Final say: Can the Modpacks work on the Mac?

[coolio2654]

Hello, all. I have been playing Civ5 on my windows for many years now, have 300+ hr.s, and have enjoyed the glorious of multiplayer mods all that time on windows.

However, does the modpack-creation technique work on the mac? I want to play with a friend. Some sources - link1, link2 - claim that they can, but doing that with any of the listed mods crashes Civ5 on the mac.

So are the authors of those posts wrong, or is there some way to make Vox Populi work with the mac?

I would extremely appreciate any advice.

Moderator Action: Welcome to CivFanatics. Moved this thread to the main C&C forum as that is where questions are posted.

 

[coolio2654]

I have read in different laces that mods with Lua elements do not work on with macs, but the MPMPM thread says this technique should work for macs regardless, so I am rather confused.

 

[LeeS]

Vox Populi requires the Community Patch DLL mod in order to run. DLL is specifically a Windows thing, and has no equivalent for Mac. Vox Populi cannot run on a Mac so far as I am aware (I don't think they've managed to make a port of the CP DLL into whatever the equivalent might be on a Mac if there even is a way to make a DLL-like thingie that would execute on a Mac).

So far as I am aware there is no problem with running lua on Mac but I am not a Mac person so could very well be wrong on this.

The real trouble with MP anything and lua is that many modders who utilize lua scripts do not give much consideration to the impact certain coding techniques can have on a MP match -- especially when getting random numbers or when executing through the contents of an lua table. The result is often de-synch between differing computers being used in the MP match.

 

[coolio2654]

So, what you said makes it sound like if I find the mods that don't use DLL files, they will work on the mac side? Would you tell me if there are any major game enhancement mods (like Vox Populi), that do not rely on DLL components?

 

[TopHatPaladin]

Most or all of JFD's gameplay mods (Nationalism, Prisoners of War, Workforces, etc.) should function without requiring any DLL.

 

[coolio2654]

Thank you very much for that confirmation. I will report back if I manage to get a sizable Mac mod going.

 

[coolio2654]

TopHatPaladin - when I was looking through JFD's mods, it seems that Rise to Power is the main one, and downloading it, I can confirm it has no DLL files in it. However, placing the mod into my DLC folder has no effects, as Rise to Power seems to be meant as a singleplayer mod, not a multiplayer one.

Does anyone know a way of getting Rise to Power to work for multiplayer?

 

[LeeS]

Mods have to be specially packaged using the Firaxis Live Tuner (as I recall) in order for them to be recognized by the game as a "fake" DLC so they will load as part of the game and thus be available during Multiplayer gameplay. Creating a "fake" DLC that is automatically loaded when the game loads is how the Multiplayer Workaround Methods work. Simply placing the mod and its contents into the game DLC folder does not make it load automatically in the way a real DLC package does.