Help needed for Granny! - Civ3 - Apple M1 - Porting Kit - GOG - No text appears on launch - Buttons unusable - Fatal Error

[pooslein]

Hi All,

I'm writing this on behalf of my 83-year-old mother who loves playing Civ3 (for 2 decades now!) but now can't, for the reasons set out below, and seeks your excellent help.

She has an iMac 2022 Apple M1 using Sequoia 15.0.
I downloaded Porting Kit. No problem.
I signed her up to GOG, logged in to GOG on Porting Kit and installed Civ3. No problem.
As advised on numerous forums I amended the conquests.ini file to add PlayIntro=0 and KeepRes=1. No problem.
As advised by Paulthetall (of Porting Kit), I used his workaround with RDM to add the 2 extra resolutions he recommended to the monitor. No problem.

However, when we try to play Civ3 we get the Main Menu page but:
(1) There is absolutely no text visible on the menu (not even the copyright notice);
(2) If I click on any of the buttons, it briefly shows a 'loading bar' and then I get the opening scene (i.e. a single worker on a small area of green, surrounded by black) including the various game play buttons, text boxes, etc, but again there is no text and none of the game buttons work. However, in front of all this is a box with a FATAL ERROR message: 'Unable to allocate draw-buffer; terminating program.', with an OK button. If I click on OK, nothing happens and the message remains.

The only way to quit the game is to Force Quit 'wine32on64-preloader'.

I also saw lots of advice to rename the LSANS.fot file in conquests.ini, but that has made no difference as a new LSANS.fot file is immediately created next time we try to launch the game.

I tried copying the LSANS.tff files into all the various Fonts folders in the Civ3 package: all this achieved was that the copyright message appeared on the main menu when Civ3 was launched.

Having spent 2 days trying every possible search term on every possible forum, I am at a loss as to how to make this work.

I have no doubt one of you wonderful experts will spot something - probably tiny - that I have failed to do, and I'd much appreciate your help a.s.a.p. (as I leave my mum to head home in a few days).

With many many thanks,

pooslein's son

 

[SayHayKid]

I wrote the guide at the top of this forum and the one on Reddit. I have had zero problems running it on my M2 MacBook Air. Unfortunately, there are very few people who are running on Apple Silicon so help is hard to come by. The only difference that I see is your grandma is running Sequoia (I am still on Sonoma). Your post made me stop before upgrading to Sequoia, in case that is the culprit. Apple may have changed something.

Maybe try this. Go to the newly created Civ III.app in Finder, right-click, choose "show package contents". Then double click on Wineksin.app. Under "tools" tab choose "Change Engine Used" and select a different Windows engine. Mine is working with WS11WineCX20.0.4.

 

[pooslein]

Dear SayHayKid,

Many thanks for your kind and prompt help! You have made Granny very very happy. : )

First, I can confirm that this all works fine with Mac OS Sequoia 15.0.

Second, here is what I did to make everything work (thanks to your advice)

1. Go to Applications and right click on Sid Meier's Civilization 3 icon and select 'Show package contents';
2. Open 'Contents' folder and double click on 'Wineskin': this will open a small box: in that box click on the 'Advanced' button;
3. From the menu bar in the 'Wineskin Advanced' select 'Tools' and then select 'Change Engine Used' in the right hand column;
4. I then selected the only other engine available to me, i.e. I made the change to from WS12... to WS11...;
5. I then had to restart my Mac and voila! it worked. Granny is now playing happily beating up barbarians!

I hope these instructions - along with those in my original post above - help anyone else seeking to play Civ3 on an Apple M1.

Many thanks again,

pooslein's son

 

[SayHayKid]

Dear SayHayKid,

Many thanks for your kind and prompt help! You have made Granny very very happy. : )

First, I can confirm that this all works fine with Mac OS Sequoia 15.0.

Second, here is what I did to make everything work (thanks to your advice)

1. Go to Applications and right click on Sid Meier's Civilization 3 icon and select 'Show package contents';
2. Open 'Contents' folder and double click on 'Wineskin': this will open a small box: in that box click on the 'Advanced' button;
3. From the menu bar in the 'Wineskin Advanced' select 'Tools' and then select 'Change Engine Used' in the right hand column;
4. I then selected the only other engine available to me, i.e. I made the change to from WS12... to WS11...;
5. I then had to restart my Mac and voila! it worked. Granny is now playing happily beating up barbarians!

I hope these instructions - along with those in my original post above - help anyone else seeking to play Civ3 on an Apple M1.

Many thanks again,

pooslein's son

@pooslein There is one more thing I recommend if you haven't left your grandma's house. WINE doesn't render lines on the Diplomat Screen. What that means is your grandma won't be able to see current trades, military alliances, etc. Still playable, but PITA. Another user @Flintlock fixed this, plus a bunch of other bugs. I HIGHLY SUGGEST installing his patch. You don't need to change anything in the config file, it has the diplomacy lines fixed by default.

I will send you the modded EXE as a PM since others have reported having issues. All you need to do is unzip the patch and place the folder and the modded EXE into the Conquest folder. The game will start like normal and the diplomacy lines issue will be fixed. To get to the Conquests folder you have to right-click and show package contents as before and then navigate to the /drive_c/GOG Games/Civilization III Complete/Conquests folder. Then move the files in.

It sounds like a bit of work, but is pretty easy once you see it. The one trick is that with new versions of porting kit, the drive_c folder is in a new spot (I am on an old version and can't check). Just click around in the folders until you find it.