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The packaged Wine requires at least 10.12, which is not too far from where you are. You should be able to easily upgrade to 10.12. You could use the Wineskin client instead, but there's no guarantee of its reliability going forward - Winekin itself has been abandoned by its author.

The symptoms sound like your CoH files have gotten corrupted. Try deleting your homecoming, updates (if you have it), hc-bin32, hc-bin64, and hc-beta folders inside the Applications/coh folder and let Island Rum re-download them all.

What's funny is, it's the greed of the pre-MMO gaming industry that made a lot of people from that era believe that games should release, and then stay frozen in that state forever - because they didn't want to spend money working on updates, and wanted you to buy the next shiny game instead. In those cases, it makes sense to have one computer for it and never upgrade it, so you can always play that one game. MMO's changed that rule so it constantly changes, and you have to constantly upgrade to keep up. We do still have a few people though who want and expect CoH to always run on the oldest rig that supported it from 2005, and some who take that further and assert that the devs have a responsibility to make certain it will always work on that rig from 2005. Unfortunately, the reality is that not only do we need to keep up with modern tech, but the tools to build applications that old start to become deprecated and fall apart. So it's not that we want to push you all to upgrade to a new shiny computer; in some cases, on the development side, we no longer have the choice.

I'm the only developer for Island Rum. I don't do any coding for CoH. The announcement I made at the top of this thread is a courtesy because I know Safe Mode going away is going to happen eventually, and I want everyone to have time to prepare as best as they can. And as I said above, preparing to be able to run the 32-bit or 64-bit CoH clients means you'll probably also avoid problems with newer games, ones you might download from Steam for instance, and even future macOS or Windows updates. It really is worth the time.

The changes were necessary to support both current MacOS and future Windows support, as well as solving slow deprecation of the ancient development tools required to build CoH. In short, planning for the future. If your OS is old enough or broken enough not to support what is really an incremental change, now is a good time to fix it before something else you want to run won’t

At the moment, it's possible I am both the Linux and Mac support "team". I've been swamped getting the Mac version to run for everyone, though, so I haven't had much time to deal with Linux. I don't even have a Linux computer of VM working to test with at the moment, so I kind of blindly build Island Rum for Linux based on assumptions from the Mac platform. I have tested it in the past though, and Island Rum did run and launch CoH. What will really help you is that I built Island Rum for Linux to use the same graphics subsystem as CoH - OpenGL. If you drop the Island Rum application into a terminal, and google the errors, you will be able to figure out which graphics drivers and extensions you need to install to get Island Rum to load. And if you get that far, CoH should load as well.

If you're getting errors inside the game client, you probably just need to re-patch it. Select the Re-Scan option from the tree menu in Island Rum. You won't need Homebrew anymore, that requirement has been removed (you can type "brew remove wine", unless you need it for something else). Island Rum will download the most current working Wine version by itself, and it will run 64-bit!

Update: The "Safe Mode" CoH client might be going away very soon. This might effect you if you use the Mac client with Wineskin or Cider. If you're using either of those, now is the time to attempt using the non-"64-bit" CoH client instead. Post here if you have any trouble with that. As usual, I recommend using the Mac client with at least macOS Sierra (10.12) and with the built-in Wine client. You can accomplish that by removing "City of Heroes.app" and "CoH.app" from the /Applications folder and re-launching Island Rum.

Most of the stuff to try is already above your post in this thread. Good luck!

Also remove City of Heroes.app and CoH.app from /Applications if they are there. There is a log, but the only thing it will tell me is which client it detected (if any) and where your install is located. If you remove those two apps, there should only be the internal Wine client left, and if you installed in /Applications, that question is answered as well.

Move the Wineskin package out of /Applications. It's not going to work with Catalina. That dialog is a dead giveaway that you should re-scan and let Island Rum download the latest patches.

Which macOS are you using, and Wine, Wineskin, or Cider? I didn’t actually make any changes to the way the game is launched, so I’m not sure why it would do that.

That sounds like wherever you had Island Rum installed, it doesn’t have user write access. Running it from an administrator account is recommended. If it behaves really stubbornly, re-download it from https://telstar.eekstudio.com/islandrum-mac.zip for mac, or https://telstar.eekstudio.com/islandrum-win.zip For windows.

Island Rum will now attempt to verify the patch manifest URL's host names against a list of known good ones. At first, those host names only include Closed Beta, Homecoming's official manifests, and Victory. Others will be vetted and added to the known good list - which can be updated without changing the app - as they are discovered. Because there are now multiple servers and manifests floating around out there, there is potential for someone to hand out a rogue manifest URL that can cause things to be installed on your computer that don't belong there. Therefore, Island Rum will now filter those so you can only enter and see manifests which have been demonstrated to be safe. Please let me know if any issues arise because of this new feature.

That would be more of an issue if the manifest would require full paths - it does not. If someone forgets to enter a path, the file would simply be dropped into the CoH install folder. If the incorrect relative path were entered, a new folder would be created inside the CoH install folder. It takes extra effort to enter a path into the manifest that could cause problems, so it's very unlikely to happen by accident. I don't want to do things like Sweet Tea that lure players into a false sense of security. I don't want them to feel bullet-proof because of such claims when there are too many other exploits possible. If we (myself and whoever is working on Tequila) have to implement more security, I want it to be fully comprehensive so players can feel bullet-proof.

What happens if you set the install path in Sweet Tea to "C:\" and then connect it to a manifest that puts files in "\Windows\System"? It's no more secure than Tequila or Island Rum then, is it? Securing an application against one particular case creates a false sense of security. The only way to have a patcher that's 100% safe in every situation would be to give it a locked-down sandbox to play in, which would require two things: 1. Having the patcher offer a list of verified manifests only; and 2. Having the patcher set a standard install path, and refuse to allow installs anywhere else. It's possible to do both, however, we would then see a lot of complaints from people who want to do odd things like install CoH on another hard drive. So far we haven't had a need to do either, because our manifests are carefully made and tested. That's the real path to keeping the playerbase safe keeping all of the software paths clean - making sure that players use the correct manifest, and that we know exactly what it does. By the way, Island Rum runs in user space by default. It does not even have a way of authenticating as an administrator. So if there are any rogue files in a manifest trying to write over system files, it would normally get an access violation error - unless the user went out of their way to launch it in administrator mode first.

There are perfectly valid reasons for a game patcher to be able to access files outside of their primary game install path, and to be able to delete files. Game patchers are not consumer-level utilities that accept input from end users, and therefore don't have any obligation to protect end users from their own mistakes. They are designed particularly to be used with manifests that are verified to be safe and serve a very specific purpose - making City of Heroes work. For Island Rum, I have tested and verified that the official manifests for Homecoming (http://patch.savecoh.com/manifest.xml) and Closed Beta function as intended, and are not harmful to your computer. I do not recommend using any other manifests with Island Rum. If security of unverified third party manifests becomes an issue, I am prepared to take measures to make sure they cannot be used with Island Rum.

There are a whole lot of questions that go with that, like is it ALL sound that's gone or just in the game? You might have messed up sound settings in the game, or you need to change from Performance to Compatibility sound mode.

FYI, Island Rum no longer uses Homebrew Wine. Well it does, actually, but it installs it by itself in /Applications/coh instead of relying on Homebrew. It also used a private settings folder for it at ~/.privatewine. This both takes some work out of installation, and prevents Homebrew updates from breaking things. The Wine client will work in any macOS at or above 10.12 (Sierra). Below that, Island Rum will attempt to install the Wineskin client. The Wineskin client is neither necessary or optimal above 10.12. If you want to optionally use the Wineskin client, you have to manually name it CoH.app and drop it into /Applications. The Cider client isn't really supported, but it can be named City of Heroes.app and dropped into /Applications. Neither one of those clients are being updated or maintained anymore. You must have your Applications folder writeable, so you need to either use an Administrator account, or change the permissions of Applications if you insist on keeping your Mac unusually locked down.

That's Cel Shader mode, Island Rum doesn't control that. It's an in-game setting. I think /usecelshader 0 turns it off.

I've heard of that happening, but I can't figure out why. It's part of the self-update process, so downloading a new copy manually would fix it. I can only guess that it can't create the "old" folder in Applications and move the current app into it so it can replace it for some reason.

Right, 10.11....if you remove the /Applications/coh and /Applications/CoH.app, Island Rum should be able to successfully download and install a working Wineskin for you.

I can't see which one you launched, but if you're using the new built-in Wine you should use the 64-bit Homecoming.

If I knew what to put in an installation guide I'd write one! Island Rum is designed to be able to install its own Wine client, so the Homebrew stuff is no longer necessary - which will also solve the problem of what happens if the Homebrew version upgrades. It also installs its own pre-made Wineskin client, which would have been virtually impossible if it had to be custom installed for each person. It even creates its own settings that Homebrew doesn't use to keep the two from being tangled. So logically, the only permanent instructions should be: 1. Download Island Rum from https://telstar.eekstudio.com/islandrum-mac.zip 2. Launch Island Rum and let it install its stuff. Where I'm getting buried is there are dozens of combinations of different starting points and factors on each individual computer that leads to an absolute nightmare of a troubleshooting tree. I've been gradually making changes to Island Rum to try and remove a lot of those differing factors and force as many of those computers as possible to "fit the mold" so the install works properly. Unfortunately it's just not enough. I stopped updating it for now because the causes/effects/solutions are becoming even more random to the point where I can't duplicate them anymore. The more guesses *I* make, the more changes I make, the more of a moving target this becomes. So I'm leaving it alone (pending any discovered serious issues) until I can aim the next change at a much bigger target. That target is looking more and more like I'm going to have to force the install path and remove the Reset Path option, but we'll see.

I just downloaded it, it's 082920191, which is newest. The version numbers are date stamps plus a revision number.