Ephinea PSOBB client for macOS 10.15+ & Apple Silicon

[NinJy]

Hi,

I built a Wineskin based .app compatible with X64 only macOS systems which started with 10.15 "Catalina", indeed also works with older.
Globally it works well. I can play at 30fps with a Macbook Air 2017 (latest model of the "old gen"), running an i5 and HD6000 integrated GPU.
I will try to update later with more updated Wine 64.

I would not recommand to enable the "low perfomance" mode because it seems to highly raise engine suttering and so reduce framerate, actually on my machine.

It correctly detects DualShock 4 connected via integrated bluetooth or Sony official dongle.
Have not tried DualShock 3 or Xbox 360/One controller.




Installation:
Open/mount "Ephinea PSOBB.dmg".
Drag and drop "Ephinea PSOBB" to "Applications" folder.

Known issues:
- I get a popup saying: "is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Trash".

Solution:​

Thanks to @BABY and @adam3000​

Copy Ephinea to Applications folder, then run terminal command: xattr -cr /Applications/EphineaPSO.app​

​

You need to disable Gatekeeper.​

Open a terminal and run: sudo spctl --master-disable​

Type your user session password​

Retry to launch PSO.​

It may be possible to enable back Gatekeeper after opened PSO one time.​

Run: sudo spctl --master-enable​

- A popup says "the process can't write because the HDD is read only.

Solution: I don't know the source cause, but moving the .app to another folder fix the issue.​

​

- The game have poor framerate even with all settings on low.

Solution: You can try to set fog setting on Vertex, it seems to help with configurations running low end/old Intel CPU/iGPU.​

- The game crashes when cmd+tab when playing fullscreen mode.

Solution: If you are using "classic fullscreen" in launcher options, uncheck it.​

​

- The game crashes at launch.

Solution: Try to set another resolution in launcher options.​

​

- The game is not using official text font.

Solution: Right click on the .app and "show package content".​

Go to "Ephinea PSOBB.app/Contents/Resources/drive_c/EphineaPSO/font/".​

Run "GULIM.TTC", that should launch macOS font app and 4 small windows for each font style.​

Click install on each of them. You should now see them in the font list of your system.​

Launch Ephinea client and go to Options -> More.​

Set the font to one of the Gulim familly of your choice.​

​

Known issues I have not managed to fix yet:
- When the app start, a macOS popup displays an authorization request to get inputs.

Workaround: Just discard it, it is not useful to actually gets inputs from keyboard/mouse/gamepad.​

​

​

Update History:

5.00:

Rebuilt from scratch using 32bit prefix to work with new launcher.​

Size also reduced from almost 1GB.​

4.03:

Added workaround to boot old Ephinea (online_old.exe) launcher as the new one is crashing on Wine.​

​

4.02:

Added libMoltenVK.dylib 1.1.9 to SharedSupport libs​

Updated DXVK to 1.10.1-mac​

​

4.01:

Rebuilt from scratch using Wineskin-2.9.1.1​

4.00:

Updated engine to WS11WineCX64Bit21.2.0​

Updated d3d8to9​

Updated Ephinea client​

Updated icon shape​

​

3.00:

Updated engine to WS11WineCX64Bit20.0.2 & add DXVK for macOS​

Add support for Apple Silicon​

2.03:

Updated engine to WS11WineCX19.0.2​

​

2.02:

Reduce bundle size.​

Performance tweaks (hopefully).​

​

2.01:

Embedded Gulim font and set as default in PSO options.​

App now released as DMG file.​

​

2.00:

Rebuilt package from scratch based on Wineskin wrapper 2.9.0.6 and engine WS11WineCX19.0.1-1.​

Significantly reduced app size.​

1.05:

Added d3d8to9 v1.11.0, performances seems improved on heavy charge.​

​

1.04:

Set fog setting on Vertex by default.​

​

1.03:

Minor preset options update.​

Disable "low performance" mode by default, see above why.​

​

1.02:

Option.exe is now working.​

Removed now useless reg templates.​

​

1.01:

Updated Wineskin wrapper to 2.9.0.6.​

Cleaned some useless stuff.​

Download

Git Repository
If you want to contribute, the project is available on GitLab.

Let me know in this topic if you have an issue.

Cheers

 

[Axel]

This. Is. AMAZING. Thank you for getting me back on PSO!!!

Works like a charm as far as I can tell. Funny how it works far superior to PSO on my bootcamp (runs too slow).

I'm curious if you've managed to make any of the PSOBBmod add ons work (item reader, etc)?

I managed to get some addons working well with wine+Mac before Catalina. Would love to know how to keep using them if possible.

 

[BABY]

This. Is. AMAZING. Thank you for getting me back on PSO!!!

Works like a charm as far as I can tell. Funny how it works far superior to PSO on my bootcamp (runs too slow).

I'm curious if you've managed to make any of the PSOBBmod add ons work (item reader, etc)?

I managed to get some addons working well with wine+Mac before Catalina. Would love to know how to keep using them if possible.

I have it running on mac. These are the steps I took.

1) right click on the App and do "Show package contents" then place the addons folder in drive_c/EphineaPSO
2) open the wineskin application thats in the root of the show package contents folder
3) choose advanced, then go to the tools Tab and click "Config Utility (winecfg)"
4) a weird windows looking window should pop up, click the Libraries tab and enable a new override for the libraries d3d8 (native) and dinput8 (native, builtin).





people who understand this better please lmk if any of this is wrong.

 

[Axel]

I have it running on mac. These are the steps I took.

1) right click on the App and do "Show package contents" then place the addons folder in drive_c/EphineaPSO
2) open the wineskin application thats in the root of the show package contents folder
3) choose advanced, then go to the tools Tab and click "Config Utility (winecfg)"
4) a weird windows looking window should pop up, click the Libraries tab and enable a new override for the libraries d3d8 (native) and dinput8 (native, builtin).

View attachment 14112



people who understand this better please lmk if any of this is wrong.

Thank you. It's working now. It wasn't at first - I noticed I didn't have dinput8.dll in the psobb folder, so I added it from a previous install and now it works fine.

Next question ... How would one go about making the pso palette manager work?

 

[NinJy]

Thanks dude
I am surprised that it runs better than on Bootcamp, what is your machine ?

I think all mods involving dll injection should work, but those who require external process to run in background I don't think it is possible.

I tried Reshade, it loads correctly, but it fails to compile shaders. At least from this pack: https://www.pioneer2.net/community/...n-space-ray-traced-global-illumination.16144/
I have not searched more by the way.

 

[NinJy]

Uploaded a new version with engine updated to WS11WineCX19.0.2.

Think of backuping your chat logs in /Contents/Resources/drive_c/EphineaPSO/log/ before overwriting the app, if you want to.

 

[Plush!]

This is great, thanks for your work on this! Installed and ran painlessly once I got the gatekeeper to calm down. Only issues I've really noticed so far was some lag on the character creation screen, and it didn't recognize my DualShock 4 the first time I started the game up, but worked just fine after that (and after rebinding the controls, as it constantly wanted to move up in the menus.)

Great work and thank you!

 

[NinJy]

Updated engine to WS11WineCX64Bit20.0.2 & add DXVK for macOS.

Not sure if it will get any benefits as it seems to only affect DX10+ games, I still let d3d8to9 dll in Ephinea folder.

It also adds support for Apple Silicon under Rosetta2 but I can't test it.

 

[Smileyep1]

Hey i am really interested in this. Looking for a way to run PSO on my mac but am not thrilled about downloading the MEGA app or using that service in any way. Is there a way to get this running from your GIT repository ? Thanks in advance

 

[NinJy]

Hey i am really interested in this. Looking for a way to run PSO on my mac but am not thrilled about downloading the MEGA app or using that service in any way. Is there a way to get this running from your GIT repository ? Thanks in advance

You can try to sync and launch the .app
But maybe you will run into some popup saying the app was downloaded and is not safe, have to disable GateKeeper and stuff.

In that case you can try to package the app into a dmg using disk utility, then extract it again.
It is how I generate the dmg file I upload on Mega.

 

[Smileyep1]

EDIT:
Its running now. For everyone having the same problem -> I downloaded the most up to date Wineskin from this repo:

GitHub - Gcenx/WineskinServer: Wineskin

Wineskin. Contribute to Gcenx/WineskinServer development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

After downloading i needed to create a new Wrapper and copy the PsoBB folder inside the C/ folder. Then just select "online.exe" as the executable.
Only thing that is not working is Character creation. The second i want to create a new char, the game freezes. May be a problem with video playback since this should be the point where the game plays the intro cutscene.

Is there any way to skip this ?

 

[Smileyep1]

Ok got it. Copying the game folder does not work. You need to use the ephinea installer and install it with wineskins.

 

[NinJy]

You're just redoing yourself everything I done.
You will run into trouble with options.exe too.

The "application is damaged" is the typical macOS security when you try to run a .app that was not created else by your machine or installed via a DMG file (because the OS analyze the package to ensure safety).

The only way to bypass is to disable SIP in bios, run app once, then you can renable it.
But I would not recommand doing that since SIP, as its name says, ensure integrity of the system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Integrity_Protection

Not sure what is the problem with downloading on Mega by the way.

 

[Luca]

Hello, thanks a lot for this! You mentioned you weren't able to test it under Apple Silicon but wanted to check in and mention it's so far been working just fine for me on an M1 MacBook.
Screenshot

The only issue I've had is that an Xbox One controller (via Bluetooth - can't test any other method currently) won't work, as when it's connected to the Mac it ends up with the game constantly scrolling through menus until I disconnect the controller (should mention it's ok with various Steam games, it's just PSOBB it's acting odd with). While it's also said you only tested a DualShock 4, wanted to mention it here just in case anyone else happens to know if there might be any way to fix it, not quite familiar enough with the Mac OS to find the reason myself.

 

[staphen]

Hello, thanks a lot for this! You mentioned you weren't able to test it under Apple Silicon but wanted to check in and mention it's so far been working just fine for me on an M1 MacBook.
Screenshot

The only issue I've had is that an Xbox One controller (via Bluetooth - can't test any other method currently) won't work, as when it's connected to the Mac it ends up with the game constantly scrolling through menus until I disconnect the controller (should mention it's ok with various Steam games, it's just PSOBB it's acting odd with). While it's also said you only tested a DualShock 4, wanted to mention it here just in case anyone else happens to know if there might be any way to fix it, not quite familiar enough with the Mac OS to find the reason myself.

That may be a case of PSO mapping another analog controller input, like one of the triggers, to the in-game forward/back input. Try pressing the triggers in on the menu to see if the cursor changes direction. If so, you can keep that trigger held down about halfway to make it stop moving the cursor. Use the keyboard to log into the game and fix the controller mapping.

 

[NinJy]

Hello, thanks a lot for this! You mentioned you weren't able to test it under Apple Silicon but wanted to check in and mention it's so far been working just fine for me on an M1 MacBook.
Screenshot

The only issue I've had is that an Xbox One controller (via Bluetooth - can't test any other method currently) won't work, as when it's connected to the Mac it ends up with the game constantly scrolling through menus until I disconnect the controller (should mention it's ok with various Steam games, it's just PSOBB it's acting odd with). While it's also said you only tested a DualShock 4, wanted to mention it here just in case anyone else happens to know if there might be any way to fix it, not quite familiar enough with the Mac OS to find the reason myself.

Nice, do you get good framerate ?
I have not watched recently the gaming performance on M1 compared to Intel IGPU.

For your pad, as saying staphen, I'm sure I had same issue with DS4 too.
You have to manage to get in game, then open the menu with F12 and go to setting, gamepad settings, then remap everything.
It will be saved on server.

 

[AcousticDophin]

Nice, do you get good framerate ?
I have not watched recently the gaming performance on M1 compared to Intel IGPU.

For your pad, as saying staphen, I'm sure I had same issue with DS4 too.
You have to manage to get in game, then open the menu with F12 and go to setting, gamepad settings, then remap everything.
It will be saved on server.

I downloaded this today, I'm using a 13 inch MacBook Pro 2020 model. I followed all the steps above and used the Mega link to download ephinea. I run into the error "Ephinea PSOBB is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash." So i ran the terminal, disabled sudo spctl, and tried to open it. Same error has occurred. What am I doing wrong, and why cannot I not get this to work?

 

[NinJy]

I downloaded this today, I'm using a 13 inch MacBook Pro 2020 model. I followed all the steps above and used the Mega link to download ephinea. I run into the error "Ephinea PSOBB is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash." So i ran the terminal, disabled sudo spctl, and tried to open it. Same error has occurred. What am I doing wrong, and why cannot I not get this to work?

Are you sure the command spctl --status returns disabled ?
It is typically the error you get when Gatekeeper is on.

 

[AcousticDophin]

Are you sure the command spctl --status returns disabled ?
It is typically the error you get when Gatekeeper is on.

Yes. Even with the proper commands, checking the status and seeing it as "disabled" I still run into the move application to trash error.
I have zero clue why I'm unable to get this to work sadly.

 

[NinJy]

Yes. Even with the proper commands, checking the status and seeing it as "disabled" I still run into the move application to trash error.
I have zero clue why I'm unable to get this to work sadly.

In this window you set to "anywhere" after diasbling spctl?


Or you can try to temporary disable SIP the time to launch the game once.

Disabling and Enabling System Integrity Protection | Apple Developer Documentation

Disable system protections only temporarily during development to test drivers, kernel extensions, and other low-level code.

developer.apple.com