Is there any way to use a wrapper to run a windows steam game on a mac?

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Garpfruit May 21, 2014 @ 6:33am

Is there any way to use a wrapper to run a windows steam game on a mac? I tried to dowload a game and it told me something allong the lines of "invalid operating system".

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Showing 1-15 of 19 comments

Bad 💀 Motha May 21, 2014 @ 5:57pm

Invalid OS because the game u tried to install wasn't designed for MacOS.

If you want to emulate WinOS and run those apps/games, then u need to use something like "Wine" or "WineBottler"

Garpfruit Jul 5, 2014 @ 3:07pm

I have those, do I need to put Steam in the wrapper? That was my real question.

ReBoot Jul 5, 2014 @ 3:09pm

Originally posted by Garpfruit:
I have those, do I need to put Steam in the wrapper? That was my real question.

Yes. You have to start Steam through Wine and then the game through Steam on Wine.
My recommendation would be CrossOver Mac. Basically, it's a commercially supported version of Wine with loads of work been done to make it as automagic as possible.

Garpfruit Jul 5, 2014 @ 3:12pm

I have wineskin winery and it was free and so far, it's been working pretty good.

Garpfruit Jul 6, 2014 @ 8:59am

OK, Steam throught Wine removes all text from the steam window. Steam through CrossOver dosen't allow me to actually start the game...

ReBoot Jul 6, 2014 @ 9:00am

Originally posted by Garpfruit:
OK, Steam throught Wine removes all text from the steam window. Steam through CrossOver dosen't allow me to actually start the game...

Then work on your Steam bottle settings.

Garpfruit Jul 6, 2014 @ 9:13am

I am only modeatey efficient at feeling my way through this stuff, the most code~y expierience that I have is the computercraft mod for minecraft that uses lua, and that still confuses me. What's a bottle (not the phisical kind).

ReBoot Jul 6, 2014 @ 9:19am

Originally posted by Garpfruit:
I am only modeatey efficient at feeling my way through this stuff, the most code~y expierience that I have is the computercraft mod for minecraft that uses lua, and that still confuses me. What's a bottle (not the phisical kind).

A Wine container. Did you check out the WineHQ guide on Steam? Looks like you have to install a font.

Last edited by ReBoot; Jul 6, 2014 @ 9:20am

Garpfruit Jul 6, 2014 @ 9:23am

I manually installed the fonts (not that the fonts weren't already installed) and it didn't fix it. And CrossOver dosen't have that problem. I will look at the wineHQ again, but I didn't see anything too helpfull as most of the similar issues were on ubuntu.

Garpfruit Jul 6, 2014 @ 9:29am

I noticed that when I try to launch space engineers it does the "first time set up" thing where it installs DirectX and DotNet 4.0, but those are both already installed, and it fails ot launch every time.

#10

Dirty Deeds Jul 6, 2014 @ 2:56pm

I really wouldn't advise this, the game will run slow as hell on most macs, from what I've seen

#11

Teksura Jul 6, 2014 @ 4:27pm

Originally posted by Garpfruit:
I noticed that when I try to launch space engineers it does the "first time set up" thing where it installs DirectX and DotNet 4.0, but those are both already installed, and it fails ot launch every time.

Installing directX every time you launch a game for the first time (sometimes when you launch it every time) is pretty normal. I don't know why, and I've stopped questioning it. It will go through a longer "first time setup" for every game the first time you run it though, every time after that should be quicker.

http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=12564

You should check to see what runs before attempting to run it. Many things work great because people have already set them up to work. Some things require more fiddling to work, and thus aren't automatically supported.

Corssover has worked great for me though. How did you install steam through Crossover? the best way to do this is to Go Configure > Instal software and simply select Steam from the list of programs. This automatically starts the download of the .exe and makes certain everything is set up properly. I think it also helps to make sure that your steam games run properly as well.

Originally posted by HeroOfErathia:
I really wouldn't advise this, the game will run slow as hell on most macs, from what I've seen

Are you another one of those people who believes all computers are created equal and since you saw someone try something on an 8 year old mac 2 years ago therefore you figure all macs must perform the same way no matter what? Because those sorts of people are ridiculious.

The fact of the matter is, it always depends on the system specs of the system running the program. This is true for both Mac and PC. I know PC fanboys love to compare the newest PCs to Macs that came out several years ago just so they can pat themselves on the back, but it's not helpful to anyone and actively disruptive to genuine help topics. I've had a grand total of 1 problem with any of the games which Corssover says it supports. *and* this is done on a 2 year old mac mini (for those of you who are not familiar with that model, it's basically the most stripped down, bare bones, least powrful mac you can get).

So what was that one problem? I had to turn the graphics down slightly in Skyrim. Because if I didn't, then Nords had hair that looks like this.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=273976321

And that's about it.

Last edited by Teksura; Jul 7, 2014 @ 1:22pm

#12

Pilieser Jul 7, 2014 @ 1:02pm

For the issue with Steam having no text in Wine, start it with de No dwrite option like this:

wine steam.exe -no-dwrite

I do not agree with above that games run slow using Wine, with some games I have a feeling that it runs faster and smoother in Wine then on Windows. But that's just my experience ;-)

Last edited by Pilieser; Jul 7, 2014 @ 1:06pm

#13