Toolset for Mac in the future?

ngc7293

This has to have been asked a few times in the past. Bioware never made the Aurora toolset for Mac and even though I have a nice HP sitting in the corner which is the gaming Machine, I sit in front of this iMac all the time with NWN on it. When I get stumped with a Mod it would be nice to be able to look up the thing in this computer instead of going over to the other machine. I think I may have read about this from someone else and it was "Not in the works", but is it ANYWHERE in the works as in any time in the future? I saw an update to the Toolset somewhere.

Thanks.

JuliusBorisov

It's not in the works. NWN celebrated its 19th birthday last month, such a big investment as developing a new app is not possible at this stage.

meaglyn

Just use Wine, that works on Macs, I think.

ngc7293

I know it's not in the works, but as far as I have seen, some investments are going into this archaic game. I was just curious as to the amount of effort it would take. As to using an emulator, I would rather not.

Glorwinger

I run on Mac and use Wine... From their site -

"Wine (originally an acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator") is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications on several POSIX-compliant operating systems, such as Linux, macOS, & BSD"

It is not an emulator it allows the native execution of compatible Windows apps on MacOS.

meaglyn

And Linux, which is where I use it.

jimdad55

The problem with using WINE now is that NWN won't work once you update to Catalina and beyond - unless someone has found a way which would be superb . . . I'm still on Mojave for that reason.

virusman

@ngc7293 Rewriting the Toolset from scratch would be an enormous amount of work, so it’s safe to say that it’s not going to happen. Besides that, it already works just fine with Wine/CrossOver.

@jimdad55 I’m personally using CrossOver to support Wine developers and for ease of use, but as far as I know, recent open source versions of wine32on64 also exist and work just as well on Catalina and Big Sur. I run Toolset in CrossOver on an M1-based Mac with Big Sur without any issues.

jimdad55

Wow! Didn’t know that. Thanks @virusman .

I knew about Crossover but not wine32on64. I’m about to pull the trigger on a new M1 iMac so this is great news . May update my old iMac to at least Catalina on the basis of this.

Is wine32on64 a simple install? I remember when I originally installed Wine I followed a list of instructions on YT.

jimdad55

As a follow up to my last post, I don’t suppose you’ve got the NWN2 toolset working using Crossover ?

virusman

@jimdad55 Install via homebrew: https://github.com/Gcenx/homebrew-wine
No, I don’t have NWN2.

jimdad55

Thanks but GitHub scares me, Virusman !

I'm not really bothered about NWN2 toolset. I've heard it's a bit awkward to use. I'm close to buying a new iMac ( current one is late 2013 !) so it's good to hear that things work well. I'll probably take the free month with Crossover to try things out and then if all is well with NWN ( does the game itself use Rosetta2 or do you use Crossover and the PC version?) and the toolset I'll get a subscription. Small question. Is the F9 button in the toolset to test the module working ? Mine stopped several patches ago but it was useful.

jimdad55

@virusman, I've got my new iMac and it seems I need to install Rosetta2 which I've done. The game now runs perfectly. However, I've started a trial with Crossover and am struggling to get the toolset working. I tried bottling it ( is that the expression?) and during the process the toolset opened properly and I was able to build with it and test it in game. However, after it said it had installed it there was no bottle to be found. I've contacted Crossover support and they've asked me for more info which i'm struggling to give them about how the toolset relates to the game and whether the game would need to be "bottled" along with the toolset for it to work.

Is there any light you could shed on this? Thanks.

virusman

jimdad55 wrote: »

@virusman, I've got my new iMac and it seems I need to install Rosetta2 which I've done. The game now runs perfectly. However, I've started a trial with Crossover and am struggling to get the toolset working. I tried bottling it ( is that the expression?) and during the process the toolset opened properly and I was able to build with it and test it in game. However, after it said it had installed it there was no bottle to be found. I've contacted Crossover support and they've asked me for more info which i'm struggling to give them about how the toolset relates to the game and whether the game would need to be "bottled" along with the toolset for it to work.

Is there any light you could shed on this? Thanks.

You don't have to install anything. Just create a bottle, click "Run command..." and point it to nwtoolset.exe from your game's installation directory on Mac.

jimdad55

Thanks for the comment. Crossover support got back to me with the same suggestion and a neat little video showing me step by step. FWIW< they got me to create a bottle for steam then open it and install the game ( I'm guessing to get the Windows version of the game) then, as you say I needed to Run command, browse to the toolset .exe and the toolset icon appeared. all working well now. Thanks for the advice. Have to say I'm impressed by Crossover support. The guy got back to me very quickly and created a couple of videos to help me along. Now I've set him off to try to work out how I install NIT ! Managed to get 7z working but NIT defeated me.

jimdad55

@virusman, sorry to bother you again but I’m having issues running the toolset with Crossover. Do you run the toolset through a Steam bottle? Crossover support suggested this approach so I have to open the Steam bottle first then Toolset.

Also, do you have graphical issues using this or using toolset in general? I’ve got a map which I’m using inside a hak and just altering appearance of an existing placeables. Worked fine up to now but now it won’t even appear in the appearance pull down. I think this has at least partially been caused by the Crossover setup as on further investigation none of my haks are being picked up so it would seem the pathway is wrong yet it seems fine in the .ini.

Finally the new development patch has some Mac specific improvements including a binary to allow the game to run natively on M1 Macs but which isn’t possible through Steam. Thread on the Vault. You might want to have a look.

jimdad55

Follow up to above. Managed to get my map into the toolset but it appears as a white rectangle. I'm guessing this is the graphical glitch folk were talking about?

virusman

jimdad55 wrote: »

@virusman, sorry to bother you again but I’m having issues running the toolset with Crossover. Do you run the toolset through a Steam bottle? Crossover support suggested this approach so I have to open the Steam bottle first then Toolset.

Also, do you have graphical issues using this or using toolset in general? I’ve got a map which I’m using inside a hak and just altering appearance of an existing placeables. Worked fine up to now but now it won’t even appear in the appearance pull down. I think this has at least partially been caused by the Crossover setup as on further investigation none of my haks are being picked up so it would seem the pathway is wrong yet it seems fine in the .ini.

The game comes with binaries for all platforms, so you don't need to install it in Wine at all. I just installed it on the Mac, and run nwtoolset.exe in an empty bottle in Crossover.

jimdad55

Thanks, @virusman. your help is appreciated.

Since I last posted I've resorted to opening the main game natively ( or under Rosetta - never sure which now). Crossover support originally had me create a steam bottle and put everything inside that, I think, but that didn't work particularly well so I now use the toolset just be double clicking on its icon without opening Steam and it opens Crossover directly and seems to work better.

The only problem I still have is a custom made map which when imported into the toolset and I change the appearance of a placeable to that of the map is a bit flaky, sometimes appearing, sometimes not. I'm thinking this is just one of the vagaries of WINE. Do you have such issues or is all working fine?

I'm going to buy a subscription to Crossover today so will remove the other bottles and work it directly as you do. Thanks again.

Calgacus

I just tried it in Crossover ver 21.2.0.33926 and it still seems to be working.