Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura Forum

Arcanum seems to work without issue when run with Crossover Games. Here is how to install it.

Before you begin: you will need the English install discs for Arcanum, English patch 1.0.7.4, and the unofficial Arcanum patch found here (and the accompanying extra patch, optionally):

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23720

It is possible that this method will work with localized versions, but I don't think the unofficial patch currently supports them, and I don't know how well things will work without the unofficial patch.

Steps:

1. In Crossover Games, go to Configure > Install Software, choose Install Unsupported Software, then New Bottle. Insert Arcanum disc 1 and use it for the install disc. The install will erroneously claim to have completed successfully and show you a game menu screen, but you'll need to quit this game menu and then click "Finished" on the unsupported software installer window.

2. Find the Arcanum install folder in ~/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/[your new bottle name]/Sierra, make an alias of it for your desktop for convenience, insert Arcanum disc 2, and drag the files:

arcanum1.dat
arcanum2.dat
arcanum3.dat

from the CD into the Arcanum folder.

3. Go to Configure > Install Software, choose Unsupported Install, choose to install into your existing bottle that contains Arcanum (ignore the warning about this being likely to produce errors), click on "Choose Installer" and browse to your patch 1.0.7.4 executable. It should install without issue.

4. Do the exact same process, but choose the unofficial patch installer this time. The unofficial patch installer will not actively confirm completion, it will just finish.

5. If you want the extra pack which goes with the unofficial patch (it's optional to this process), install it in the same way.

6. In Crossover Games, under the Programs menu, you should now see Sierra > Arcanum folders, which contains a few program aliases. Choose "Arcanum Safe Mode" to play Arcanum.

Remaining issues: none I've seen yet. Mouse movement is natural and disk load times are fast. There are sometimes briefly artifacts on the screen when the main menu loads, and there is a brief moment of blackness when a saved game is first loaded.

Updated after getting about 75% through the game: the game will occasionally crash when scrolling through a very large area, with a frequency of approximately once every couple hours of play. Otherwise, the experience is the same is a Windows install.

Sorry to bump this topic up, but I got CrossOver Games from the Lame Duck thing, and now that I've got a free bit of time from the break, I am trying to use it.

I've followed your steps for Arcanum, and now the problem is that I get a black screen to start with, which then returns me to desktop. Any ideas?

Hi Althane,

I haven't encountered that kind of crash, but maybe you can see if there are any clues in the log by going to Crossover's Programs menu and selecting the Run Command option, and then clicking the "create log file" checkbox on the dialog that comes up, and in the same dialog, clicking the "Browse" button and navigating to your Arcanum.exe to launch it with logging.

Ah, I discovered the problem. Turns out that the unofficial patch bugged out when I first attempted to do it. Thus, it didn't work, and was performing the CD-check. Without actually telling me that it was doing such.

Re-installed the patch, got it working, and now the game works.

-JOY-

Now to work on other games (this was a trial run for me). Thanks for the guide, Halle!

Glad it worked for you!

Fantastic guide, Halle - truly, thank you for taking the time!

You're welcome! I'm glad it's working for you.

Hiya,

Using CrossOver 7.2 and I followed your guide and at step 1 I get a "installation ended prematurely because of an error" with "Fatal Error" in the title box. I still went on and followed the guide but at Step 6 I have to go to "Programs - Run Command - (Then i select the bottle and Browse to "Arcanum.exe")...however nothing happens after the load bar appears and disappears.

Any ideas? Running this on a MacBook Pro (late 2008 edition).

• Ryuki A.

Hello Ryuki,

Can you try turning on logging and seeing if there is anything informative in the log? Just at the point where you are going to Programs – Run Command, also select the logging option and see what turns up.

When I try to play the game, I get as far as the main menu and the mouse doesn't work. I know the game is still active because the shortcut keys can get me as far as the create character screen, and I can hit esc to quit. Is there any fix for it?

Hello Chowdown,

I'm getting the impression that something might have broken with Arcanum in the last Crossover Games update – I will check it out as soon as I get the opportunity.

Confirmed, I am having same issue. CXP 20090125
Getting premature exit error, and then "Disk not found" when starting game.

Linux (ubuntu 2.6.24-214-generic SMP)
NVidia drivers
ASLA sound

While doing STEP 1, I got Akira's 'fatal error' message. So I followed STEP 2, 3, 4 and 5 anyway. I got the game to load, but the movies are audio only. I got through character creation to the crash site, but as the image shows (image: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2639/3940734174_3d2ef21a0a_o.png) the graphics are a bit messed up. The gui is a little messed up too. Not sure how to smooth those graphics out, though.

Hi crispy,

Sorry it isn't working for you. Like Akira, it would be helpful if you would turn on logging and let me know what the log says when you get that fatal error.

From looking at your screenshot, that is the fullscreen/compact UI mode of Arcanum, which to the best of my knowledge is neither supported by Crossover or the unofficial patch. What alias did you click on to get that UI? There should be one called "Arcanum safe mode" which might give better results. If you are getting that UI when you launch "safe mode" that is unexpected.

An alternative would be to create a command-line alias with Crossover for launching Arcanum which has the flags -no3d -doublebuffer, as described in my tips for running Arcanum on older versions of Crossover:

6. In Crossover, select Configure > Refresh Programs Menu and then Programs > Run Command. Choose your Arcanum bottle. Click "Browse".

7. Browse to the Arcanum folder, and select Arcanum.exe. In the Run Command window, right after the command which is now enclosed in quotes, add these two flags with no quotes around them: -no3d -doublebuffer

On my system this command looks like this:

Code:
"/Users/myaccount/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/Arcanum/drive_c/Sierra/Arcanum/Arcanum.exe" -no3d -doublebuffer

The path will be a little different on your machine so don't copy and paste my command.

8. Click the "Save command to programs menu" button. With luck you will see a new alias populate your Programs folder in the Finder. You can now play Arcanum by clicking the "Run" button in the command window, or you can cancel and just select the new alias from your Crossover Programs menu. Before playing, you will probably want to increase your mouse tracking speed in the System Preferences so that the Arcanum mouse isn't too slow.

Thank you very much. That worked. Due to the fatal error, there was no folder in the 'programs' menu, and the Sierra folder in C drive didn't include the dat files Arcanum 1, 2 and 3 from disc 2. I manually inserted those dat files (as listed in tips and tricks). When I installed the 1074 patch, it created a folder and ONE 'alias' in the folder, simply marked Arcanum.

Being very new to crossover, I wasn't exactly sure which logging you were talking about, but the installation log seems to run okay until this point:

trace:cxassocscan:do_ext L".avi"
trace:cxassocscan:do_ext mimetype=L"video/avi"
trace:cxassocscan:get_value unable to get the size of L".avi"->(null) (2)

About halfway into installation. I then see a lot of repetition of the "unable to get the size of L" message with various extensions after the end quote.

The final line is
trace:cxassocscan:do_vrb app_name=L"winebrowser.exe"
trace:cxassocscan:do_ext L".xsl"
trace:cxassocscan:do_ext mimetype=L"text/xsl"
trace:cxassocscan:get_value unable to get the size of L".xsl"->(null) (2)

However, as your suggestion above works well, that - combined with the earlier tips and tricks - should get the game playable.

Thank you VERY much for your help on that.

That's great news! You're welcome.

If you don't mind, let me know how the game played so I can amend the instructions to tell people to ignore the fatal error and to create their own alias, in the case that the game works well for you as a result of these steps.

Thank you again. The game played as well as in windows. I submitted screenshots to show various aspects of the game. The graphics rendered beautifully. The save and load functions well. Combat, equipment, the log book: all function as I would expect if I were playing it on my old windows machine. It seems a tiny bit slow at times, but that's all right since my old machine wasn't very fast either. Again, thank you for helping me get this game playing on my Mac.

I get the same Fatal Error on Crossover 8.0.0 (w/ MacBook Pro + OSX 10.6).

I have a log file, but I can't make any sense of it.

Hi, Malcolm. I'm sorry I didn't check back here sooner. As Halle said, there's a step here that will help you.

When you open up Crossover Games, at the menu at the top, you'll have "Crossover Games File Edit Programs Configure Window Help", right? Go to Programs, and Run Command. Under "Use Bottle" make sure you have the name of the bottle where Arcanum is. Under "Command" browse the bottle's C drive to find the Sierra Folder, inside that the Arcanum folder and inside that the Arcanum.exe. To the end of the line, add -no3d -doublebuffer after the quotes. Looke at the Tips & Tricks Section for Halle's suggestion on installing in Crossover 6 and up.

It should look like this.
"/Users/myaccount/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/Arcanum/drive_c/Sierra/Arcanum/Arcanum.exe" -no3d -doublebuffer
(depending on whether or not you named your bottle Arcanum.

Make sure you move the dat files as listed under tips and tricks too. I hope this works for you. If not, let us know.

Thanks again to Halle for getting this running for us.