Homeworld Remastered Collection

What works

Installing the game (use a 32 bit wine prefix straight up because the homeworld launcher in my experience throws an access violation error in 64 bit mode)

Playing the game (so far only tested singleplayer)

What does not

Unable to run launcher post initial install script in Steam (see workarounds)

Workarounds

before you begin install, set your WINEPREFIX (or create one) as 32 bit (e.g. run `WINEARCH=win32 winecfg` from the command line). I set my windows version to 10 in winecfg

after installing and initially running the steam install script (e.g. launch the game in steam) to install directx and visual c++ runtime 2014, run the wine uninstaller
Uninstall .NET Framework 4.0 using wine uninstaller (otherwise the launcher won't run due to mscoree.dll error)

launch winetricks on your 32 bit prefix and install dotnet40 (can also install corefonts and use the fontsmooth=rgb if you feel like doing that too, I did but I don't think it's relevant to getting the game to run)

escape the gearbox video after launching the game, it has an audio loop issue (other reports mention this too)

note that upon first launch, I had to set the game textures to medium in settings to prevent stuttering

What was not tested

multiplayer

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: Nvidia
• Driver: proprietary

Additional Comments

game runs after performing the workarounds. I was able to spend a few hours playing HWRM with no issues aside from the initial video glitch mentioned in other reports.

Last update: 2021-04-17

HW:RC requires the following software:

• Steam, only for the Steam version of the game (users may want to use the native Linux client instead, see information at the top of the page)
• .NET Framework 4.0 (required by the game launcher)
• LittleCMS 2 library (liblcms2-2 in Debian and Ubuntu)
• PNG library (libpng16-16 in Debian and Ubuntu)

Please refer to the AppDB entries of Steam and .NET Framework 4.0 for detailed installation instructions.

The LittleCMS 2 and the PNG libraries are provided in Debian and Ubuntu by the liblcms2-2 and the libpng16-16 packages respectively.

Last update: 2021-04-18

The following shell commands can be used to directly launch one of the games in the collection, bypassing the HW:RC launcher.

Set the path to your Wine prefix, the path to the Steam folder (only for the Steam version of the game), and the path to the main game folder. For example:

export WINEPREFIX="${HOME}/.wine/homeworld"
export steam_path="${WINEPREFIX}/drive_c/Program Files/Steam"
export game_path="${steam_path}/steamapps/common/Homeworld"

If using the Steam version of the game, launch Steam first, otherwise the following commands will not work. To launch Steam in background:

wine "$steam_path"/Steam.exe -silent

To launch Homeworld 1 Classic
Run:

wine "$game_path"/Homeworld1Classic/exe/Homeworld.exe

However most users may want to use the arguments (in the form /argument or -argument) /noglddraw and /window (see notes in the Troubleshooting section):

wine "$game_path"/Homeworld1Classic/exe/Homeworld.exe /noglddraw /window

To launch Homeworld 2 Classic
Run:

wine "$game_path"/Homeworld2Classic/Bin/Release/Homeworld2.exe

To launch Homeworld 1 Remastered
Run:

wine "$game_path"/HomeworldRM/Bin/Release/HomeworldRM.exe \
-dlccampaign HW1Campaign.big -campaign HomeworldClassic \
-moviepath DataHW1Campaign

To launch Homeworld 2 Remastered
Run:

wine "$game_path"/HomeworldRM/Bin/Release/HomeworldRM.exe \
-dlccampaign HW2Campaign.big -campaign Ascension \
-moviepath DataHW2Campaign

To launch Homeworld Remastered Multiplayer
Run:

wine "$game_path"/HomeworldRM/Bin/Release/HomeworldRM.exe

Last update: 2021-04-18

Issues with Mesa drivers - OpenGL 3.3 Compatibility Profile required
This is a known issues that causes the remastered versions of the games to not work with the Mesa drivers. It is discussed in the bug report 41551.
The games require the OpenGL 3.3 Compatibility Profile that should be supported by the Mesa drivers starting from version 18.2.0. Please check if the compatibility profile is supported by your setup with the command glxinfo | grep version. If so, then set/export the environment variable MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=3.3COMPAT before launching the games.

Please note that:

• this issue does not occur when using NVIDIA and AMD proprietary display drivers;
• the classic versions of the games are not affected by this issue.

Homeworld 1 Classic crashes at startup
Homeworld 1 Classic crashes at startup with the message Fatal Error - couldn't initialize default rendering system. To solve this issue, launch the game with the argument /noglddraw.
The argument can be set as described in the section How to launch the games from the command line, or as an argument for the HW:RC launcher. For the latter, if using Steam, the argument can be set in the Steam game launch options as %command% /noglddraw.

Homeworld 1 Classic, game screen not scaled and menus off screen
The game allows to choose only 4:3 screen resolutions. If the game screen is not properly scaled, then launch the game in windowed mode with the argument /window.
The argument can be set as described in the section How to launch the games from the command line, or as an argument for the HW:RC launcher. For the latter, if using Steam, the argument can be set in the Steam game launch options as %command% /window.

Homeworld 2 Classic, game screen not scaled and menus off screen
If the game screen is not properly scaled, then launch the game in windowed mode with the argument -windowed and then set a proper screen resolution.
The argument can be set as described in the section How to launch the games from the command line, or as an argument for the HW:RC launcher. For the latter, if using Steam, the argument can be set in the Steam game launch options as %command% -windowed.

Remastered games, crash when loading levels and cinematics
The problem could be caused by a memory issue with the display server, lowering the texture quality to medium (or below) should solve the problem.