Catalina and Codeweavers PSA

[jkalten]

So I've gotten to testing Codeweavers 19 and Catalina today. It works great to run DDO in Catalina. In fact, it runs far better than the official Mac DDO client does in HS for me.

Now the downside. I did some reading up, it looks like crossover's method to get wine running in Catalina was pretty hacky requiring a special compiler to be made for creating some libraries, and unfortunately is not going to even make it into development wine for a good long time.

I can't recommend enough using Codeweavers now for Catalina users.

https://www.codeweavers.com

[Optalidon]

So I've gotten to testing Codeweavers 19 and Catalina today. It works great to run DDO in Catalina. In fact, it runs far better than the official Mac DDO client does in HS for me.

Now the downside. I did some reading up, it looks like crossover's method to get wine running in Catalina was pretty hacky requiring a special compiler to be made for creating some libraries, and unfortunately is not going to even make it into development wine for a good long time.

I can't recommend enough using Codeweavers now for Catalina users.

https://www.codeweavers.com

Didn't try it yet, but last time (years ago) I used Crossover it didn't handle mouse very well. That said, would be nice to hear a word from SSG about this topic.

in short: we can expect a similar hack from SSG or we have to pay additional 50$ to Codeweavers to play DDO?

[jkalten]

Didn't try it yet, but last time (years ago) I used Crossover it didn't handle mouse very well. That said, would be nice to hear a word from SSG about this topic.

in short: we can expect a similar hack from SSG or we have to pay additional 50$ to Codeweavers to play DDO?

Mouse seems to handle pretty well. Honestly in my testing, it's far superior to the wine bottle that SSG put out. I'd honestly recommend any Mac user to use it. It's better performance than the current wine client and even better than the native client that used to be supported.

edit*
Codeweavers also offers a 30day trial so you don't have to buy sight unseen.

[Optalidon]

Mouse seems to handle pretty well. Honestly in my testing, it's far superior to the wine bottle that SSG put out. I'd honestly recommend any Mac user to use it. It's better performance than the current wine client and even better than the native client that used to be supported.

edit*
Codeweavers also offers a 30day trial so you don't have to buy sight unseen.

It's a 14 day trial and I'm testing it right now.

so far installation went well but every time it starts it keep asking authorisation for each font I have in my font folder (and they are a lot), so I have to manually move out all my font to let DDO start.

The game runs very smoothly and no problem at all with mouse.

in a couple of hours the game froze a couple of times, will say more in the next 14 days.

still it costs 50 bucks/year

[Optalidon]

As promised I'm back with Crossover + DDO report.

I found the experience fairly good. The game runs smoothly, no problems with the mouse and overall it can be played as good as with the SSD mojave client, maybe even better.

Minor issues I found follow:

1) The font problem: everytime DDO starts it keeps asking authorisation for each fon I have in my font folder, the simple solution is to move all fonts in a folder inside the font folder when this happens. MAC OS doesn't mind if the fonts are in a subfolder, it reads them anyway so you don't have to put back them after DDo starts, simply move back and forth from the folder you created in the fonts folder.

2) In 14 days of playing (mind 1-2 hours per day) the game crashed only once, but sometimes it freezes for 5-10 seconds apparently to load something. The 5-10 seconds are enough to get your character killed if you are in the middle of a fight, otherwise it is a minor problem. Mind that in 14 days my wiz was killed only once due to this problem. The mojave client crashes almost every time I play.

3) I was not able to get high resolution textures enabled. I play on a 4k iMac display and the game, with the mojave client, runs at the highest level of graphic settings and look gorgeous as this old game can be. With the Crossover the high res textures simply do not display, don't know why.

I tried a number of solutions to play with Catalina installed without have to reboot with mojave or windows, and found that Crossover is the best one. FYI i tried Parallels and Virtualbox

Parallels runs well but it is incredibly invasive (it install windows on your HD) and have a major problem with the mouse.

Virtual box works well, but you need a super machine to actually play well, as it is incredibly slow, it is free though.

[Optalidon]

Short sad story: I bought Crossover and DDO doesn't work anymore