box64 VS Whisky

In the video, they mentioned they can't run steam on RISC-V because box64 doesn't support 32bit apps. In the README of box64, it is mentioned:

I see it can do more now, already tried some stuff. But see it is now more mature than months ago. Will try factorio again https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64/issues/665

Also, in the discussions of box64 is this thread: https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64/discussions/524 My guess is that you have to install both box64 and box86, the latest mesa drivers with vulkan support. And then try to launch the game with proton. There is also this issue that shows factorio running on a Rock 5B: https://github.com/ptitSeb/box86-compatibility-list/issues/284

In Box64, which is an emulator+JIT recompiler, and thus likely pretty slow?

macOS runs x64 executables just fine through Rosetta so I don't see why Wine couldn't make use of that hardware acceleration.

It's also possible to only simulate the entrypoints through Rosetta and then execute native aarch64 code from there. On Linux https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64 does exactly that, for example. However, with the performance Apple has been able to squeeze out of Rosetta, I'm not sure of that workaround is even necessary.

Recently, I got a server from Oracle Cloud, having 4 cores and 24GB of RAM. Then, using a software called Box86 and its 64 bit version called Box64, I succeeded in running Factorio! Unfortunately, 1.1.80 ran at 3 UPS! I went through each major version, testing each individual one down to 0.12. Here are my results!

You could try https://github.com/ptitSeb/box86 and https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64/ , I believe they allow you to emulate x86_64 on aarch64, though I have no experience with them, so cannot say for sure.

git clone https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64.git

If you have time and patience take a look at box86 and box64. These are basically like translation layers that allow x86/x86_64 applications to run on ARM. I personally haven't use them yet, so I can't provide a guide or vouch for game compatibilities. But by the look of the progress made by them so far it looks promising.

You can follow progress of this on https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64/issues/635

Step 1: Install Whisky + Winetricks with Homebrew.

Download Whisky from https://github.com/IsaacMarovitz/Whisky/releases, copy it to your applications folder.

EDIT: It seems like some folks couldn't get beta 2 to run either. I've double confirmed that both the initial release and beta 2 work great for me on macOS 13.4.1 using Whisky, but with beta 3, Apple blocks you from even trying to use it.

You can download the latest version of Whisky from the official GitHub repository: Whisky Download. Installation is straightforward, and the app is user-friendly, ensuring you get started in no time.

brew install whisky in a normal Terminal with Homebrew, or see https://github.com/IsaacMarovitz/Whisky, has a GUI installed to /Applications

The only magic of Proton is handled by Steam. Proton itself is just providing the tools for the job, as you put it. There are already rapidly developing tools such as https://github.com/IsaacMarovitz/Whisky that give you a UI to launch games and apps using Apple's GPT. In theory, you could run the Windows version of Steam inside it and then launch apps from there and it would look a lot like what Proton does.

Hello, Vulcan mode isn’t working in crossover, use standard mode and use Whisky app(it’s free). Here link for download :https://github.com/IsaacMarovitz/Whisky/releases/tag/v1.0.1

Whiskey project - https://github.com/IsaacMarovitz/Whisky/releases

For those on macOS, there is an excellent new project called Whisky [0] built around CrossOver and Apple's Game Porting Toolkit.

[0] https://github.com/IsaacMarovitz/Whisky