EQ2 on Linux and Mac guide

FYI Sturmlocke, this guide worked a treat for CrossOver on MacOS.

* Macbook Pro 16" 2019
* macOS Sonoma 14.2.1

Hail mate, thanks for the feedback! Good to know that it works for Mac too. Both Mac and Linux seem to be doing really good on the gaming front. Excellent. Btw, if anyone ever experiences issues with .NET 4.0, you can also always switch a newer version, such as 4.8. Installation is the same for all versions in Crossover, so it should be fairly straight forward.

For my next trick, I want to try and get the DarqUI widget running. Ive run it in the CrossOver Bucket but havent gotten very far with it yet.

Can confirm that the DarqUI Unified utility also works under CrossOver on Mac.

After initially running into problems making it run in my CrossOver bottle, I realised that the Bottle was setup as WinXP 64bit. Pretty sure any recent compiled .NET app is going to not be happy about that.

I created a new Bottle for EQ2 using the Win10 template. Even though CrossOver says it might not work, it does in fact work. I then installed the latest .NET Framework (4.8 from memory) into the bottle using the supported installer available in CrossOver. DarqUI Unified worked without any problems after that.

Just fyi, an interesting little snippet from Digital Foundry. Steam Deck / Linux runs Tomb Raider Remaster better than the Windows PC version yet again (like Elden Ring and many others) - despite being run through Proton and its "overhead":

@16:48 minutes

Btw @powers that be: That's a BEAUTIFUL remaster too! That's how you remaster old games! You keep the nostalgic magic intact, but enhance it to meet more modern standards (polys, chars, shadows, water, textures, flora - you name it). We've discussed this around here a couple of times already, but I thought it might be good to mention it again seeing how well done the TR remaster turned out to be and how happy ppl knowing and loving the old classic games are about this new version. Same thing with Ocarina of Time on 3DS (vs N64). See veteran reactions here.

That was amazing, @Sturmlocke, thank you for sharing. I may have to go try the old Lara Croft games again

I'm having fun checking out what the 2020 M1 Mac Mini can run and was able to run EverQuest II with "Whisky"

https://getwhisky.app/

So from what I gather this is like a free but less featured/less polished equivalent to CrossOver. Whisky also takes advantage of the Game Porting Toolkit that Apple released last year (?).

Whisky says it is best suited for modern games using DX10/11/12.

However it seems to support some DX9 games.

• Create a Windows 10 " Bottle"
• Do NOT enable DXVK
• Enhanced Sync >> MSync (no idea what difference it makes tbh)
• Use the "Winetricks" button and add DLLs > d3dx9_43
• Now you could likely copy over your entire EQ2 folder to save time. I installed Steam and downloaded the game through Steam ( Run the WINDOWS steam installer through Whisky etc )
• At this point you can Pin or Run LaunchPad.exe it should work.
• (enabling Borderless Full Screen works very well and no window resizing shenanigans when Cmd-tabbing to wiki and whatnot)
• Please note this Mac has 16 GB memory.

Issues with Keyboard
- to summarize it seems like I can't bind Alt + <something> shortcuts at all

I'm not sure why on my initial attempts I had a "Requires directx9.0c" error dialog. Then later I had a dialog that directx can not create aD3D device for Apple M1 or something. Seems I tried too hard, setting Windows 7, and DXVK. I created a fresh bottle as above, did NOT enable DXVK.

So yeah I'm pretty stoked. I am looking at buying a MacBook Pro and I didn't quite understand what these M chips can do. Diablo II Resurrected on just 8/8 cores ran at 35 FPS low detail - but native 1440p. Using Internal Resolution of 70% I got the game to a pretty playable 50-ish FPS.

EQ2 seems to run very smooth, some stutter when you turn around no different from what I remember on Windows. Because the game uses old shaders, it seems even the 8/8 core M1 can handle it very well.

Now as for DirectX 11 I'm not quite up to par with those updates I've been away for a while - but at first glance it sounds like it will work just as well if not better once the game uses DX11 Whisky should support it right away.

@Sturmlocke through your experience running the game via Wine or Linux are you aware of issues related to the keyboard input? Wondering if there is a " Winetricks" perhaps. I can't do any shortcuts based on the Alt key for some reason (running on M1 Mac Mini via Whisky which is a GUI for Wine similar to CrossOver)

I had problems under linux/wine too with this. Some things i could bind to the Alt Key, others not... (strange)

My Solution was/is:
I saved a custom Keybindings File and edited manuell with an Texteditor

/save_keymaps mychar-keymaps
Loading:
/load_keymaps mychar-keymaps
These files are saved in the Keyboards directory under the Everquest II directory

I know this is not comfortable, but it worked for me.

gz

Well done testing you guys! So to answer your questions, no, I did not know about getwhisky, at least I don't recall ever using it personally (not sure if I tested it in the past tbh). Seems like that project just started in 2023. Interesting, because Apple has been doing a bunch of things in the background in order to further optimize their stuff for all things gaming, and now all things Wine is improving for ya'll too. I actually remember watching one of their keynotes touching on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/live/GYkq9Rgoj8E?si=iTRO8fVXnlFSyLzF&t=2852

Hm, I don't remember encountering the issues that you guys describe when using Proton and Steam on Linux, but I will test tonight to see if I can confirm any of the above. So the issue is just with mapping a key with alt, right?

Btw @a_shrubbery: I'm actually pretty stoked too that it's performing that well on getwhisky despite the lack of dxvk performance enhancements. Turning off dxvk will also help for hardware that lacks the support for newer Vulkan extensions etc. For example, Proton 8 and higher now recommend using Vulkan 1.3 and higher for it to work the best, but you always have the OpenGL fallback option plus older Proton versions. Anyway, way to go for testing in such detail! How well does that same machine perform with Crossover and DXVK? Have you guys tested with the new DirectX11 EQ2 client that we have on test right now? Would love to know how well both Crossover and Whisky performs on that and if it still complains about DX9 missing etc. On Proton and Linux it all just works out of the box. Download game, start, patch, login and it works with DXVK at incredible framerates. Speaking of Mac and Linux, I wonder if we will ever see these systems get the "officially supported on" status at some point in the future. There are a number of ways one could do this, but even when using freely accessible and usable things such as vanilla Wine and its numerous forks, surely you can make a build of the game that will download and install automatically on both Mac and Linux so that ppl interested in these two systems have it even easier making the jump without having to rely on "third party tools" and the likes.

Thanks. From what I remember I had no issues with keyboard bindings running EQ2 via Steam (Proton).

With Whisky on macOS, now I find - assuming the keymaps file refers to "Alt X" for eg. Options window - that I have to press Cmd + Alt + x. So Alt+x alone doesn't work. Yet in-game if I try to configure by pressing Cmd+Alt+x it shows Alt-h !

So I can fix some of these via the file as you mentioned, but I can't access Alt directly for whatever reason. Maybe I am missing some "winetricks" like direct input or some other Windows DLL.

As I have to resell this M1 Mini unfortunately I won't have the time to experiment with the DirectX 11 version. Maybe later if I buy a Macbook Air/Pro.