question: setting up windows version of steam on a mac with WINE

[nskaran]

hi, i'm pretty new (to steam and gaming) and i have a mac, which i know isn't that great for games usually, but i'd still like to play what i can. i've been looking into playing some windows-only games recently (like the sims or guild wars) and i did some googling around and found this[www.cultofmac.com] guide, but i spent almost six hours yesterday trying to figure this out, and i'm having some problems.

i'm not very experienced with programming or command line, so i just followed the instructions i found blindly, which might have overcomplicated things. i'm gonna explain what i did in possibly too much detail in case something's important:

1. launch xcode (which i had already) and install the command line tools.
2. go into terminal and accept the end-user license agreement for xcode (sudo xcodebuild -license).
3. update macports, which i already had (sudo port -v selfupdate).
4. go to terminal, enter "echo export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:\$PATH$'\n'export MANPATH=/opt/local/man:\$MANPATH | sudo tee -a /etc/profile" (no response) and then "if [ `sysctl -n hw.cpu64bit_capable` -eq 1 ] ; then echo "+universal" | sudo tee -a /opt/local/etc/macports/variants.conf; else echo "not 64bit capable"; fi" (got +universal).
5. close terminal, reopen, enter "sudo port install wine." wait ages for it to finish.
6. try to install windows version of steam. at first i tried the instructions here[appdb.winehq.org], but i didn't know what to do about the wineprefix; then i think i just typed in "wine msiexec /i SteamInstall.msi" and it created ~/.wine (and gave me an error because i hadn't downloaded SteamInstall.msi, like a dumbass).
7. download windows steam.
8. find this[www.speedofmac.com] guide, try to follow it. enter "cd ~/.wine" in terminal. then enter "curl http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks > winetricks." it seems to download winetricks. then enter "chmod +x winetricks." it sends me back to the command prompt.
9. try "winetricks tahoma," it tells me winetricks is not a valid command.
10. mess around trying to install winetricks, finally succeed with "sudo port install winetricks."
11. try "winetricks tahoma" again, get this error: "wine cmd.exe /c echo '%ProgramFiles%' returned unexpanded string '%SystemDrive%\Program Files' ... can be caused a corrupt wineprefix, an old wine, or by not owning /Users/[username]/.wine"
12. give up on winetricks because i think tahoma's a font anyway and i have it so maybe this is unnecessary.
13. enter "cd ~/Downloads/" and then "wine start SteamInstall.msi." it appears to install steam! the PC version of steam even opens for the initial installation and closes automatically.
14. enter "cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program/ Files/Steam" and then "open ~/.wine/drive_c/Program/ Files/Steam." it opens the folder with steam.exe in finder.
15. enter "wine steam.exe." this is where everything explodes. i get the following error: "fixme:actctx:parse_depend_manifests Could not find dependent assembly L"Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls" (6.0.0.0)
Jul 21 09:28:43 Gigo.local steam.exe[66594] <Error>: ImageIO: PNG Extra compressed data
fixme:heap:HeapSetInformation 0x0 1 0x0 0
wine: Unhandled exception 0x40000015 in thread 9 at address 0x478490 (thread 0009), starting debugger...
err:seh:start_debugger Couldn't start debugger ("winedbg --auto 8 84") (2)
Read the Wine Developers Guide on how to set up winedbg or another debugger"

i'm not sure what's happening, and if it's related to the fact that macs can't open .exe files? i guess this is what happens when you try to mess around with command line without knowing anything. what am i supposed to do?

(i also then tried using playonmac, but it wouldn't actually open steam. then i realized that i didn't actually have X11 even though it shows up in my applications folder, so i installed it and then tried again, but i still get the error message.)

(sorry if this isn't the right place for this kind of support question! feel free to move it if it belogs somewhere else.)

[Danger]

Hello nskaran. Probably you must upgrade all of your drivers to the latest ones and try downloading the the latest DirectX setup.

[nskaran]

thanks for the reply! my drivers are up to date, but i don't think there's a version of DirectX for mac?

[Danger]

Originally posted by nskaran:

thanks for the reply! my drivers are up to date, but i don't think there's a version of DirectX for mac?

Sorry me my mistake about directx.

[nskaran]

no problem! i actually downloaded winebottler and tried again, and now winetricks works and i was able to start steam, but i haven't received the email to confirm my login from a "new computer." i don't know if that actually addressed the problem of what was happening, but it seems to be a shortcut. i'm still curious as to what the problem was, though, if anyone has an idea.

[nskaran]

(i never received the email, but i was able to get it up and running by temporarily disabling steam guard—just keeping this updated in case it's useful!)

[Danger]

Originally posted by nskaran:

(i never received the email, but i was able to get it up and running by temporarily disabling steam guard—just keeping this updated in case it's useful!)

I suggest you to enable again the Steam Guard.

[nskaran]

I did, yes! I only disabled it long enough to log in.

[Danger]

Originally posted by nskaran:

I did, yes! I only disabled it long enough to log in.

Alright then.