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HomeWorld 2 on new alu iMac?

P

Padraic

macrumors regular
Original poster
Hi all, I've been lurking around here for quite a while. Got tired of Windows and decided to switch. I just recently bought myself a post-deployment present (20" 2.4ghz iMac) and I Love it!

I'm curious if anyone has Homeworld 2 working on a new iMac and how it runs under Rosetta (HW2 is not U/B).

My next question is if I bought the game is it simple to install? I don't have any non U/B applications at the moment and not sure what the process is. I'm sure in typical Apple fashion it is almost invisible to the user...

Thanks!

Patrick
 
Welcome to macrumors! Nice buy too.

I have previous generation Macbook Pro (see sig) and I tried to run HW2 on it in the first few days of owning it, but under rosetta, in my experience, and at any resolution is at most 5 fps. Absolutely unplayable. Sorry, but I'm really disappointed too, and I may get a PC version of the game and play it under Boot Camp.

Any non-UB application runs as any OS X app should run (just a bit slower). It is an entirely invisible process.
 
Thanks for the info Sammich. Looks like if I'm gonna play it, it'll be under bootcamp. That's already where I'm playing most of my games.
 
I bought a new 15.4" MBP, with a 256MB GeForce 8600M GT, at the end of November which came with Leopard. I put Boot Camp and XP SP 2 on it and installed the PC version of Homeworld 2. The graphics are so choppy that it's unplayable!

I installed the latest drivers from Apple which improved it a little bit, but it's still unbearable even with all the settings turned off or low.

Half-Life 2 seems to run fine, though, and I think that's a more graphically demanding game.

Has anyone gotten decent results with Homeworld 2 and Boot Camp?
 
Homeworld 2 under boot camp

Well, I can say that HW (PC Version) works (worked) GREAT under bootcamp (Win XP 32 bit) on my MB Pro. The only real issue was that the built in screen res options didn't match my own and I had to pick one of the presets that was closest (and now everything is slightly squished).

Actually I shouldn't say that's my only issue because for some reason it stopped letting me play network games. It worked at first, but when I try it now it won't find any networks (even on my local LAN). I don't know what changed.... maybe a Windows security update or something; although I tried turning off the FW, just to test. If anyone else experiences the same issue and has a solution, I'd very much like to hear from you.
 
Actually, I was able to solve the problem easily. I simply toggled the "enable vsync" setting in the video options. That was it!

NOW my issue is with Neverwinter Nights, though this is much worse. I occasionally get BSODs with the IRQL_not_less_or_equal error. I had been occasionally getting the infinite loop nv4_disp.dll error, but then I rolled my graphics driver back to the original Bootcamp one. Now I've got the occasional BSOD. Again, HL2 runs just fine.
 
The demo runs very well on my MacBook but there's some texture corruption. I haven't tried it recently with the new Leopard graphics update.

On the Windows side I've had HW2 since launch. I need to turn on VSync since there's an issue with ATi cards but it works great once that's on.
 
Maybe that's why I didn't have a problem - My macbook has an nvidia card (nvidia has always been my fav so I'm quite happy about that).

Has anyone who's had problems with HW2 have an nvidia card?
 
soccerjoe5 said:
any updates on this? i'd like to play homeworld 2 on my MBP (Merom)
Click to expand...

Why don't u download the demo and try it out?
http://www.macgamefiles.com/detail.php?item=18375 lists version 1.0 of the demo only.

http://www.cnet.com.au/downloads/0,239030384,10647001s,00.htm lists version 1.1.1, so you should probably go with that (even though it's not a UB).

I don't know if there are any later versions, and the aspyr web site (which i usually find to be VERY lacking in terms of content) doesn't say anything about the demo (http://www.aspyr.com/product/info/35)

I remember trying it out once on my first generation intel iMac with the radeon x1600 (256 megs) and it did NOT run well. Playable, but I had to turn down most of the graphics settings.
 
redsteven said:
Why don't u download the demo and try it out?
http://www.macgamefiles.com/detail.php?item=18375 lists version 1.0 of the demo only.

http://www.cnet.com.au/downloads/0,239030384,10647001s,00.htm lists version 1.1.1, so you should probably go with that (even though it's not a UB).

I don't know if there are any later versions, and the aspyr web site (which i usually find to be VERY lacking in terms of content) doesn't say anything about the demo (http://www.aspyr.com/product/info/35)

I remember trying it out once on my first generation intel iMac with the radeon x1600 (256 megs) and it did NOT run well. Playable, but I had to turn down most of the graphics settings.
Click to expand...

i've got the windows version here at home, so i'd hate to shell out for a new copy for mac. i plan to run it in bootcamp in XP by the way.

anyone able to run it in XP through bootcamp in the MBP?
 
soccerjoe5 said:
i've got the windows version here at home, so i'd hate to shell out for a new copy for mac. i plan to run it in bootcamp in XP by the way.

anyone able to run it in XP through bootcamp in the MBP?
Click to expand...

Yep, and it works great! Just make sure you toggle the "enable VSync" option if you get slow/choppy graphics.

A word of warning, I nearly bought the Mac version, too, until I read in the details that it can only play network games with other Macs! What's up with that?!?
 
I can also attest to the fact that the Mac version of Homeworld 2 works great on Intel Macs. The PowerPC emulation is fast enough for this game. Just play with the vsync option as others have mentioned. It'll run smooth even at your monitor's max resolution.
 
I GOT IT!!!

It took me about 15-20 minutes of testing but I finally figured out what was killing my performance. It's the "detail geometry" option. If I set that to off I can run it at it's highest resolution and all the other settings turned up and get a decent framerate. There's still a little bit of skipping if there are a lot of ships on screen, but it's still pretty good.

BTW, does anybody know how to display the framerate in Homeworld?

in case you were wondering, my specs are: Rev A 20" iMac - 2 GHz core duo (not core 2), X1600 with 256 VRAM, and 2 gigs of RAM.
 
soccerjoe5 said:
anyone able to run it in XP through bootcamp in the MBP?
Click to expand...

I run it in XP/bootcamp. It works great. The only issue is the aspect ratio. My Macbook Pro's resolution isn't one of the defaults for PC homeworld and the closest one makes the screen look a little squished.

Oh, and I had to disable UPnP on my router or Network play wouldn't work.
 
hardlynoticable said:
I run it in XP/bootcamp. It works great. The only issue is the aspect ratio. My Macbook Pro's resolution isn't one of the defaults for PC homeworld and the closest one makes the screen look a little squished.

Oh, and I had to disable UPnP on my router or Network play wouldn't work.
Click to expand...
You can set custom resolutions using the command line options. Keep in mind the interface is bound to 4:3 resolutions so it'll stretch.
 
Homeworld 2 (Mac) runs great on my G4/G5!

I guess it will be a while before I switch over to the Intel side if it has problems running Homeworld II.

It's runs great on my G4's and G5's!

Anybody want to play multiplayer?

Jim
 
JaimesBeam said:
I guess it will be a while before I switch over to the Intel side if it has problems running Homeworld II.

It's runs great on my G4's and G5's!

Anybody want to play multiplayer?

Jim
Click to expand...

I would, but the Mac version can't play networked with the PC version (according to Relic). Not sure what you mean about Intel problems. Like many games, you have to tweak options and settings to get the best performance on your specific machine.
 
Problems running Homeworld 2 on new intel Mac

I recently got a new intel MBP (not one of the brand spanken new ones, but one that came out right before). I installed Homeworld 2 fine, but it crashes as soon as I hit play in the config utility. The only things I can change are the screen resolution and whether it's windowed and neither of those have an effect.

I see people talking about toggling vsync I don't see where to do that. Could someone tell me where that is or give me some other suggestion?
 
Over on RelicNews there appears to a problem with running HomeWorld 2 on newer Macs under Leopard. Could you post the crash log to at least get some sense of what's happening?
 
elos04 said:
I recently got a new intel MBP (not one of the brand spanken new ones, but one that came out right before). I installed Homeworld 2 fine, but it crashes as soon as I hit play in the config utility. The only things I can change are the screen resolution and whether it's windowed and neither of those have an effect.

I see people talking about toggling vsync I don't see where to do that. Could someone tell me where that is or give me some other suggestion?
Click to expand...

I assume you're playing the Mac version and not the PC version under Boot Camp, correct?

I tried out the Mac version on my Leopard machine and I had the same problem. I think I eventually fixed it by tweaking my permissions. I put my game folder under the main Applications folder in a folder called "Games". I used my Admin account to install it, but my Standard to run it, which caused the conflict.

I can't remember what exactly I had to change, but you might start by doing chmod 777 on your HW2 folder and see what happens.
 
I only use the administer account so that is where I installed the game and where I tried to play it from.

I'm not sure how to do chmod 777, but I'll try to look it up.

Here are the problem details. I hope they pass for a crash log.

Process: Homeworld 2 [639]
Path: /Games/Homeworld 2/Homeworld 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Homeworld 2
Identifier: com.aspyr.hw2
Version: Homeworld 2 version 1.1.0 (1.0)
Code Type: PPC (Translated)
Parent Process: launchd [82]

Date/Time: 2008-11-16 17:10:55.776 -0800
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.5.5 (9F33)
Report Version: 6

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x00000000c000000b
Crashed Thread: 0

Thread 0 Crashed:
0 ??? 0x83c9d8b2 0 + 2211043506

Thread 1:
0 ??? 0x800bc4a6 0 + 2148254886
1 ??? 0x800c3c9c 0 + 2148285596
2 translate 0xb818b6ea CallPPCFunctionAtAddressInt + 202886
3 ??? 0x800ed6f5 0 + 2148456181
4 ??? 0x800ed5b2 0 + 2148455858

Thread 0 crashed with X86 Thread State (32-bit):
eax: 0xc000000b ebx: 0xb813cfcc ecx: 0x80802e00 edx: 0x83a01cec
edi: 0xb81d8794 esi: 0xb81d8770 ebp: 0x8080d180 esp: 0xb7fffacc
ss: 0x0000001f efl: 0x00010213 eip: 0x83c9d8b2 cs: 0x00000017
ds: 0x0000001f es: 0x0000001f fs: 0x00000000 gs: 0x00000037
cr2: 0xc000000b

Binary Images:
0xb8000000 - 0xb81d7fe7 translate ??? (???) /usr/libexec/oah/translate

Translated Code Information:
Rosetta Version: 21.03
Args: /Games/Homeworld 2/Homeworld 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Homeworld 2 -psn_0_327760
Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)

Thread 0: Crashed (0xb7fffacc, 0x83c9d8b2)
0x00232ca8: /Games/Homeworld 2/Homeworld 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Homeworld 2 : ___pformatter + 208
0x00233c28: /Games/Homeworld 2/Homeworld 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Homeworld 2 : _vsnprintf + 68
0x00233d00: /Games/Homeworld 2/Homeworld 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Homeworld 2 : _sprintf + 56
0x0001d11c: /Games/Homeworld 2/Homeworld 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Homeworld 2 : GameRulesLibrary::ReadGameRulesFromArchives(char const*) + 204
0x0001d9ac: /Games/Homeworld 2/Homeworld 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Homeworld 2 : GameRulesLibrary::ReadAllGameRules() + 924
0x0001dafc: /Games/Homeworld 2/Homeworld 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Homeworld 2 : GameRulesLibrary::Startup() + 76
0x00020660: /Games/Homeworld 2/Homeworld 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Homeworld 2 : initStartupSystems(InitList*, void (*)(int, int, wchar_t const*)) + 176
0x00082958: /Games/Homeworld 2/Homeworld 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Homeworld 2 : AppInit::Startup() + 40
0x00083660: /Games/Homeworld 2/Homeworld 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Homeworld 2 : AppObj::Run() + 96
0x00277f80: /Games/Homeworld 2/Homeworld 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Homeworld 2 : Plat::App:😛latWinMain(void*, void*, char*, int, AppInterface*) + 128
0x00002978: /Games/Homeworld 2/Homeworld 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Homeworld 2 : _main + 2264
0x00001d4c: /Games/Homeworld 2/Homeworld 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Homeworld 2 : __start + 392
0x00001bc0: /Games/Homeworld 2/Homeworld 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Homeworld 2 : ___code_start__ + 48
0x00000000: /Games/Homeworld 2/Homeworld 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Homeworld 2 : + 0

PPC Thread State
srr0: 0x00000000 srr1: 0x00000000 vrsave: 0x00000000
cr: 0xXXXXXXXX xer: 0x20000000 lr: 0x002335f0 ctr: 0x002319c4
r00: 0x00000000 r01: 0xbfffa640 r02: 0xbfffaa38 r03: 0xc000000b
r04: 0x00000001 r05: 0xbfffa6c8 r06: 0xbfffaa30 r07: 0x00000001
r08: 0x00afc080 r09: 0x000d9630 r10: 0x0098f004 r11: 0xa02c8050
r12: 0x00233a30 r13: 0x0040abfc r14: 0x0001d070 r15: 0x0000000d
r16: 0x0000000d r17: 0xc000000b r18: 0xbfffa907 r19: 0xbfffa908
r20: 0xbfffaa90 r21: 0xbfffaab0 r22: 0x0040ab22 r23: 0x00000000
r24: 0x00000000 r25: 0x0040ab24 r26: 0x00000000 r27: 0x0000000d
r28: 0x0040d628 r29: 0xbfffa9b0 r30: 0x00233a30 r31: 0x00232bfc
 
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