Does anyone have any experience with Wineskin?

Howdy,

I'm fairly close to making the jump to Macbook world and was reading up on options to run some retro games (going to have a desktop for latest and greatest). I stumbled on this Wineskin program and it seems like it would be too good to be true? Just make a "wrapper" with the right "engine" and you're good to go? Any thoughts?

 

It uses Wine as the main resource for running programs, which is what is in the engine. So just like normal Wine or Crossover, programs may or may not work... or may or may not work easily. Sometimes it can be a chore getting a program to work... and sometimes it can be easy. Typically the older the program is, the more likely it is to work easily.

You can look in the WineHQ.org AppDB to get ideas of how other people have gotten programs working with Wine, and it typically holds true for Wineskin as well. There are also places like PaulTheTall.com and Portingteam.com which make wrappers you can download and use that are already made for a specific game, so you just install your copy of the game inside the wrapper (easy), and play, without having to do the more complicated stuff.

 

Wow.

I decided to make the plunge and should be getting a new MBA in a few days. I don't mind having to tinker with things (half the fun) and if I can even get one or two of these old things running consider me an enthusiastic donor.

 

I find it fun to "tinker" as well. Thats what I was doing most of the time to get things running when I started making a tool to get it done easier, which turned into Wineskin. Make a useful tool, and theres no reason to keep it to yourself, I started getting more fun out of making the tool over using it

 

we have a word for that, masochism!

But its a good thing, the problem for me is that I only tinker with games to mod them. Not to make them work.

 

On another note, would it be possible to Wineskin Windows version of Excel and run Windows specific Add-Ins such as certain Oracle ones? That would make life world's easier for a good number of Mac people I know here at school.

I think that will be Project Number One when it gets here ... stupid shipping times. I'm practically salivating, here.
The only problem is if it works and I start doing it for people my secret identity as a serious computer nerd will become known to the world at large.

 

For something like that you might want to look into Parallels Desktop. Office addins are notoriously hard to work with even on Windows.

 

while I know its possible to get Excel 2007 running... I don't think it works 100% right and you'll probably have TONs of problems with using an Add In

also Apple has totally screwed something up with graphics in OS X 10.8.2 update that just came out today, and all 3D graphics in Wine seem to be busted... so Wineskin cannot currently play any games at all if people upgrade to 10.8.2 ... hopefully Apple will get this fixed soon.