ET on a Mac in 2021

[BlackWolf]

ET on a Mac hasn't been the easiest to get going for a while, so I thought I'd pull a tutorial together in case anyone does want to get ET up and running on a Mac

 

Current Issues

Official ET install: The official install of Enemy Territory has been incompatible with Mac since OSX Mavericks, as Apple removed support for certain key functions that are required. It is not possible to run the official ET install on Mac on Mavericks or later.

 

ET Legacy: ET Legacy will no longer run on OSX since Catalina, as Apple removed support for 32 bit applications. Prior to this, ET Legacy for Mac was incompatible with many mods including SilEnT. Should a 64 bit version be released in future, this will work, but will not be compatible with mods other than Legacy

 

Wine could previously be used to run Windows applications on Mac. This is also no longer an options as Catalina's removal of 32 bit support also put an end to this method.

 

The Solution

Fortunately there is a workaround using Play On Mac, and some tweaks to enable mouse support to work properly.

 

Install Play on Mac + Download ET Legacy

1) Download and install Play in Mac from here: https://www.playonmac.com/en/

2) Download the Windows* version of ET Legacy from here (do NOT install it yet): https://www.etlegacy.com/download

*Do NOT download the Mac version. It will not work.

 

Install ET Legacy

1) Open Play on Mac and click "Add"

2) Select "Install a non listed application"

3) Locate the ET Legacy file you downloaded and click next.

4) Follow the prompts and ET Legacy will install as if you're on a Windows PC

 

Fix Mouse Issues

Mouse behaviour will be very erratic and unusable. To fix, carry out the following;

1) Click the Apple logo, then System Preferences

2) Select Security and Privacy

3) Select Accessibility

4) Click the padlock icon and enter your admin password

5) Tick Play on Mac in the list to allow accessibility access.

 

Launch the Game

To Launch ET, open Play on Mac, select ET from the list, and click run.

 

Notes

 - You can complete the above and use the ET 2.60b official installer. However, this seems to have performance issues. PunkBuster will also not run under Play on Mac so you will be kicked from any PB enabled servers.

 - ET Legacy does not include PunkBuster, so you cannot play on any PB enabled servers.

 - ET Legacy is incompatible with ET Pro, as the mod will only allow clients to connect from the official 2.6b installation.

 - FPS performance is lower than a native application. As ET is a very old game however, it shouldn't have any major performance issues on a modern install.*

 

*I have tested this on an early 2013 non-retina Macbook Pro and FPS runs around 60-70 when uncapped. The native ET client ran at around 100-125 FPS when it was still compatible.

[captnconcrete]

good stuff thanks.!