Silent Hunter III on Mac OSX
 

I hope I'm posting this in the right place. Mods, please feel free to sticky-ify this and move to the correct place.

To my knowledge, none of the SH games will run on OSX. In fact, OSX is sorely lacking any subsims at all.

I'm a mac user, and managed to rather painlessly get SHIII to work via WINE on OSX 10.6.6 on an Intel Core 2 Duo 15" laptop with 4gb of ram and a 120gb hard drive.

This was done using the Steam version of the game (because the game needs to be playable without the CD). It retails for $10USD on Steam now.

Before you start, you need to install the XCode tools from the Mac system installation disk. I think it can also be downloaded for free from Apple. It's the developer's kit for OSX, and installs a few software items necessary to compile all the WINE stuff.

Here's a link on how to install WINE: http://davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/wine-mac/

That same guide tells you how to install Windows software once you've got WINE up and running.

It took me about 10 minutes to start the WINE install, and the computer chewed on it for 90 minutes or so.

Once you've got WINE up and running, install SH3 as per the instructions on installing software in the link above.

You'll need to tweak a few things before it will work, though.

Instructions for those tweaks can be found at http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManage...estingId=25847 in the "howto" section.

Personally, I used the free application TextWrangler to edit the .cfg file mentioned on that site.

In the .cfg file, I changed 1280 to 1400, and 1024 to 900; but that will depend on your monitor resolution. You'll see what I mean when you open up that file. Be sure to save the file when you're done editing it.

The site mentions editing the WINE config file as well, and you get there by typing wincfg in the terminal. It will pop up a window, and from there you can make changes.

I haven't played through a full career yet or anything, but the game seems to work just fine on all fronts.

Best of all, it runs in a window, so I can mess around on the Web while I'm cruising across Biscay.

I hope this helps some would-be OSX subsimmers!

Very interesting. Any luck with the mods out there? It's the mods that make the game playable.

I haven't played with any of the add-ons yet. I want to make sure the vanilla version runs at least as well as Windows before I add another layer of confusion. I'll mess around with it today.

The only two problems I've encountered was a crash while approaching a convoy at 1024x compression and hitting the numpad delete key managed to clear the control panel at the.bottom of the screen.

Will post more later.

So GWX3.0 Gold installs, and works right up until the loading screen for the mission. It hangs, and then WINE spews D3D errors and registration errors.

It loads about 90% and then dies.

I'm seeing what can't be done about that now.

Perhaps a legacy version might work better. Will update again shortly.

Fixed. It loads missions now. There was a virtual memory problem apparently caused by runaway memory use in a sound module.

In WINE, using the command "wine regedit" do:

Make sure that this key exists in the wine registry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\DirectSound
In that key, create a string MaxShadowSize with value 0 . Or the game may run out of virtual memory and crash.

Correction: It loads the first single mission map. Starting a career patrol in port, it runs, but then runs out of memory still.

Looking for a fix.

If anyone can read Polish, this page seems to describe my problem. I wonder what it says...

http://forum.linux.pl/viewtopic.php?id=10532

Ok, adding the registry entry discussed and linked here seems to be letting me get out of port.

See the numerous threads on high TC for some solutions there. I wouldnt go over 128

Thats normal. Hit it again.


Over all, this is awesome for the MAC users out there that want to play this. I would recommend getting a moderator to add this to a FAQ or something in the stickies

First up apologies for the resurrection of this dead[?] thread...

I got SH3 to run just fine out of the box - direct2drive digital download in Wine on OS X 10.6. But it was lacking because my previous experience was with GWX.

So in my haste I installed GWX without backing up the SH3 install a mistake...

The installation was fine, but I encountered the crashing during loading - applied both of the suggested fixes that are found in this thread, as well as updating to the latest version of Wine and using the newest "engine".

Alas, I can load a mission or a career game, and generally go about my business of heading out into the sea.

However after an erratic amount of time it just suddenly crashes. I've had it crash when near a convoy, and it crashes when there aren't any ships nearby. Also there's no explanation of what's causing the crash. It just pops up and says it's not working.

Has anyone else had success with getting SH3/GWX 3.0 Gold working under OS X or just with Wine?

Does anyone have any suggestions of what to try? I am not at all programming savvy and wouldn't have the foggiest of how one goes about compiling your own version of wine so I'm not too fussed about the missing smoke/particle effects. But if therein lies the answer then I guess that's the way I'll have to go.

Yet another resurrection, but I know a better way to play SH3 GWX on Mac: install SH3 & GWX via wine or crossover or whatever, and then download a programme called "NTCore Explorer Suite". Install that programme in the same bottle as SH3 GWX, and then run "CFF Explorer.exe", then within CFF Explorer open sh3.exe (back it up first), then go to "File Header", then click on "Click Here" on the bottom right corner of the right hand panel (a bluish square), and tick "can handle more than 2GB RAM". Save and close. Now your SH3.exe will not CTD if it overflows from memory and GWX will run as smooth as ever.

Great first post! That's a big help for Mac users. Welcome to the forum!

Thanks!

Sorry to bring back a dead thread, but this trick with NTCore so far has been amazing. Thank you Volisas! I was actually able to complete a raid on Scapa Flow finally and play so far has been much better. Will keep posted, but early signs point to :up:

Sorry to bring a thread back from the dead... again lol but I am having trouble with the very last solution. I used crossover and downloaded the game via steam and then used explorer suite to increase the ram. But my game freezes every time I load a mission right at 90%... any help would be appreciated, thanks!