Brass Restoration works on Wine

Brass Restoration

No excuses now, I need to hurry up and play and review this game:

Installer is a breeze.


Everything works perfectly fine. Music, SFX, visual effects... its is just like Windows.

This is a practically out of the box Darwine install. I did add DirectX 9 a while back through Trix but thats just a routine installer from Microsoft. Runs without a hitch and minimal lag.

So no excuses! Any one who can read this blog can run this game.

Things Seen Today

Happy Things....

Nagato x NanaDro .... 萌え

Scary Things....

DirectX installing on my Mac

Overlooked Things...

What does this Dock say about me? (Post below)

More on WINE, CrossOver and how to stay the hell away from Microsoft

My last two posts have been on two solutions on running Windows software without Windows. Both technologies described use the WINE project as their base. WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is a very old (but active) open-source interpreter to let Windows stuff run on other systems. More on that at WineHQ

Darwine : Free (libre) Mac binaries (application) to implement WINE. No interface, you simply run set WineHelper to handle the files and run them. Everything is ran through XQuartz. Uses one big hidden "virtual C drive" in your user folder, so be prepared to enable hidden files in finder alot. Not as bad as it sounds : when it works it works and when it doesn't WineHelper makes nice long log files to stare at confused :)

CrossOver: Proprietary WINE interface with lots of help files and GUI goodness. Easy menus to choose the version of Windows you need and supports many different bottles (virtual C drives) kept in the library. Uses XQuartz but doesn't make it obvious (no dock icon/menu bar etc messiness).

Obviously, Darwine is free and that's a good thing. If you've read my posts this is the WINE solution I am experimenting with, I do not plan to buy CrossOver. It is easier for me to just muck around with free software I can download and install infinitely on any computer at any time. I like to break things and just reinstall them over and over, its like a puzzle and I learn from each step.

Since the core technology is shared, anything Darwine can do CrossOver can do. Conversly, anything CrossOver can do Darwine can do. I would never recommend Darwine to a non-power user: its just not practical. I would direct them to CrossOver. Likewise I would not tll a power user to use CrossOver I would point them to Darwine. This are different solutions.

I love the open-source ideal and the community but I also understand the incentives of proprietary works. Apple is practically the polar opposite of open-source after all, with their very closed OS and hardware, but I love Leopard and iWork and use them over Linux and OpenOffice.org .

Lastly, as most people here know, I have a dual boot Windows/Mac system in place. I do not run a single critical program exclusively on WINE. I can break things and it doesn't matter the slightest cause the same program is on a perfectly good Windows install. Most importantly, I am familar with Windows, how things are stored and called and why things would and wouldn't work. I grew up on Windows and use it almost daily (sadly). A lot of mac users aren't. Obviously the transparency of Darwine is useless to someone who does not understand Windows.

So I just want to clarify my position on these two technologies. I am not doing this to promote CrossOver. I actually just wanted to write a feedback letter for the trial (a request of thiers of every person who tries the software; quite fair) and felt it would be easiest to post my thoughts here as well.

So my conclusion is:

CrossOver for the average Joe
Darwine for the power user who's Windows-literate.

Also, CodeWeavers has fantastic customer support (I emailed them about feedback and they even posted here) and a remarkable "Truth in Advertising Approach".

Read on:
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/differences/
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/truth_in_advertising/

Found! Working Darwine builds for OS X

Darwine builds for OS X
It works..... I have tried Darwine many times before to no success. After my failure with CrossOver I consulted WINEHQ again. This time I found a build that works. Definitely try this before CrossOver.
The chat windows jumps down half an inch every time you click it. Minor annoyance. Did not happen in CrossOver which uses WINE and X11/Quartz as well.
Same output as CrossOver, I'm thinking the sound issues might be part of the audio files. Obviously, fonts work now.

CrossOver Mac : Promising but One Fatal Flaw [updated]

Note: Some kind folk who sleep the proper number of hours per night pointed out you can launch programs from Finder (Open With) to run non-installer programs from CrossOver. I'm still sticking with Darwine but this is an important feature I missed. Bold text is new.

CrossOver is a commercial Wine implementation. Its designed to make installing and running Windows programs easy.

Installing Windows programs. NOT running them, installing them so crossover can run them. This is CrossOver's biggest issue..... it needs an installer. So all those fun doujin games: no installer no luck. That cool app from the internet? No installer no luck. Or so I thought until others told me you can use the Finder Open-With -> Choose (However, CO did not appear in the normal open-with menu for me). A menu item for this IN CrossOver would do wonders since that's where I looked first.

For installers, InstallShield seems to work great with it. Font support is practically non existent however. I have no idea how to add fonts. I could only get one application to install... a LabQuest emulator I had for science class. It would not run because it couldn't preform hardware check. I had issues with the InstallShield installer for ONE however, it might same issue that occurs when attempting to install on EN Windows or it might not; I localize my Windows for games.

Now its a slick program, supported apps like Steam, Office, Quicken... they probably work great. But its so limited by its pre-set boundries making Japanese programs or hobby programs run is flat out impossible. Window management is handled by X11/Quartz it seems and no complains there.

I was able to make Casual Romance Club run by telling CO it was an installer. Not an ideal setup and sorely in need of fonts. According to Libido, CRC doesn't need Japanese fonts unless translation is turned on. Even so, the english should display without issues but...

English text in loading screen: Squares. I quit it at this point.

Restarted: It remembered the name I gave it seems. Still no text.
Music was fine. Images were fine. No lag.

Attack of the squares. The soundtrack squeaked when I advanced the text quickly. This game only has key lines voiced. Notice, its running as in installer in CrossOver. Not ideal.

Everything works perfectly except text.

Voices are fine. If it would just let me run the program as a program (and I then I would tweak the fonts) I imagine the game would run perfectly. (see note)

Don't even look for the Japanese version of CrossOver... its 11550 yen if you can find it. Thats almost twice as much as the English version!

Obviously WINE has great potential, the CrossOver interface to it just doesn't work for these sorts of games at this point.