About a month ago, I decided (most likely thanks to Jevasi, DanTheMystFan, and all the other great people I was talking to at Mysterium this year) to get back into the world of Writing (the process of creating a custom Age for Uru), after a year-long hiatus. I returned to find the community in good health, happily churning out very high-quality ages one after another. The tool used for Writing, pyPRP (which is actually just a plugin for Blender) had improved and advanced tenfold since I last used it, now supporting animated textures, custom cameras, and something called ‘AlcScript’, which allows for simple actions to be scripted, making it easier to Write dynamic ages (my only finished age, Galamay, has no interactivity whatsoever, because when I Wrote it years ago, you had to actually write code to do that stuff…). The Guild of Writers Wiki, with its big list of tutorials, was endlessly helpful as I re-learned the little I remembered, and quickly advanced to new levels of ability.
The only problem with this Age Writing is the fact that I use a Mac, and Uru is built for Windows. The classic problem. My first solution was Dropbox, an easy file-syncing program that automatically copies files to every computer you’ve registered, every time the files are modified. This worked well enough, but I still had to wait on my network to move the files, and then move them to the Uru directory on my PC once they were synced. It worked, but it was definitely flawed.
So I began to think about another option. What if I could run Uru on my Mac? That would solve my problems, because then I could Write and test on the same machine. But how would I do it? My first thought was Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion, which both run Windows on top of OS X, meaning that the game would definitely run exactly as it would on a PC. However, a virtual machine would only cause more problems, such as the time it takes to load a virtual machine, or the lag that would be produced by running 2 operating systems. I thought about the latter problem for about two seconds before the answer hit me:
Wine. A self-referencing acronym standing for Wine Is Not an Emulator, Wine allows users of non-Windows operating systems to run .exe files meant specifically for Windows. The great thing is that it does this without having to run the entire Windows OS, just the specific parts that it needs to make the program work. This means that there’s no added lag, and programs really do run as if they were native to your own OS (in my case, Mac OS X, but it is available for Linux, OpenBSD, Solaris, and any platform you can build it on really, since it’s an open-source project).
The first thing I tried was DarWINE, a Wine project dedicated to getting Wine to work on OS X. Using the installer on the Uru Disk, I got through all of the initial installation before it gave me a strange error (Cannot find string ERROR_CANNOTLOAD), and crashed.
Next, I tried CrossOver Games, a commercial version of Wine dedicated to making Windows games work on Mac OS X and Linux. This behaved exactly as DarWINE did when I gave it the CD with the installer.
Frustrated, I thought more about my past experiences with Uru. I have found in the past that you don’t actually have to install Uru: all the installer does is unpack the data from the CDs to the hard drive. If you can get the files from another source (such as a past installation), you can simply run it without any other modifications. Perhaps the installer makes some registry changes, but they aren’t necessary for the game to run. Following this line of thought, I copied the files from my Uru install to my Mac, and tried opening UruExplorer.exe with CrossOver Games.
Presto! Flawless Uru, running directly on my Mac. Everything that worked on my PC works on my Mac, and given the fact that my PC doesn’t have speakers, the Mac can actually run Uru better than my PC!
Here’s how to do it:
- Install URU:Complete Chronicles on a PC.
- Install Drizzle, and get the No-Disc patch, flymode, OfflineKI, whatever add-ons you want. Drizzle is natively Mac-compatible, so you can always modify these settings later on.
- Make sure all of that stuff works on your PC.
- Copy all the files in your Uru directory (C:/Program Files/Ubisoft/Cyan Worlds/Myst Uru: Complete Chronicles by default) to somewhere on your Mac.
- Get CrossOver Games if you don’t already have it. The link is a trial, the full version costs $39.95 unfortunately…
Based on various reports, it seems like Crossover Games 8.0.0 works the best for Uru, newer versions can have some odd issues. You can download the trial for that here. - Create a WinXP bottle in Crossover (“Manage Bottles” from the Configure menu).
- Programs > Run Command…
- Hit browse and locate UruExplorer.exe on your hard drive
- Save the command, to make it easier to launch again later
- Hit Run, and Uru will launch. You can ignore the error message that might pop up, Uru will launch a moment later.
You can also just find UruExplorer.exe in Finder and double-click it, Uru should launch just the same.
More pictures:
If you love Uru, but are tired of exploring by yourself, you should install Myst Online: Uru Live Again on your Mac and come play online!
w00t!
You even have a working cursor! 😀
w00t!
You even have a working cursor! 😀
Interesting. Perhaps it can work on Linux after all, though I still plan to stick Debian on the desktop.
I just checked their site, Oblivion still needs work. :p Oh well, one apparently down…
–TSK
Interesting. Perhaps it can work on Linux after all, though I still plan to stick Debian on the desktop.
I just checked their site, Oblivion still needs work. :p Oh well, one apparently down…
–TSK
Woohoo – it works! Not quite as snappy as on Windows (or as MOUL on Cider), but with much less graphical glitches than in VMware or Parallels. Thanks for the tip, Zib, that’s going to make my Writing easier!
I tried Wine 1.1.6 from http://www.kronenberg.org/darwine/ before, but UruSetup crashes, and launching UruExplorer directly produces an immediate stack dump. Looks like I’m not going to spend any more time trying to figure out if that can be fixed (the first attempts were what led me here), but go and buy CrossOver, considering that it also plays Portal…
I followed the instructions given here to get URU to run in Crossover. It starts up and shows the Ubisoft and Cyan logo videos, and then a loading bar. But before it completes loading, I get this message:
Exception type: Access violation
Call stack (14 levels):
0x004D3E19
0x004D5709
0x004E3353
0x004CFE8F
0x526EBA39
0x5273635C
0x52760F99
0x963F6AA4
0x629C7C8D
0x629C579A
0x629EA4D7
0x629EA54A
0x629ED0B9
0x629EC345
Then it quits.
I am on a brand new unibody MacBook Pro 2.4.
Anyone have any idea how I can fix this? It would seem a crime to actually have to boot into Windows to play a Myst game.
I followed the instructions given here to get URU to run in Crossover. It starts up and shows the Ubisoft and Cyan logo videos, and then a loading bar. But before it completes loading, I get this message:
Exception type: Access violation
Call stack (14 levels):
0x004D3E19
0x004D5709
0x004E3353
0x004CFE8F
0x526EBA39
0x5273635C
0x52760F99
0x963F6AA4
0x629C7C8D
0x629C579A
0x629EA4D7
0x629EA54A
0x629ED0B9
0x629EC345
Then it quits.
I am on a brand new unibody MacBook Pro 2.4.
Anyone have any idea how I can fix this? It would seem a crime to actually have to boot into Windows to play a Myst game.
Hi
your suggestions work fine, perfectly, thx. I’d like to distribute this article to some interested persons resp. forums a bit more, would you mind that?
Its great to play URU on Mac, even better than i had it ever before on a Windows machine!
Ekk
Go for it! 🙂 The more the merrier. Just link back to the original article here.
Hi
your suggestions work fine, perfectly, thx. I’d like to distribute this article to some interested persons resp. forums a bit more, would you mind that?
Its great to play URU on Mac, even better than i had it ever before on a Windows machine!
Ekk
Go for it! 🙂 The more the merrier. Just link back to the original article here.
I followed your instructions, and the game works great and thanks for the guide however my curser doesn’t look right (like in picture 4 of 7)
How did you manage to get the curser right?
The method I described is exactly what I did, nothing more or less…The cursor always looked right for me :< Sorry I can't be more helpful than that...
Thanks for replying 🙂
I have learned that some people have made this work in Wine by adding the DIB Engine (http://wiki.winehq.org/DIBEngine) I however have no clue how to compile wine with the DIB Engine..
I know that CodeWeavers back in 2008 where working on a DIB Engine of their own, but it seems to have ben discontinued.. so it might be that my version of Crossover Games (9.1.0) is handling URU a bit differently.
Can you tell me which version of Crossover Games you used?
I’m using Crossover Games 8.0.0. It’s the newest version I can use without renewing my subscription or whatever. Either that or I’m too lazy to upgrade :-\
I’m using Crossover Games 8.0.0. It’s the newest version I can use without renewing my subscription or whatever. Either that or I’m too lazy to upgrade :-\
Okay, so I got my friends old Crossover Games 8.0.0 and license, installed it and now the game works flawlessly with the curser working and everything.
It seems that as some point between Crossover 8.0.0 and 9.1.0 there was made some changes in wine which broke the ability to display the curser right, and since Myst URU isn’t on CodeWeavers officially supported games list, CodeWeavers didn’t make patches to maintain compatibility with this game.
Thanks for the guide, it is great to have URU on my mac 😀
Would be cool if you could update the links i the guide and specify the version of Crossover Games needed.
Thanks again, Zib U Rock!
Where can I find Crossover games 8.0? I can only find the newest version and I want to avoid running into any problems URU has with newer versions.
Where can I find Crossover games 8.0? I can only find the newest version and I want to avoid running into any problems URU has with newer versions.
Also, I ran the Crossover 8.0 trial but now it is up and the buy link just sends me to the newest version. ?
Also, I ran the Crossover 8.0 trial but now it is up and the buy link just sends me to the newest version. ?