I wanted to play on Fox and on Tygem on macOS. On an Apple Silicon (M1, M2 processors etc.) it’s possible to install the iOS version of Tygem using the App Store and run it natively but I really dislike that version because after every move it requires you to click a button to confirm and moreover it is plagued by intrusive full-screen Unity ads.
One way might have been to use Parallels Desktop to run a Windows virtual machine, but that is a heavy solution. It also requires many Gigabytes of disk space, which is quite limited on a MacBook Air.
But I was able to get Fox and Tygem to run using CrossOver, a commercial version of Wine. This works on both the Intel version of macOS and on Apple Sililcon.
You will need CrossOver. For Fox, you will need the Fox installer. For Tygem, you will need the Tygem installer and a DLL file that is missing in the default installation.
From https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover download the “Free Trial” version. At the time of writing this downloads CrossOver version 21. Install CrossOver.
Installing the Tygem client
From http://tygemgo.com download TygemGlobalSetup.exe by clicking on the white stone in the upper right area of the home page. If you don’t see it, disable your ad blocker.
From http://www.dlldownloader.com/mfc42-dll/ download the 32-bit x86 version of mfc42.dll
Start CrossOver. It should open with a window that has a big blue “Install a Windows Application” button. If not, then from the “Configure” menu, choose “Install Software…”. This will open the “CrossOver Software Installer” dialog. It has several tabs. In the “Select Application” tab, choose “Unlisted applcation”. In the “Select Installer” tab, click “Choose Installer File…”. In the file dialog, choose the TygemGlobalSetup.exe installer. In the “Select Bottle” tab, choose “New Windows 7 Bottle…” (not the 64-bit version); use “Tygem” as the bottle name. Click “Continue”. It will create the “Tygem” bottle, then run the Tygem installer. Follow the instructions in the installer. Now CrossOver’s main dialog should show a “Tygem” bottle that contains a “TygemGlobal” app.
But when you double-click “TygemGlobal”, it will crash. That is because it needs the mfc42.dll.
Bottles are kept in your ~/Library folder and the mfc42.dll needs to go into the C:\Windows\System32 directory, so from a macOS terminal, do:
cp mfc42.dll ~/Library/Application\ Support/CrossOver/Bottles/Tygem/dosdevices/c:/windows/system32/
Just to be sure, quit CrossOver and restart it.
Now if you double-click “TygemGlobal”, the app should work. A proxy for the Tygem app is also installed in ~/Applications/CrossOver/TongYang Online/TygemGlobal/TygemGlobal.app so you can create an alias to it, drag it into the dock or run it with a launcher like Alfred.
Installing the Fox client
Installing the Fox client is easier than installing the Tygem client because you don’t need any extra files. Download the installer from the Fox weiqi site. Then follow the steps described above.
After the 14-day free trial of CrossOver expires you’ll have to buy it for €59 but that’s still cheaper than Parallels Desktop or a separate Windows laptop.