Installing WA on macOS

(Up to Guides, FAQs, and ReadMes)

This page details how to install Worms Armageddon on macOS via wine. Please note that the latest updates of the game require no special patches to wine in order to run satisfactorily. This page should provide a good guide to get you started.

Important: This guide is no longer compatible with macOS Catalina (released in 2019) or later, as it completely removes support for 32-bit apps. You may have to either downgrade your macOS, or resort to proprietary software such as CrossOver or Hypervisors such as VirtualBox or Parallels Desktop. (see alternative methods at the bottom of the page.)

Getting started

Installing Wine

MacPorts Method

You will need:

• Xcode - these are the development tools for macOS. 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 macOS. 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 (x11) - This is the latest official release
wine-devel (x11) - The development version

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

sudo port install wine

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

Installing WA

Install the game

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/).

Using the Steam edition

Download and install the Steam edition as follows:

curl -O https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/client/installer/SteamSetup.exe
wine SteamSetup.exe

If after the installation of Steam the UI buttons are empty, open winecfg and in the "Libraries" tab add an override for "dwrite". Then click edit and set it to Disable. If your wine process continues to run in your terminal window, press Ctrl+C to force cancel it and run Steam:

wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Steam/Steam.exe

Install WA via Steam as you would normally.

Using the GOG edition

In your web browser, log in with a GOG account that has purchased the game, then download the full latest installer via this link. After it is downloaded, use the following command to install it (example for version 3.8.1, change to yours if different):

wine ~/Downloads/setup_worms_armageddon_gog-3.8.1_\(43454\).exe

Install the latest update

(Skip this step if using Steam or GOG.)

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

wine ~/Downloads/WA_update-3.8.1_\[CD\]_Installer.exe

Starting WA

CD Edition

Make sure your disc is mounted, and run:

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

Steam Edition

wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Steam/Steam.exe

GOG Edition

wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Games/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?

Automating startup and replay playback

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 launch process, such as automatically mounting and unmounting your CD image, starting WA when you open it, and playing back replays if you choose to "open with" or "drop onto".

Fullscreen mode

If you prefer to run in fullscreen mode, try disabling windowed mode in Advanced options of the game. Note that fullscreen support will vary based on your drivers and the wine version used.

Alternative methods

CrossOver

CrossOver is a software package that will allow you to install and run W:A even on the latest versions of macOS (such as Catalina and later) through a special 32-bit compatibility layer.

Please note that a CrossOver license will cost you at least $29.95 as of 2021.

Virtual Machine

Parallels

Performance is good, be sure to enable 3D acceleration.

Please note that a Parallels license will cost you at least $79.99 as of 2021. (not including the cost of the Windows OS)

VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a free virtualization solution that will allow you to run any version of Windows with Worms Armageddon installed in it. See this page for more details.

Compatibility/experiences

Below is an archive of people's reports for versions of W:A before 3.8. This list is no longer actively updated and should not be used as reference when installing and configuring your game.

Reporter	Configuration	Tweaks	Notes
Koen	mid 2011 iMac; 27", 3.1GHz i5, HD6970M - wine-1.5.14 (MacPorts), XQuartz 2.7.4, WA 3.7.0.0	Renderer_DirectDraw_32bit.reg, FrontendUseDesktopWindow_Enable.reg, SkipIntro_On.reg	I had to change my DirectDraw renderer, after doing this everything works flawlessly. Update: works fine with wine-1.5.27, Steam version also confirmed to work. Using Parallels Desktop 8: Windows 7 x64 guest, take a look at the relevant settings I use within my gaming VM. Running from a BootCamp partition on a SSD.
Zemke	iMac 27-inch, late 2012, macOS 10.8.3, 2.9 GHz i5, 660M 512 MB graphics, wine-1.5.27 (MacPorts), XQuartz 2.7.43, WA 3.7.2.1	Default tweaks when first running WA under Wine.	Just followed this wiki's instructions and now it's working like a charm.
Prankster	MacBook Pro Retina 13", late 2013, 2.8GHz i7, Intel Iris 1.5GB, OSX 10.11 / wine-1.6.2, MacPorts 2.3.4, XQuartz 2.7.7, WA 3.7.2.1	Default tweaks when first running WA under Wine.	W:A starts, sounds are OK, I can see the cursor, but the rest of the screen is blank.
MrBean	(how to fix the blank [white] screen problem on macOS 10.10/10.11) On newer versions of macOS (10.10, 10.11) you may get white screen. So you start Worms using wine, you hear the sound of the intro and "main menu", you may even see the mouse cursor, but all the buttons and the background are just blank white. This is because for some reason wine cannot render WA properly using the default macOS driver (I also tried switching to direct3d renderer and enabled direct3d for the menu using wkdrdwnd.dll and i could see the picture of the menu but it didn't react to the mouse. weird). To fix the problem, you should switch to the x11 driver. You may install it using mac ports, but i just downloaded XQuartz from [1]. After installing XQuartz, you need to instruct wine to use X11 and not Mac driver. So I edited the registry. Start wine registry editor using terminal command regedit then go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Drivers create a new string parameter named "Graphics" (if is not there) and set its value to "x11" Do not forget to reboot your mac - a simple log out/log in didn't work for me. After the reboot you can go into your worms directory and launch worms by typing "wine wa.exe". The first start of XQuartz may take some time, it were a few minutes for me. Then the worms menu should be displayed in an x11 window and the game hopefully will work. Note that you may need to play with the "Tweaks" to get it working. I had to disable wkD3DWnd module (in the wkD3DWnd.ini set EnableModule to 0). I also removed all the other wk*.dll files except the ones I needed (like wkRubberWorm.dll), and enabled WormKit, by typing in regedit Tweaks/LoadWormKitModules_Enabled.reg when in the Worms directory. To be able to type text in russian language, you need to go to XQuartz preferences (Cmd+,) and select there "Follow system keyboard layout". Also, when starting worms with wine, use this command in terminal (otherwise instead of russian/cyrillic characters you will see ?????): LC_MESSAGES=ru_RU.UTF-8 /opt/local/bin/wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Worms/WA.exe (/opt/local/bin/wine and ~/.wine/drive_c/Worms/WA.exe are the paths to your wine and worms. Wine path will most likely be the same if you used macports to install wine, and worms path can be different - you may wanna rename your "Worms Armageddon" directory to "Worms" and move it to ~/.wine/drive_c/). Instead of "LC_MESSAGES=ru_RU.UTF-8" you can use the "LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8", which will force your worms to speak russian, and your flag will be russian (overriding the system locale set in regedit) Now instead of typing these in Terminal everytime you want to play worms, you can create an AppleScript and put it in Dock so its easier to start worms. Open Script Editor, and enter the following (change the paths if necessary): tell application "Terminal" do shell script "if [ -z \"$(pgrep -f WA.exe)\" ]; then LC_MESSAGES=ru_RU.UTF-8 /opt/local/bin/wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Worms/WA.exe > /dev/null 2>&1 & else osascript -e 'tell application \"XQuartz\" to activate'; fi" end tell What this script essentially does it making sure only one instance of WA.exe is running (otherwise the game freezes when the second instance is launched). If it detects wine WA.exe already running, the script just makes XQuartz window foreground. The "> /dev/null 2>&1 &" part cancels all text output of the wine process, and launches the process in the background. Click File->Export->Application, save it to /Applications/ and drag it to your Dock from the Launchpad. Now you can click the dock icon when you want to play Worms. You can put a WA icon (but you need to convert WA.ico to WA.icns first) into the bundle if you like so you'll have a nice Worms icon instead of the default "script" one.