RTW and Mods with Mac

[MasterOfThessus]

Hello Techies!

We've been having several posts lately of people wondering how to play RTW and its mods on a Mac.

Does anyone know anything about this, or is there some place where we can direct the people asking?

Thank you in advance

[apple]

I'm playing (and moding ) on a mac using bootcamp to run Windows and RTW. However I know that RTW has been ported to mac (running natively) but I haven't got any chance testing that.
If I could get a picture of the RTW's inner structure I could likely answer the question if it's modable.
If the guy who had RTW for mac could open his application folder, find RTW, right click on it's icon and from the drop down menu choose "Show Package Contents", take a picture of what's displayed inside and also what's inside the folder called resources that would be enough.

[Fexlix Saturnus]

/Applications/Rome Total War/Rome Total War.app/Contents/Resources has six folders and three files.

The folders are:
English.lproj
French.lproj
German.lproj
Italian.lproj
Spanish.lproj
MacShaders

The ".lproj" folders each have three files, the most interesting of which is "KeyNames.strings".

The MacShaders folder has 217 ".arb" files, whatever those are.

The three files are:
BuildTag.txt
Rome Total War.rsrc
Rome.icns

Here is BuildTag.txt, it looks like the version number of the build:
r11226
Thu 17-12-2009 15:38:43
IBB

The .icns file has the various sized icons.

The Rome Total War.rsrc file is 365 KB. When opened in TextEdit, it shows some interesting stuff (see below), then gibberish. It does not open in Property List Editor.app.

Stuff from Rome Total War.rsrc:
<plist version="0.9">
<dict>
<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
<string>com.feralinteractive.rome</string>
<key>CFBundleName</key>
<string>Rome Total War</string>
<key>CFBundlePackageType</key>
<string>APPL</string>
<key>CFBundleSignature</key>
<string>Rome</string>
<key>CFBundleIconFile</key>
<string>128</string>
<key>CFBundleVersion</key>
<string>1.0</string>
<key>CFBundleShortVersionString</key>
<string>1.0</string>
<key>NSHumanReadableCopyright</key>
<string>Copyright 2002-2009 The Creative Assembly Limited</string>
<key>CFBundleDevelopmentRegion</key>
<string>English</string>
<key>ZGLProductCode</key>
<string>ROME</string>
</dict>
</plist>

[apple]

No idea then actually. There should be some kind of a data file somewhere. I guess those might be stored in "Rome Total War.rsrc" are you able to open it trough "Show Package Contents" or something alike?

[The Sicilian]

Here's a pic of the first few items of the Data folder:


The files are mostly .txt, .dat, .itx, .CAS, .tga, and .evt.

[apple]

Well that looks the same as the pc version.

Could you try to download a mod and install it there.
You wont be able to use the mods intaller as they uses .exe but if you are able to extract the files and move the data folder to your rtw's data folder it should work.

[The Sicilian]

OK, I've gotten everything to work fine, but it takes way too long to do everything manually, I think running the PC version via Bootcamp or Crossover might installing mods or anything of that sort much easier.

[irishron]

One using Bootcamp got medieval2 and Kingdoms to work with mods.

[apple]

Yes everything works exactly the same as on a normal PC if you run it trough Bootcamp. Tough this is about RTW for mac.

@the Sicilian what exactly what was it that took extra long? You didn't copy every file for itself did you. It should be just as simply as to copy the whole data folder and click yes when it ask you if you want to replace the files.

[AkelAWOLF]

I've been trying for a while to get mods working on the mac version, but no luck yet.

The problem seems to be that you can't access the game files conventionally, there's an image file called "RomeData" and whenever you launch the game, it mounts and reads it from there. I can't figure out how to get the mod folders into the image file, which is at the heart of the problem. I can copy things from the image file, but not into it.

If anyone has found a way around this, I'd be very grateful to hear how to solve it.

[Feliks]

I'm getting back into Total War (I got a mac for college and my pc back home crashed). I have the Mac version of Rome Total War on the way as we speak and I would very much like to mod it.

Have people actually gotten it to work without bootcamp?

[apple]

OK, I've gotten everything to work fine, but it takes way too long to do everything manually, I think running the PC version via Bootcamp or Crossover might installing mods or anything of that sort much easier.

He said he got it to work. However It would be good to more people testing it.

[Seleucius the Conquerer]

I've been trying for a while to get mods working on the mac version, but no luck yet.

The problem seems to be that you can't access the game files conventionally, there's an image file called "RomeData" and whenever you launch the game, it mounts and reads it from there. I can't figure out how to get the mod folders into the image file, which is at the heart of the problem. I can copy things from the image file, but not into it.

If anyone has found a way around this, I'd be very grateful to hear how to solve it.

hi everyone i have a mac and just found out to edit the disk image you have to put it in diskutility and convert to read and write it is only set at read only at the moment
hope this helps

[OneoftheLost]

Thanks! This thread was sort of a stepping point. My goal was to install EB over the Mac version of RTW:G. After numerous threads, and several very kind people, I am now happily playing a campaign in EB on my mac. ^_^

If anyone needs any help regarding EB and the mac, feel free to throw up a post.

[intrepid132]

Yes! I've been trying to find a mod for my mac version of RTW:G for a week now. I've tried to find a way to edit a mod in by opening the .exe file, but I can't find anything that'll open one. I'd love help getting EB up and running, but I've got one question first: How badly does EB slow down the game? Right now, I'm running on a step above the lowest settings (I've got a regular MacBook) and it already gets laggy playing single-player sometimes.

[ambereyes]

I modified my Rome data folder in order to make all factions playable. However when I install RTR its a windows file and my mac cant read it. Ive looked for an alternate downloading site and i haven't come up with anything am i not looking the right place?

[apple]

I don't think there is an alternative one. You would probably have to extract it from the exe. on a PC and then move those files over to your mac.

[ambereyes]

Now I'm out of my technical depth,
At this point ive ran the rtr_platinum_v1.9_full_install folder on the pc and put the resulting files on the mac, and I'm not sure were to go from here
there's a data folder which i can switch out (Ive already made a new disk image ect...) but theirs also a RTR folder another data folder and a docs folder, what do i do with all of this?

[apple]

Place them as they are in your RTW folder. The data folder should overwrite the old RTW data folder and the RTR folder should be like it is inside the RTW folder.
I'm not sure how to edit the shortcut to make it work tough. You might need to cut and copy all the things in the RTR folder to the RTW folder once you have moved the data folder.

I know, it's a bit of a mess but these mods wasn't made for the mac version sadly enough.

[richardkina]

hey,
I was wondering if anyone has been able to install the mod called Roma Surrectum 2 on RTW for Mac?.

So far I have used disk utility to convert the image data into a different one where its Read and Write, so i copied over the Roma Surrectum 2 files they same way you would install Europa Barbarorum. However my problem is that when I try to start the mod by typing in -mod:Roma in the advance options (the same way I do for EB) the game opens up but just freezes with a image of Roma Surrectum 2, so it doesn't load to the menu or anything.

I would really appreciate some help on this thanks