FM2008 running under Mac OS 10.12 Sierra

Appreciate this is old news to many (FM2008) and Mac users are a minority, however, this may be helpful to someone as Mac support can be thin, and FM traditionally has been a strong game on the platform. Admins - if this post is in the wrong place please feel free to move it - I did look for an older game section but seems to end at 2012.

Specs
FM 2008 DVD (not Steam)
Mac OS 10.12 Sierra
Mac Pro (tower) 5,1 2012 - 32GB Ram, 4GB GPU, SSD 6GBs (for the OS), RAID stripe over 3GBs bus (data)

Brief pre-empt
I have been running an FM game for 9 years now (real time) under FM 2008 and I've got attached. Leeds United, started in the Championship, now its 2020 and they are back in the top 4, Premiership, Europe etc. The running game is on it's fifth Mac (Intel) hardware - originally an iMac iSight, iMac Core2Duo, Mac Pro 1,1, Mac Pro 3,1 and now MacPro 5,1. I have newer versions of the game on disc, however, I have come to like FM 2008 and made some fairly detailed mods over the years to the graphics, beyond shirts, balls - it's now has a BBC Match Of The Day theme - I am a graphic designer so I've made a good deal of this myself, extending an original theme I found here - all those years ago.

Fix
I've seen a lot of reports of FM games not running under Mac OS10.11 and OS10.12 (I'm not concerned currently with 10.13 or Mojave, the latter kills most older software.). I've got it running on both currently. The main issue I have found is the installer fails to put files in the correct place on OS's after 10.7 - FM2010 for example under Sierra does not install a user folder at all, so the game on launch reports a cryptic error and fails. In some cases with the older FM 2008 (my running game), the installer itself on the DVD will not run at all.

The work around is fairly simple providing you have a Mac capable of running an older OS. As a graphic designer I've kept / bought older Macs to keep my legacy work files accessible. I got a Mac Pro tower 1,1 Quadcore Xeon (2006) for £100 on eBay and it's running fine in 2019. On this I run OS 10.6 which is fully supported on FM 2008. Install the game as normal, use the editor, play a couple of games, save. Then copy the following folders / files to an external drive:

• Users/youruser/library/preferences - there should be a single text file and a folder both include Sports Interactive in the title
• Users/youruser/documents/Sports Interactive (folder - contains personal games data, saves etc)
• /applications/Sports Interactive (folder - the main folder with FM app and editor app)
• Users/shared/documents/Sports Interactive

Command I on each of the above files / folders (or Get Info in the menu bar) and set permissions for Everyone - Read & Write. This is important as a new Mac OS can silently refuse access to files that are under the permission of another user - in this case, having been installed first on another Mac, they will have been assigned the permission of the original OS 10.6 user.

Copy each of the files and folders on to the new Mac / OS (10.12) into the same locations - the root and file structure on Mac have not really changed for 18 years since OS 10 arrived in 2000.

Final step - on the OS 10.12 Mac, go to the single preferences file you have just copied over:

Users/youruser/library/preferences/Sports InteractiveLtd Preferences

Open this file in Mac's (free) Text Editor - its in the apps folder. Scroll down to the line which says - User\ Data\ Folder= After the equals character you will see it indicates the path of the user folder under the original Mac OS10.6. Change the path to your new location under OS 10.12 and save the file - Mac pref files are simple text (Win: plain text) so this will be fine. This tells the FM app, where to find your user data and is typically the broken element of the DVD installer process.

Launch the main FM app and if you've followed the guide, FM 2008 should launch without issue. First run it wont offer last game played as you haven't played any on this Mac. However, it will allow you to load any previously saved game and it will run your game editor data. If you don't want to put the DVD in the Mac every time you play the game (required) you can create a disc image with the Macs (free) Disc Utility - Google the process for this. Launch the disc image before the game and it puts a virtual DVD on the desktop which FM will accept. This is how I have kept one game going over almost a decade on several different Macs.

I'm going to try this manual install route with FM2010 (with 3d pitch!) shortly - I will report back if it is successful.

Final note
As indicated, Apple have decided after 10.12 to use a new disc formatting rather than their traditional HFS+ - this is to take advantage of the latest ultra fast SSDs which Apple does not manufacture so they have had to bend the Mac to meet the specs. The problem is that any software not built for this file structure (or patched) will likely not work all so if you have bought a new Mac last year or so you will need Steam + an account + latest FM game version I would imagine. Or you can do what I have and get a bargain 4 / 8 core tower, put in a 4GB graphics card and continue to enjoy your legacy games - DVD game discs going for pennies on eBay.

Best


Nemo