You'll recall that on Wednesday I announced the arrival of my new Macbook Pro and my subsequent desire to load it up with Fallout 3. I mused over the possibility of a dual boot setup, but then my friend suggested I install Wine. So I headed over and followed these instructions (which seemed simple enough, if not lengthy) and I felt positive that I was on my way to a legitimate path of playing a Steam purchased copy of Fallout 3.
Spoiler alert: this story doesn't have a happy ending.
Close to the end of the day on Christmas I set about to downloading my game. I hopped onto Steam and moved forward with the purchase, deciding I'd download it just to be "on the ball" and then I'd install Wine later. It turns out you can't do that! Steam for OSX doesn't like it when you try to download a PC title. With a shrug and a sigh it became apparent that I'd better start with Wine right away.
The first of many status updates announcing my gung-ho intentions.
Commence an hour or four of installing XCode, X11, a Java Development Package, MacPorts, a quick tutorial on using the Terminal, and then Wine, and I was starting to feel pretty optimistic. With the exception of a few minor user error issues everything was going quite smoothly. Wine functioned as it should have and I was able to nab the Windows version of Steam and get my copy of Fallout 3 into an "imaginary" Program Files folder. Well, not imaginary, but whatever on Earth it is that Wine does to interpolate Windows files as readable for a Mac.
I was feeling really good, you know? Savvy and smart. I was entering command lines into the Terminal and making windows open and what-not. On top of the computer world, I was!
On top of the world, but still just a touch confused.
Things began to fall apart when I went to actually install the game. A lot of dialogue boxes popped up and everything went well at first. When it became time to install the .NET component, though, I thought my computer might blow up in angry protest. It threw multiple (and repeated) violent errors warning missing components and crashing files and error reports before finally exiting out in a huff of smoke and leaving me staring surprised at the innocuous open Steam window.
After a few looks around online for solutions I found the missing DLL components that it so desperately needed (according to the Terminal log, anyway), but I was met with disappointing results. At this point I had sort of coded myself into a corner and I really no longer knew what was installed and what I was missing. So...
First off, please forgive that typo. I was extremely tired and apparently sort of incoherent. I had stayed up until around 1:30 trying in vain to produce satisfactory results, but when it became apparent that I'd have to start over I decided to turn in for the night. I then proceeded to lay awake until around 3:00, just, thinking about the errors and of possible solutions. I woke up at 7:00 sharp and found that I was absolutely wired for some reason, and that reason was desperation to get back on my laptop and make the frigging game work.
So on hardly four hours of sleep I set back to work. I found a second tutorial with a different set of instructions, and I worked with a clean slate and crossed fingers that the planets would align and the computer gods would have mercy on my Fallout deprived soul.
Sadly, today was not my day. After conceding defeat I fell back into bed and slept for three hours.
Anyone have a copy of Windows 7 they're not going to use?
-MJ
Posted in: .net,christmas,command line,computers,dll,facebook,fallout 3,installing games,mac,macbook,osx,pc games,steam,terminal,windows,wine
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