Graphics issue with Homeworld 2 \ VOGONS

Graphics issue with Homeworld 2

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First post, by JayAlien

Posted on 2023-06-24, 01:38

JayAlien Offline

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Evening, I picked up Homeworld 2 this week, having never played it, but enjoyed HW1 and Cataclysm. I've tried Homeworld 2 (patched to version 1.1) on two systems (the Radeon 9700 and the Radeon X850 in my sig) and neither seem to render the game correctly.

Firstly, there is just black space behind the playing area, and it likely should be colourful nebula type backgrounds akin to HW1 and SOASE.

Secondly, the enemy ships are not rendering correctly, they're invisible, but my attacks are showing up hitting the invisible ships.

I've tried playing around with the Catalyst settings, disabling Catalyst A.I, setting everything to Application Settings, and have also set everything back to defaults. I've tried 800x600, 1024x768 and 1280x960 resolutions, but no change.

Any ideas on this? I may give it a try on the P3/Radeon 8500 but haven't had chance yet. Was looking forward to a relaxing couple of hours of gaming, but of course troubleshooting has decided it is the more fun part of the hobby 😉

386sx25 SBP2 2M
P75(486) SB16 8M
P133 S3 Vir DX A64g 32M
P233MMX R128Pro A64 64M
Pii400 TNT2 Live! 128M
P3-1G V5 M80 256M
P3-1.4G R8500 A1 256M
A3200 9700Pro A2 512M
X6800 X850XT A2ZS 1G
E8600 X1950XTX Xfi 2G
QX9650 3870 Xfi 2G
i7-975 GTX570 Xfi 3GB

Reply 1 of 7, by iraito

Posted on 2023-06-24, 08:17

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Do you have a system with an nvidia card? just to check if it's a problem similar to the one in mgs2 substance.

If you wanna check a blue ball playing retro PC games
MIDI Devices: RA-50 (modded to MT-32) SC-55

Reply 2 of 7, by JayAlien

Posted on 2023-06-24, 22:24

JayAlien Offline

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iraito wrote on 2023-06-24, 08:17:

Do you have a system with an nvidia card? just to check if it's a problem similar to the one in mgs2 substance.

Oddly not one from that era, probably need a P4/GeForce build... I'll have to look in my parts box.

Reply 3 of 7, by MadMac_5

Posted on 2023-06-28, 21:49

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Which OS and driver version are you using? You may need to choose an older driver than the newest one that supported your GPU in question, since Homeworld 2 came out in 2003 if I remember correctly. Drivers from circa 2004 may have the best chance of working? For a 9700 Pro, I'd recommend the Catalyst releases from late 2004 or January/February 2005, since those should also have the Doom 3 performance tweak (if you intend to play that game) as well as optimizations for Half-Life 2.

Reply 4 of 7, by gdjacobs

Posted on 2023-07-03, 23:51

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Test -noVBO and -noDisplayLists flags. I had invisible ships with an RV380 and fixed it with the -noVBO option.
http://www.thegameengine.org/homeworld-2/home … nvisible-ships/

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 5 of 7, by JayAlien

Posted on 2023-07-14, 00:51

JayAlien Offline

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MadMac_5 wrote on 2023-06-28, 21:49:

Which OS and driver version are you using?

It's XP Sp3, and version 10.2 of the ATI drivers.

gdjacobs wrote on 2023-07-03, 23:51:

Test -noVBO and -noDisplayLists flags. I had invisible ships with an RV380 and fixed it with the -noVBO option.
http://www.thegameengine.org/homeworld-2/home … nvisible-ships/

I tried this on the X850XT PC.
-noVBO fixed it for me, thanks! The enemy ships are visible, and the background nebulae have returned to their former glory 😀

Reply 6 of 7, by Gamecollector

Posted on 2023-07-15, 04:33

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By the way, ATI broke OpenGL in Catalyst 7.12. I have used Radeon X850 PE AGP around this time and have remembered this bug.
And yes, it wasn't fixed (like the substract blending etc).
Try atioglxx.dll from the 7.11 version.

Asus P4P800 SE/Pentium4 3.2E/2 Gb DDR400B,
Radeon HD3850 Agp (Sapphire), Catalyst 14.4 (XpProSp3).
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Reply 7 of 7, by JayAlien

Posted on 2023-07-16, 02:55

JayAlien Offline

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Thanks for the additional info on the versions.
Some other observations on this game at 1024x768 with all settings at max:

1. this game has low fps on the X850XT (10.2 drivers) quite early in the game when unit count is still low
2. the game ran much better on the X1950XTX (10.2 drivers) system, framerate seems high and consistent
3. the graphics worked as intended on the X1950XTX system, even without the additional argument on the exe

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