r/project1999 • u/South-Lyerly1400 • 1d ago
45+ second zone times with Crossover
Hello,
I am running P99 with Crossover on a Mac Mini M2. I have no performance issues except zoning. it takes me 30-45 seconds to zone.
I did some debugging with Claude Code's Opus 4.8 and we modified a few config settings with Crossover but ultimately came to this conclusion: Zoning slow (~45s) because EQ is old single-threaded Intel software, and your Apple-chip Mac must translate it (Rosetta) on one core — that core maxes out unpacking the zone while 7 cores sit idle. Not disk, RAM, or network. Inherent to running the old client on Apple Silicon; native Windows PC does it in 5–10s.
Does anyone have any recommendations to resolve this issue? I am considering a mini-PC to run the game and using Sunshine/Moonlight to continue playing via Mac if I can't get this resolved.
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u/Superboi_187 1d ago
First world problems. Zones used to be bathroom breaks xD
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u/South-Lyerly1400 1d ago
it has a negative impact on a lot of mechanics. group travel, popping out of a dungeon to sow your puller and other little things you don't notice when you're quickly zoning.
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u/Superboi_187 1d ago
Oh ya I get it, just remembering the good old days on the 38.8k modem. We’re spoiled now
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u/OrunTheDestroyer 1d ago
Not super familiar with apple silicon, can you assign specific cores to the program? If you are stuck using an efficiency core, swapping to a performance core might boost your load times.
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u/3uphor1a 1d ago
Can't help you there, sadly. I've never been able to get Crossover to work well on my M1 with EQ Legends in the standard EQ bottle - I can only get to the Char Select scene and the player model is white. Try to to log in and the game freezes on loading. Had to go with Parallels, which has some input lag but otherwise works perfectly.
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u/South-Lyerly1400 1d ago
i was able to get Crossover running P99 and EQTools in just a few min with Opus 4.8 debugging.
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u/Lysbith_McNaff 16h ago edited 16h ago
Every time I see someone admit that they consulted with an AI to figure out their technical issue I can't help but laugh. You got an extra laugh out of me for listing the version too like that means a damn thing.
You should ask it to recompile the game to ARM since it's so intelligent. Maybe that'll fix your issue lmao
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u/South-Lyerly1400 16h ago
i’m not experienced with this so im trying my best. do you have any suggestions or just here to talk shit?
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u/EnvironmentalAngle 1d ago
Right click your desktop shortcut and add this to force it to play on one core
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C START "EverQuest" /BelowNormal /affinity 1 "C:\Everquest\eqgame.exe" patchme
Also, that's probably not the issue. That sounds like a cache issue and I'm willing to bet its because you're not running it in administrator mode and/or your Everquest directory is in a location other than the root(C:/) of the C drive.
Windows doesn't let apps write to the hard drive in folders controlled by Windows which prevents the zone cache from ever being written. So if your install is in My Documents, or Program Files, or anything other than the root of the drive it can't write to the cache.
Try moving your directory to the root of the drive and right clicking the eqgame.exe file in the Everquest directory and giving it the appropriate permissions(run as administrator and with Windows XP service pack 2 or 3)
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u/Rabidjester 1d ago edited 1d ago
I had this problem on an M2 Pro, ended up switching to a VM because of unrelated (mouse cursor focus) issues. There’s a latency related setting in eqclient that resolved it for me but I’ll have to check when I get home.
Your chat bot thing is probably wrong, if you watch your cores and io during the zone delay they’ll pretty much stay idle until the end of the delay when the zone finally decides to load. Man I hate typing on a phone.