EB on RTW for mac

[OneoftheLost]

Oh. Ok. That explains it. Ive been having sound problems as well, but I'm not entirely sure if that's a 'feature' of EB or not. Every few seconds the menu music cuts out. Also, when in battle, the soldiers don't make any sounds for commands. Like they don't shout "Halt" and whatnot. This was in a custom battle, is that due to me not having the proper EDU activated? They also don't announce verbally when the enemy general goes down, or is that a 'feature?'

[vartan]

That's weird. Need a sound expert for that. IDK the sound file types. They are just referenced in the txt files. Like, certain things cause certain sounds. Mind you, not all units make sounds...good luck. This is all my knowledge.

[XSamatan]

Seems this is a more popular problem on mac...http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=358286

[OneoftheLost]

Err.. no. Not more common, that's me. I figured two communities. More chance of answers? :P

[XSamatan]

Yeh, you're right...;)

Are the files playing outside EB?

XSamatan

[amdonati]

This is really great news!
I am very happy to hear that it is possible to play EB on the mac, but I still did not manage to start it :-(

What I did was:
1) copied my EB folder from the windows partition in RomeData.dmg, where I have now 3 folders: BI, data and eb
2) started the game entering in the advanced options field: -mod:eb -nm

Unfortunately the game crashes after a few seconds, while showing the standard RTW by Feral background.
Am I missing something?
Should I put somewhere the config files that are in the main RTW folder in windows (eBChecklist.txt, ebconfig.dat, ebconfig.xml, ebignoreList.txt)?
Should the content of the Lighting, Modesty, presets and sp game edu backup be put somewhere?

[Tellos Athenaios]

You do not need to touch ebconfig files. EBChecklist.txt or ebChecklist.txt or whatever it is called is a list of MD5 sums which is used by the eb validation program which you can use to check for errors (if you have Java installed, that is).

The sp edu game backup / mp edu game backup folders are used by the trivial script to switch between single and multiplayer versions of EB on the fly (simply by overwriting a few files in the main EB file tree). Trivial script probably doesn't work on the Mac but fortunately a few shell scripts can probably accomplish similar behaviour:

#!/bin/sh
# config values: edit as required
Base="/path/where/EB/is/installed";
MOD="EB"; # should be relative path from $RTW to $Base/EB 
RTW="/path/to/RTW";

# sub routine for copying files
file_copy() {
  cp "$Base/$1 game edu backup/map.rwm" "$Base/EB/Data/world/maps/base/map.rwm"
  cp "$Base/$1 game edu backup/export_descr_unit.txt" "$Base/EB/Data/export_descr_unit.txt"
  cp "$Base/$1 game edu backup/Rome.lnt" "$Base/EB/Data/menu/Rome.lnt"
}

# subroutine for displaying help text:
eb_help () {
  echo "This program acts as a single/multi player modeswitcher for EB on the MAC
  
  Usage: $0 [-sp|--single-player|-mp|--multi-player|-h|--help]
  
  -sp|--single-player : run EB in single player mode
  -mp|--multi-player  : run EB in multi player mode
  -h|--help           : show this \"help\" screen
";
}

# determine which mode we are in: sp or mp
case "$1" in
-sp|--single-player)
  file_copy "sp";
;;
-mp|--multi-player)
  file_copy "mp";
;;
-h|--help)
   eb_help;
   exit 0;
;;
*)
  echo "Error: \"$1\" is not a valid mode flag!";
  eb_help;
  exit 2;
;;
esac;;

# pop first argument off the argument list
shift 1;
# run RTW with the remaining arguments
cd $Base; # or try: cd "`dirname $RTW`" if it doesn't work?
$RTW -mod:$MOD "$@";

EDIT: I don't have Mac OS X, and don't have RTW running on a Mac either. So I can't really vouch for the correctness of the script, and you probably have to do some bugfixing on it if I got it wrong.

What it does is fairly straightforward however: Assuming this script is called eb (e.g. ~/eb) and is executable you might run it from a terminal window as follows:

~/eb -sp -show_err -nm

The script consumes the first argument -sp and determines that this refers to running EB in single player mode. It copies the single player backup files to the main EB file tree, and it then proceeds to run RTW with the required -mod switch and the remainder arguments ("-show_err" and "-nm" respectively).

Now the tricky bit in the script is that there might be 3 different ways in how the game must be run. It depends on “the current working directory” or $PWD for short.
(1) One might be that RTW must be run from wherever RTW resides. The mod switch (contents of the MOD variable) would then be the relative path to the main EB file tree. The cd command before running RTW changed the current working directory to the $Base directory, but this would be wrong. It would have to be "`dirname $RTW`" or similar instead.
(2) Another might be that RTW doesn't really care from where it is run (it knows its own location so it can load the core files regardless), as long as that working directory and -mod switch together give a working mod or alternatively the RTW base directory itself. In that case cd $Base is the right thing to do.
(3) A third might be that RTW doesn't really care from where it is run; but that it requires the -mod switch to be a valid relative path from the current working directory to the mod ... in that case cd $Base makes sense because in theory the working directory could be anything prior to that cd command (so it is a matter of pick and choose).

It is however quite clear that on Windows the -mod switch is simply a relative path to a directory. (So you can, in fact, install EB outside of the RTW directory; but you need to know what you are doing in order to make it work.) So I assume that on Mac OS X it is much the same; which means that the default -mod:eb switch was never going to work anyway because EB is installed in a directory called EB. And Mac OS X, unlike Windows uses case sensitive filenames by default. (Windows doesn't, although NTFS does make this distinction...)

EDIT 2: It may be worth contacting Feral for some customer support regarding this issue (it's a simple enough question and it can't hurt to try). Possibly show them this script/thread to help clarify your question.

[amdonati]

Tellos, thank you for the detailed explanation. I could use your script to know where exactly to copy the files in the sp_EDU folder.
I would like to see EB running before moving on using the script to select the various options...

after copying the files, I left only the data folder in eb and started the game with -mod:eb

Unfortunately the game stops immediately but I could notice 2 things:
* The startup process recognized the eb folder, as it created there the preferences folder
* The game stops after the first background image but without apparently crashing, as the usual windows that appears when a mac program crashes does not pop up.

I do not know how to debug this issue; is the -show_err a standard RTW command? Where does it saves its log?

[Tellos Athenaios]

RTW on Windows doesn't save logs. -show_err is used to make the game pop up error messages if it encounters certain types of errors. It's not reliable, though; but still the best thing we have for debugging problems. The problem on your end may be that RTW chokes at the intro movies; in which case running with -nm will bypass those (among others) and may therefore fix your problem.

[amdonati]

Unfortunately even though I start the game with -nm as well, it comes back to the desktop immediately after the first game bitmap.
I receive no error message or nothing, I am just out of the game.
I am really lost now, because it should work but I cannot and do not know how to debug it :-(

[Tellos Athenaios]

There's a few things we can try: RTW might be writing to STDOUT or STDERR streams, if so, we can probably redirect those streams to output files:

The general pattern is:

# save begin statement to /path/to/file
echo "begin at: `date`" > /path/to/file
# run rtw redirect STDERR to STDOUT and append STDOUT to /path/to/file
rtw-command -show_err -mod:eb -nm 2>& 1>>/path/to/file
# append a line with exit code once RTW has crashed
echo "exit code is: $?" >> /path/to/file

Collect the contents of /path/to/file and post them; it may help to debug your problems. Further: have you contacted Feral customer support (forums?) yet? You might want to ask them about commandline switches, collecting diagnostic information etc. etc.

[amdonati]

Unfortunately it seems that Feral cannot help with switches et al, as they do not officially support mods. Here is their answer:

"Unfortunately I cannot offer any advice as we do not support mods for any of our games. The best place to find out about how to apply modifications is via forums dedicated to the game, although we can accept no responsibility if anything goes wrong with your machine or game installation after modifying the code."

I also tried the above script, but the output is a simple "exit code is: 0"

:-(

[vartan]

Unfortunately it seems that Feral cannot help with switches et al, as they do not officially support mods. Here is their answer:

"Unfortunately I cannot offer any advice as we do not support mods for any of our games. The best place to find out about how to apply modifications is via forums dedicated to the game, although we can accept no responsibility if anything goes wrong with your machine or game installation after modifying the code."

I also tried the above script, but the output is a simple "exit code is: 0"

:-(

Dastards. Those cowards are fearful of liability claims. No wonder they won't cooperate...

[Tellos Athenaios]

Unfortunately it seems that Feral cannot help with switches et al, as they do not officially support mods. Here is their answer:

"Unfortunately I cannot offer any advice as we do not support mods for any of our games. The best place to find out about how to apply modifications is via forums dedicated to the game, although we can accept no responsibility if anything goes wrong with your machine or game installation after modifying the code."

I also tried the above script, but the output is a simple "exit code is: 0"

:-(

As to your first disappointment: I'd try again. Explain that what you want to know is what commandline parameters are supported, explain that RTW on Windows supports numerous commandline switches and ask for clarification if this behaviour was preserved in the port to Mac OSX: http://rtw.heavengames.com/rtw/mods/...ne/index.shtml
You do not need explicit support for getting a mod to work, you need to know how (if) you can manipulate the way Rome runs on the Mac.

As to the second piece of information, if you are up for it we can try to troubleshoot your problems still further. It requires that you are able to work with a terminal emulator (commandline prompt), though, and if you want more concrete help examples from me I'll have to know a thing or two about how RTW and EB are installed on your machine. For starters:

1. The full path to RTW (the executable) e.g.: /path/to/Rome/RTW.exe
2. The full path to EB (the directory) e.g.: /path/to/Rome/EB/
3. What is the shell environment you use? E.g.: bash.
4. Do you have Java 1.6 installed? What is the output of "java -version" ?
5. What is your home directory (the default directory under which files associated with your user/account are stored)? E.g.: /home/myname/

[amdonati]

Thank you for all the feedback, Now it is a persona battle with the Game! :-)

I have asked Feral for the accepted switches, let's see.
Using the terminal is not an issue, being an ex linux user (although I almost forgot everything, damn GUI! :-) )

Here are the answers:

1) Full path to the executable (which start a started menu though, not the actual game): /Applications/Rome\ Total\ War/Rome\ Total\ War.app/Contents/MacOS/Rome\ Total\ War
2) /Volumes/RomeData/eb
3) I have BASH 3.2
4) Java is installed, version is: 1.6.0_20
5) /Users/amdonati/

Ready to go!

[Tellos Athenaios]

First up is a simple test: can we run mods through the -mod switch. Because EB is an unwieldy collossus of a mod, we will use the MMS (Multi Mod Sampler) as a test case: it is small, it uses the -mod switch, and it was put together by people who know what they were doing --so it is unlikely to die on you just becaus of sloppy coding. In short: problems we will encounter will be of our own making.

I've installed the MMS using Wine (note: on this Linux machine I do not have RTW installed, and in any case it would not compare to your Mac version anyway because it'd be a Windows executable: a completely different creature altogether). You can download the MMS installer from here https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...(MMS)-launched. Alternatively I can provide you with a tarball of the contents. If you choose to use the installer, do that similarly to this:

installdir="$HOME/mms"; # choose non-existing directory to install MMS
mkdir -p installdir; # make the directory for MMS
cd "/path/to/folder/with/downloaded/installer";
chmod u+x mms_v1-1.exe; # make MMS installer executable so you can run it
wine mms_v1-1.exe; # install MMS to $installdir: be sure to select this in the installer

You may need to check with winecfg how the file paths work out for the installer for it maintains a Windows-like logic to your Mac filesystem layout...

Next I've got a script which you can use to generate & install a script for running MMS on your Mac.
It takes care of the tedium of working out the correct value for your mod switch parameter and writing the wrapper script to $HOME/bin/$script so when you next log on you can run the mod as
$script. All you need to do is edit script, rtwPath, and modPath parameter. The first is the name of the script you want to generate (I suggest you use: "rtw-mms"). The second should be the exact place of the executable (use find, finder, ls, whatever to find it). The third is the path to your MMS directory as created by the installer; in that directory there should be a data directory as well as readme files etc.: contents of the mod.

#!/bin/sh

script="rtw-mms"; # name of script to generate and install
rtwPath="/opt/bin/test.exe"; # path of RTW executable
modPath="$HOME/mms/mms"; # where you installed/extracted mms

# installs a script in ~/bin, creating the directory if it doesn't exist yet.
install_script () {
  if [ -f "$HOME/bin/$1" ] ;
  then
    # error: we don't want to overwrite already existing files
    echo "Script already present: ~/bin/$1";
    echo "Edit: '$0' to use a different script value.";
    exit 1;
  elif [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ;
  then
    # generate script and make it executable
    run_script > "$HOME/bin/$1";
    chmod u+x "$HOME/bin/$1";
    echo "Installed a script to run the mod at: '$HOME/bin/$1'";
    echo "Typically this means you can simply run '$1' to run the mod.";
    echo "If not: edit your '$HOME/.profile' or '$HOME/.bashrc' file to include: ";
    echo '$PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"';
    exit 0;
  else
    # recursive case: create directory, then try again
    echo "Creating directory: '$HOME/bin'";
    mkdir "$HOME/bin";
    # no point continuing if unable to create the directory
    if  [ $? == 0 ];
    then
      echo "You will need to logout and log back in before you can run the mod with: '$1'.";
      install_link "$1";
    fi;
    exit $?;
  fi;
}

# finds relative path from <rtw> to <mod>
rel_path() {
  cpath="`pwd`";
  rpath=".";
  cd "$1"; 
  while [ "`pwd`" != "/" ]; 
  do 
    rpath="$rpath/.."; 
    cd ..; 
  done; 
  cd "$cpath";
  echo "$rpath$2";
}

# echos a script suitable for running the mod
run_script () {
  # get directory in which rtw resides
  prog="`dirname $rtwPath`";
  # get relative path from rtw directory to mod
  modRPath="`rel_path $prog $modPath`";
  # declare interpreter
  echo '#!/bin/sh';
  # this mimicks windows .lnk behaviour: cd line is akin to Start In
  echo "cd \"$prog\";";
  # template line to execute the rtw command with mod switch
  echo "\"$rtwPath\" \"-mod:$modRPath\" -show_err -nm;";
  # return exit code in generated script
  echo 'exit $?;';
}

install_script "$script";
exit $?;

You can install the above script invoke it like "sh installer_script" (if you called it installer_script) and then examine its output. This should be in "$HOME/bin/$script" where "$script" is the name of the script you choose earlier (for instance: rtw-mms). If that looks ok, you can attempt to run it using its full path name "$HOME/bin/$script", so continuing the example: "$HOME/bin/rtw-mms".

[amdonati]

It is working!

I installed the mod under windows in boot camp, where I still have my RTW game and then copied the mms folder in the RTW for mac folder.
I then started the RTW starting shell and entered, in the advanced options: -mod:mms -show_err -nm

The mod started correctly and I could start the Romans vs Carthaginians battle.

So mods can run without much issues, now what is happening to EB?
Unfortunately I cannot find any error log, so I do not know How to debug

Amdonati

[Tellos Athenaios]

A few questions:
(a) You installed MMS where exactly?
(b) You previously used what -mod parameter to run EB? A correct value *should* be the relative path to "/Volumes/RomeData/eb" from the RTW for mac folder.

[amdonati]

MMS was copied in /Volumes/RomeData/ where also the standard data folder is.

I tried to start RTW with : mod:-mod:/Volumes/RomeData/eb

Curiously RTW started but in the normal way, the mod was not loaded

[Tellos Athenaios]

Now I'm confused. Going back over the previous posts the following things are worth double-checking:
http://dougbarned.co.uk/blog/tutoria...ng-dmgs-to-rw/ (via this link: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=358286 )
And:

Still no luck.
Eb crashes even before arriving to the introductory FMV!
I have done the following:
1) Overwritten the data folder with the content of:
* EB/data folder
*EB/Lighting/Recommended
*EB/Modesty/Default
*EB/mp game edu backup
2) Copied EB/preferencies in the prefernices folder under library

I could not copy the content of the presets folder as I cannot recognize where the it should go.

I have also noticed that the 2 Eb intro videos (EB logo and Placeholder_intro) are in a wmv format that I cannot see in my mac.
Could this be the reason?
Would it be possible to have the 2 files in mov?
And where should I put the presets files?

Did you revert these modifications? If not I would suggest you wipe RTW for the Mac from your harddisk and start from scratch:
-Install RTW.
-Make the .dmg file read writable
-Copy the EB folder (the folder into the <RTW folder> so that you have a vanilla <RTW>\data and next to it a <RTW>\EB)
-Run with -mod:EB
??

[Tellos Athenaios]

Also I don't know whether it'll help (but it can't hurt to try) did you enable the RomeShell?
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=923756

[amdonati]

Nothing.
I tried to delete the whole RTW directory and preferences and reinstalled it.
Then I made the romedata folder RW and copied the MMS and EB folders in it directly from the windows partition where they work correctly.

MMS starts correctly, EB not.
If I start EB with -mod:EB it exists immediately, if i start it with the full path of the EB folder, the standard game is started and not the mod.

Rome shell is active

[amdonati]

It works!
I did manage to start EB on my RTW for MAC!
This is what I did:
1) Copied the EB folder with a fresh install of EB 1.2 from the windows partition to RomaData
2) Tried to start the game with the usual -nm -mod:eb and the "active RomeShell" flag flagged. No success, the game exits immediately as usual
3) Changed some parameters in the startup window (Set language to English instead of Automatic and flagged the "unlock all factions" flag)
4) The start windows closed and restarted with the new parameters saved
5) Tried to start EB and this time it started correctly!
From now on, even if i start the game with the usual parameters ( -nm -mod:eb and the "active RomeShell" flag flagged only, the rest back to default) EB starts correctly.

I am not sure why, as my first try with the newly copied folder did not work.
I can only imagine that when I changed the parameters and the start windows closed, it saved the new configuration to a file in the EB folder and this allows now the game to start.
So I tried to delete the preferences folder in EB and when started, the game crashed immediately.
I had to redo the process above (change the start window settings, leave it restart etc) in order for EB to start again, simply copying back the preferences folder or copying the default preferences from RTW did not work for me.

What do does not work yet:
a) Savegames from the windows version cannot be loaded in the MAC game
b) EB historical battles are, for some reasons, not seen in the Mac version. I can live with this but it is quite annoying as there are some nice battles.

But anyway, now I can play EB on the mac and can trash my old Bootcamp partition!
Thank you to everyone for the help and I hope this thread can help others trying to start the mods on the RTW for mac

Amdonati

[vartan]

I wonder if an EB player on the Mac OS X version of RTW can play with an EB player on a Windows system online.

[amdonati]

Interesting question, but I cannot help out here, I never played online even on the Win version...