[How2] MacOS Initial Testing Notes

[Fiery_Deception]

First off thanks for all you guys do to help out the Mac community.

 

Sadly I followed all the steps to the best of my ability and I am currently stuck on step 3: installing the HC Launcher, specifically the "First Launch" section in the guide. When I click on "New Launcher" I did not get the EULA screen but I got an install screen asking me to select a path to put the game itself. When I click Install I get an error message saying it cannot be installed due to firewall issues. It's hard to make out exactly what it says because it appears off screen and I need to use Mission Control to see it. Basically I can't launch the new launcher and the game won't install. I tried manually installing rosetta 2 and got the same results.

 

Before this guide i tried running it with Island Rum and couldn't get it to run. The game installs but the game itself won't launch, no white screen, just a wine64-preloader pops up in the menu bar that says "Program Error." Any help here would be much appreciated.

[GM Manga]

@WanderingAries

 

If you're using my Launcher Installer (it looks like you are) it's not really necessary to install Wine or Homebrew anymore - it has a current version of Wine included in the package, which installs to the /Applications/coh/wine folder.

 

I haven't had access to an M1 Mac yet due to severe budget issues, though, so if you tested it with Wine-Devel and found it to work better, I can swap the Wine version included in the installer.  I've been meaning to update it anyway so I can finally sign it.

 

And I also heard about the mini-window issue, I don't have any ideas yet but I'll look through the wine default settings and see if something jumps out at me.

 

@Fiery_Deception

 

Move the "coh" folder somewher else and run the Launcher Installer.  That might fix whatever permission issues are going on.

[GM Manga]

4 hours ago, WanderingAries said:

So, if you can instruct me on how to undo all the things I did in the guide (removing apps, removing the Traces of the apps, logs etc), then I can gladly test things from here. Now, I Can say that I'd already tested the launcher and it Did install just fine IIRC (maybe?), so perhaps the insight here is what I needed and didn't have? Whatever, throw me things to chew on and maybe we can make an M1 flavored cake! ^.^

The Launcher Installer includes both a stable version of Wine and an Xquartz installer.  I don't think Wine actually even uses Xquartz, but it has a dependency, so it has to be installed anyway.

 

You don't actually have to uninstall Homebrew or Wine-devel unless you want to save disk space.  The CoH Launcher has been designed to use its own working folders and settings folder, so they won't interfere with each other.  I did that on purpose so if Wine releases an update via Homebrew that causes devastating problems with CoH, the CoH Launcher and Island Rum can completely ignore it.

 

If you do want to remove Wine-devel, I think you just use "brew remove wine-level".

 

The biggest thing I don't know about the M1 Mac process is whether Rosetta 2 will install itself if CoH is the first Intel app launched, or if it will simply fail until another Intel app is launched.  If it's the latter, I might have to include some sort of stub app that I know is Intel only to trigger Rosetta 2 install.  

 

A lesser issue I'm concerned about is that tiny window issue, because it sounds like Wine doesn't support the native screen resolution of the M1 Macs (switching it to full screen uses a non-native custom resolution).  I have a theory I can't test that switching to full screen mode, choosing a reasonable size smaller than the actual display size, clicking Apply, and then using Cmd-Enter might fix it.

[GM Manga]

@WanderingAries   PM me, and I can talk you through replacing the Wine client with Wine-devel, and we'll see if that exhibits different behavior.  If that test doesn't work out, then it might just be something we have to wait for the Wine or XQuartz team to get around to fixing (the Wine-devel test would see if they're already working on it!).

Edited February 22, 2021 by GM Manga

[Fiery_Deception]

On 2/21/2021 at 11:41 AM, GM Manga said:

Move the "coh" folder somewher else and run the Launcher Installer.  That might fix whatever permission issues are going on.

@GM Manga

Sorry for the late response, was busy this week. I tried doing this and it didn't work, the launcher just sat in the dock for 10 seconds and closed itself without doing anything. Tried a clean install several times and once again i'm stuck the "first launch" section. When I launch it for the first time I do not get the Homecoming user agreement, it just goes straight to the "Please select a folder to install the Homecoming Client to." window. Tried several different paths and nothing seems to work, getting the same permission issue saying that the "launcher isn't a trusted executable."

 

Any assistance here would be great, thanks again.

Edited February 26, 2021 by Fiery_Deception

[Fiery_Deception]

20 hours ago, WanderingAries said:

 

You scrolled down and read through This part, right?
 

 

EDIT: Just realized that may or may not end up actually coming up on the M1, but the key with Big Sur is the permissions. You've Got to give the permissions during the process or you won't get anywhere.

I did and none of those steps appeared during the installation. I installed XQuartz already so I do not know if thats an issue or not. I do not remember the last 2 boxes in #3 and #4 appearing at all during the installation. Once again i've tried removing the launcher and the coh folder to try and install it again and i'm getting the same issue above.

[Fiery_Deception]

2 hours ago, WanderingAries said:

What are you running this on (hardware)? Have you got Big Sur all the way up to 11.2.1 yet? Make sure to reboot every other failed attempt or so just in case (every time shouldn't be a need).

Running the 2020 Mac Mini M1 8 GB Ram. Just installed the latest version of Big Sur and got the exact same issue. I even manually uninstalled XQuartz and tried installing it through the launcher and it STILL none of the prompts appear in your follow-up post. It doesn't even install XQuartz, just says the application was installed successfully. I clicked on Launch CoH icon and get to the install box with the same permission issues.

[GM Tock]

By request of the OP from the original guide writer, I'm moving posts to here from the prior thread that's been revised.

 

All of his comments based on the old guide have been removed.  All others remain intact.