Macintosh / Mac / macOS Support 2024

[Kaytis]

The interesting parts to me are that Game Porting Toolkit is just a very old version of wine that Apple upgraded to work in 64-bit architectures and to which they added extensions that route graphics calls to their native Metal APIs. I am sure that newer versions of wine owe at least some of their 64-bit support to the work that Apple must have contributed back to the project.

The clear advantage of the Game Porting Toolkit are the Metal extensions. They take advantage of hardware support that the open source wine code does not. One significant advantage is that it offers DX11 support. The latest version of wine only offers DX9 support. There is a clear improvement in many aspects of the rendering when the DX11 options are enabled. Shadows and atmospheric effects are significantly more sophisticated. Using the hardware acceleration makes rendering silky smooth. However, antialiasing is broken. In DX11 it discolors and washes out the entire environment. Not being able to use it is definitely a step back from DX9.

I never used anti-aliasing in DX9. Mainly because I forgot to turn it on. Now that I see it, I kind of want to keep it. But I will use the Game Porting Toolkit for a while to see how it goes.

 

[Yulrem]

Great, thank you very much for breaking it down!

Let me know when your version is ready to be installed and I'll give it a go.

 

[Kaytis]

The instructions for the macOS Game Porting Toolkit can be found here]
DDO on macOS using Apple's Game Porting Toolkit
I had to learn how to create new templates on DDOWiki for all the warnings and notes. That is what took so long
Let me know if you have any trouble.

 

[Kaytis]

I have transitioned the information in this thread into a ddowiki page: https://ddowiki.com/page/DDO_on_MacOS

There you will find the latest information about how to install and play DDO on macOS.

NEW: April, 2025

• Added information about how to install Apple's Game Porting Toolkit
• Personalization information has been moved out of the Launcher Script
• Added support for Dungeon Helper to the Launcher Script (installation instructions aren't quite ready yet).
• The Launcher Script has been cleaned up a lot. Cruft from its Window's origins have finally been removed.

 

[Kaytis]

NEW: April, 2025

Installation instructions for DungeonHelper are now available at https://ddowiki.com/page/DDO_on_MacOS

 

[Yulrem]

Game Porting Toolkit 3.0-beta1 is out on Homebrew
Antialiasing is a bit better.

 

[Ying]

Very thorough info, and I appreciate you including DungeonHelper. What limitations, if any, exist within DDO when using the Game Porting Toolkit?

 

[Yulrem]

Very thorough info, and I appreciate you including DungeonHelper. What limitations, if any, exist within DDO when using the Game Porting Toolkit?

Non so far. Except antialiasing is not working properly yet.

 

[Kaytis]

Very thorough info, and I appreciate you including DungeonHelper. What limitations, if any, exist within DDO when using the Game Porting Toolkit?

It's a complicated mix of factors. I explain it very thoroughly on the wiki page, but here are the pros and cons:

Game Porting Toolkit 2.0:

Pros:

• Supports DX-11: more graphic options available -noticeably better quality with textures and shadows.
• Uses built in hardware for graphics rendering via special drivers that Apple includes.

Cons:

• Very complicated to install. If you dont understand what is happening, you had better follow the instructions to the letter.
• Uses Wine 7 which is positively antique.
• Because of the former, does not support Dungeon Helper at all.
• Enabling any antialiasing causes the screen to wash out. You can see stuff, but it's like looking through a barely transparent plastic bag.

Wine 10:

Pros:

• Very easy to install. A breeze compared to GPT.
• Supports Anti-aliasing.
• Supports Dungeon Helper.

Cons:

• Only supports DX-9.
• Graphics rendering is all emulated (On Apple Silicon this isn't a problem -I can run 6 clients without any degradation).

I steer people in very forceful terms to using the standard Wine installation. I only left the Graphics Porting Toolkit instructions there in case some enterprising person discovered an update worth looking at. It seems that @Yulrem has found something. I will investigate. If Apple has managed to modernize the underlying Wine, resolved the antialiasing flaws, and made GPT easier to install, then this may be a huge win. I will spend some time validating the new kit and if all goes well, will simplify the wiki page by switching to GPT 3. My biggest concern is that it is still going to be complex to install -especially if they did not move to Wine 10. Wine 7 is not supported on Apple Silicon -it has to be emulated, which is what makes installation complicated. Fingers crossed.

 

[Yulrem]

As far as I can tell...
- It's still wine 7.7
- Antialiasing improved but still flawd and looks work in progress.
- The current version 3.0 is still beta1 so all could improve in the stable.

 

[Kaytis]

I have discovered that all Wine versions past the original 10.0 version will not launch DDO due to a video driver issue. At least on my machine and I am assuming others. I will work with the Wine owners to see if this can be resolved. In the meantime, if you have accidentally updated Wine, or installed it after April 22nd and are unable to launch DDO, please follow the instructions on the wiki to downgrade to Wine 10.0: 1.1.2 Installing the 'wine' framework. These instructions will uninstall whatever version of Wine you have installed and specifically install Wine 10.0.

Be sure to grab the new launcher script as well. It is no longer personalized, so just replace the text in the one you already have:

https://ddowiki.com/page/DDO_on_MacOS/DNDLauncher_script