Hey there! Klypso from Homecoming/Excelsior here. This is a guide on how to play City of Heroes on Linux. We will be running the 64-Bit version of City of Heroes, if you are curious.
This guide presumes that you already have you GPU drivers installed. NVIDIA users (may) have to install it themselves, while AMD users (may) not have to, but it doesn't hurt to check. If you have any issues, PLEASE make sure you've installed your GPU drivers properly. Also, if you're using an iGPU (Integrated GPU), disabling it should fix some issues that you may run into.
Edit: There has been an official post by GM Tahquitz on how to use the new Homecoming launcher in order to download / install / setup HC to run on Linux. Please check it out here if you have issues with this one, or you want to use the official guide: Official Guide by GM Tahquitz.
Edit 2: There have been some issues with rolling release distros that're on WINE 5.18 where HC doesn't launch at all, or has issues launching. I've been currently bypassing this issue by using the 32-bit client instead of the 64-bit one. Please, if you are having issues as well, try setting your Architecture to the 32-bit version within the official HC launcher, or through Tequila by using the second option.
Tips are BLUE
Attentions are RED
My system specs:
*Pop!_OS 20.04
*i7-4770 with Kernel version 5.4.0-7634-generic
*Nvidia GTX 970 (using driver 440.100)
*16GB DDR3 RAM
To be able to do this, you'll need the files for i24 / Homecoming. If you don't already have it, then you can click this link here to download the files. They will be out of date, so we'll be updating them later on in the guide ourselves.
Please note that FireFox can't download files past a certain size with that link, so you will need to use Chrome / Chromium to download the game.
Prerequisites:
*Linux
*A dedicated graphics card (although integrated graphics should run as well, although I haven't tested)
*A dual-core CPU (Tested on an i3-4130, i7-4770, and an AMD FX 4300 CPU) or better.
*At least 4GB of RAM
The start of the guide
Now, we're going to need to have 3 things already for this process to be simplified. These three things are as followed:
A copy of City of Heroes already, one that we have ourselves that we can simply copy over, or the one downloaded from the link above.
Wine to already be installed. If you don't have it, you can easily install it yourself by following the guide here VIA the official WineHQ website for your current flavor of Linux. Just search for your flavor (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora) and open the Terminal, then copy-paste the commands it gives you to follow. Make sure to grab winehq-stable.
For Lutris to be installed. Grab it here.
We're going to go ahead and make sure that you have WINE properly installed. To do this, please run this in your Terminal. Do note that your version may be different than mine as this guide ages.
Next, we have to add City of Heroes: Homecoming (CoH: HC) to Lutris. The video below will show you how to do so. Please note that it's a little fast as I need to be quick due to "Max total size" limits for uploading, and as such I had to compress the videos. Please, full-screen the videos so you can follow along.
Adding_CoH.mp4
When you run CoH: HC (Tequila) for the first time, you'll encounter 3 of these pop-ups. They're necessary to run the program, so please, install them.
Once that's done and those files are installed, we need to navigate to the CoH: HC directory, which is shown in this video. Please note that your directory may be different if you've placed it in a different folder.
Selecting_Tequila_Directory(2).mp4
While validating files, you (may) come across an error that states "Insufficient Memory". Getting past this is simple, just exit out of Tequila first, and then click "Ok", as shown below
Insufficient_Memory(1).mp4
Please note that it will always say that "The file Tequila.exe already exists", just click "Ok", as it doesn't matter.
That's it! Every time you want to play CoH: HC, you need to run Lutris, then CoH: HC, then the 64-bit version of the game. Tequila will automatically update as it normally does.
I hope this helps you with getting CoH: HC running on Linux! If you have any issues, please, post something here and I'll try my best to help you out!
