X³: TC and AP - Mac support thread

[Killrathi]

Doubt they will support new M1 chips
For many years Egosoft have not been rebuilt for a 64-bit platform in order to be able to use games under modern versions of MacSs. And making a reassembly from 32 bits to 64 bits is much easier than for ARM.

[Cycrow]

its not possible to rebuild for 64-bit. The whole game would have to be remade from scratch

[enphily]

X3TC works good through Parallels on Macbook Air M1 16Gb RAM and quiet slow using Crossover, especially loading process

[jimlpearce]

its not possible to rebuild for 64-bit. The whole game would have to be remade from scratch

Hi mate. Bit of a long time listener first time caller situation.. but I wanted to pick your brain on something in case you can help or know anyone who might be able to.

I have been tinkering trying to get X3FL working on M1 Mac via Porting Kit and I've got quite far but now i'm stuck.

The game will boot but the Egosoft logo video does not play, it just skips. Then I can start a new game and the game plays well with good framerate but there is no voices whatsoever. No Betty or pilot voices (or videos) when hailed. It also crashes when I land at any station - which is suspect relates to the missing voices welcoming you.

I think I need to load up the exact right drivers in my wine container to get these working but I'm struggling to establish exactly what system(s) are involved in identifying and playing voices (and possibly related videos) in windows x3TC/AP/FL.

Any advice or resources on this subject would be greatly appreciated. And of course... Thank you for the endless hours of joy that your mods and work on these games have brought me over almost 2 decades!

[Cycrow]

im not really sure about getting it running in mac, but the sounds and video are done via DirectSound, and are wma (Windows Media) files.

Have you tried porting the linux version instead? The linux version uses different audio and videos files

[jimlpearce]

im not really sure about getting it running in mac, but the sounds and video are done via DirectSound, and are wma (Windows Media) files.

Have you tried porting the linux version instead? The linux version uses different audio and videos files

Appreciate your help mate. I am 99% of the way there..I have videos working and a stable game but the voices are missing. My suspicion is it's something to do with my Mac/wine infrastructure not being able to decompress 00044.pck

Next plan is to try and change the format to something that it can read. But if you have any thoughts I'd appreciate them as i'm wandering around in the dark abit

I'm so close after 2-3 years (on and off) of trying to achieve this on my M1 mac

[Cycrow]

Its unlikely an issue with pck files, they are just xml with zlib. And all the xml/txt are packed the same way, so nothing would work if it couldnt read them.

Ive never used Porting kit so i dont know, but it could be possible it doesnt work with wma files.

Converting themnto do different version might be an idea depending on how it handles the audio layer. Its the 00144.dat, 00244.dat (AP) and 00344.dat (FL)

[jimlpearce]

Its unlikely an issue with pck files, they are just xml with zlib. And all the xml/txt are packed the same way, so nothing would work if it couldnt read them.

Ive never used Porting kit so i dont know, but it could be possible it doesnt work with wma files.

Converting themnto do different version might be an idea depending on how it handles the audio layer. Its the 00144.dat, 00244.dat (AP) and 00344.dat (FL)

Thanks this is really helpful. I gave up on Porting Kit as it's too opinionated on installing certain things so i've built a custom wine bottle. I have been trying to get the right drivers installed but getting nowhere.

I confirmed it's currently unable to play wma files as I converted the .dat files to MP3 and enjoyed the hilarity of the voices all working but being almost completely random. I'm going to attempt the notoriously painful task of installing wmp10 to see if that will unlock the .wma files.. if not I guess I need to find a file format to convert to that doesn't break the mapping.

I could always resort to no voice with subtitles but the game would just be so lifeless

[jimlpearce]

You were bang on.

Got it working. Like you said, I could not get .wma to be playable on Mac M1. The solution was a constant bit rate conversion to MP3. I lost the Egosoft intro video and I think it puts the sounds a few milliseconds out of sync. But otherwise so far so good. And completely free to run!

Thanks for your help Cycrow