Installing WA on macOS

(Up to Guides, FAQs, and ReadMes)

This page details how to install Worms Armageddon on Mac OS X via wine. Please note that, unlike in previous versions of Worms Armageddon, 3.6.30.0 and above require no special patches to wine in order to run satisfactorily. However, there is still a number of things you may need to do, depending on your configuration - and there are still some known bugs. This page should provide a good guide to get you started. Do not be put off by its length - much of it probably won't apply to you.

Getting started

Version requirement

Note: I had bad luck with the 1.3.x builds of wine, so I cannot guarantee this information is correct. (Koen)

First of all, you need to have a recent version of wine, as there have been some relatively major wine-side fixes recently. If your wine version starts with 1.3 and is 1.3.3 or later, or it starts with 1.2 and is 1.2.1 or later, you already have a recent enough version of wine to run Worms Armageddon to a satisfactory standard. If you are not sure about which version you have, open a terminal and enter the following command:

wine --version

This should report your version of wine. If you get a "command not found" response then you probably don't have wine installed.

Installing Wine

MacPorts Method

You will need:

• Xcode - these are the development tools for OS X. Xcode is available for free from the Mac App Store.
• MacPorts - this will download and compile all the packages for us.
• XQuartz - an open source X Window System for OS X. Your Mac might have Apple's native X11.app installed, which can be used but is not recommended.

To install Wine:

We will start by updating MacPorts. Type the following command into a terminal window:

sudo port -v selfupdate

This will update the list of ports that are available. Do a search for wine to see which packages are available:

sudo port search wine

Out of the available packages, you should see two versions of Wine:

wine @1.4.1 (x11) - This is the latest official release
wine-devel @1.5.14 (x11) - The development version

Start the installation of the Wine version of your choice by running the following command:

sudo port install wine-devel

MacPorts will then start downloading, unpacking and compiling all of the dependencies that Wine requires. Be warned, though, as this process may take several hours before completing.

Configure wine (Optional)

By default WA will, at it's first launch, ask you if you would like to enable a set of tweaks which should help with wine compatibility. If you choose not to do this, remember to run winecfg from a terminal and manually set wine to emulate a desktop.

Installing WA

Using a CD

Your CD will be automatically mounted into /Volumes/WA/. You can start the installation with the following command:

wine /Volumes/WA/Install/Install.exe

Using a disk image

You can create a disk image with the Disk Utility application. Open Disk Utility, and select the WA partition attached to your Superdrive. From the menu, create a new disk image. You can double click this image to mount it, or use Disk Utility to do so as well. If you eject your CD and mount the image it will use the same mountpoint (/Volumes/WA/).

Install the latest beta patch

Download the latest update. Use the following command to install it:

wine ~/Downloads/WA_update-3.7.2.1_Installer.exe

Starting WA

Make sure your disc is mounted, and run:

wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Team17/Worms\ Armageddon/wa.exe

Hopefully everything works. If you encounter problems, play around with the Tweaks in your WA installation folder. Also take a look at the compatibility overview below.

What's next?

If you want to playback replays or do other fancy stuff, you will need to make a launch script. You can also choose to automate certain steps of the launching process. Take a look at mine for inspiration. Paste this into the AppleScript editor and compile it as an application. It will automatically mount and unmount your image, start WA when you open it, and play back replays if you choose to "open with" or "drop onto".

Compatibility/experiences

Please add your configuration here, to give others an insight into what works and what does not.

Koen:

Configuration: mid 2011 iMac; 27", 3.1GHz i5, HD6970M - wine-1.5.14 (MacPorts), XQuartz 2.7.4, WA 3.7.0.0

Tweaks: Renderer_DirectDraw_32bit.reg, FrontendUseDesktopWindow_Enable.reg, SkipIntro_On.reg

Notes: I had to change my DirectDraw renderer, after doing this everything works flawlessly.