Homeworld 2 Classic will not start.

[A Burnt Neck]

I bought the collection a few days ago, loaded it, everything seemed fine. Honeworld Remastered 1 and 2 work fine, and even Homeworld Classic, bur Homeworld 2 Classic, when i try to open fails each time.

I've reinstalled the game, so im kinda at a loss as to what to do. Any help would be appreciated.

[[=W=] Hawk]

If you get an answer i would like to know how to fix this same issue. HW2 Classic just shuts it self down after launch.

[Sammi79]

AMD graphics, right?

[A Burnt Neck]

Yes actually

[Væ]

Ok I have also been on the extemely painful and time consuming journey of trying to get this game to work and ive come to a semi-fix (that fixes all the other problems and leads to one more penultimate problem)

BTW Im a AMD user so this'll more than likely only help you if have an AMD

1. If you start you Homeworld 2 Classic and it doesnt even load. Make sure you have this atioglxx.dll inside your
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Homeworld\Homeworld2Classic\Bin\Release

Link: http://www.megafileupload.com/en/file/550087/Doom3BFGFix-zip.html
Use your system bit value 64 or 32

2. You now should be at the Black screen (with no sounds) and if you click any where your Homeworld2.exe will crash phase (My personal Favorite)

3. Then you have to have a HW2 Classic mod (I havent found a way around this) and in the HWR launcher select MODS Then HW2 Classic and select your mod but in the command line parameters put -nopbuffer and run the game and wait like >10 seconds
DO THIS EVERY TIME OR YOU'LL STILL GET THE FIRST PROBLEM

If you need a mod i'd suggest this one
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=452695707&searchtext=

4. This is where I'm currently at you'll be able to launch the game and it'll still be a black screen but you will hear the Gearbox intro and eventually you'll be able to hear the main menu UI noises

Thats as far as i got the only fix ive found for the last bit only works on Nvidia cards. Gearbox pls help

[Sammi79]

OK folks there are 2 fixes for this problem.

It seems to be caused by incompatible OpenGL calls from the software to AMD's OpenGL library (part of the driver)

It can be resolved by using an older driver or by using a legacy version of the atioglxx.dll in the game executable folder. Exactly which version depends on your exact hardware, and which OS you use - it differs from user to user. I would advise downloading the legacy driver from AMD and extracting the .dll from it if you want to try this route rather than using obsoleted third party sites like mentioned above (although if you're really lucky it just might work for you) because you can try different driver versions in chronological order until you find the one that works for you.

[edit for link to post containing detailed info to come shortly]

A more recently discovered and much easier method is to create a shortcut to the Homeworld2.exe and in the target box after the last " type a space then:

-nopbuffer

which seems to fix the problem for everyone whom the overriding .dll method does not, especially on newer x64 win 10 systems.

[Sammi79]

If using Windows 10 try this first:

OK found a simple fix that may work for you folks (it works for me, without using an old dll override on Win 10x64 with an AMD R9-285x). I take no credit as someone else found this one.

You need to create a shortcut to the Homeworld2.exe first, then right click it and select properties. In the target box (where the directory path and file name are listed inside quotes) after the end quote add a space then:

-nopbuffer

then click apply to save it. Run from the shortcut and report back here if you still have issues.

If this doesn't work THEN try these steps - just be aware that the 2 methods here are mutually exclusive, you should only use one or the other not both.

Here is the list of legacy drivers for AMD graphics & Windows 7 (Windows 8 only use the top 4)

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/previous?os=Windows%207%20-%2064

For me, the 14.4 version works so try that one first. Follow the instructions below to extract the opengl library .dll we want to put in override:

1) Download the driver from AMD. Run it (self extracting zip) and make a note of the extraction directory, or change it to your preference. The default is C:\AMD\AMD-Catalyst-14.4-64Bit-Win8.1-Win8-Win7-WHQL-Aug. When it has finished extracting Click 'Cancel' to abort the install of the whole driver package.

2) Navigate into extracted package \Packages\Drivers\Display\WB6A_INF\, then select the folder B171094 with a single left click, then hold 'Shift' and Right Click the B171094 folder and select 'Open command window here' from the context menu.

3) At the command prompt, type:

expand atioglxx.dl_ atioglxx.dll

and press Enter. A dialogue will inform you the file has unpacked so you can close the command window. Now you can simply cut/copy/paste the atioglxx.dll file from the B171094 folder into your \Homeworld2Classic\bin\release folder.

4) If it does not work go back to the driver list and try the previous driver until you find the one that works for you, hopefully you will not have to do this as I have seen no problems with version 14.4 so far.