Current State of CC3+ on macOS
CNYGamer
Newcomer
Hey all.
In the past I've used CC3 and CC3+ on Intel-based Macs with Wine CrossOver and with Parallels with varying degrees of success. Where I ultimately landed was just to run CC3+ on my Windows box.
Now I have a shiny new M2 Pro MacBook Pro and I really want to get away from running CC3+ on a Windows machine if I can help it. Literally everything else I use for managing and running my games is on my MBP, and having to swap over to a different machine to run CC3+ is a mild annoyance.
I'm interested in hearing about any first-hand experiences, particularly from people running CC3+ on an Apple silicon Mac. Is Wine CrossOver my best bet? Parallels? Continuing to run CC3+ on my Windows box?
Thanks in advance for any info and advice.
Edit: Replaced 'Wine' with 'CrossOver' for better specificity.
Comments
I have an M1, and I run CC3+ with Wineskin without issue. I'm not exactly a power user, but it fits my needs. I also occasionally run it in Wine on an Ubuntu machine and use RDP to display it on the MacBook. Long story as to why I do that, but technically it does work well.
It's Wineskin 90% of the time when I'm on the M1.
Thank you for the feedback, ThatKert.
What I ended up doing was downloading the 14-day trial version of the most-current version of CrossOver. I installed all of my Profantasy software in a bottle and it seems to be working very well. I'll beat on it a bit for the next week or so to be sure, but if all goes well I'll probably purchase CrossOver. I have a years-old license, but the company offered me a generous discount to buy the new version.
I had forgotten what a long, involved process it is to re-install all this stuff. With all the add-ons and the annuals, it was around 40 installations. What I wouldn't give for a web installer that just installs everything you have a license for. 😉
Sounds like you have a plan, but thought I'd add that I have no problems running CC3+ (also with a lot of annuals and add-ons) on an M1 MacBook Pro using Parallels and Windoze 11 (arm version). I have found it interesting that I have a LOT less problems with this setup for 10 years than I had with Windoze on PCs for the previous 25 years. I need Windoze to run some rather esoteric ham radio programming software using serial ports and with that and CC3+ and FT3 it's worked like a champ.
Running on CrossOver has been going very smoothly. I did download a trial version of Parallels but I hit quite a few hurdles getting it set up and attempting to install CC3+ on it, whereas CrossOver was quick and easy. It was also less expensive both for the price of the actual software and for the fact that I don't need a Windows license.
The other interesting thing, and it sounds like it might parallel (no pun intended) your experience, is that installing add-ons and annuals to CC3+ using CrossOver is MUCH smoother and faster than installing them on my Windows box, which is a pretty beefy gaming machine.
So all in all, I'm quite happy with how things turned out. And it's a nice quality-of-life improvement not to have to fire up my Windows box when I want to work on maps.
Hi @CNYGamer , I have - all in all - the same working like you.
But one question, do you have the problem with fonts in the maps, too? The scaling and placing of text is not really working. It is getting better, when deactivating the "new" improved font rendering and using the old font rendering algorithms in CC3+. But I am not really satisfied on that front currently. How about you?
some fonts have always been an issue but the latest version is not to bad at displaying what the original artist intended
I'm on an M2 Mini and use Parallels because Crossover doesn't work on the M series. I would love to be able to run CC3+ straight from my Mac - would save me money as well! There is a learning curve with setting Parallels but it is what it is, sadly. but because we're in the [probable] 0.1% of PF users we're left with paying out if we want to use PF.😥
as far as i am aware crossover now does run on m1 - m4 type apple machines as it also runs 32bit programs in a 64bit enviroment , why not test it using the free trial they offer which is fully functional and lasts for 2 weeks
Rob
sadly, despite what they say when I had installed crossover I was greeted with:
And they wanted £60 GBP for the full version!!!! I'm sticking with Parallels .............
personally i have run cc3+ under parallels and crossover and found that i got a faster program for rendering with crossover , if you want to try crossover you need to install as a unlisted program