Wine + Icy Tower = a diversion I didn't need
July 12, 2009
A while ago, I managed to get a free copy of CrossOver (legally). CrossOver lets one run (some) Windows programs on a Mac, without the need to install Windows. Sweet. But for some reason (I think I installed some incompatible version of X11) CrossOver stopped working for me. Not that big a deal, since I really barely used it. And I couldn't get most of the games I wanted to run to work with it anyhow.
For reasons I'm not going to get into right now, I decided to install Wine, the free (and open source) program on which CrossOver is based. I've been quickly trying out various Windows software on it, with some pleasant successes (SciTE, Notepad++, EnviroBear2000, Knytt) and some disappointing, if unsurprising, failures (Spelunky, You Found the Grappling Hook!, La-Mulana). That's the thing about Wine: in my experience, you've got to expect failures, especially from more complex programs... But still, it's free and it works sometimes, so it's cool. And maybe with a little effort, I could get some of the failures working.
My happiest success (so far) was Icy Tower. This is a game I've known of for years, and my love has never wavered... but it's never been ported to OS X, so sometimes I forget it exists. One could describe it as a platform game that distills the genre to its bare essentials: the platforms. A simple concept, but done so elegantly, and with just the right amount of flourishes, as to make this one of my favorite games ever. And they've released a new version since the last time I played it. The new version awesomely added loads of GTA-style achievements/stats. (The graphics might even be better too?) And it works in Wine, so I can easily play it again!
In case you're curious about using Wine on your Mac, I'll give you what advice I can:
(NOTE: Darwine and WineHelper, as described below, are no longer actively developed. Instead, there is just Wine. Still, Mike Kronenberg has released WineBottler, which includes a build of Wine (or maybe Darwine. I'm not sure, and it's not important) inside it, and does most of the same stuff I explain below, and some of it even better than his Darwine build. Soooooo, you might want to check that out instead. I haven't played around with it as much, so I'm not writing about it here. Yet.)
Although the best way to install it would be with a binary from the official site, I couldn't find one there. Instead, there are links to various pages about installing it from source code yourself, but this is rather complicated. So the easiest way it to use binaries that someone else has already compiled, like Mike Kronenberg's build of Darwine that I used. Go ahead, try it out... it's easy. Once it's installed, you just need to open Windows .exe files with WineHelper, and you're good to go.
Mind you, there's a chance you'll need to install X11. Easy enough, since it can be found on your OS X installation disc. (A worthwhile install, in my mind, as it'll also allow you to run the OS X version of The Gimp, a free image editor that is the closest free thing to Photoshop that exists.) There's also a chance that after you install X11, you might need to install XQuartz, a different version of X11, but that's easy enough, too.
Once you've got it running, you can, as I mentioned, open .exe files with WineHelper. Single executable programs (like Knytt) will just run, if they can. Installers (like Icy Tower's) will run, and you can just let them install to their default location. Feel free to let the installers add a link on the desktop, since it's one of the easiest ways to launch applications. You can always move the link into a different location afterwards.
Programs that don't have an installer can either be placed wherever you want, or, keeping it Windows-like, can be placed in the Program Files folder where the installers put stuff. With this build of Darwine, the default folder for this is ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/ or, more explicitly, /Users/[INSERT-YOUR-USERNAME-HERE]/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/ so you could create a directory and toss it in there, like I did for Knytt.exe. You're going to want to use either Terminal (type "cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/" and then to get a Finder window, type "open .") or Finder (use Go -> Go To Folder... and then type in the directory name) to get to that folder.
That's about it. Confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty simple.
Posts
July 12, 2009 at 5:17 PM
Apparently, Wine runs more things on Linux than it does on OS X because X11 for OS X doesn't work so well. Bummer. This is why I only have luck with simpler programs, I suppose.
July 12, 2009 at 8:36 PM
And, to add yet another comment to my own post, I got Knytt Stories working! Just needed a .dll file that was easily obtained.