Srb2 Running On Mac (Works with Netplay and everything the Windows Version does)

[SamTehLulz]

Alright, so I noticed people were having issues with Fullscreen and Netplay with the official srb2mac port (Including myself). So I decided to look into using Winebottler to set it up, and it actually WORKED and I could join netgames and enter Fullscreen mode. So I did a search on the Message Board, I couldn't find any current tutorial for how to do it, so I decided to make one.

Requirements:

X11 (This comes with Mac OS X Lion or older, if you have Mountain Lion or newer download XQuartz from here)

Winebottler (You can get this from here)

Srb2 for Windows (You can get this from the srb2 website, the same as you normally would)




Okay so after you install everything, double-click the srb2 installer you downloaded and tell Winebottler to make it an application. Then, follow the instructions and make sure it places it somewhere on your desktop or some other easily accessible location. Then wait. Then after the srb2 installer comes up, MAKE SURE YOU CHANGE THE Z:/ FILEPATH TO C:/Windows/Program Files/Srb2/ (Or at least somewhere within the C:/ Directory)

Then, when it asks which executable to use, select srb2win.exe and then it should finish from there. Double-click on the new bottle you just created and the game should run. Select "Allow" and if it shows a black screen or appears glitchy, press Cmd+Shift+A to get out of the fullscreen mode. Then press Cmd+Shift+D to hide the dock, if it gets in your way. Be sure to bring the dock back with Cmd+Shift+D again when you're done.

If you think I should make a video tutorial of this, please say so. Also, if someone already made a tutorial of this, I didn't see it. Sorry if this tutorial has already been made and I just haven't seen it.

If you have any questions, just ask me and I'll get back to you as soon as I can!

 

[ÐeltaResero]

So, if my memory serves me correctly, this is only a solution for Intel MacIntosh and not PowerPC based ones as PowerPC platforms use Big Endian (instead of Little Endian). I remember reading about the Darwine project being partly capable of running x86 executables on PowerPC platforms a few years ago, but I currently have no way of testing this with SRB2. Even if SRB2 could properly execute using this method, it would likely be quite slow, even on a modern machine. Not only does the conversion between endianness requires a lot of CPU cycles, but the emulation does as well. Also, it seems PowerPC support in Darwine was suspended a while back as well.

As for your solution with Winebottler, it seems more practical as this is similar to how some use Wine on Linux attempt to run SRB2. Though I don't have an Intel MacIntosh, I'm still curious as to how this compares to Wine running under (x86) Linux. Did you notice if there's a significant difference in throughput between OpenGL rendering and the default Software mode? Also, does Winebottler suffer from the same regressions that Wine currently does with Linux? For example, when taking a screenshot (with the F8 key) in Linux using Software mode, it rarely turns out with the current version of Wine as shown (hopefully) in the image below.

Screenshot a Common (Linux) Wine Issue

Spoiler

To be clear, I mean that only the snapshot looks like this, not the actual gameplay...

 

[SamTehLulz]

I have yet to try out switching between OpenGL and Software, but I did test out the error with the Screenshot that you mentioned. I have actually gotten this to occur when taking screenshots in srb2 on Windows quite a while ago. When I just tried it out, I took three screenshots and all of them turned out perfectly without any visual bugs.

 

[ÐeltaResero]

Interesting, maybe WINE is just provoking a regression that didn't get caught in time for the 2.06 release. For me, it seems to occur more frequent when my machine is low on CPU and I'm trying to take a snapshot of a moving character. Hopefully these bugs get fixed by the time version 2.1 of SRB2 becomes public and that running SRB2 with emulation (or similar) will become a thing of the past.

Using your method mentioned here, it should be possible to use it with editors such as Doom Builder and Slade without having to boot a second system. As far as I know, there's no free alternative to Doom Builder for McIntosh. If it's anything like WINE has been in Linux lately, it will likely take some trial and error to get this to work reliably though. By the way, is there a compatibility list for Winebottler like there is for WINE?

 

[SamTehLulz]

I think the list on WineHQ would be the same as if there were one for WineBottler, as all Winebottler does is install the Mac version of Wine and create an Application or Prefix used for launch Windows executables. So it's basically the same version of Wine.

 

[Cinefast]

Also, it seems PowerPC support in Darwine was suspended a while back as well.

IIRC it never worked. If it did, it would've been extremely slow as well, even if you were running a PowerMac G5 Quadcore, on account of the solution being based around QEMU which provided x86 emulation, instruction by instruction.

Assuming SRB2 is compiled with something other than MSVC now, you may have luck finding out what compiler is used and building that compiler on OS X then using that compiler to build SRB2 natively.

 

[Cue]

Assuming SRB2 is compiled with something other than MSVC now, you may have luck finding out what compiler is used and building that compiler on OS X then using that compiler to build SRB2 natively.

Pretty sure it's still MSVC, much as I nagged for GCC everywhere.

I'd like to be wrong, someone correct me.

 

[AlamGBC]

Pretty sure it's still MSVC, much as I nagged for GCC everywhere.

I'd like to be wrong, someone correct me.

SRB2 2.0.6 was compiled with Mingw 3.4.5 on a Debian testing system...

 

[Larissa Celeste]

Did someone already have the problem where they tried to open srb2 mac and it closed automatically (I'm sorry did someone already say that?)