I run a handful of Windows titles on my Mac via CrossOver, namely: Solium Infernum, Armageddon Empires, Another World, Blood Bowl: Dark Elves Edition, Close Combat: Modern Tactics, Fallout Tactics, the Gratuitous Space Battles demo, the Sins of a Solar Empire demo, and the Galactic Civilizations II demo.
Today, CodeWeavers released version 9.0 of CrossOver Games for Mac and Linux. So far it’s converted all my old bottles without hiccup, and I’ve launched several of my titles without fail.
If you haven’t heard, CrossOver (and its source technology, Wine) acts as liaison between Windows programs and Mac OS X (or Linux), sending calls specific to Windows APIs, to the open-source alternative. It’s not fail-proof, but several people have had stellar success running certain games, and they post their results in either CodeWeaver’s compatibility tree or Wine’s application database, ranking each application as platinum, gold, silver, bronze, or garbage depending on success.
I’ve had crossover games for a few months now, have tried heaps of titles, including:-
Bioshock
Sins of a Solar Empire
S.T.A.L.K.E.R titles
Neverwinter Nights
Settlers II 10th Anniversary
Dungeon Keeper II
Supreme Cmmander
Battlezone II
Far Cry
to name but a few. These titles rank from bronze to gold in the so-called ‘compatibility tree’. NOT ONE of these titles has even gotten to the intro screens. Every single title installs fine, but won’t recognise the CD/DVD due to DRM, something crossover cannot provide support for. I paid just under $40 for this software, and it has only caused me frustration. What really pisses me off is the only games that seem to work that support is given for are games like Prey & Cod2 – that’s right, games that are readily available native to mac anyway!!!! Gamers, put your $40 towards a basic version of Windows and run your games properly on boot camp, that’s what I plan to do.
Correct, Jesse, CrossOver isn’t perfect; it’s one of many solutions for playing Windows titles on Mac and Linux. I currently game between native Mac titles, CrossOver, Steam, VMWare, Parallels, DOSBox, and Boot Camp. That seems like a bit of overkill, particularly with the two virtualizers, but I have this somewhat sick penchant for tinkering.
CrossOver has problem with CD-validating solutions such as SecuROM, which means that I could install Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic under CrossOver and play it with a no-CD patch. Since I like the unofficial community patch to that game, I choose to play it under Parallels instead.
When CrossOver works, it’s my preferred solution. It doesn’t carry the overhead of a virtual machine so it can sometimes run my game faster (e.g., my CrossOver install of Blood Bowl runs exponentially smoother than my Parallels and VMWare installs) and it gets me to the game quicker (i.e., I don’t have to wait for a virtual machine to load). Yeah, it can be a pain in the tucks to configure and troubleshoot. And even though I like tinkering, my patience will sometimes mutiny and cause undo frustration.
There are a couple of tricks that you can use such as installing the title under Windows and then moving that install directory into your appropriate CrossOver bottle. You an also load dlls that are either native to Windows or built specifically for CrossOver. CodeWeaver’s forums can provide much more accurate information on this.
Best of luck, Jesse!