Ryzom sous Mac OS X

[vrykolakas]

Mise à jour au 17 août 2007 : ça ne marche pas avec Crossover Mac, VMware Fusion ou Parallels Desktop 3.0 (nouvelle version avec un peu d’accélération matérielle) — le tout sous Vista. Je n’ai pas testé avec BootCamp, même si ça devrait sûrement.

[macpete]

I've read this thread thanks to the French to English translation made by my Firefox's Translator plugin so please pardon me if this reply is off topic and be patient with my English ...

I'm a new Ryzom player and a Mac user.

My rig is a 20" iMac Core Duo (2 GHz, 2 gigs of RAM, Mobility Radeon x1600/256) and I've played tons of MMO under Windows XP Pro SP2 thanks to Apple Boot Camp and I must say that this is the best way to play PC games on an Intel Mac.

Even if Parallels 3 and the new VMware Fusion do support 3D acceleration by some degrees, they are not and never will be a very good way to play modern games ... maybe it will be possible to run some older 3D games of the nineties.

Codeweavers solution works pretty well with some games but the performances suffer a bit and their games compatibility list is very short ...

In case you want to try Ryzom via Boot Camp, here's my personal (improvable) recipe:


- uninstall the Ati Control Panel or the Catalyst Control Center from add/remove applications
- uninstall the Ati drivers from add/remove applications
- reboot in safe mode (keep pressing F8 at boot)
- use Driver Cleaner to remove everything ATI (optional but useful)
- reboot in standard mode
- stop the "new hardware found" wizard
- install the new drivers set (in case you are going to install the official Ati Catalyst suite remember to choose the "custom" installation if you don't like the bloated Catalyst Control Center)
- reboot and test everything

Some very useful links:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/ (Apple Boot Camp 1.4)

http://ati.amd.com/online/mobilecatalyst/ (this allows you to directly download the latest version of the regular Mobile suite)

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysint ... oruns.mspx (Sysinternals Autoruns will shows you all the processes that are running in the background)

http://www.drivercleaner.net/professional.html (to remove completely the installed drivers)

The old, free version of Driver Cleaner is still available and works pretty well under XP SP2:
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=745

http://www.guru3d.com/article/atitraytools/189/ (Ati Tray Tools: way better and lighter than Ati's Catalyst Control Center ... just remember to choose the "custom" option inside the Catalyst set-up wizard and remove the "Catalist Control Suite" flag before installing the Ati Tray Tools).

http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool/ (the DH Moblity Modder allow us to patch the full, regular Catalyst Suite so that it become fully usable by Mobility chipsets users)

http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catal ... adeonx-mce (regular Catalyst suite).

I've tried this procedure with my iMac and with a MBP 2.13 GHz (similar hardware) and a friend of mine plays Ryzom with the CTO (configure to order) GeForce 7600 version of the same model of iMac using the latest nForce suite ... if someone want to share its experiences with other hardware configs I will be glad to update my recipe

At the moment I'm playing Ryzom with the full Catalyst 7.9 (I also use the Ati Tray Tools) and it runs very well (max settings, 1280x768, 2x FSAA, 8x AA, Vsync ON, a 5% software-based automatic overclock, a steady 30-32 FPS) ...

One possible way to play Ryzom under Mac OS X would be Transgaming's Cider (http://www.transgaming.com/products/cider/), the solution adopted by Gametap for Myst Online: URU Live and CCP Games for EVE Online but I don't think that the silent managers at GF will ever consider such an investment given the current state of the game ...

Hope it helps ...