python anymore. I'll go over to the civ forums and get some more information.

I tried to get RUSE and Worms demos to run, but zilch. I figured high end and pretty low end, but neither would launch. Is STEAM maybe not the best way to go? Do you know of any way to tweak CrossOver's settings to adjust compatibility?

[besson3c]

I don't know if STEAM includes WINE, what version that would be, or what it does when there is no Mac version of the game available, but if you know that there is no Mac version available you should check the app database to see whether the game will work in WINE. E.g.:

WineHQ - Worms Armageddon 1.0-3.6.29.0

[Helmling]

Interesting...so I interpret that to mean that it's not the game itself but the way Steam is launching it. Maybe I'd be better off with a physical CD, but I was hoping to purchase through Steam because then when the Mac version comes out I would be able to switch to that (probably, since IV is steam play on both).

I should've explained. I'm running the PC version of Steam in CrossOver games. I downloaded one demo that worked. It was some super low end game that opened in a window, but even that fouled up when I tried to go full screen.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Helmling 

Interesting...so I interpret that to mean that it's not the game itself but the way Steam is launching it. Maybe I'd be better off with a physical CD, but I was hoping to purchase through Steam because then when the Mac version comes out I would be able to switch to that (probably, since IV is steam play on both).

I should've explained. I'm running the PC version of Steam in CrossOver games. I downloaded one demo that worked. It was some super low end game that opened in a window, but even that fouled up when I tried to go full screen.

Are you running the PC version of Steam under OS X? How so?

[Helmling]

I'm running PC Steam through Crossover Games.

I'm starting to despair. Somebody else told me that every time they update Civ 5, it's likely to throw off Wine and I'd have to wait for an update. I'm thinking if I really want to play this game (and boy howdy, do I) I'll have to resort to Boot Camp, which would mean I have to find a copy of Windows.

[besson3c]

Just wait a few more days and see how well it works in WINE. Starcraft 2 works just fine out-of-the-box, as do many other modern games. A lot of the impressions people have of WINE are pretty outdated, it has come a long way.

AFAIK, Steam is just sort of like the iTunes Store - just a way to find, purchase, and install apps. It doesn't provide Windows APIs to run Windows games on the Mac, that is the job of WINE, and I have no idea whether Steam works alongside WINE although my gut feeling is that it doesn't. Therefore, I don't think Steam is going to be of much use to you at all unless it is the only way to download and install the game. Is it?

If you want to run the PC version of Steam, it will work, but as you can see here:

WineHQ - Steam Official Release

The development versions of WINE are what have been tested. What version of WINE have you installed? The stable branch is the 1.2 branch, dev is 1.3. If you want to run Steam that way I would install the 1.3 series.

Otherwise, if you don't need Steam to run Civ 5, I would wait to see if you can run it in WINE before you run out and buy a copy of Windows. It won't be long before it is tested and people have reports on whether it works and whether there is a way to make it work, there are a ton of gamers using WINE. Patience!

[besson3c]

Ahh, if click on the "show all tests" button on the Steam app DB page you can see that there are reports of Steam working in Wine 1.2 as well.

If you weren't able to games to run in PC Steam this is probably because it was not launching the PC games using WINE. LIke I said before, I would skip Steam unless you can't.

[besson3c]

Also, addressing the Civ updates breaking WINE, obviously I can't offer any guarantees, but I've run literally all of the Civ IV games and all sorts of versions of the original Civ IV, Starcraft 2 beta updates, Starcraft 2 and its updates, etc. in WINE without a problem, as well as several older games, even Nintendo 64 and a Gamecube/Wii emulator that require USB game controller support. I doubt a Civ update would drastically change the frameworks and basic design of the game, they will probably just be bug fixes, balance changes, other tweaks that shouldn't break anything.

[Helmling]

Okay, that's hopeful.

No, Steam isn't the only way to get the game, but it's preferred for me because with Steamplay I'll be able to switch to the Mac version when it comes out. And I, um, already bought it to get the pre-sale DLC stuff.

So, I'm pretty committed to running through Steam at this point.

Okay, you keep saying Wine...so is that your way of telling me to give up on CrossOver and just load Wine the, um, hard way? I read up on it earlier today, but I think it was you who told me Crossover was just an easy package for Wine, no?

I'm looking through the Wine stuff about Steam and I tried a fix that sounds like my problem, but no luck so far.

[besson3c]

Okay then, so then use Steam to download the game so that it has been registered with your account, and WINE to run/install it...

[besson3c]

I would skip CrossOver Office because you have to pay for it, and because it is probably lacking behind WINE... If you are looking to play the game ASAP, there is no telling how long it will take for this game to be installable through Crossover.

[Helmling]

Eh, yeah, unfortunately Steam doesn't work that way. It launches the game for you. Sucks, I know. I'm thinking maybe I'll try the whole shebang through Wine...maybe?

Hey, regardless of whether I manage to get it working, thanks for all your help.

[besson3c]

To install WiNE on OS X, install XQuartz first:

X112.5.3 – XQuartz

Then install XCode if you haven't already.

Then install MacPorts. Then drop into your Terminal and enter:

sudo port selfupdate

To update the MacPorts port information, and then

sudo port -v install wine

to install WINE 1.2 or

sudo port -v install wine-devel

to install WINE 1.3.2

Then try typing in "wine" to see if you get a response, if you don't you need to add WINE to your path. To do this, open up the .profile file in your home directory in your terminal:

nano ~/.profile

Change or add the following line:

export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/opt/local/share/man:$PATH

Then, close and reopen your terminal window, and enter:

echo $PATH

you should see that /opt/local/bin is in your path now, which is where WINE lives. Now you can launch WINE simply by entering:

wine

rather than:

/opt/local/bin/wine

now that you have WINE installed, find out where your game was installed and enter:

wine /path/to/your/game

[Helmling]

Gulp. Okay. I'll give it a whirl...um, tomorrow. I think.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Helmling 

Eh, yeah, unfortunately Steam doesn't work that way. It launches the game for you. Sucks, I know. I'm thinking maybe I'll try the whole shebang through Wine...maybe?

Yeah, it looks like Steam is a DRM manager for the games, it needs to be running. Fortunately, it will run in OS X: WineHQ - Steam Official Release

I'm trying these instructions now to see if I can get it to work... It looks like you need to install winetricks and have it auto install some Windows libraries as per the instructions in the above URL. I'm looking at that right now. I will see if I can download and install the Windows versions of the Civ IV games I bought through Steam.

[besson3c]

Okay Helmling,

I did get the Windows version of Steam installed and working, and I also downloaded, installed and ran Civ IV Colonization through the Windows version of Steam with no difficulty. I have no reason to believe that this same recipe won't work for Civ V, but we'll find out soon enough!

Here is what I did... You of course need an Intel Mac for this, and I'm using Snow Leopard:

- Installed XCode, XQuartz, Macports are per above instructions
- Optional: added /opt/local/bin to my path (this may already be done for you via the Macports installer)
- Installed Wine 1.2 and winetricks via Macports (this will take you a while, there are lots of dependencies which will be automatically installed for you). Verify that you can invoke wine, if you can the hard part is over!

sudo port -v install wine
sudo port -v install winetricks

(you might be able to do both at the same time with sudo port -v install wine winetricks). The -v means show all the gory stuff in your terminal window. You don't need to understand any of this stuff, I just like to see that it is doing something as it compiles. If you see screenfuls of text after doing this all is good!

- Downloaded Windows SteamClient
- wine msiexec /i Steaminstall.msi - unfortunately I can't find a way to map Windows .exe files to WINE and .msi files to the Windows installer (msiexec) so you'll have to put up with not being able to double click icons like you can in Linux. Perhaps somebody here knows how to register custom file extensions to custom apps in OS X? The /i = install, Steaminstall.msi was in the same directory I invoked this from
- You need Microsoft .NET, DirectX and other stuff to run Civ IV, you can install these via winetricks:

winetricks d3dx9 msxml3 vcrun2003 dotnet11 corefonts

- Civ IV Colonization then launches via Steam... To get back into Steam, again, this would be much easier if we could map file extensions properly and stuff, but:

cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Steam && wine Steam.exe


I guess I should take back what I said about this working "out of the box", it worked out of the box for me cause I installed directX and .NET and created my WINE environment some time ago. The above is not necessarily hard, just several steps of work. Once done the game will run beautifully for you though, great framerates and everything. My wife plays Civ IV on our 37" TV at 1900x1080 that way... You'll need to change your screen resolution to match your Mac's once you are inside the game.

[Helmling]

Interesting.

Well, I haven't yet given up on CrossOver. I went ahead and downloaded Portal through Steam and it launched no problem--well, except that my dock and Mac menu bar are still visible even in full screen.

It seems like only those demos I was trying were affected. I'm downloading the Windows version of Civ 4 BTS right now to see if it will launch. If so, I'll wait out Civ 5 on Tuesday. If it doesn't work then I will set right to building a custom Wine setup as per your directions. Thanks, and I'll keep you updated.

(Oh, that's sweet with the TV setup. I want to get a new mini for our TV with a decent graphics card so we can game on our flat screen. Right now, it's got an integrated intel chipset, so 3D blows.)

[besson3c]

Sounds like you're several steps ahead of me then if you have things working in Crossover! Crossover may not have the recipe for Civ V as soon as the WINE junkies do, WINE is more bleeding edge for nerds, but we'll see... Perhaps I'll take pity on you and see if there is a Crossover demo or something i can download. Somewhere in the package is probably the WINE binary, I can see what version you have, and if compatible use that so that you don't have to install WINE separately. I suspect Crossover is using WINE 1.2 now since it's stable and has been for a little while). Winetricks should help us install any Windows dependencies that are needed, although according to the system requirements page:

Pre-purchase Sid Meier's Civilization� V on Steam

It's just DirectX 9 and XP or greater, so these requirements should be the same as Civ IV's. I'm not sure why the WINE guys have you install .NET, the game just seems to be your standard non .NET Windows app (.NET apps generally don't seem to work in WINE, based on my experience... Maybe the stuff you downloaded were .NET games?). Maybe .NET is needed for cooperative play or some facet of the game I haven't gotten into yet.

It's been years since I played with Crossover, but I seem to recall a way to add custom apps, so I would't be surprised if once you get your hands on the Civ V installer and point Crossover at it that it happily installs and just works for you out-of-the-box. It is good that you worked on getting Civ IV up and running, because that should have taken care of installing the prerequisites for you (DirectX 9).

[besson3c]

As far as full screen support in WINE for OS X, according to this:

MacOSX/FAQs - The Official Wine Wiki

This is a no go... You'll have to reset the resolution of your game in WINE to a resolution that will fit, but you won't be able to get rid of the menu bar or dock like you can in the Linux version. You can auto hide the dock though...

[besson3c]

Sorry for the verboseness of everything, I'm thinking of helping future people that come across this thread that may want to run something else in WINE and/or don't want to buy Crossover and doing a lot of thinking out loud. The bottom line for you is that Civ V should work fine in Crossover for you if you can put up with the lack of full screen.

That is my prediction

[Helmling]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

As far as full screen support in WINE for OS X, according to this:

MacOSX/FAQs - The Official Wine Wiki

This is a no go... You'll have to reset the resolution of your game in WINE to a resolution that will fit, but you won't be able to get rid of the menu bar or dock like you can in the Linux version. You can auto hide the dock though...

It doesn't bother me for Civ, but I wouldn't want to play any FPS like that.

Yeah, I hope the game plays Tuesday no problem. If not, I will be pinging you like mad. Thanks for the help. I've learned a lot about Wine today. It says my Civ 4 download is 17 minutes off. I think I'll go have a snack and wait it out.

I've been reading the Civ 5 manual all night in preparation. I'm in danger of ruining my keyboard with drool.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Helmling 

It doesn't bother me for Civ, but I wouldn't want to play any FPS like that.

Yeah, I hope the game plays Tuesday no problem. If not, I will be pinging you like mad. Thanks for the help. I've learned a lot about Wine today. It says my Civ 4 download is 17 minutes off. I think I'll go have a snack and wait it out.

I've been reading the Civ 5 manual all night in preparation. I'm in danger of ruining my keyboard with drool.

Man, you're really intense about the game

Have you played a beta or demo yet? Has something been released or leaked? Or, is Tuesday going to be biblical for you?

[Helmling]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Man, you're really intense about the game

Have you played a beta or demo yet? Has something been released or leaked? Or, is Tuesday going to be biblical for you?

LOL. The demo doesn't come out until Tuesday. It also happens to be my birthday. I would be seriously tempted to take the day off just to play (and I wouldn't be the only nut doing so, either), but I have too much to do this week.

I don't know what it is about this game--well, I guess it's mostly the ego trip of getting to rewrite history--but I've always been a hard core Civ addict. I started playing on my college roommate's computer in the early 90's and it was a driving force in purchasing my first 486. It's damned near 20 years and I've bought every version that's come out and usually gotten my money's worth a 1,000 times over. I've also spent probably a 1,000 times as many hours playing this series as all other video games combined.

I really wish that was an exaggeration. I swear, if I could harness the mental energy I've exhausted on this game and channel it into something useful then I'd have a Nobel prize in something.

[besson3c]

Have conversations with your wife ever gone like the following?

Wife: "Helming, come to the bedroom, I want to play with your penis!"

Helmling: "Can it wait just a little bit? Ghandi has just created the Statue of Liberty and I've got 26 longbowman now!"

[Helmling]

Post-snack update: Civ 4 BTS ran, but it's buggy. It went full screen, until I tried to change the resolution. Then all hell broke lose. Note to self: if Civ 5 launches, live with low resolution until the Mac version comes out.

Thanks again. If you don't hear from me on Tuesday, then all is well.

[Helmling]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Have conversations with your wife ever gone like the following?

Wife: "Helming, come to the bedroom, I want to play with your penis!"

Helmling: "Can it wait just a little bit? Ghandi has just created the Statue of Liberty and I've got 26 longbowman now!"

Of course not.

I never build longbowman and I'd never let Ghandi beat me to the Statue of Liberty.

[besson3c]

Heh...

To this day I still find it funny that one time I was watching my wife play one of the Civ IV games (Warlords, I think?!) and a longbowman shot down a helicopter!

[Helmling]

Okay, I'm going to bed, but I did restart the game to see what would happen.

Turns out the resolution change took and it ran fine. Better than fine, actually. It was noticeably smoother than the notoriously crappy Aspyr port to OS X.

Tuesday's looking to be a great day.

[Dork.]

I've been ignoring the fact that Civ V will exist shortly, because I have been very busy with things like Work and Life recently, and I know that if I even read a review of Civ V I'll end up throwing about a month or two's worth of evenings into the game right off the bat. I feel a little like a recovering drug addict or something....

(I don't even need wine, since I have Windows XP in VMware....)

[williamclv]

Yo!

I am in the same situation as you, long time civ fan, but got a mac a year or so ago.

I actually recently moved to Amsterdam too, so I have to wait 3 whole extra days until I can get the game!?! Oh well

Anyways, wondering how you will download civilization 5 from steam, do you install the mac or windows version of steam and if you are doing the windows version did you use "Crossover games" to install it? Then what happened? haha, i appreciate any info you can lend to a fellow Civ'er



will

[besson3c]

You'll need the Windows version of Steam running to play Windows Civ V

[Helmling]

Bad news...I loaded up the game. It launched. I could start a game, but when it came up, the world was gray. I couldn't see any 3D elements. I can actually switch the game's new "strategic view" but I can't figure out how to move my units or anything. I mean, technically, I think I could play that way, but it's not exactly the full experience.

[williamclv]

helmling, i am in similar situation as you, but was doubting if maybe it was just because my graphics card sux?

what are your comps stats?

my graphics card is only 144mb, so i think thats pretty shoddy

[besson3c]

This guy couldn't even get it to install: WineHQ - Sid Meier's Civilization V Steam . I'm trying the demo now in Wine 1.2...

[williamclv]

yeah i get it installed fine (the demo) but then the text is all sorts of garbled in the menus and then it just stalls when loading my game as Alexander, and i kind of see parts of a bad looking screw up map

so thinking its more my computers fault, but looking forward to how it works for some of you

[besson3c]

Did you install the version of DirectX that is needed for this game?

[P]

Originally Posted by williamclv 

my graphics card is only 144mb, so i think thats pretty shoddy

That sounds like it might be a GMA950. If so, I'm sorry - it won't ever work, and neither will most other games.

[besson3c]

I'm just getting a white screen and an "unhandled page fault" on my Mac, I'm trying this on my Ubuntu machine to see what happens there.

[besson3c]

One guy said he got it to work with Wine 1.2 and winetricks:

WineHQ - Sid Meier's Civilization V Steam


Looking into this some more...

[besson3c]

Yup, I got the demo working in Ubuntu Wine 1.2 just fine... I don't know yet if it graphically looks as it is supposed to, but it plays fine.

[williamclv]

its a "Chipset Model: GMA X3100" with 144 mb i guess, civ iv works just great on it, but maybe that games a bit 'simple'

but doesnt work on my gf's macbook pro either

[besson3c]

I think that my Macbook Pro might not have a video card that will cut it, doesn't matter whether I'm in fullscreen mode or not... (BTW, fullscreen mode will get rid of the Mac's dock and menu bar, Helmling). It will play on my Ubuntu machine, although it defaults to very low graphical settings (I can increase them, I haven't determined whether I can keep up with them though).

I think we're going to have to wait on some more reports of what sorts of video settings are needed to get this to work. It sounds like this game is far more demanding of the various graphical extensions and tricks supported by video cards.

Helmling: have you tried turning on and off vsync in the in game video settings?

[besson3c]

Responding to a PM I got (sorry, I'd rather consolidate everything into this thread):

how could i try that with winetricks and this wine 1.2? and what type of mac are you running, or is it not a mac at all?

I provided instructions above for installing Wine and Winetricks via Macports. I have a Macbook Pro where I can't get Civ V to play, and a Ubuntu machine that plays it fine with the following:

winetricks msxml3 msxml4 d3dx9

(these same libraries were needed for Civ IV)

[Helmling]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

To install WiNE on OS X, install XQuartz first:

X112.5.3 – XQuartz

Then install XCode if you haven't already.

Then install MacPorts. Then drop into your Terminal and enter:

sudo port selfupdate

To update the MacPorts port information, and then

sudo port -v install wine

to install WINE 1.2 or

sudo port -v install wine-devel

to install WINE 1.3.2

Then try typing in "wine" to see if you get a response, if you don't you need to add WINE to your path. To do this, open up the .profile file in your home directory in your terminal:

nano ~/.profile

Change or add the following line:

export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/opt/local/share/man:$PATH

Then, close and reopen your terminal window, and enter:

echo $PATH

you should see that /opt/local/bin is in your path now, which is where WINE lives. Now you can launch WINE simply by entering:

wine

rather than:

/opt/local/bin/wine

now that you have WINE installed, find out where your game was installed and enter:

wine /path/to/your/game

besson,

I'm trying to get started on this, but you kind of gloss over the "install Xcode" part. I have not. Apple says I have to register as a developer to download it. Yikes?!?

[besson3c]

Helmling: what kind of Mac do you have? It sounds like your video card is a little more modern than mine since you were able to get further than me...

My theory is that WINE doesn't graciously offer some sort of error message if your video card will not cut it, it just tries its best and fails. Either that or there are bugs in WINE, although it is peculiar that we all seem to be getting different results with it under different machines.

This may not bode well. If my video card will not cut it, I'd imagine that the forthcoming Mac version will not help any. I'll guess we'll wait and see! I have an nVidia GeForce 9400M, the game is supposed to work with an nVidia 7900 GS or greater though, but I don't know if my card is "greater" or not... Looking into this.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Helmling 

besson,

I'm trying to get started on this, but you kind of gloss over the "install Xcode" part. I have not. Apple says I have to register as a developer to download it. Yikes?!?

It's a free download, you can just login with your AppleID to get it. You don't need any money or special credentials to get XCode.

[besson3c]

Hmmm... the 9400m should be up to snuff. Not sure what is going on, maybe this is a Mac WINE implementation specific problem.

If you are desperate you could dual boot your Mac with Ubuntu or some other Linux and play the game there. That would at least save you from buying Windows, although I'm sure this is more work than most people would want to go through for the game.

I'm going to try upgrading to Wine 1.3.3 on my OS X machine to see what happens there... Stay tuned!

[Helmling]

Okay, thanks. I'm downloading X-code now. I want to try CrossOver again, but I can't connect to Steam. I think maybe some IT police caught my 1Gb download from Steam this morning and put it on the proxy's no-no list. I'll be going home to try it there soon enough.

I'm starting to think I'll end up dual booting after all, but I need to find a copy of Windows somebody isn't using.