News Archives - PaulTheTall PaulTheTall

CX21 Engine finally there!!!

On October 22, 2021 / News, Portingkit / 1 Comment

Yes yes yes, it took a while but we finally did it. Gcenx has build a proper CX21 engine which we can use publicly :) This means we have a lot of work to do coming weeks with updating ports, adding new ports, fixing the Origin client (Origin version C&C Series, Need for speed etc. will work again!) Better M1 Apple Sillicon support, and new games (uplay games will work again and new ones added!) pff….too much to tell!

Well I will get to work now! But then you know it’s there and much news is coming up! Keep a very close eye to the blog!!

Steam Winetrick issue…Steam fails to install (Resolved)!

On September 28, 2021 / News / Leave a comment

Update 13:15: Steam Install issue resolved!
From now on the Steam install should now work again. Please note that you might need to restart Porting Kit for changes to go in effect!

Thanks for bearing with us past hours :)

===============
A quick update here. It seems that steam ports doesn’t install properly at the moment (when you install a steam port for the first time). The Steam Winetrick seems to be broken (happened to appear last night). You in that case get a message when installing a steam port in the end as in the screenshot below. When you installed a steam port in the close past, it might be that the the Steam Winetrick is already cached, and you don’t have this issue.

We are working to to fix it, might take this day to have this issue resolved.

Porting Kit and game ports runs on Monterey 12.0 Public Beta.

On September 27, 2021 / News, Portingkit / Leave a comment

Here a quick update on the recent situation regarding Monterey 12.0 and Porting Kit and the game ports. And we have good news! I tested Porting Kit with some games in Monterey 12.0 public beta, and everything (so far) is working as attended. I tested the Porting Kit application including some games I already installed earlier on Big Sur 11. 5 and those are still working out of the box. So that’s good to know. Secondly, I tested some game installations and these will now run as well. Tested the Pharaoh Installation and that one worked as attend. Also tested a Steam install and login and running a game. All works fine. I still need to check improvements on the M1 Apple Silicon Mac.

Games tested and all working so far:
– Pharaoh Gold
– The Guild Gold
– C&C Tiberian Sun
– C&C Red Alert 2 (DVD)
– C&C Red Alert 3 (Steam)
– Company of Heroes (Steam)
– Jewel Quest 2 and Jewel Quest 3.

So these are great perspectives for the official release of the Monterey 12.0 Mac OS. That all works fine at first sight doesn’t mean that there might be a sporadic port which needs some attention, but the last Mac OS version change (Catalina 10.15 to Big Sur 11) didn’t gave (luckily) not much trouble as well. Let’s hope this will be kept that way. We had precociously a block on Porting Kit on Mac OS Monterey 12.0m but removed them yesterday. So everyone who has the public beta of Monterey 12 (minimum Beta 5), can now test and use Porting Kit on it.

Thrillville: Off the Rails GOG port!

On September 21, 2021 / GOG.com Games, News, Portingkit, Wrapper updates / Leave a comment

As you may know, GOG.com added recently Thrillville: Off the Rails to their game catalog. This was a good opportunity to add the GOG.com source of the game into Porting Kit as well. So here we are! If you purchased Thrillville: Off the Rails on GOG.com you will now be able to install and play the game DRM free out of the box :) Have fun!

You can find the GOG.com source in the game port when you search the game in Porting Kit on the library tab or check out the game page on the Porting Kit website up here…

Star Trek Voyager – Elite Force for Mac

On September 20, 2021 / Action, Game Port, GOG.com Games, News, Portingkit / Leave a comment

Another Star Trek game just released on GOG.com added to Porting Kit: Star Trek Voyager – Elite Force for Mac! Tested it on my intel based Macbook Pro with AMD Radeon GFX card and works perfectly in the 1024×768 resolution. Somehow cannot choose a widescreen resolution which fits properly and thus makes a small window instead. So 1024×768 for my Macbook is best way to go for now unless I find a config ini somewhere where you can adjust the resolution manually.

Basic Portingkit Install Instructions GOG games:
1. Download the Star Trek Voyager – Elite Force “offline backup setup” file(s) into your download folder.
2. Always read the “notes” of the game description first for additional steps!
3. Go to the library server tab and select the game you want to install and click “Install”
4. Portingkit will create the wrapper and locate your setup file in your download folder
5. The installation of the game will start, run through the install wizard.
6. After installation, exit the installer (don’t run launch the game).
7. Porting kit will say it has finished successfully.
8. Go to your local library tab and select the game and click “play”!
9. Enjoy the game!

Game Description:
One blast from destruction, the U.S.S. Voyager is mysteriously transported into a hull space infested with danger. As part of Voyager’s elite Hazard Team, you must defend it from a host of scavenging aliens, then infiltrate a Borg Cube and derelict vessels to eradicate your deadly foes. The Quake III Arena™ engine powers the dynamic gameplay as you fight for survival through 40 ultra-intense single-player missions and 16 multiplayer arenas. It’s first-person shooter action that won’t quit. But, be prepared-if Voyager is destroyed, humanity won’t be far behind…

Go to the Porting Kit game page up here…

Release Porting Kit 4.2.29

On September 19, 2021 / News, Portingkit / Leave a comment

We just now released Porting Kit 4.2.29. There are some import fixes in it which made us rush the update now then waiting a couple of weeks. There is for example an important timeout build in when a specific Winetrick file source is unavailable. Instead of hanging for a long while, it will now choose another file location. Also a more common bug should be fixed regarding: “There is no Windows Program configured to open this type of file” should be fixed as well.

Updating may take a long while (depending on high traffic even an hour). Alternatively you can select the autoupdate feature and then all will be done in the background anyways. When you have no patience, then you download latest version from the Porting Kit Website manually :)

Changes Since 4.2.20
– Adding option to enable esync in WSI files
– If the destination path is invalid, the user shouldn’t be able to proceed
– Added button to edit description of local apps
– When creating custom ports in experimental mode, the user should be able to select between
installing with standard options, or with advanced options, using the WSI editor
– When exporting WSI files, the user should be able to edit the WSI file
– WSI1 files should be loaded from the server properly
– Custom properties should never be undefined
– Local apps should only store the relevant data
– Trying to identify bug “Cannot read property ‘type’ of undefined”
– If the master wrapper fails to download, PK should wait 3 seconds until it tries again
– macOS hidden files shouldn’t be suggested when creating new ports
– Added option to terminate native apps
– “There is no Windows Program configured to open this type of file” issue fixed
– Adding workaround to the description editor to avoid issues with the underline button
– Steam wrappers should be identified accordingly when adding new ports to the server
– Adding default description to new server apps
– Winetricks download should always work properly
– If Desktop access is removed after it was granted, PK should still work
– Downloads should have a 10 second timeout in case nothing is downloaded

All ports are now updated to WISI3!

On September 15, 2021 / News, Portingkit / 2 Comments

You may have noticed the past days and a while back, that there were hundreds of port updates in the Porting Kit database. In these updates the game description was updated, ports got updated to the latest Wine Engines, and when updating, the port was also upgraded to a new Script version (WSI3). This new script version is much more advanced, then it’s predecessors. With this script we can let it do all kind of actions before and after installations and even do actions depending on GFX cards! This is very important to make Porting Kit an advanced application which will configure ports for you fitting the best for your configuration. The possibilities are massive and will be further implemented on the game ports through time.

But that’s not all, now we made all ports WSI3, all ports should be Linux ready (compatible) as well! What does this mean? Well, with this update, the long announced Linux version (or even Windows version?) of Porting Kit will finally coming very soon!

The update is also the final breath of Porting Kit 3. Although everyone should got a message that they need to update to Porting Kit 4 , will now see a completely empty game library, because Porting Kit 3 cannot read/handle WSI3 files. Users of Porting Kit 3 should have seen the decline of ports in the database there past days, and now it’s completely empty. An upgrade to Porting Kit 4 is a must now to be able to install new ports.

More news of new features and options, and about the Linux version will follow soon!

Porting Kit Forum is back in Business!

On August 10, 2021 / News, Portingkit / Leave a comment

Great news! For everyone who missed the forum, then we have good news, its back :) It was gone for a while because of massive spam attacks of bots, messing up the whole forum, which was impossible to keep clean at some point. Now we enhanced the forum again with better protection, so we are making a new start and imported loads of old topics back in the new forum. With this new forum, new features are back possible, like ranking and also premium membership in the near future, to support our cause and to have some extra benefits and bonuses.

You can find the forum on the Forum page of the Porting Kit website, or on the community tab in Porting Kit itself.

Crossover 21 released!

On August 5, 2021 / Crossover, News / 1 Comment

Yes, great news! Crossover 21 has been released! Crossover is an application similar as Porting Kit but then commercial (Paid application) and has a big team of developers and offer paid support for their product. Crossover is a product of Codeweavers which contributes a lot to the Wine project. In short, a great product and ran by very cool guys! :) Crossover is priced 59,- and comes with 12 months of support of updates and phone support. With Promocode “Portingover” you will get 30% off! So take advantage of that code :)

Crossover 21 makes now use of Wine 6.0 and has loads of improvements and fixes for games and better support for M1 Apple Silicon. It also includes fixes for Ubisoft games like Anno 2070, Rayman Origin/Legends, Assassin Creed series and more! When we created a CX21 Engine for Porting Kit these ports will be fixed and new ones will be added as well!

Check out the full change log below.

21.0.0 CrossOver – August 3, 2021

Core Technology Improvements:
- CrossOver 21 includes Wine 6.0, with 8,300 improvements, and selected patches from recent Wine with benefits to many popular applications.
- Update to DXVK v 1.7.
- CrossOver now ships Wine Mono.
macOS:
- Added support for Dark Mode.
- Vulkan WineD3D backend now on by default for D3D10/11 games.
- Skyrim SE now runs on m1 with WineD3D.

We are using the opensource code of Crossover to make Wineskin engines to use in Porting Kit. We are working hard to get a working patched engine to Porting Kit to make use of the the new engine as well to use for new specific games and upgrade old ones for fixes and improvements. When we have it finished this will be announced again on the blog. Meanwhile if you want to play with Crossover already, then you can get Crossover 21 from their website.

Love the work we do? Become a Patron… and get extra Tiers! Want to support Porting Kit? Buy also Crossover from Codeweavers! They are mass contributors of Wine development and are the core people making this possible.

Beta 2 of Crossover 21 released and what are the findings so far…

On July 24, 2021 / Crossover, News / Leave a comment

As mentioned earlier and some probably have heard by mail replies as well, I am very busy with testing the Beta of CX21 and reporting bugs to get solved. The CX21 will be the new engine we can use in the near future when released, including some extra patching to solve some extra stuff like the Origin Client. But you may wonder what we are experiencing thus far in the latest Beta release of Crossover 21. We will tell you in the next coming paragraphs.

M1 Apple Silicon Support:
Maybe one of the most important things is Apple Silicon Support for games. We found that this has been improved a lot. Games like, Skyrim SE (without too many glitches), Monkey Island 4, Dungeon Keeper 2, and many more where we don’t know off (because we cannot test thousands of games in such a short notice) are now starting to work. We see also big steps forwards in other games, like that it first in CX20 didn’t launch at all, but now it launches but has some slowness issues or crashes. But there is process, as you know what I mean.

More games which stopped working in Catalina are working again as well!
We have tremendous good news! A bunch of games which stopped working in Catalina 64bit. Start working again in CX21! An important Xaudio bug has been resolved, making a lot of Ubisoft games work again, like Rayman Origins, Rayman Legends, Assassin Creed 2, Assassin Creed revelations , Anno 2070 and more. These popular games suffered under this bug in Catalina 10.15 and up, but is now fixed in CX21.

But thats not all, also Steam bugs are solved and working better and faster (no big delays anymore) and more games are working better (like Tomb Raider 2 and Tombraider 4) including improved Directx11 support in 64bit games. Yes, a lot of joy is coming!

Still a lot to do:
Although we certainly won’t complain about CX21, there is still a lot to do. Especially for M1 Apple Silicon support we have a long road to go. It’s improving but we aren’t there yet. But we are happy to see Wine development is going the good way, also for M1 Apple Silicon. I will in the coming time do more videos (Porting Diaries) regarding M1 Apple silicon gaming, to show what is all possible already :)

We are now in the second beta, so I expect only a couple of weeks for the real release. Then we will add some extra patches which will have some better compatibility and then, on the end of the road there we hope to have also the Origin Client back in business again which means all the C&C games, and many others are back playable again in Porting Kit. In short, there are a lot of cool things happing and we hope to have this all in place in a month or so.

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