TrackMania Nations Forever for Apple Silicon

Install TMNF with Competition Patch, working textures and audio, and a patched Wine runtime tuned for this game. The runtime includes D9VK, MoltenVK and an x87 translator that preserves the game's 24-bit floating-point precision.

This is an independent community project. The game and Microsoft DirectX are downloaded from their original hosts during installation, not redistributed here.

In game	Main menu

Both screenshots are from an M1 Pro in a 1280x720 window with the DXVK frame rate overlay enabled (DXVK_HUD=fps,frametimes).

Requirements

An Apple Silicon Mac, an internet connection, and Apple's command line tools for make (run xcode-select --install if they are missing). Rosetta 2 is also required; the installer adds it if necessary.

Close any existing TMNF session before installing or updating, then download this repository and open Terminal in its folder. Pick one of the two options below.

Option 1: install the prebuilt runtime

This downloads a ready-built runtime. Run:

make install

The installer downloads the versioned runtime from GitHub Releases, verifies its checksum, installs the game and creates two apps:

• TrackMania Nations Forever starts the game with Competition Patch.
• TrackMania Settings opens the original launcher to change graphics and audio settings. Close the game before changing these settings.

Save and close the settings launcher, then use the game app to play with Competition Patch.

The session supervisor tracks both settings and game executables, so a launcher exit alone does not authorize cleanup. Normal quits are quiet; failed or uncertain sessions show an alert with the log location. Uncertainty does not authorize killing a game that may still be running. Use make stop when you explicitly want to stop the selected prefix.

On the first launch the game shows its own "Network check" dialog for the peer-to-peer firewall test; click OK. The account screen follows. A launch takes a while to show a window; the game's windows may open behind others.

The apps go in /Applications when it is writable, otherwise in ~/Applications. You can remove the downloaded repository after installation. The apps use their installed support files, not the checkout.

To install from an archive you already downloaded instead, point the installer at it and give the checksum from the release:

version="$(cat VERSION)"
MACTMNF_RUNTIME_ARCHIVE="$HOME/Downloads/mactmnf-${version}-runtime.tar.xz" \
MACTMNF_RUNTIME_SHA256="<checksum from the release>" make install

If macOS refuses to open the game after a manual download, the archive picked up a quarantine flag in the browser. Clear it, then install:

version="$(cat VERSION)"
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "$HOME/Downloads/mactmnf-${version}-runtime.tar.xz"

Archives that make install fetches with curl are not quarantined, so this step is only for a browser download.

Option 2: build it yourself

This compiles the whole runtime from the pinned sources instead of downloading it, then installs the game. Install Homebrew and the full Xcode app, then select Xcode:

sudo xcode-select --switch /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer
make build
make install

Use a checkout path without spaces for source builds, as required by Wine's makefiles. Installed games and runtime folders support spaces.

make build installs missing build tools through Homebrew. It downloads pinned sources, checks archive hashes and Git revisions, applies this repository's patches, then compiles Wine, D9VK, x87sidecar and the runtime libraries locally. It does not require another Wine installation or a separate source checkout.

The complete runtime is written to .build/release/runtime. Downloads, sources, build logs and intermediate files stay under .build. Allow several gigabytes of disk space and a substantial first build. Builds use every CPU core by default; use MACTMNF_JOBS=4 make build to leave some free.

The deployment target is macOS 14. x87sidecar also depends on the installed Rosetta version; its compatibility probe must pass. See building and releasing for the tested host and limitations.

Everyday commands

Command	Action
make play	Start the same game as the app
make configure	Open the original settings launcher
make doctor	Check runtime, game, renderer, audio and mod installation
make stop	Stop Wine processes in this game's prefix
make install	Install missing files and refresh the app launchers
./bin/mactmnf play-vanilla	Run the official game without Competition Patch
./bin/mactmnf uninstall	Remove the Wine prefix after confirmation

A new installation starts with Nice shaders, post-processing and stadium water geometry disabled, four game threads and at most six opponents. Existing settings are preserved. Use the Settings app to adjust them.

The game runs in the display mode it is set to in TrackMania Settings (fullscreen or windowed, at the resolution you pick). On more than one monitor, fullscreen uses the primary display, so set the resolution to match it. To force a fixed windowed size instead, set MACTMNF_WINDOW_SIZE=1280x720 (any WxH); that runs the game inside a separate Wine virtual desktop for this session. Each dimension must be between 1 and 65535.

The renderer keeps a shader cache between launches. A first visit to a track can still stutter. The patches improve specific problems; they do not guarantee a particular frame rate. See runtime fixes and troubleshooting.

Where files go

Files	Default location
Game and Wine prefix	~/Games/TMNF/prefix
Saves, settings and replays for a new install	~/Games/TMNF/UserData/TmForever
Runtime and installed launcher scripts	~/Library/Application Support/MacTMNF
Download cache	~/Library/Caches/MacTMNF
App launch logs	~/Library/Logs/MacTMNF

Older local installations may still save to ~/Documents/TmForever; the installer keeps that existing arrangement. Uninstalling the prefix keeps the runtime, download cache and separate user data.

To choose another game or app folder, set it when installing:

MACTMNF_ROOT="$HOME/Games/TrackMania" \
MACTMNF_APPS_DIR="$HOME/Applications" make install

The apps remember these installation paths. When using commands from the checkout with a custom game folder, keep the same environment variables set.

App logs rotate before launch when they reach 2 MiB, retaining three numbered backups. A currently running verbose session can exceed that size because game output goes directly to a file, not a pipe that could interrupt a surviving game.

For a diagnostic comparison, MACTMNF_X87=off make play uses stock Rosetta math. MACTMNF_AUDIO=off make play disables sound. Normal installs enable both audio and the patched translator. These temporary overrides do not change saved game settings.

Development

make check runs shell checks and offline tests. make smoke runs Windows regression probes against the selected Wine prefix, not an isolated test prefix. It needs an installed runtime and initialized prefix, Rosetta 2, Python 3, both 32-bit and 64-bit MinGW-w64 C compilers, and network access for the HTTPS probe. Close the game and Settings app first; audio checks need a working output device. make package creates the runtime archive, matching source archive, and SHA-256 files for a release. See docs/building.md before distributing them.

This project's own scripts and tests use the MIT license. Patches and bundled third-party code retain their upstream licenses. See LICENSE and the licenses directory in each runtime archive.

Acknowledgements

This runtime is thin glue over other people's hard work. With gratitude to:

• Wine for the Windows compatibility layer everything here is built on.
• DXVK and the d9vk fork that turn the game's Direct3D 9 calls into Vulkan.
• MoltenVK for running Vulkan on Apple's Metal.
• Apple's Rosetta 2 for translating the game's x86 code on Apple Silicon.
• athei's x87sidecar and cooperative Wine handshake, which keep TMNF's 24-bit x87 math intact under Rosetta.
• tomashu's TMLoader, and the TrackMania Competition Patch and CoreMod that make online play current.
• GnuTLS, Nettle, GMP, libtasn1, libunistring, FreeType and mingw-w64, which the runtime links or is built with.
• Nadeo and Ubisoft for TrackMania Nations Forever itself.

Trademarks and game content belong to their owners. This is an unofficial community project, not affiliated with Nadeo or Ubisoft.