Talk:Guild Wars on CrossOver

Spiffy. But $40 just so I don't have to use Bootcamp? Hmm.. I'll have to think about that one a bit.

Anyway, is there anything you want us to do, or is just an informational article? - T HARKUN  21:18, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi! Mainly we're just putting this here for informational purposes, as we noticed a complete lack of mention of CrossOver here on the Guild Wars wiki, even though Guild Wars is reported by our users to run quite well.  That seemed a shame.  If anyone would like to help flesh this out, or thinks it should be moved elsewhere, suggestions are welcome.  We'll also likely be adding to it periodically.  We've been corresponding with Emily Diehl about this also.  Cheers!  --CodeWeavers 21:38, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you could tell us the benefits of running Guild Wars with CrossOver over Wine or Cedega? Is the code in any way optimized specifically for Guild Wars? Are we going to get better framerates? Eliminated particular bugs? - Tanetris 02:31, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I hesitated to go into any breakdown of CrossOver versus other technologies on this page because I wanted to avoid having the article look like an advertisement; a worry was already expressed on Emily Diehl's talk page that the article as it stands is too much like an advertisement. The last thing CodeWeavers as a company wants to do is waltz onto someone's wiki and start blaring out an infomercial, so I'd welcome your guidance here.  As for progress on existing issues, our CrossOver Games genius, Stefan Dösinger, will be writing about that in his blog.  --CodeWeavers 15:31, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I would say the usefulness of a direct comparison between the various options, as they relate to Guild Wars specifically, outweighs potential bias, so long as the comparison is kept as neutral as possible (i.e. explaining any benefits Wine may have over CrossOver on equal footing with benefits CrossOver may have over Wine. Bash Cedega all you like though ;) (kidding on that last part, of course)). Of course, if wiki'ers find it doesn't accurately reflect their experiences, I'm sure it'll be ammended soon enough, but I'm curious to see what you guys say. - Tanetris 03:02, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I have added a mention on the Guild Wars on Wine article directing to this page. It was not out of malice that no mention was made. Until now, CrossOver always been around office and, apparently, no one had heard of the new gaming product you have. Since CrossOver is comercialy supported i dont know what contribution anyone could bring to this article. Maybe keep the version and html link current, every thing seem to be handled in the "Compatibility Center"..
 * Once that article is fairly complet i think it should be moved to the main namespace. --Bob 02:40, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Official status?
The page over at CrossOver for games says that it "officially" supports Guild Wars, but the page here has a notice about running Guild Wars on OSes other than Windows. Could this possibly send mixed messages to users? Kokuou 10:42, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I think people are able to understand the difference between the product running guildwars and Anet not supporting problems within that system. Right? - T HARKUN [[Image:User_Tharkun_sig.png|16px]] 19:17, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * By "officially supports Guild Wars," we mean that CodeWeavers guarantees Guild Wars will work with CrossOver Games, and that we can provide technical support for our CrossOver Games customers with issues. It is not meant to imply (hence the inclusion of the warning tag on this page) that ArenaNet officially advocates the use of CrossOver.  The two are separate issues.  Hope that helps to clarify!  --CodeWeavers 19:25, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Does that mean you also guarantee I'll be able to run it with an ATI card, without issues? Or is it one of the many "We fully support this (as long as you use an nvidia card) "? ATI's linux drivers are quite horrible, and I personally haven't gotten any commercial game to work under neither cedega nor wine in over a year. The last time I could actually play GW on linux was with cedega before the Sorrow's Furnace patch, 2½ years ago. And I can't seem to find anything on your page about what happens if it doesn't work after all, since you "guarantee" it will.


 * Please excuse the hostility. I just have a problem with companies that sell commercial copies of open source projects with guarantees thrown both left and right. I'm also a bit dissappointed that the discussed "project" was a "wine copy" (if I may call it such) and not a solution to running Guild Wars natively in Linux/OSX. &mdash; Galil [[Image:User Galil sig.png|Talk page]] 21:00, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I have an ATI video card, and it seems to run on my iMac. (The version before this, just the regular CrossOver, didn't though.) To me, it's playable to an extent, but try going into any remotely busy outpost, and you get a major framerate drop. The gamma settings also do nothing, even in full screen, and I prefer things a little brighter than the default so I can see what I'm doing. So far, it's okay, but I don't know if it's $40-okay. Kokuou 00:21, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * He was talking about ATI cards on Linux though, which are notoriously bad due to lack of driver support, especially compared to nVidia cards. Obviously ATI cards on Apple work much better, as they have drivers created specifically for OSX. [[Image:User_losershawn_sig.jpg|shawn]] (shawn - talk) 00:26, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * No worries, Galil, I see where you're coming from. ATI cards on Linux are tricky, and that's well known.  This kind of thing is why we offer two things:  a) a free trial, so that anyone can download CrossOver and see how it works for them on their particular rig, and b) a money back guarantee if they do happen to buy CrossOver and find that it isn't what they'd hoped.  --CodeWeavers 15:09, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

'Advanced' graphics capability?
I've been looking at the Crossover compatibility page for GW, and am impressed by the stats of Crossover 7, with GW getting three silvers and five golds, which means it should be running near to as it would on Windows. However, looking at the screenshots that have been posted, I'm wondering if there's support for the 'advanced' graphics features, such as anti-aliasing and post processing. The latest screenshot I can find were taken with Crossover 6.2, and doesn't seem to be making use of these features. Disappointing, as it plays a large part in the game's style. (Top right, bloom off, no AA. Bottom left, bloom on, 4x AA.) Are these disabled due to unplayable framerates, or perhaps only been added recently and have no spiffy screenshots showing it off? (shawn - talk) 18:39, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The screenshots on that page are all shots submitted by our users from well before CrossOver Games was released, so they're not current. The release was just two days ago, so it may be a while before we get new screenshot submissions.  We try to stick to showing user-submitted screenshots in our Compatibility Center.  The current status is that CrossOver Games does support post processing, and anti-aliasing is being worked on right now.  If you have a video card that can handle it, and a driver config tool to force anti-aliasing, you can currently use that to enable it.  Obviously we're working to make that process less fiddly!  --CodeWeavers 21:12, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Input wanted on GW for Linux/Mac project!
Hi guys! There are some folks that we're corresponding with here with that are working on a way to get Guild Wars running under Linux and Mac platforms, and they'd be really interested in working with the community to get feedback and thoughts about their project. I'd love to point them over to a wiki page so they can just interface with interested people directly, but I'm not sure where you guys would like to put a page like that. I figured I'd bring it up here and see what everyone thinks.

If we can get some kind of a page ready for the project so I can point our contacts at it, that would be really awesome.

Any thoughts? :) -- Emily Diehl (talk) 19:22, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It should probably be in your userspace. Or, they could make an account, and put it in their userspace. Lord Belar 19:27, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Seeing as Gaile's talk pages are frequented a lot by players and users alike, perhaps something in her userspace? Things like the User talk:Gaile Gray/Third Year Miniature Guesses and User talk:Gaile Gray/International Cultural References received a lot of attention and feedback in a very small amount of time. That's probably the best way to go about it; I couldn't see it working on a page in the main namespace as the publicity it'll receive from the player and user bases probably won't be as much. --[[Image:User Brains12 Spiral.png|15px| ]] Brains12 \ Talk 19:29, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * there's already a page w/ some linux info. Guild Wars on Wine. -- VVong | BA 19:32, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it does seem like a userspace may be the way to go. I'm inclined to agree that we should start it off of Gaile's page or my page and then move it over to our contact's page if they choose to make an actual userpage. I'm not positive if we should mix this project with the Wine page, since they aren't really related. Maybe we could put a related links link to the new project off of Wine? --[[Image:UserEmilyDiehlStar.gif]] Emily Diehl (talk) 19:40, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Your userpage might be a starting point. Gives the project enough initial page views and also gives you some control over it. In the end though, this definitely sounds like it should become a project page. --Xeeron 20:29, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * If the person/group has a name for their project, we could just start a talk page at Talk:(ProjectName) or Talk:Guild_Wars_on_(ProjectName). Alternatively we could easily talk on GW on Wine talk, or right here (if you care to host the discussion, of course), or a subpage until it's mature enough to warrant its own page. Wherever the discussion ends up, pinging the GW on Wine talk page will probably bring the most people who are interested in GW on non-Windows systems. Where it takes place is rather less important as long as we make sure interested parties can find it. - Tanetris 22:09, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * "Guild Wars on alternative operating systems"? poke | talk 22:22, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed with Xeeron, but I don't think GW on Wine's talk page would be a good idea since it would drive the focus of that talk page away from running GW under Wine, which after all would still be the way to do it until this project is finished. Also, not everybody's got that page on their watchlist. ;) Putting a note there for those who do have it on their watchlist is a good idea though, so they too can get involved. &mdash; Galil [[Image:User Galil sig.png|Talk page]] 03:18, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * A wiki article, where ever its located, is a good idea. But if the intended feed back they whant are debuging trace and core dump a mailing list would be more efficient. We talk about large amount of text and file here, a wiki talk page would be unreadable very fast. It a nice move from the dev team. I have been waiting for this awenser to be "yes" since the guildwars preview release. --Bob 13:06, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Awesome, thanks guys. I sent an email back to the folks leading the project with this feedback. I'll keep you posted as soon as I learn more from them about how they'd like to proceed from here. --[[Image:UserEmilyDiehlStar.gif]] Emily Diehl (talk) 20:08, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Wow, this talk has gotten me all excited! I'd absolutely love not to have to boot up Windows every time I want to play, so I'll definitely keep my eyes peeled on this space. If/when the project gets rolling, I think those of us with "alternative OSes" would really appreciate an official page that we could tag in our watchlists. Kokuou 11:20, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Definitely. As it is, I have this page on my watchlist, and am getting excited anytime it updates, even if it comes up as an update to a different section. I have a feeling this will receive a lot of dedicated support once it gets underway, hehe. [[Image:User_losershawn_sig.jpg|shawn]] (shawn - talk) 18:51, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Hiya all! Looks like our friends at CodeWeavers have put up a project page stub off of their userpage! User:CodeWeavers/Guild Wars on CrossOver is where you can find it, so head on over and check it out :) --[[Image:UserEmilyDiehlStar.gif]] Emily Diehl (talk) 21:13, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, that's somewhat disappointing, I was under the impression this was going to be an ArenaNet project to get GW to run natively on other OSes. But I suppose that would require not using DirectX and instead switching to OpenGL.. Can't see that happening with GW2 on the pipeline, (although perhaps it's something to look at for that game rather than gw1?) [[Image:User_losershawn_sig.jpg|shawn]] (shawn - talk) 23:51, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Very disapoinitng indeed, this is still the same "Wine" solution as Guild Wars on Wine but from a different vendor. I had hope for a real native support :(. The more options the better i guess.. Is this a official partnership where crossover support guildwars linux or mac at the same level Anet support it on windows? --Bob 02:06, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I was kind of hoping for native support, as well. I mean, CrossOver is a nice product, but it's not specifically for getting GW to run on Mac. I was under the impression that those that contacted ArenaNet did so to work on a specific GW project. I know that the testers over at CrossOver are working hard, but this seems kind of like a product advertisement, no? Kokuou 09:58, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * As I touched on above, if they were making a native version of GW for *nix, it would have to be the Anet devs, as it's not something an outside party could really work on. As of now, GW runs on DirectX 9, a proprietary API made by Microsoft. And as such, this API can only be found on Microsoft operating systems. Fancy that, eh? In order for games to run natively on OSses that don't have this API, they would have to use an open-source version, such as OpenGL. Not many publishers work with OpenGL yet, with Blizzard and id software being two of the most well known, however the advantage of that is all Blizzard and id software games run on both Windows and Mac, with the majority of id titles also running under Linux. Anyway, this is getting incredibly nerdy and long-winded, but the short of the long is that it would require a ton of resources to switch APIs, even to do a Cider port, especially after the game has been out this long. Luckily, after checking out the feedback for CrossOver, it seems that Guild Wars has been getting 'Gold' performance on Macs running Crossover 7. All we need now is for the iMacs to get a refresh, and come with a video card that doesn't completely suck.. [[Image:User_losershawn_sig.jpg|shawn]] (shawn - talk) 21:11, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I moved the userpage in question to mainspace, as it's not really a user-specific thing, in the typical sense.

I'm a little disappointed that ArenaNet didn't approach the wine community directly, so that whatever modifications integrated into CrossOver would make it back into the main codebase. That said, since Guild Wars runs pretty flawlessly on wine anyway, it doesn't matter too much.

&mdash;Tanaric 01:49, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Happily, the modifications CrossOver has made do indeed make it back into the main Wine codebase. That's one of the differences between CrossOver and other solutions.  You can read a little more about that here, if you're curious.  --CodeWeavers 14:52, 27 March 2008 (UTC)


 * In that case, I apologize for my accusation! I'm still pretty bitter towards the guys behind Cedega -- I should have a done a little more research before assuming the CrossOver team was similar. &mdash;Tanaric 02:44, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Shawn: I was assuming the company that was discussed (before anybody mentioned what company it was) to be a company like Loki Software was. They worked with various gaming companies to port their games to other platforms. Also about "Not many publishers work with OpenGL yet", I'd make that "Not many publishers work with OpenGL any more", especially since OpenGL has been around a bit longer than DirectX. Doom 3 was almost the first commercial game using OpenGL in years when it was released. Happily enough, it seems to be turning around now though. Also, about all blizzard games using OpenGL it's not the whole truth. WoW for example uses DirectX by default in Windows but yes, it has an optional OpenGL engine that can be enabled by modifying a config file, or starting it with a command line parameter.


 * Sorry for the offtopic-ness. :P &mdash; Galil [[Image:User Galil sig.png|Talk page]] 05:29, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * To bad crossover isn't free. But a start with crossover would certainly help, since wine and crossover are pretty closely linked Dominator Matrix  06:43, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

News
So...any news on this? Its been nearly 3 weeks...Dominator Matrix  02:20, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
 * What news are you looking for? Its released, and being updated.  The article has details; the website has more.  I'm curious what you find lacking.  — T HARKUN  [[Image:User_Tharkun_sig.png|16px]] 02:32, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Freebie
Apparently the owner of the company made a promise to the public at large that if gas in their city dropped below a certain price, they would give away CrossOver for free. It did. Today's the day. As of right this moment and for the rest of the day (till midnight Central time), Codeweavers' website is offering CrossOver Pro and CrossOver Games for both Mac and Linux free (not free-trial free, unlimited free). So if anyone's watching this and interested, go go go. Getting to the website's a bit slow, obviously, but the links are right there. If you want more on the why and such, just do a search on news.google.com for "crossover", there's like 7 stories on it. - Tanetris 14:11, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Crossover Games vs Wine
Since Bob is reporting that some issues have been fixed with the latest Wine, I thought it'd be a good time to take a quick comparison between the latest Wine and Crossover, the latter of which I've been using since their giveaway back in November. I'm using the most current version of each program as of this writing, which are Wine 1.1.12, released Jan 2, 2009, and Crossover Game 7.1.0, released July 24, 2008. Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-23, if anyone's curious. I will be the first to admit this comparison is not comprehensive. Mostly I did a quick run-around in each based on things I've noticed about Crossover over the past couple months, while keeping an eye on FPS.

The first thing I'll note is that the cursor will randomly disappear in Crossover during extended gameplay. Don't know what causes it, and the only way I know of to fix it is to restart the client. I understand this has long-since been fixed in Wine. I'd imagine it will also be fixed in Crossover whenever they get around to releasing a new version, but without knowing when that might be, it's a pretty big point for Wine.

First point against Wine is that zones seem slow to load. It's only a few seconds, and it's possible to just chalk it up to lag, but each time I zoned in Wine, whether map travel or stepping through a portal, took noticeably longer than doing so in Crossover. Take it as you will. Secondly, resizing the window in Wine by maybe 10-15 pixels (that's less than the height of this line of text) caused the program to stop responding for nearly a minute. My computer is no slouch, and resizing in Crossover causes at most a 2 second pause. There's no reason for that.

Comparing FPS in similar environments, Crossover usually had about 20 FPS better than Wine. Fooling around in the Hall of Monuments, I was getting around 40-75 FPS with Wine while the pool was in view, compared to 60-90 in Crossover. In both cases, the FPS ranges went up about 30 without the pool in view. Running around Ascalon with heroes a bit, in the same situations Wine was getting 120-175 FPS vs Crossover's FPS was 150-200. Again, these were not comprehensive, rigorous tests, just some brief observations. YMMV and all that.

In both Wine and Crossover, reflections are a bit odd depending on camera angle. This is particularly noticeable in the tar around Ascalon (which is why I was running around there). Moving the camera up and down, the tar will shift through different colors, ranging from a dark blue to a yellowish color, and change brightness. Less drastic, the pool in the HoM, again depending on the height of your camera angle, will switch back and forth between a transparent blue and having an opaque cyan "rim" over it. Not a big deal, but worth noting compared to Windows.

The last thing I'll mention is that both Wine and Crossover have a great deal of difficulty detecting disconnection. Under Windows, if I get disconnected, the most it takes is about a minute from when I try to move for GW to figure out it's lost connection and ask if I want to reconnect. In Crossover, I have literally tried for an hour to move around after being disconnected, and all it does is leave me stuck in place. I tried the same in Wine, giving it a little over 10 minutes before I concluded the same problem. What this means is that if you get disconnected in the middle of the zone, the only way to get a chance to reconnect into that zone is to kill GW from the System Monitor and start the client again, which is pretty annoying.

If anyone out there is playing GW on Linux and is considering Crossover, my personal recommendation would be to wait until they release an update that fixes the cursor bug. That bug aside, I would say that Crossover offers a better playing experience than Wine, so it comes down to whether you're comfortable paying $40 for it. In the meantime, Wine runs GW quite well, and Bob posts very helpful recommendations on Talk:Guild Wars on Wine on each new version release.

I'm not sure anyone actually reads this page, let alone runs GW on Crossover, but if anyone cares to add their own experiences, feel free. And if the Wine/Crossover devs happen to be reading, if you could fix the disconnect-detection bug in Wine and Crossover and fix the cursor-disappearing bug in Crossover, that'd be fantastic. - Tanetris 19:05, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Crossover Games 7.2.0
Crossover Games 7.2.0 was released on February 26. I did not notice this as I forgot to sign up for new version announcements. After a couple hours worth of testing, I'm sad to say that the issues from 7.1.0 (detailed in the section just above) have not been fixed. The cursor still disappears sometimes, there's still no disconnect-detection, and reflections are still a bit odd (though reflections seem to have improved slightly, but I can't say that for certain). There's also a new problem: When opening Guild Wars, the program locks up before reaching the login screen. Force-quitting and immediately reopening GW will make it run as normal, but it's rather bothersome.

I've submitted a support ticket on these matters. I'll let you guys know how it turns out, in case anyone's curious. - Tanetris 17:55, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
 * An update for the all of no one reading this: the problem opening GW turned out to be because I had upgraded over top of the old version. Uninstalling Crossover and installing the new version fresh eliminated the lock-ups. - Tanetris 17:39, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Crossover Games 8.0.0
Crossover Games 8.0.0 was released September 2. Both my own testing and other people on the crossover forum confirm that the disappearing cursor bug is finally fixed! - Tanetris 02:53, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Crossover Games 8.1.0
Crossover Games 8.1.0 was released yesterday. It's fixed a graphical glitch that appeared on a few NPC models and certain armor combinations. Also things seem to load a bit faster and my average FPS is ~10 higher than usual doing the same things. Aside from the lack of disconnect-detection, I'd call it as good as Windows. - Tanetris 23:42, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks Tan for the play-by-play. I know you thought no one was reading, but you helped a fellow Mac user make an informed decision. Needed a machine for running a second copy of the game at home. Kudos. -- Alesain 09:10, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Crossover Games 8.1.0-1
I've been running Guild Wars in Crossover for quite some time now, and everything is just wonderful. I did have one issue that 8.1.0-1 crossover seems to have fixed the Mouse is now longer disappearing every 2 hours, which was very annoying, because the only way to get it back was a reboot of the game.Wynterarwynrose 18:17, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I know this is a long shot, posting my question here - but does anyone know of a Wine version that also fixes the same mouse problem ? I'm using Wine 1.1.33. Erszebet 10:05, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

About the command lines
How does it work on the mac version of CrossOver Games ? I'm quite new at using the program, and I'd like to try to use the -image to download everything once and for all. -Alarielle- 11:52, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Assuming it's anything like the Linux version, there should be a "Run a Windows command" option (or "Run Command" or something like it) under CrossOver's program menu. Just pick the appropriate bottle, browse for the .exe, and add the -image inside the quotes. Asidely, the CrossOver GW forum is probably a better place for support on this. - Tanetris 16:18, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, it worked perfectly ! -Alarielle- 12:29, 9 May 2011 (UTC)