The Apple Transition To ARM

[Manga]

On Monday, June 22, 2020, Apple announced that it was transitioning all of its computer hardware to the ARM "System On A Chip" platform instead of Intel.

 

There isn't a lot of information about this transition yet, so it's difficult to tell what the full effects will be as far as running City of Heroes on a Mac.  The only certainties are that Apple plans the transition to take two years, and that MacOS "Big Sur" (the next upcoming version) will support Intel x64 to ARM/64 translation called Rosetta 2.  The new ARM computers will be powered by a custom ARM/64 chip with built-in video.

 

What I don't know for certain about it is whether Apple's own video inside the new silicon will support any Intel based games that have to be translated via Rosetta 2.  I'm also unsure if Wine, the core of the CoH Mac client, will even be translated by Rosetta 2 (it might be for GUI launched apps only, not command-line).  The best case scenario would be if CoH launches via Wine with no problem, other than some sluggishness and lower FPS because it has to be translated.  But worst case would be it doesn't work at all, and there is no immediate fix.  If you're using a Mac for CoH, you should at least be prepared for that possibility.

 

Another issue might be if Apple decides to "lock down" these new ARM Macs to only allow software downloaded from the App Store.  This would be an extreme roadblock:  Even if CoH could run via Wine (and Rosetta 2) on the Mac, the OS simply wouldn't allow it.  An alternative might be to try and get it approved for the App Store, but that would take both a Signing of the Official Agreement™ and Apple drastically changing its App Store rules (it currently does not allow apps that require emulation or translation, and definitely doesn't allow apps that have to download more stuff).

 

Unfortunately I can't afford to purchase a developer ARM machine just to test CoH for Mac.  Even when the first ones are released, I still might have too strained a budget to purchase one right away due to the virus shutdowns and limited employment sucking up most of my savings in 2020.  So when the first ones are released, it's likely that some players will get ahold of them before I do, and I might have to depend on their accounts and experiences to see how this works.

 

Even if initially the roadmap reads "road closed", it could be short lived.  This is a big and complicated transition that's going to harm a lot of games and open-source projects.  Hopefully that means workarounds will come fairly swiftly.  It just might take some time.

 

I will try to update this thread as more information becomes available.
 

Edited June 24, 2020 by Manga

[RogerWilco]

I have been using Macs since 1997.

I have been playing games on Mac since 2004, between 2007-2017 exclusively, I had no other gaming platform.

 

For the last 3 years, I've been using Bootcamp more and more. Gaming on Mac is in a bad place at the moment, ever since they went form-over-function, overheating, underperforming hardware around 2013. Studios and publishers that used to release all their games on Mac as well, often no longer do, this will get a lot worse if the it becomes harder to port the games because of large differences in architecture.

 

I am shopping around for an RTX3080 based windows machine right now, the first Windows machine I will buy since 2004.

I do not expect any of my current games to work on the new ARM Macs. I am planning to abandon the platform after 20+ years, even though I love OSX and think it is the best desktop and OS experience by a mile.

 

I see the announcement as a big FU to people like me, and am not planning to continue with Apple. I don't know what their beef is with NVidia, Intel and others, but I do not see this as a customer friendly move. I know ARM is great at what it does, and maybe Apple is going to get desktop performance out of it, although I don't see where they will go with the Mac Pro any time soon. I have no faith in any kind of long term support from them, so I will abandon the ecosystem. It's a bean-counter move, looking at logistics, margins and hardware manufacturing costs.

 

Your efforts are really appreciated, but I'm not expecting CoH to be available/playable on Apple ARM Macs. Do not worry too much about it.

 

Macs are a lost cause for "PC gaming", I only expect glorified mobile titles to work on their systems in the future.

 

Sorry for the rant.

Edited September 22, 2020 by RogerWilco

[CFIndustries]

Let's hope Parallels or VMWare support the move to ARM with their offerings. I almost went that route to play Homecoming until I saw the Mac-specific loader.

 

But then again, I have the benefit of an old XP image for Parallels, and CoX-on-XP-on-Parallels on even my "Mid-2012" Mac Pro probably outperforms the PC rig I had back when I played. 🙂

 

But…this doesn't bode well for folks with more modern Macs. Given my needs, I can't skip off to PC land. And not everyone will run out and buy Parallels to run CoX.

 

This mid-2012 Mac cannot go farther than Mojave so it can always stick around as a CoX game machine if pressed.

 

(I have OTHER reasons to worry about new Macs. I rely heavily on Controllermate and Xkeys for ergonomic improvements as well as gaming, and Catalina broke that…so I'm not even in a hurry to upgrade to a newer Mac for that reason.)

[WanderingAries]

6 hours ago, CFIndustries said:

This mid-2012 Mac cannot go farther than Mojave so it can always stick around as a CoX game machine if pressed.

The 2012 Macs should be able to handle Catalina just fine. Mine does.

[CFIndustries]

According to Apple, Mojave is the upper limit for a mid-2012 Mac Pro (big cheese grater). In the Mac Pro line, a Late-2013 Mac Pro is required for Catalina. You're probably thinking of a MacBook Pro (laptop).

 

On a mid-2012 Mac Pro, to even go to High Sierra I had to get an aftermarket video card recently that supported Apple's Metal technology (most Macs of this type did not have the higher-end Apple video card required). Basically, the mid-2012 barely makes the cutoff for Mojave. Besides, as stated above, I'm in no hurry to get to Catalina until apps I need catch-up...need Controllermate at minimum, or a similar app (of which essentially none exist).

 

And by the time I get forced to get a new Mac, it'll all be ARM-based which will probably cause all kinds of havoc, as mentioned above.

[csr]

On 9/22/2020 at 9:49 AM, RogerWilco said:

I see the announcement as a big FU to people like me, and am not planning to continue with Apple. I don't know what their beef is with NVidia, Intel and others, but I do not see this as a customer friendly move. I know ARM is great at what it does, and maybe Apple is going to get desktop performance out of it, although I don't see where they will go with the Mac Pro any time soon. I have no faith in any kind of long term support from them, so I will abandon the ecosystem. It's a bean-counter move, looking at logistics, margins and hardware manufacturing costs.

Apple has an ARM architectural license, which means they design their own ARM chips ("Apple Silicon").  Cost is probably not much of a concern really.  Apple has just always loved vertical supply chain control.  They want to control everything to do with Apple products.  I suspect if they could get away with it they'd copy every single successful program in the App Store and sell only their own stuff.

 

Ironically, nVidia announced an offer to buy ARM (90% of it anyway) for $40B about a week before your post.  Apple had talked about acquiring ARM, but there was little chance such a deal would have been allowed, since so many of its competitors use ARM as well (it would have been viewed by regulators as a potentially illegal move to cripple those competitors).

[WanderingAries]

On 9/22/2020 at 7:15 PM, CFIndustries said:

According to Apple, Mojave is the upper limit for a mid-2012 Mac Pro (big cheese grater). In the Mac Pro line, a Late-2013 Mac Pro is required for Catalina. You're probably thinking of a MacBook Pro (laptop).

 

On a mid-2012 Mac Pro, to even go to High Sierra I had to get an aftermarket video card recently that supported Apple's Metal technology (most Macs of this type did not have the higher-end Apple video card required). Basically, the mid-2012 barely makes the cutoff for Mojave. Besides, as stated above, I'm in no hurry to get to Catalina until apps I need catch-up...need Controllermate at minimum, or a similar app (of which essentially none exist).

 

And by the time I get forced to get a new Mac, it'll all be ARM-based which will probably cause all kinds of havoc, as mentioned above.

Good catch, between the "one off" naming and (other personal factors), I did miss that. My current venture (that broke my Bootcamp) is to get Big Sur running on my 2012 MBP sometime this year or whenever it's officially released.

[RogerWilco]

On 9/23/2020 at 1:15 AM, CFIndustries said:

According to Apple, Mojave is the upper limit for a mid-2012 Mac Pro (big cheese grater). In the Mac Pro line, a Late-2013 Mac Pro is required for Catalina. You're probably thinking of a MacBook Pro (laptop).

 

On a mid-2012 Mac Pro, to even go to High Sierra I had to get an aftermarket video card recently that supported Apple's Metal technology (most Macs of this type did not have the higher-end Apple video card required). Basically, the mid-2012 barely makes the cutoff for Mojave. Besides, as stated above, I'm in no hurry to get to Catalina until apps I need catch-up...need Controllermate at minimum, or a similar app (of which essentially none exist).

 

And by the time I get forced to get a new Mac, it'll all be ARM-based which will probably cause all kinds of havoc, as mentioned above.

My 2010 Mac Pro is stuck on High Sierra.

 

It is quite a nice machine, from a time when Apple actually built machines you could upgrade. I have 32GB of RAM in it, HyperX Predator ACPI PCIe SSDs 2300MB/s which are OSX bootable, a MacVidCards Nvidia GTX 980 and the Xeon X5690 6-core 3.5 GHz. I also have a bunch of SATA disks, but the Mac only has SATA 2 (300MB/s), so quite slow and why I have the HyperX. It was faster than any Mac that Apple sold though, at least until they released the iMac Pro in 2017.

 

I am a Software Developer by day, and gamer by night, and we use CUDA and NVidia for large scale data processing.

I was really happy with the support from Nvidia for OSX, for many years and more modern GPUs than Apple ever put in a Mac.

But when Apple went with Metal, they didn't allow Nvidia to write a driver for it, that's why this machine is stuck on High Sierra.

 

I still really like OSX, but Apple has abandoned me with their hardware choices.

1) My Mac Pro is stuck on High Sierra because of some stupid fight with Nvidia. Why could Apple not go with Vulkan instead if they wanted to ditch OpenGL?

2) My Macbook Pro is stuck on Mojave, because we use several 32-bit applications at work.

3) I find the Touchbar beyond useless. It fades out, so you have to tap it twice to push a key. The keys jump around when the screensaver activates. And I have not found a single use for it. The advantages that it could have are not realized, as you can not freely match keys onto it, e.g. combine volume controls and F-keys. As a programmer it is very annoying to not have a proper ESC key.

4) This keyboard is horrible. Since Covid-19 I have to type a lot more on the built-in keyboard of my Macbook Pro. It often repeats keys, especially "o" and "l".

5) Also, if Touchbar is so great, then why is there no external keyboard that supports it, when I am behind my desk and nice big monitor? This way it is never going to be part of my workflow.

6) I have been using bootcamp more and more over the past 3 years. I still hate Windows, but there are fewer programs that run on MacOS, especially Nvidia related.

7) I do not believe that ARM based Macs will run bootcamp/Windows 10. I have a whole library of games that are no longer updated, which only have Intel binaries, if they have a Mac port, or are Windows only.

8 ) Oh, and dongle hell is real. Why can't I have a few legacy ports on my Macbook? I don't care if it makes it 2mm thicker and 50g heavier, my old 2011 Macbook Pro was just fine.

 

I will really miss OSX, but I am so done with Apple's hardware choices over the past 7 years, starting with the rubbish 2013 Mac Pro.

Those AMD 5000 series CPUs and 6000 series GPUs look good, and NVidia's 3000 series are very nice as well.

The price/performance of the 2019 Mac Pro is a joke in comparison. I can build a Ryzen based system for 25% of the price of a high end Mac Pro, that will outperform it in most cases I care about. In 2010 the price/performance of Apple was a lot more competitive.

 

Sorry for the rant. I just had to get that of my chest.

Edited November 5, 2020 by RogerWilco

[RogerWilco]

On 10/12/2020 at 11:01 PM, csr said:

Apple has an ARM architectural license, which means they design their own ARM chips ("Apple Silicon").  Cost is probably not much of a concern really.  Apple has just always loved vertical supply chain control.  They want to control everything to do with Apple products.  I suspect if they could get away with it they'd copy every single successful program in the App Store and sell only their own stuff.

I mean cost, compared to buying from Intel/AMD/NVidia. In house is probably a lot cheaper, especially when they already develop for the iPhones. And the logistics are a lot simpler as well.

Tim Cook is all about reducing costs and efficiency, he has very little vision, just like when Steve Ballmer took over at Microsoft.

 

Nearly all programs I use are open source, usually some form of Unix/Linux based, and nearly all run on OSX natively. They are not from the AppStore, about half I have compiled myself. Some of this code is ancient. I have programs that do not understand file systems, but think in in-tape, out-tape and program-tape, and with which I interact over a simulated 8-bit terminal.

We were still running tape-based computers until about a decade ago, as a well tuned system can deliver about 500 MB/s and store TBs of data. Now we use a 200x GTX1080 cluster to process our data.

As a result, I care very little about the stuff that the AppStore has to offer. And my games are on Steam and GoG, and not some beefed-up iPhone "game" riddled with monetization.

 

Apple was best from 2006-2012, after the switch to Intel, but before they went crazy with their hardware form-over-function choices and introduced the AppStore to Mac. Even their hardware was competitively priced back then, often being on par with similar priced Windows machines from Dell and IBM/Lenovo.

[CFIndustries]

Well, you've probably seen the other shoe finally drop for the Apple laptops and Mini.

 

What bothers me is this:

 

I have a mid-2012 Mac Pro (the last of the "cheesegrater Macs") and an upgraded Metal-capable video card so…I can get as far as Mojave.

 

I had been looking at one of the new Mac Pros, but the $10,000 cost was bit of a heart-attack (I'm a designer, classic gamer, and run multiple virtual machines via Parallels…the low-end gear isn't enough).

 

I had just settled into the idea of being able to use a Mac laptop with a GPU (I need three non-Apple displays and this was really the only good way to do this on a laptop). But the horsepower seemed there, so that was my idea. This also seemed the best way to manage having literally dozens of USB devices (plug them into the GPU instead of the laptop).

 

But the new laptops have on-die RAM as part of the stack, and only 16 GB. Not upgradable as near as I can tell. WTF? I need 20 at least, and really 32+ is what I need. And the new Apple silicone only has one Thunderbolt channel (not the TWO on current laptops and I have no idea how many on the Pro).

 

And what does Apple Silicone mean for virtual machines? I run my basic PC needs that way, and some web QA work this way.

 

I guess I'm back to the big $10,000 beastie? Or are those going to go to Apple Silicone too? If so, they need ALOT more RAM and more Thunderbolt channels.

 

Glad I can survive on Mojave for a while, and use my work Mac laptop for anything I need Catalina+ for. Going to be putting off new Mac purchasing for home as long as possible to see how this all pans out. Windows really isn't in the cards due to my profession; though I might have to build another dedicated PC again if virtual machines become too difficult or performance isn't there.

 

The next 2–5 years is going to be interesting…

[Gulbasaur]

<posted in error>

Edited November 17, 2020 by Gulbasaur

[RogerWilco]

On 11/16/2020 at 9:14 PM, CFIndustries said:

Well, you've probably seen the other shoe finally drop for the Apple laptops and Mini.

 

What bothers me is this:

 

I have a mid-2012 Mac Pro (the last of the "cheesegrater Macs") and an upgraded Metal-capable video card so…I can get as far as Mojave.

 

I had been looking at one of the new Mac Pros, but the $10,000 cost was bit of a heart-attack (I'm a designer, classic gamer, and run multiple virtual machines via Parallels…the low-end gear isn't enough).

 

I had just settled into the idea of being able to use a Mac laptop with a GPU (I need three non-Apple displays and this was really the only good way to do this on a laptop). But the horsepower seemed there, so that was my idea. This also seemed the best way to manage having literally dozens of USB devices (plug them into the GPU instead of the laptop).

 

But the new laptops have on-die RAM as part of the stack, and only 16 GB. Not upgradable as near as I can tell. WTF? I need 20 at least, and really 32+ is what I need. And the new Apple silicone only has one Thunderbolt channel (not the TWO on current laptops and I have no idea how many on the Pro).

 

And what does Apple Silicone mean for virtual machines? I run my basic PC needs that way, and some web QA work this way.

 

I guess I'm back to the big $10,000 beastie? Or are those going to go to Apple Silicone too? If so, they need ALOT more RAM and more Thunderbolt channels.

 

Glad I can survive on Mojave for a while, and use my work Mac laptop for anything I need Catalina+ for. Going to be putting off new Mac purchasing for home as long as possible to see how this all pans out. Windows really isn't in the cards due to my profession; though I might have to build another dedicated PC again if virtual machines become too difficult or performance isn't there.

 

The next 2–5 years is going to be interesting…

Yes. I'm in a similar boat.

 

I have basically decided to move back to Windows, even though it will be at great pain. But an AMD X5950 CPU with either NVidia RTX3080 or AMD RX6800XT and 64 GB of 3800 MT/s RAM is so much cheaper than even the base 2019 Mac Pro. The ASRock Creator motherboard has all the Thunderbolt 3 I need.

 

My Mac Pro 2010 (with Xeon X5690, 32 GB RAM, PCIe SSDs, MacVidCards GTX980) was faster than anything Apple cared to sell for years . Their new Mac Pro 2019 is already going the same direction and has a horrible price/performance ratio. I haven't seen a Mac Pro 2020, have you?

 

I specced a full blown Windows work station for around €3000, which I will buy as soon as parts become more available in a few months. I think it will be faster for any conceivable real world task than even a very high end Mac Pro 2019.

 

The base Mac Pro starts at €6499 and is an absolute joke.  Something with similar performance to the €3000 machine above is around €11,444.

The highest end iMac Pro is €9789 and weaker than the €3000 Windows machine. (it does include a 5K display though.)

Sure, you can get really beefy Mac Pro configurations, that would also require a much more expensive Xeon/Threadripper based Windows machine, but those are in a different league.

 

But I don't need that. I just need a reasonably beefy workstation, for the rest we have a Linux/GPU cluster at work, which has 200 GTX1080 cards, so I really prefer to work with CUDA, which Apple has dropped after OSX High Sierra.

 

Apple is clearly not interested in continuing to have me as a customer.

 

Also, I fully expect the next Mac Pro to also use Apple silicon, and until the current one will languish, just like the trashcan 2013 model. They already promised that they would fully switch to their own silicon over the next two years, and I don't see a Mac Pro 2020, and don't expect a Mac Pro 2021. The Mac Pro 2022+ will be Apple silicon.

Edited November 18, 2020 by RogerWilco

[RogerWilco]

Also, the new Apple silicon machines are system on a chip, which means zero expandability. Even the RAM is integrated into the CPU and fixed at 16 GB.

 

And I fully expect them to continue on the T2 path and lock things down more and more, also on the OSX and software end.

It will become a completely closed ecosystem. Given that I'm already stuck on Mojave, because of applications that are 32-bit that I need, I have no faith that such an ecosystem will serve my needs.

[FinalCyclopedia]

Wine running windows games on Apple Silicon and macOS Big Sur 11.1 beta

 

https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/jwhite/2020/11/18/okay-im-on-the-bandwagon-apple-silicon-is-officially-cool

[Quindorrian]

On 11/18/2020 at 9:55 PM, FinalCyclopedia said:

Wine running windows games on Apple Silicon and macOS Big Sur 11.1 beta

 

https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/jwhite/2020/11/18/okay-im-on-the-bandwagon-apple-silicon-is-officially-cool

After reading through all the whining post responses, I am glad you just cut to the chase and responded with something relevant. 

 

[GM Tock]

1 hour ago, Quindorrian said:

After reading through all the whining post responses, I am glad you just cut to the chase and responded with something relevant. 

 

I don't see how any of it is whining.  There are a lot of uncertainties, and if a opportunistic player does have their hands on an Apple M1-running MacBook or Mac Mini, personally I'd love to hear their experience trying to run Homecoming Launcher or Island Rum using Rosetta 2.  Everything else until that happens is the same we have had since Apple made the announcement, a bunch of hypotheses and preferences.  Same as anything I'd bring to the table.

 

And this is a Support forum.  Discussing computer issues are allowed.  Expressing disinterest based on anecdotal use is okay, same as praise stories for a particular platform, but it's not why we're here.  And it's not likely to get a lot of staff replies, since we're not interested in boosting or warding off sales from one platform over another.  Configurations found to work in playing the game on any platform are more of an interest to us than platforms as a whole.  Feasibility for the mainstream being a second priority.  (Such as my recommendations to stay off of ARM on Chromebooks and Linux: if makefiles and compilers are involved to get it running, things stop being fun.)

However, platform "brag-biting" or dumping on Apple, Microsoft or Linux for no reason than starting an argument isn't beneficial.  (Not to say that is what you're doing, necessarily, because if it was the post wouldn't be there anymore.)  There's plenty of places to hate on a company because they're not in a particular camp of users.

Edited January 5, 2021 by GM Tahquitz

[Quindorrian]

4 minutes ago, GM Tahquitz said:

I don't see how any of it is whining.  There are a lot of uncertainties, and if a opportunistic player does have their hands on an Apple M1-running MacBook or Mac Mini, personally I'd love to hear their experience trying to run Homecoming Launcher or Island Rum using Rosetta 2.  Everything else until that happens is the same we have had since Apple made the announcement, a bunch of hypotheses and preferences.  Same as anything I'd bring to the table.

 

And this is a Support forum.  Discussing computer issues are allowed.  Expressing disinterest based on anecdotal use is okay, same as praise stories for a particular platform, but it's not why we're here.  And it's not likely to get a lot of staff replies, since we're not interested in boosting or warding off sales from one platform over another.  Configurations found to work in playing the game on any platform are more of an interest to us than platforms as a whole.  Feasibility for the mainstream being a second priority.  (Such as my recommendations to stay off of ARM on Chromebooks and Linux: if makefiles and compilers are involved to get it running, things stop being fun.)

However, platform "brag-biting" or dumping on Apple, Microsoft or Linux for no reason than starting an argument isn't beneficial.  (Not to say that is what you're doing, necessarily, because if it was the post wouldn't be there anymore.)  There's plenty of places to hate on a company because they're not in a particular camp of users.

That is what many of the responses are doing: Ragging on Apple and its hardware and how they are moving to Windows because of their opinions on things.  It's annoying when an Apple user is looking for answers and most of the responses are about how "Apple Sucks".  As Apple users, this is not helpful to us.  We want information on how to get things to work on current and upcoming platforms; not, opinions on what they think of Apple and its hardware choices.  Just some thoughts.  

[GM Tock]

5 minutes ago, Quindorrian said:

That is what many of the responses are doing: Ragging on Apple and its hardware and how they are moving to Windows because of their opinions on things.  It's annoying when an Apple user is looking for answers and most of the responses are about how "Apple Sucks".  As Apple users, this is not helpful to us.  We want information on how to get things to work on current and upcoming platforms; not, opinions on what they think of Apple and its hardware choices.  Just some thoughts.  

Self-Support and volunteer advice forums (including here) aren't ever going to equate to paid support where only answers and expertise is permissable.  Free as in beer (or as in freedom of speech) comes with a signal-to-noise ratio.

[WanderingAries]

@GM Tahquitz, if you ever find anyone who cares to lend one of those M1 MBPs out for testing purposes, then let me know as I could Really use the experience for work as well. :p I'd consider saving up, but I've got medical to deal with this year too.

[pauper_ill]

On 11/18/2020 at 8:55 PM, FinalCyclopedia said:

Wine running windows games on Apple Silicon and macOS Big Sur 11.1 beta

 

https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/jwhite/2020/11/18/okay-im-on-the-bandwagon-apple-silicon-is-officially-cool

Should be noted for accuracy's sake that they're talking about running the portions of Wine that exist in Crossover, their commercial version of the product, not solely in Wine.  (Note, the thread linked below also talks about the specific module in Crossover that allows it to use Rosetta 2 to run on the M1 chip, which module doesn't exist in 'base' Wine as it's considered a hack.)

Haven't yet found much, even on the WineHQ forums, regarding Wine on the new M1 chips. Most info I've found is this thread (https://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=32590&start=125) which starts out talking about the Catalina transition to 64-bit only apps, but by the last page has moved on to discussion of the M1 chip.

Seems like you can buy Crossover and hope CoH runs on your M1 Mac, or wait for the official supported version of Wine on M1 processors.

[GM Tock]

12 hours ago, pauper_ill said:

Seems like you can buy Crossover and hope CoH runs on your M1 Mac, or wait for the official supported version of Wine on M1 processors.

That was my hope, somebody among us got a Apple Silicon Mac and bought Crossover for something else, but tested it for Homecoming anyway.

 

On 1/5/2021 at 4:39 PM, WanderingAries said:

@GM Tahquitz, if you ever find anyone who cares to lend one of those M1 MBPs out for testing purposes, then let me know as I could Really use the experience for work as well. 😛 I'd consider saving up, but I've got medical to deal with this year too.

So far, no offers.  I don't review PCs or electronics for a living, so don't hold your breath.

[pauper_ill]

On 1/7/2021 at 11:02 AM, GM Tahquitz said:

That was my hope, somebody among us got a Apple Silicon Mac and bought Crossover for something else, but tested it for Homecoming anyway.

Any news on the verdict?

[GM Tock]

"Us" meaning the community at large, not just Homecoming Team.  A sample size of 30ish people is much smaller than everyone who reads this after all.

[pauper_ill]

Decided not to wait and tested this for myself -- downloaded the free 14-day trial of Crossover.

 

Under Bottle menu, select 'New Bottle'. I named the new bottle City of Heroes and set it to Win 10 64-bit. (Edit: If you let Crossover create its own bottle, and it chooses to install into a Windows 7 bottle, you will likely encounter an installer error suggesting an anti-virus or other program is preventing the installer from working. Ignore this, delete the Win 7 bottle, and create a new Win 10 64-bit bottle to avoid this error.)

Downloaded the Windows installer (not the Island Rum Mac installer).

With the City of Heroes bottle selected, selected 'Install Software into City of Heroes Bottle' from the Bottle menu, then navigated to the CoH Windows installer.

Waited for install to progress as normal.

 

Once the install was complete, I was able to launch and run CoH on my M1 Mac mini. Buttons were a bit sluggish; fairly frequently I'd miss an animation for a power when selecting a button and occasionally a graphics artifact might persist, such as the orbiting selector that indicates a power is being activated, until that power was activated again, but the game was certainly playable.

 

The big challenge in running the Island Rum installer directly is that the game will launch, but no graphics will display, which I assume is due to the inability of the base Wine package to translate OpenGL graphics commands into Apple's new Metal graphics language.

 

Edit: Though I was able to launch CoH after installing, I found I wasn't able to launch after closing, as Crossover didn't create a launch icon for CoH in its bottle. To fix that, I double-clicked on 'Run Command', clicked the 'Browse' button next to the Command field, and navigated to drive_c/Games/Homecoming/HC Launcher.lnk

 

That gives me an HC Launcher command that brings up the updater/launcher and allows me to get into the game again.

 

--

Pauper

 

Edited February 5, 2021 by pauper_ill
Added method for creating launcher command

[WanderingAries]

@pauper_ill, can you try the following for the New launcher? You'll likely need the Rosetta 2 installed I'd imagine,

 

 

Quote

How to Install Rosetta 2 via Command Line on Apple Silicon Mac

Another way to install Rosetta 2 on the Mac is by using the familiar softwareupdate command line tool.

softwareupdate --install-rosetta

This will launch the rosetta installer and you’ll have to agree to a license agreement, which I’m sure you’ll read completely and thoroughly as we all do every time we install anything on every device.

 

You can also skip the license agreement by providing an additional flag:

/usr/sbin/softwareupdate --install-rosetta --agree-to-license