Welcome to Fractal Forums

I everyone,
Last weeks I didn't had much time to work on mandelbulb 3D for mac, BUT since I don't think I'll have enough time for quite a long, I decided to share with you my testing program, it's basically a wrapper based on wine which can launch windows apps directly from Mac OS X, without bootcamp or any virtualization solution (eg VMWare, ...)
here is the link : https://rapidshare.com/files/3353493393/windows.app.zip (https://rapidshare.com/files/3353493393/windows.app.zip)
to install it, just unzip it, run it once and then right click on a windows executable (.exe file), read informations --> open with (select my program in the dropdown menu, you may have to manually point "windows.app" if it doesn't shows ) and finally click the button right under the dropdown menu.
now, just double click on any .exe file to run it. The method also works for .bat and .lnk (shortcuts) files

It works at least with ultra fractal 5 and mandelbulb 3d
Here you are ;)

EDIT !
The new wrapper is here !
here is the link : http://www.mediafire.com/?25hx62lyywn18

Ok, thank you :)
if you need help to run a specific windows program on mac, just ask, I'll see what I can do
Unfortunatly I can't send the wrapper directly to the forum, the file is way to big (357 mo compressed, and it's the smallest I can do :/ )

please upload on a dif site, the website says you cant download it anymore

hi,
yes, I know about the recent problem with almost every filehost, I'll reupload it later on a different host, maybe filebay ? or maybe Rapidshare ? I don't know yet

obviously the panic after the megaupload close-down! :hurt:

ok, link updated, this should work now

This doesn't seem to work. I can't even make it the standard program to open the .exe :(

update: making it standard program does work but if i double click, windows multi launcher opens but mandelbulb doesn't

i have mac 10,6,8

hello !
this isn't normal, it should work
for now, just try to open windows multi launcher by double clicking on its icon, a windows explorer windows should pop up, then naviguate to mandelbulb (your mac hard drive is listed as z:/ in the windows explorer) and launch it from there, there is no reasons (I launched the last version of mandelbulb with it yesterday and ran a big render, it worked fine)

I just open windows multi launcher but nothing else pop ups and from within this 'program' i can't open anything :s

First thanks a lot, slock, for the "window.app".

For me it work perfectly, nearly all softwares I tried open and run OK, I also give the link to some friends and they also have success with it.

I struggle with Parallels Desktop for years, personally I never like this software to much bugs and no support. Your solution is not perfect in all case but it'll help me to limit the use of window virtuallization to the rare occasions were your software don't work...

I get a funny bug with one of the fractal software I use time to time call; FlightFromFractal the software was create by a japanese artist, in window xp, 2000 and 95 it open normally and all the menus are in english but with your software many of the menus are unreadable it probably try to load the Japanese charset without success. I try to find how to make it open in English but for now no luck  :) If you are curious about it here is the link for the software;
 
http://www.nahee.com/Software/FlightFromFractal.zip   

Hi,
I've looked the application and I think I've located the problem : In fact, wine lacks a few fonts from windows (legal issues) but this application tries to use a missing one, ordinary, wine's replacement font is enough, but for this app, the only replacement found was the webding font, which include the symbols you see, I'll try to figure out how to bypass the problem; anyway, I'm glad my little app helped ;)
ps : your english is quite good ;) (I'm french so english is not my natural language either)

Hi Slock,

You got it, I put the fonts I have in Window xp, in the font folder of Wine "et voila" the app load correctly now, thanks. 

well, I'm glad I helped, but as I said previously, for legal reason (and for size reason too) I can't put these fonts in my wrapper and upload it, but I'm still working on the new version, I think I'll release it rather soon

Thank you very much for the new version "just a Glass".

The old version didn't work on one of my friend computer running lion, the new version now work.

This emulator is the most useful software I get in many years. Each time Parallels Desktop send a mail asking to buy an update I smile...   

I downloaded the "just a Glass" so what do I do with it javascript:void(0)? As you might have guessed I am completely new to this application and fractals.

Hi.

I use a mac, but refuse to upgrade past OSX 10.5 - Apple broke too many things with 10.6, and broke more with 10.7, and they're continuing the trend with 10.8 making too many programs useless for me to ever consider upgrading!  They really need to wake up to the Critical Importance of backward compatibility - even Micro$oft have "Compatibility Mode" for older programs, but apple feel they are not required to support such normal things as that.

I say that so you'll take my advice with a pillar of salt  O0

I use Mandelbulb3D all the time on my system, but I run it using Crossover, a paid version of WINE which is supposed to be better than the free version. 

It runs perfectly.

I suggest trying WINE, and if that fails consider Crossover  (it's around $40 US, but runs many Windoze Programs with no need for dual booting or having any version of Win-Anything installed).

Because I never had any problems with Crossover, I never tried this system to make stuff run on my mac. 

But as bib stated, WINE runs it fine under Linux, so there's no reason it should not do so under these crazy stupid newer OSX versions  (Yes, I'm upset with apple and venting here - just because!).

Hope that helps.

Good luck with it and Welcome to the forums  :elvis:

Thanks. Are there instructions or do we just wing it?

Instructions for WINE?  Or Mandelbulb3D?

WINE, a WINdowsEmulator (even though they deny it!), can be had here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wine/ and instructions are probably easily found if it does not come with instructions.  With Crossover, it's just install, and then start the exe file of your choice.  If the program does not run with default settings, it prompts to "create a new bottle" and just try different types from the list until one works.  It remembers the choice for future uses, so I forget the exact details.

Instructions for Mandelbulb3D are tricky.  There are many tutorials out there, search youtube, deviant art, and even here!  It depends what you want to do - there are many topics for tutorials, ranging from the interface, to DIFS tricks,  to animation, to creating 3D Models using it's Voxel Stack feature and other programs!

Again, I hope that helps   O0


EDIT : Direct link to the mac version of WINE - http://sourceforge.net/projects/darwine/?source=recommended

Thanks again. For the moment I am just trying to get it running to try it out. Until I screw around with it I won't know if it is suitable for marriage.  javascript:void(0)