Multiple WoW applications on a Mac?

[JU1CYFRU1T]

First, let me say this... I am a multi-box n00b... but not a "forum" (in the general sense) n00b so I did try to search for this, but I could NOT find anything related to what I wanted to know... so here it goes.

I found this Terminal code to run multiple applications of WoW on my mac, but I wanted to know if there is any variable that I needed to change to make a 3rd/4th/5th? I am at work, so I can't test it out... and I don't want to break my WoW install, so I wanted to ask first. Here is the code:

 
#!/bin/sh 
p1="/Applications/World of Warcraft" 
p2=$p1/WoWCopy 
mkdir "$p2" 
ln -s "$p1/Data" "$p2/Data" 
ditto -X "$p1/World of Warcraft.app" "$p2/World of Warcraft.app"

I know ZERO about writing or reading code, but I can follow instructions... so getting the code into termial doesn't scare me, but is there anything in that string that I would need to change so that I can "do it again"? I have three accounts, and I want to run them all at the same time, with different addons for each account. My Shaman doesn't need "Tankadin2" in his addon list, and my Warlock doesn't need "Healbot" for anything... etc etc.

If this has already been asked/answered, a link would be great. I tried the wiki, the forums, and even google... but when I search "multiple mac applications" I was getting results with "multiple shaman" or "macro"... so after 20 minutes of hunting... I am starting my own thread.

aTdHvAaNnKcSe

TL;DR?

I know how to make a copy of my WoW application, but I don't know if it will work twice... help me understand that code ^^

[Indestructigal]

You would need to change p2 for each additional copy you want to create.

To explain in a bit more detail: in the code you quoted, p1 is the directory for your original World of Warcraft install. p2 is the directory you want to create for your second copy. The code simply creates a directory for a new copy of WoW (i.e. p2), links your original Data directory to the copy, and copies the WoW program into the copy directory.

Personally, I keep all my copies directly under the Applications directory, so my p2 looks more like:

p2="/Applications/wowcopy2"

I also add

ln -s "$p1/Interface" "$p2/Interface"
ditto -X "$p1/World of Warcraft Launcher.app" "$p2/World of Warcraft Launcher.app"

The first keeps me from having to update my AddOns for every instance of WoW, but it isn't necessary to do that.

I think I needed the Launcher line when I switched my account to battle.net, but it hasn't been necessary since. Besides, you really don't want to fire off WoW from the Launcher in your second copies because everything will get messed up if there's a patch to download and install. You want to use World of Warcraft.app all the time instead.

Finally, I also link my WTF/Account/<account> directories, but that's a pretty personal choice. To do that, you would need to add lines to create the $p2/WTF anf $p2/WTF/Account directories and then link the account-specific subdirectories.

To use the script a second time to create a third WoW, you would just edit it to say something like p2="/Applications/wowcopy3" and run it again.

Oh, and remember that every time there is a patch, you will need to re-run the ditto commands for each of your copies.

[JU1CYFRU1T]

Thank you for the explanation... but it appears I was overly confindent in my ability to follow instructions. I could NOT get the code to work, no matter what I did. To be more specific, even when just copy/pasting the code, it would not work. I will have to try your extra line of code for battle.net, because I ALWAYS got this error:



Is this because I am missing the line: ditto -X "$p1/World of Warcraft Launcher.app" "$p2/World of Warcraft Launcher.app"

Where would this go... and does the code get copy/pasted to textedit directly as is, or do I need to remove line-breaks? If I am reading this correctly, it should look like this when I am done (exactly like this?):

 
#!/bin/sh 
p1="/Applications/World of Warcraft" 
p2=$p1/WoWCopy 
mkdir "$p2" 
ln -s "$p1/Data" "$p2/Data" 
ditto -X "$p1/World of Warcraft.app" "$p2/World of Warcraft.app" 
ln -s "$p1/Interface" "$p2/Interface" 
ditto -X "$p1/World of Warcraft Launcher.app" "$p2/World of Warcraft Launcher.app"

I am running this code in terminal (found on wowwiki, iirc):

chmod +x ~/wowcopy.sh; ~/wowcopy.sh

Is that correct? what am I missing.... do spaces ( ) at the end of the lines make any difference? I don't know... I am simply asking questions because I don't understand how it all works.

I couldn't even duplicate the WoW folders correctly last night... I tried the [cmd]+d... but it didn't work. I had to copy/paste the folder back into applications to get things up and running last night. Obviously, I would LOVE to get this method ^ working, and delete those other two folders (@15GB each) 8|



EDIT:

And the second "copy" (third instance) would look like this?

#!/bin/sh 
p1="/Applications/World of Warcraft" 
p2=$p1/WoWCopy2 
mkdir "$p2" 
ln -s "$p1/Data" "$p2/Data" 
ditto -X "$p1/World of Warcraft.app" "$p2/World of Warcraft.app" 
ln -s "$p1/Interface" "$p2/Interface" 
ditto -X "$p1/World of Warcraft Launcher.app" "$p2/World of Warcraft Launcher.app"

And pointer:

chmod +x ~/wowcopy2.sh; ~/wowcopy2.sh

Is that correct, or am I doing things incorrectly?

Thanks for the help,

Thejuicebox

[Fef]

I know it's not what you want to hear, but I thought I would let you know about my experience :

I have been running 5 copies of WoW on an iMac and then on a Mac Pro flawlessly using bootcamp and a copy of M$ Vista. I use Vista in a light version, and only for gaming. The only drawback (other than philosophical) is that I have no access to Mac OS while playing, obviously. A big advantage is that my Mac OS drive, that have to deal with more important stuff (read "work related") don't get clutered with WoW folders and things like that. Running Windows for gaming gives you access to more games in general, and to the nicesest multiboxing software around.

[MultiMacBox23]

I also have a mac pro, and i have gone to the dark side and loaded Vista strictly for games.

reasons?

keyclone, and now running innerspace. (both clonekeys programs choke up running 5 wows, and have no "maximizer" functions)
Wow performs slightly better under DirectX (windows) vs OpenGL (OSX) with 5 clients open, an every little bit helps, and will let me running higher graphics settings

PS, "Fef" if you want to access your OSX drives (i usually like to load a movie to watch while i play but they are all on my mac partition) i use "HFSexplorer" it lets
windows read (and only read) a Mac HFS partition. it only requires you have have java runtime installed.

PS "JUICYFRUIT" if you still want to do it in OSX the script i used was one i got from wowwiki

#!/bin/sh 
p1="/Applications/World of Warcraft" 
p2=$p1/WoWCopy1
mkdir "$p2" 
ln -s "$p1/Data" "$p2/Data" 
ditto -X "$p1/World of Warcraft.app" "$p2/World of Warcraft.app" 
ln -s "$p1/Interface" "$p2/Interface" 
p3=$p1/WoWCopy2
mkdir "$p3" 
ln -s "$p1/Data" "$p3/Data" 
ditto -X "$p1/World of Warcraft.app" "$p3/World of Warcraft.app" 
ln -s "$p1/Interface" "$p3/Interface" 
p4=$p1/WoWCopy3
mkdir "$p4" 
ln -s "$p1/Data" "$p4/Data" 
ditto -X "$p1/World of Warcraft.app" "$p4/World of Warcraft.app" 
ln -s "$p1/Interface" "$p4/Interface" 
p5=$p1/WoWCopy4
mkdir "$p5" 
ln -s "$p1/Data" "$p5/Data" 
ditto -X "$p1/World of Warcraft.app" "$p5/World of Warcraft.app" 
ln -s "$p1/Interface" "$p5/Interface" 

i did not add in the lines linking the warcraft launcher.app - i never use the launcher to run the game.
i just took the lines starting from p2=p1 and copied them and pasted them at the end and changed p2 to p3......pasted again, changed to p4, and pasted again, then changed to p5
that way it would copy it 4 more times, with 1 run of the script.

i manually navigated to the directory with the wowcopy script and did a chmod wowcopy.sh
without the ~/ infront of it.... i cant remember if i had to put a sudo infront of it, that might help

its been so long since i set it up.

[Indestructigal]

From the error you posted, it looks like text formatting gunk got mixed into your shell script file. I'm guessing you used TextEdit to create the shell script?

I always use "vi" to edit my scripts, but that's not really something anybody is going to pick up quickly. I believe you can use TextEdit, it just requires a couple extra steps. Re-open the file, select all text, use Format->Make Plain Text and re-save the file. That should make TextEdit leave out all the text formatting stuff.

Once you get into Terminal, you can use the "cat" command below to make sure no extraneous formatting commands got into the file before executing:

$ cat wowcopy.sh

If you see stuff like "{\fonttbl\f0\fswiss\f0charset Helvetica;}" you don't have a plain text file.

Your last step is really two commands: "chmod +x wowcopy.sh" is the command that makes the script executable (the default is for newly created files to not be executable). You only need to run this command once after you first create the file.

The second command, "./wowcopy.sh" (to run it fromt the current directroy) or "~/wowcopy.sh" (assuming you saved it in your home directory), is what runs the script.

Of course, you can also just simply execute the commands by hand in Terminal since there aren't that many commands to type in and you only need re-execute a few of them each time a new patch comes out:

mkdir "/Applications/wowcopy2"
ln -s "/Applications/World of Warcraft/Data" "/Applications/wowcopy2/Data"
ln -s "/Applications/World of Warcraft/Interface" "/Applications/wowcopy2/Interface"
ditto -X "/Applications/World of Warcraft/World of Warcraft.app" "/Applications/wowcopy2/World of Warcraft.app"

I wouldn't worry about the Launcher line that much. I mentioned it only because I needed it once, but I don't expect leaving it out will cause you problems at this point.

[JU1CYFRU1T]

Thanks everyone for your help.

@ Fef & MultiMacBox23,

Thanks for the advice, but I would REALLY rather run my games on my Mac partition. I have nothing against windows, and have a partition set up for Vista... but I tend to do other things in the background while I play wow, and it's just easier on the Mac partition. I have the folders copy/pasted back into my Application drive, but the extra 30GB of wasted space is (obviously) less than ideal.

And thanks for the code to make all 5 copies of the app in one simple shell. Now I don't have to fight with 4 different .sh files. The only part I need to figure out is what the Terminal code would look like to execute that code... or is it the same? I would think it needs to say "execute copy 1, execute copy 2, etc"... and not a simple "execute this one command" or do I have that wrong? Would it be as simple as just running the one shell, and that shell makes all 4 copies of the app?



@Indestructigal,

Thanks for the tip. I am 99.999% sure that the file is saved in RichText, so that is my problem. TextEditor would not allow me to save the file in .sh, I had to save it as .sh.rtf and then delete the .rtf... is there a better format to save the file in originally, something like .html or the like (if converting it doesn't work)?

I was only concerned about the launcher script because I have upgraded one of my accounts (my main) to battle.net, while the others are still standard blizzard accounts. Will that make any difference?



Lastly, to change the subject (slightly... but it's my thread, so here it goes)... where would I go to start learning how to code for the mac? I don't want to learn a bunch of coding that is going to be useless for me (read C#), so is it best to just pick up a book and start reading, or are there good programming classes that I could take? I am not near Cuppertino, but I am in California (if that helps).

Thanks again guys (and gals?). I will be giving this code another try tonight after I get home from the beach. AHHH the life of a SoCal resident is SOOO rough. lawl

[Indestructigal]

Would it be as simple as just running the one shell, and that shell makes all 4 copies of the app?

Yep, the code that MultiMacBox23 posted is one shell script that just makes all four copies.

is there a better format to save the file in originally, something like .html or the like (if converting it doesn't work)?

I believe after you do the Format->Make Plain Text thing, TextEdit gets less picky about the file extension and lets you save it as a .sh file outright.

I was only concerned about the launcher script because I have upgraded one of my accounts (my main) to battle.net, while the others are still standard blizzard accounts. Will that make any difference?

I think you should be okay without the Launcher in your copies.

For me, it was a while ago, immediately after switched my accounts over to Battle.net I couldn't log in using the regular "World of Warcraft.app" and kept getting an error when I tried. So, I ditto-ed the Launcher and logged in that way, which worked. However, after that I never had to use the Launcher again and have gone back to just using "World of Warcraft.app". Just keep it in mind as a possible future trick if you merge your other accounts and have trouble logging in afterwards.


Sorry, I don't really have any advice to offer on the programming question. I'm really more of an OS/system-level programmer and don't really mess around much with real apps.

[JU1CYFRU1T]

So the script I would use to run the code that was given is the same ( chmod +x ~/wowcopy.sh; ~/wowcopy.sh ) given that this is what I name the .sh file..... SWEET.

Now I just need to go out and get 2 mor accounts (only have 3 atm) and buy a computer than can handle that many accounts at one time (ROFL). I have plans in the works to get a new machine this fall... and it is going to be "teh r0x0rz". new i7 processor, 60GB SSD drive, 1TB media storage, 6GB tripple channel RAM... yeah... 5-box, here I come!!!!! all connected to my 60" HDTV (ftw)!

[Indestructigal]

Oh, I forgot to mention ... I recently discovered how to scale my other WoW windows smaller than WoW normally allows on a Mac so they all fit better on the screen.

If you fire up a Terminal session and execute the command:

$ defaults write com.blizzard.worldofwarcraft AppleDisplayScaleFactor 0.5

The next time you start up a WoW client after this, you will be able to shrink its window to 50% the normal smallest size.

You will want to reset the scaling factor after this, with the following command, or WoW will always start up this way:

$ defaults write com.blizzard.worldofwarcraft AppleDisplayScaleFactor 1

There's probably an easier way to have the 2-5th WoW clients do this, but right now I just start up my first client, then execute the scaling command, then start up following clients, and finally reset the scaling factor to 1. Now if only it provided PiP functionality!