Play PSOBB on Mac OS X V2.0 *UPDATED* 2019

psydtrancer

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** Updated guide for Mojave users **

Hey guys, so with the help of others in this thread that have mentioned wine updates and simply installing wine and running PSO is simple now. So I will just put the new guide here where it can be found easily and requires way less effort and techie-ness than the OG guide. Should work in Sierra but I cannot test that so no guarantees and remember not to set your resolution crazy high or it will crash!

First I will note that I am running a clean install of Mojave on osX ver.10.14.2 and had zero complications with a successful run. I will keep things to point form to keep it short:

1. Download and install Xquartz from here:https://www.xquartz.org/
- Follow the prompts and reboot for good measure
2. Download and install Wine ver. 3.0.4(or latest version) from here: https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/macosx/download.html
- Select the "Stable" installer. Once downloaded, click to run it and install wine automatically. Just follow the prompts and when it asks you to install libraries just say yes.
3. Download the Ephinea_PSOBB_Installer.exe if you haven't already. Wine should have converted this file and changed the icon. Just double click to install and wine will do the rest, just follow the prompts and keep everything default.

4. Unhide your hidden files by going to Terminal and typing: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
- You can hide them again by replacing "YES" with "NO"

5. Navigate through your file directory starting from your main HDD. Go to the menu bar and select: Go > Library. Follow image for navigation. NOTE: Users and HDD names will differ.
Flow.png

6. Make an alias(shortcut) of the EphineaPSO folder, a duplicate will show beneath it. Drag that to your desktop and hide your exposed files again with the code provided in terminal. And thats it!

To run the game just simply open the folder on your desktop and double click on online.exe

Thats it! Good luck and have fun!


*ORIGINAL POST BELOW*

Hello all! I have some good news for Mac OS X users who want to play PSOBB. I found a tutorial online about running Windows programs on OS X with Wine and Homebrew, gave it a try and I have been happily playing on the Ephinea server crash/lag free. The only quirk is a shader isn't loading proper but it is not game breaking, you can still see all the textures and lighting fine. The source tutorial itself is easy enough to understand and is pretty straight forward if you are familiar with navigating around your Mac via Terminal with command lines.

The PDF guide I compiled is sourced from the tutorial I used as well as my own input to make it more user friendly for people who are not comfortable with Terminal or for people who find the source material confusing. I tried to make it as straight forward as possible and hopefully easier to understand.

Feedback on the guide is always welcome as I am sure I can improve it as needed. Also any questions anyone may have I will try my best to help. It should be noted I have only been running PSO with this set up for the last 4 days now, so I am still testing it and seeing how it holds up. So far so good! Just be weary when setting resolutions from the launcher, some settings will crash the game if you go too large. Keep it moderate ;)

Good luck

UPDATE: Since this was originally posted, I have been running crash free so far even with server updates.
 

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I just used this guide to install everything and it was very well done! trying to figure out wine and everything on my own was a headache, but homebrew made everything so much easier.

I do have a problem, though. I have successfully created a character, but haven't technically played with it at all yet due to the game crashing every time i select the character and it attempts to connect to a lobby/start the character for the first time.

The following is a screen capture of the errors my terminal is displaying when the crash occurs. it looks like there is some sort of critical time out occurring? I haven't changed any graphical or user settings yet, so it should all be straightforward. Any help or recommendations you can provide would be super helpful, I'm excited to play!

Thanks again for the awesome guide.
 

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I just used this guide to install everything and it was very well done! trying to figure out wine and everything on my own was a headache, but homebrew made everything so much easier.

I do have a problem, though. I have successfully created a character, but haven't technically played with it at all yet due to the game crashing every time i select the character and it attempts to connect to a lobby/start the character for the first time.

The following is a screen capture of the errors my terminal is displaying when the crash occurs. it looks like there is some sort of critical time out occurring? I haven't changed any graphical or user settings yet, so it should all be straightforward. Any help or recommendations you can provide would be super helpful, I'm excited to play!

Thanks again for the awesome guide.


Thanks for the feedback! I am glad it helped! :)

What resolution did you choose for the game in the client options, did you use the default?(I know you said you haven't changed them but it's good to double check) If you choose certain resolution sizes it will crash the game. Also, whats your specs of your Mac? I should mention as a side note that I had pulled DLL files from another tech support thread and put those in the main folder, you could try that as well and see if it helps. Not sure if it makes a difference though: https://www.pioneer2.net/community/threads/wine-crash-at-bursting-screen.849/#post-8637
The post in that thread with DLLs : https://mega.nz/#!mRlk2JhS!g1TpnVIzYuFzjWq0FYb7gmwM-mEWi_Twa5Jx_YGan6Y

Also try running the compatibility mode by typing: wine online_compat.exe

Let me know how things go! I will try my best to get you going, keep in mind I am not a programmer :)

Cheers!
 
Two things:
  1. d3d8.dll needs a matching wined3d backend, wined3d.dll. If you mismatch these, you will run into linkage issues.
  2. The DLLs used need to roughly match the version of wine used, in my case these DLLs were built for wine-1.7.53, they should work generally for the 1.7 series but without any guarantees.
With that said, I am encountering a crash when starting the game from online.exe. online_compat.exe works great, however. I'm putting that here for my uses in case I want to investigate later: https://gist.github.com/Furyhunter/7d48b7a383ac4e805d377c475001ad02

I will upload an application bundle with all the necessary files and an embedded Wine.app, that is completely self-contained and does not require any setup, sometime tomorrow after work.

Also, 1600x900 definitely does not work in Wine, but other widescreen resolutions do. You just have to set them in online.exe first, then launch the game with online_compat.exe.
 
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Two things:
  1. d3d8.dll needs a matching wined3d backend, wined3d.dll. If you mismatch these, you will run into linkage issues.
  2. The DLLs used need to roughly match the version of wine used, in my case these DLLs were built for wine-1.7.53, they should work generally for the 1.7 series but without any guarantees.
With that said, I am encountering a crash when starting the game from online.exe. online_compat.exe works great, however. I'm putting that here for my uses in case I want to investigate later: https://gist.github.com/Furyhunter/7d48b7a383ac4e805d377c475001ad02

I will upload an application bundle with all the necessary files and an embedded Wine.app, that is completely self-contained and does not require any setup, sometime tomorrow after work.

Also, 1600x900 definitely does not work in Wine, but other widescreen resolutions do. You just have to set them in online.exe first, then launch the game with online_compat.exe.


Thanks Eidolon for your input, I really appreciate it! Yea, those DLLs I didn't think would do anything with this setup but I figured it wouldn't hurt try. I am interested in any insights or solutions you may have into this topic :) Thanks again!

P.s. If you are curious, this is what my Terminal looks like when logged in and hanging out in the game lobby at the shops: http://pastebin.com/bfkrmVMW
 
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If you're patching the Wine source code with this mipmap hack, then no you don't need to build the DLLs separately. The hack simulates undocumented behavior in Windows d3d that PSOBB depends on. I built the DLLs because most people using Wine on Mac just use WineBottler, and so that people don't have to set up a build environment to build Wine.
 
If you're patching the Wine source code with this mipmap hack, then no you don't need to build the DLLs separately. The hack simulates undocumented behavior in Windows d3d that PSOBB depends on. I built the DLLs because most people using Wine on Mac just use WineBottler, and so that people don't have to set up a build environment to build Wine.


Ah, ok. I am starting to understand it a bit more. In anycase, I was able to run it after following the tutorial I found with no issues and still crash free. I didn't need the extra DLLs but they are there anyway. I can remove the link for the DLLs and the other support thread if you like and if they really don't help.
 
Ephinea PSO app bundle: https://mega.nz/#!iF8EySiB!g9JVeIehfxNb6uHhnakbPDroB8syu3pW9k1vCxsa5zI

This should work standalone. If it doesn't, let me know.


First off, thank you for putting your time in to this and second, congrats! It works! And it fixed what seems like all the graphical issues that the work around I came across had problems handling ( black areas in main lobby, weird lighting/shadowing in distance etc.).

Although, not sure if intended to run by clicking on the Ephinea PSO app because that did not work. However, viewing the package contents and drilling down the menu ( see image attached ) and running Terminal at the Ephinea PSO folder within the package runs the game properly.

May I add that I did this on a separate partition and it worked. Though I believe if anyone was to try it too, they would need to install wine. Another thing is that it ramps up the Mac more (not an issue, just a note and is normal for the most part)



My terminal code from running in compat mode: http://pastebin.com/RJu7KSxs
My terminal code from running in online.exe mode: http://pastebin.com/y5pvTkFs

In the meantime, I will run your version for the time being. Thanks again!

Cheers
 

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It shouldn't need Wine, I bundled Wine.app with the application bundle to make sure. But I can't confirm if it does or not, so some input from someone who doesn't have WineBottler would be nice.
 
It shouldn't need Wine, I bundled Wine.app with the application bundle to make sure. But I can't confirm if it does or not, so some input from someone who doesn't have WineBottler would be nice.

I can remove wine and homebrew and try it again? But it did not run stand alone. I will remove and test again and then post my findings.
 
It shouldn't need Wine, I bundled Wine.app with the application bundle to make sure. But I can't confirm if it does or not, so some input from someone who doesn't have WineBottler would be nice.

For me it doesn't work :(, when I double click the .app, nothing happens.

Trying to launch it from terminal gives me back this error:

LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed with error -10810 for the file /Applications/Ephinea PSO.app.

Just in case, I tried to check if it was a permission issue (execute permission on /Contents/MacOS/startwine or /Contents/Resources/Wine.app), but they look good.

I'm installing xquartz and wine with homebrew, will report soon :eek:
 
Just tried a different approach: before installing xquartz and wine, I tried with the wine you bundled in your package, and it actually works when launched from a Terminal, with (using absolute paths for reference):

/Applications/Ephinea\ PSO.app/Contents/Resources/Wine.app/Contents/MacOS/Wine /Applications/Ephinea\ PSO.app/Contents/Resources/wineprefix/drive_c/EphineaPSO/online.exe

:D
 
Yeah, it's an issue with PSO's timing. Phantasy Star Universe is much more efficient with CPU usage. I spent a few weeks a while back trying to hack the timing function to sleep the compensated time between 29.97 fps, but I couldn't get it working consistently, and I wouldn't be able to do it with Ephinea's EXE because they have it compressed and checked on login.

I'm an idiot though, @Laputa @psydtrancer . I will have to reupload the application bundle, but if you rename Wine.app to Wine.bundle inside the Resources directory, it should work standalone without anything installed from brew. It also does not need xquartz; the included Wine is using the native window system backend.
 
Is this still a viable way to play on the Mac? I just found out about this server and would like to run it on my MacBook.
 
Until a standalone package is built so you can just run it, currently this is the only way I know of.
 
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