City of Heroes Forum

My MacBook Pro is as follows:

C2D 2.4Ghz
4GB of RAM
GeForce 8600M GT - 256MB VRAM
OS X - 10.5.2

Now, I've experienced the black screen and corrupted cursor issue that has been described by others on this forum. However, I found a solution that will handle most of these issues.

Firstly, make a Win2000 bottle. I used the Steam preset just to get everything out of the way, but I suspect this is not required. Secondly, after getting City of Heroes installed, you'll want to manually make a shortcut via Programs -> Run Command. Browse to the Program Files\City of Heroes folder and select 'CohUpdater.exe'. It will create a path enclosed in quotes to this executable. At the end of this, outside of the quotes, add: -usetexenvcombine -compatiblecursors 1

The second flag will fix the corrupted cursors some have mentioned and the first flag has given me better framerate since it enables a simple rendering path, though it will work without it. Save this shortcut.

Now the key part, go into the Bottle manager and run Winecfg from control panel. Click on the Graphics tab and check on 'Emulate a virtual desktop' and set a size such as 1152x864 or 1024x768, click Apply and then click OK. You are now all set to run your COHUpdater shortcut out of the Programs list! Ignore the warning it gives you about GL_NV_vertex_program -- it WILL run anyway.

This game will behave for the most part. I've noticed it did NOT like me hitting 'Random' when I was generating a character, but I was able to make one and kill things for twenty minutes otherwise. The other issue I noticed is that it did not like having a transparent window (my Terminal) overlapping it, which caused immediate corruption and I had to relaunch to fix it. Otherwise, it ran rather smoothly. Good job CodeWeavers!

These tips got the game working for me okay.

I can't seem to change the resolution of the game window though, it stays at 1024x768.

Edit: I can see what I did now. I changed the CoH updater path as described in the post above but running that file directly causes the game to default to the 1024x768 resolution. But if the 'City of Heroes.app' is run directly it still calls the updater and the screen resolution can then be set from the game's menu.

FYI, it now works on a WinXP bottle with the same instructions above (although the -usetexenvcombine -compatiblecursors 1 options don't seem to make any difference).

When it starts up, it complains about "You card or driver doesn't support GL_NV_vertex_program", but if you click ok, it runs mostly fine. (I've had one glitch where it started spinning constantly, but entering/exiting a zone fixed this).

This is on a MBP with the latest CrossOver Games release.

NOTE: If anyone knows how to make a 5 button mouse work, it would be appreciated.

i need detailed instructions on how to manually make a shortcut "via programs-> run command" i have no idea what you are talking about with this and it makes me frustrated cuz i want to play coh on my good computer but it is a mac
-thanks

In your Crossover Games menu go to 'Programs' then 'Run Command'. The run command window will appear. Click the 'Browse' button, then navigate to your CohUpdater.exe file. This will generally be in Program Files > City of Heroes > CohUpdater.exe. Select that file, then in the 'Command' text box, after the quote marks, add -compatiblecursors 1 to your command. (November mentioned also adding -usetexenvcombine, but I've found that unnecessary on my Macbook Pro) After that choose the 'Save Command to Programs Menu' option, and you should have a link to CohUpdater.app in your Crossover Programs menu.

thank you, sorry i was just lost before with the whole run command thing, it runs great now

What are your load times like, I keep getting impatient. It's taking what seems to be a long time (several minutes or more) to get to the login screen. Interested in others feedback.

Joel Mesaros wrote:

What are your load times like, I keep getting impatient. It's taking
what seems to be a long time (several minutes or more) to get to the
login screen. Interested in others feedback.

My load times are pretty speedy. What are your specs?

Running a new installation for the US server I found that I needed neither of the -usetexenvcombine or -compatiblecursors 1 flags for the game to run properly.

The -usetexenvcombine flag caused graphical glitches to occur on my system when my pointer moved over allies. However, whilst not strictly needed the -compatiblecursors 1 flag is still useful for showing a solid cursor.

I was pointed to a thread on the CoX forum that suggested adding -renderthread 1 to increase performance on multi-core systems but using this just stopped the game from loading for me.

As for loading times, it only takes a handful of seconds after clicking through the updater screen before I am at the server login screen.

my load times are at least as good as my windows machine, if not a little better, however I moved recently and have been playing mostly at work (really fast connection (I love working for Apple!!)) so that may skew my numbers then again, I'm using a 1.87 dual core Imac with and ati card so it's not like I have a top of the line machine, when I first started using crossover my load times were kind of long but it has improved. Try deleting the Caches files from your home folder ~/Library/ (throw it into the trash (restart the system THEN empty the trash)) if there is some bad data in there it will cause slowdowns, (you can also repair disk permissions) /Applications/Utilities/Disk Repair, this can help as well (as a rule of thumb I empty my Cache files and repair disk permissions about once a month) if you need help with this just reply with your email and I can send you the kbase articles on how to do this. Hope this helps!

I had already installed the game on WinXP and didn't want to go through a whole install again. I did everything above (Emulate a vitural desktop and the two switches and it appears to be working fine.

Using a MacBook Pro

Hey Matt,
I guess I'm doing something wrong because I just can't get the game to last. It will run now, but it will just crash after 5 minutes or so of play or if I activate a travel power. I'm sure that's coincidental but all the same I just can't get it to last. They are doing leaps and bounds though to get it to work. I'm amazed at how far it's come.