is there a way to play the game with WINE on MacOS

[franciscus]

Hi.

I bought this game using my anniversary coupon

I know that this game does not support MacOS, and I read in Steam that there are also problems with WINE.

The game runs fine in my iMAC 27 (mid 2011) under windows 7 in bootcamp.

I would like to make it run under WINE. I tried with crossover 18.5 (WINE 4.0; dotnet 452 and vcrun 2010 installed in the bottle), and Porting Kit (using WINE 4.6, wine tricks for botnet and c++), but the game does not launch.

Any tricks or tips ?


Regards (and thanks for this game)

[pavelk]

Hello franciscus,
welcome to the forum!
I am glad to hear that the game runs under W7 bootcamp but to be honest, we haven't tested the game under any emulators at all. There is currently no support for that considering the size of our team.
If you make it running, please share it with others.
I would personally recommend to ask this question rather on the Steam forum where it might get more attention.
Pavel

[franciscus]

Thanks Pavel for answering.

I understand that you cannot support other platforms besides Windows.

Nevertheless, as I have managed to play almost all my Slitherine/Matrix games on my Mac using WINE (Field of Glory II, Pike and Shot, Mare Nostrum, WITE and WITW, WIF, TOAW IV, DC:B, AJE, CWII, WW1Gold, GoA, CotD, etc), and I am a stubborn fellow, I know that sooner or later I will be able to also play Aggressors with WINE.

Some progress:

With latest WINE engine (4.7) and a couple of wine tricks (vcrun2010 and dotnet 452), I now can get past the launcher (Slitherine)Menu. The game tries to open (white screen) but an error occurs. It seems that the automatic sending by mail of the error does not work.
If you have a spare minute and could look at the attached file (error log of the crash) and maybe give me a clue, I would be extremely grateful


Regards

error.zip

(2.45 KiB) Downloaded 74 times

[pavelk]

Sure I can try to help at least this way.
The error file you sent is related to the actual reporting system, not the reason why you cannot start the game.
I can tell you from that file why it didnt send the report about crash, it is related to a missing function in System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.UserPrincipal
Are you sure you have .NET Framework 4.5.2 installed?

If we are not able to make the reporting system work, I would need two things from you. I would need error.log and aggressors.log which are located (when running on Windows) in C:\ProgramData\Kubat Software\Aggressors Ancient Rome\
I am not sure if it is also possible to get the Windows event log records from Wine, but if so, please try to find the crash in there and send me the info about that crash.

[franciscus]

Thanks Pavel !

Attached the logs you asked for.


Regards

logs.zip

(6.95 KiB) Downloaded 54 times

[pavelk]

The problem is in fonts to install. For whatever reason it doesnt correctly load them.
There are two things I would try/test - first is to install in WINE those two fonts to Windows system. You will find them in the game installation folder in \Bin\Resources\graphics\materials\textures\gui\. There are two fonts: Cinzel-Regular and Nyala.
If it is not possible to install or it doesnt help, I would try to check if that particular folder has all access rights correctly installed.

[franciscus]

Thank you again

I installed the 2 fonts (a bit tricky. In other games like Strategic Command it is sufficient to drop the ttf files in the Windows/Fonts of WINE c:/, but in this case I had to also drop them in the fonts directory of the X11 folder)

The game still crashes. Attached the logs. As far as I can read, now the two fonts are being recognised.


Many thanks for taking all this time with this !


Regards

logs.zip

(7 KiB) Downloaded 59 times

[pavelk]

Yes, the font is installed now. I hoped that it will solve the problem but it is actually exactly the same as before. The problem is in System.Drawing.FontFamily.IsStyleAvailable function.
I found two items about this on WINE forums
https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-b ... 27321.html
https://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=6058
I am not sure if there is a workaround.

What is happening is that it tries to create image fonts out of those TTF fonts with bold, italic and regular styles but for whatever reason this IsStyleAvailable in Wine returns that these fonts do not have these styles.

[franciscus]

It works.

Reading the links you provided, and some others, plus my experience with DC: Barbarossa, I tried to install GDI+ via Winetricks, and now the game loads !

I played some of the first tutorial, and the only issues are:

- No sound

- The default mouse cursor is superimposed on the stylised mouse cursor of the game.


So, to summarize:

Aggressors: Ancient Rome works with WINE on Mac. tested with Porting Kit (unofficial Wineskin Winery 2.9.02, with latest WINE engine 4.7). Cinzel-Regular and Nyala fonts were installed to the users font directory of X11. The following Winetricks were used (not all maybe needed, but gdi+ is critical): vcrun2010, dotnet452, msxml3, corefonts and gdi+). There is no sound, though.


Many thanks !!


PS1: I will post this also on Steam

PS2: what is the audio engine you use on the game ?

[pavelk]

I am really happy that you got it working.
Yes please post also on Steam.

Regarding the sound, can you look at this?

I am not sure about the mouse issue. Maybe try to run it in fullscreen or turn on the mouse lock. It might help

[franciscus]

Hi again

Installing wmp via wine tricks did not solve the no sound issue, alas...(a pity, because the sounds and music of the game are really good... )


The mouse issue is minor. (BTW, is there an option to use the hardware mouse icon in the config files ? Ageod games used to have this option)


Another minor issue is a blue square below pulsating icons of the GUI


I also got the game to work (without sound) in Crossover 18.5, installing only dotnet 452 and gdi+ (this seem to be critical)


Regards and thank you !

[pavelk]

There are two things - WMP (Windows media player) as an application and media player as a Windows service feature
Did you install the feature? If so I am a bit diappointed that it didnt help because I was really expecting it to solve the problem.

BTW, is there an option to use the hardware mouse icon in the config files ?

Unfortunately there isn't. We were experimenting with that but it didnt really work out.

Another minor issue is a blue square below pulsating icons of the GUI

Are you talking about this ?

If so, I am aware of that but I havent seen it during testing on any of our testing PCs.

[franciscus]

Hi again

About the sound issue, I am not sure, but WINE is apparently already using the appropriate native wmp codec (l3codeca.acm) after applying the wmp winetrick...


As to the blue square, yes, it is similar to your screenshot, although a lot more bright.


Regards

[pavelk]

About the sound issue, I am not sure, but WINE is already using the appropriate native wmp codec (l3codeca.acm)...

It is not about codec but about a system component which might be turned off. Due to that, the game asks the compoent to play a sound but the component is not listening

[franciscus]

Ok, I will try to see what is known about this in WINE...



(PS: To be fair, AAR is not the only game with sound issues. WITE also had no sound, until WINE engine version 4.6 was released)


regards

[franciscus]

Hi Pavel

Just an update.

Still no sound.

Contacted Crossover support.

Things I tried:
- different WINE engines
- installing Direct Music
- installing windows media sound engine 9 and 10
- changing WINE sound engine to PulseAudio, ALSA and OSS

No sound

Strange. I have other games, including Matrix games, that use wma and mp3 files to reproduce sound and music. The best example would be Field of Glory II, using Matrix new game engine Archon. No sound issues at all...


Regards

[pavelk]

Still no sound.

I am really sorry to hear that but I am almost 100% sure that the problem is in that Windows service component.

Strange. I have other games, including Matrix games, that use wma and mp3 files to reproduce sound and music. The best example would be Field of Glory II, using Matrix new game engine Archon. No sound issues at all...

Well, there is not much to compare really. Those are entirely different games with different engines and techniques. Except for the publisher there is nothing in common between those games.

In Windows, these media features are by default turn on. This is how it looks like:




You can send me your aggressors.log file now and I will check if there is anything wrong there but when these features are turned off, the game itself does not even know it - it is simply "accepted" by the system (hence no crash) but it doesnt play the sound.

[franciscus]

Hi Pavel.

I have no doubt that the issue is a wrong implementation by WINE of whatever service or API AAR needs to play the sound files. I just cannot figure what or why. There is no way to "turn on" media features in WINE or Crossover as it is possible in Windows. The reasoning being that WINE intends to have built-in dll and libraries to emulate all that windows requires - when not, usually one or two wine tricks now solve the issue. Alas, not in this case (so far)...

I would like to thank you again for all the support and attention you are giving to an unsupported use of your software, as it works perfectly in my Windows 7, so this is no bug of AAR !

The support you are showing is better than 99% of the support other devs usually give to their games used natively !!


Attached the latest aggressors log.


Cheers

aggressors.log.zip

(9.21 KiB) Downloaded 54 times

[pavelk]

There is no way to "turn on" media features in WINE or Crossover as it is possible in Windows.

I didn't really expect that. I posted it just to show you the "grouping" of these features and I hoped that it will remain you similar settings of WINE.

Unfortunately there is nothing weird in the log and I am out of ideas:-/ It is probably an issue with implemention of WINE library.

I am always happy to help but it seems like we accomplished the maximum possible (aka game without sound). Btw. why dont you play the game on W7 machine?

[franciscus]

Many thanks Pavel

My “mild” OCD pushes me to try to fix this on WINE.

As to Windows, I hate it and dislike having to reboot...