In this guide, I'll show you how to successfully run Final Fantasy XIV on Mac OSX 10.7 Lion (and should work with Snow Leopard).
For reference, my setup is:
iMac 27" @ 2560x1440 Quad-Core i7 @ 2.93Ghz ATI Radeon HD 4850 (512MB VRAM) w/ 12GB DDR3 So-DIMM @ 1067Mhz.
Feel free to post your setups and how well it runs.
What you will need:
- Wineskin
- Wine 1.3.25
- Final Fantasy XIV Game Disc
- Some Wine Knowledge
1.) Obtain Wineskin at the following page:
http://wineskin.doh123.com/
Direct Download Link:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wine...p.zip/download
Install it by just unzipping and putting the Wineskin Winery.app into your Applications folder.
2.) Open Wineskin Winery. You should currently have no Installed Engines.
3.) Hit the '+' button and install engine, WS7Wine1.3.25. Name it w/e you want; doesn't matter. Make sure it installs successfully.
4.) Hit 'Update' under Wrapper Version. It should update you to Wrapper version: Wineskin-2.4.
5.) Finally, "Create New Black Wrapper" will be available to click. Click on it. Name the Wrapper anything you want. I.E. - FFXIV or Final Fantasy XIV.
6.) It will ask you if you want to install the "Gecko" package. DO NOT INSTALL THIS. Hit "Cancel".
7.) You're wrapper creation should be finished. Hit "View wrapper in Finder".
8.) Drag the wrapper to your Desktop, or wherever you want to place the .APP. Make sure that's where you want to keep it. Cause from personal experience, you cannot move the wrapper after you install FFXIV, as it will not launch.
9.) Once you have moved it to where you want, double click the new Wrapper. Wineskin should pop up with the following options:
Install Windows Software
Set Screen Options
Advanced
Quit
Click on "Advanced".
10.) Erase everything in the "Wine Debug" text box.
11.) Click on "Tools".
12.) Click on "Winetricks" under Utilities.
13.) Run the following commands in the dropdown box ONLY:
d3dx9
ie6
winhttp
Make sure it says that they all completed successfully. Hit "Done".
14.) Hit "Done" again. It should take you back to the 4 option screen. Insert your FFXIV game disc (or, if you have it downloaded on your system, this is fine, too).
15.) Hit "Install Windows Software". Navigate to your game disc (or downloaded file). Select "ffxivsetup.exe".
16.) Select language.
17.) It may or may not say the following:
"A new version of DirectX is required for installation. Install DirectX now?"
Either way, if it does pop up, hit "Accept" and wait for it to install.
18.) If you had to install the DirectX, which I'm sure most did, it will pop-up saying, "Installation seems to have failed". THIS IS OKAY! Go back to step 15, and reopen "ffxivsetup.exe".
19.) This time, no DirectX should pop up, and you should see the InstallShield Wizard for FFXIV. Install it normally like any other application. This will take some time to install. Grab a snack.
20.) Once it's finished, you'll have to choose which executable to start with. Select "ffxivboot.exe".
21.) Double-click your wrapper. It should now be updating FFXIV to the current patch. This could take some time depending on your connection speed. Go watch TV.
22.) Once the updater has finished and you reach the login screen, close out of FFXIV.
23.) Ctrl-Click on your Wineskin Wrapper. Select "Show Package Contents". You should see the third item says "Wineskin" in Finder. Double-click it.
24.) You'll see a very familiar 4-option screen. Hit "Advanced". Hit "Browse" across from the "Windows EXE" text box. Navigate to "ffxivconfig.exe". Hit "Choose". This should change the EXE from Boot to Config. Hit "Done". Hit "Quit".
25.) Double-click your wrapper.
26.) Pay attention here. First set it to your language, hit general, go to Font settings, hit "Use a Windows Font", choose any font, and hit save changes. Hit "Ok" and it will ask you to save changes again, hit "Yes". It will close Congif window. We do this, because it will not save ANY video settings until you do this, and it will always crash before doing this.
27.) Re-open "ffxivconfig.exe", your wrapper. You can now uncheck "Use Windows Font", if you so choose. Choose your video settings you want to use for the game (I did everything mostly standard, but I'd say it depends on your video card). Save.
28.) Ctrl-Click on your Wineskin Wrapper. Select "Show Package Contents". You should see the third item says "Wineskin" in Finder. Double-click it.
29.) You'll see a very familiar 4-option screen. Hit "Advanced". Hit "Browse" across from the "Windows EXE" text box. Navigate to "ffxivboot.exe". Hit "Choose". This should change the EXE from Config to Boot. Hit "Done". Hit "Quit".
30.) Once updated and installed, you should now see the FFXIV Login Screen, Sweet Bliss! Enter your information, hit Play. Depending on your video size you set, that's how large the window will be. Select your character and such.
31.) You should now have FFXIV up and running. It may lag slightly the first time you login and view the world for the first time. However, this is only temporary. You should be able to move around and perform actions just as if you were playing on a Windows 7 machine.
32.) If you have no sound, make sure to log out and close FFXIV completely. Ctrl-click your Wrapper, and go to Wineskin. Go to Advanced, Tools, and Config Utility (winecfg). Click on the Audio tab. Play around with these settings until you're able to hear feedback. I believe it's highly dependent on sound cards. So, my settings are different from some people's settings.
http://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Gn...0.31.43+PM.png
http://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-xL...0.43.39+AM.png
You're now done and ready to play Final Fantasy XIV on your Mac OSX. This should work for Snow Leopard, as well, I imagine.
Under Winetricks, you can also change the allocated VRAM size to "default, 512mb, or 1024mb". Wine runs FFXIV much better than Parallels or VMFusion, imo, because it's not limited to Parallels-type programs 256mb VRAM. What game only uses 256mb of VRAM? Really?
I hope this has helped some Mac users. I know you can Bootcamp Windows 7 with Mac, but I much rather prefer the Mac OSX for running applications than Windows 7. Both have great pros and cons. This is just a personal preference.
If you have any questions or something seems unclear, please leave me a message.