Launchers fail to launch anything on MacOS 12.6.3

[Zefligsamdoo]

I've been playing pretty consistently for the past couple of years. No real issues. Every once in a while, there's some goofy lags in the launcher's load time from Island Rum, but otherwise uninterrupted play. I've preferred the older IR launcher, because I could virtually multibox from it, opening two instances of CoH at the same time. I couldn't do that with the new launcher.

That said, up until the past couple of weeks, I can launch the game pretty much whenever I want to. Recently, I've run into issues where the launcher never, well... launches. After 4-5 tries, maybe a machine reboot, I could get it to run. But tonight, no action.

I've spent the last few hours trying to troubleshoot as best I can. Steps I've taken:

• rebooted the machine;
• ran the re-scan in IR;
• deleted CoH altogether, forcing IR to reinstall from scratch;
• uninstalled Wine, Homebrew, and CoH completely, and started the process from a clean slate...
• downloaded the new launcher and installed it fresh.
• verified the IR manifest is https://patch.savecoh.com/manifest.xml 

Island Rum (https://islandrum.eekstudio.com/islandrum-catalina.zip) is version 022720231, and clicking its blue arrow gets me the green checkmark, but after about 10 seconds, the checkmark fades away while never opening the HC launcher. I have repeated this ad nauseam—always the same result.

 

I tried the MacOS 12+ launcher (https://islandrum.eekstudio.com/islandrum-mac.zip), but double-clicking the packaged app gives me an error message. The file is incomplete and needs to be thrown in the trash.

New HC launcher (https://islandrum.eekstudio.com/mac-installer.zip) bounces the Statesman icon, but fails to open anything.

Has something changed in the last few weeks that has utterly broken HC on Macs? Is anyone else experiencing this complete application failure?

Is there anything I can do (besides ditch my Mac and buy a PC, you smartasses...)?

Thanks in advance for the help!
Zefligsamdoo

[Xiddo]

Mine only opens the HC launched when on a different network. But that’s cos my ISP doesn’t allow Wine to run. But once HC is open we’re running and I can go back.

you can definitely run two accounts using HC too?

 

[Tock]

On 4/9/2023 at 3:56 AM, Zefligsamdoo said:

Has something changed in the last few weeks that has utterly broken HC on Macs? Is anyone else experiencing this complete application failure?

Is there anything I can do (besides ditch my Mac and buy a PC, you smartasses...)?

I have two Macs, one 2014 Intel and one that's a 2023 M2.  The Intel one is stuck on Monterey and has 12.6.4.  But it's running the game normally.  The M2 had an issue when Ventura had a patch last month, but that's been cleared up with a reinstall.  My Intel system ran throughout, Wine hasn't stopped working at all.

 

I've installed the latest Homecoming Launcher installer from EekStudios right now just to be sure and it's still working.  Not meant as a taunt (STBY), just confirmation that whatever is happening is not widespread.  Hopefully that points you in a better direction in troubleshooting. 

 

Quote

I've preferred the older IR launcher, because I could virtually multibox from it, opening two instances of CoH at the same time. I couldn't do that with the new launcher.

 

HC Launcher allows multiple instance use.  It's a check box in options, tick "Allow Multiple Instances" in General Settings.  Then every click of the Homecoming "Card" on the left side of the launcher starts another instance for you (the bar stays blue and shows "Running" until all instances are closed). 

 

It's disabled on mine because it's the s***ty Core i5 1.4 GHz Dual Core Mac Mini (It's a Core i3, let's face facts).  RAM and Processor determines how many you can do: 4GB per instance is a good rule of thumb, even though it runs on a bit less.  If your system has a 16GB RAM footprint and at least a Core i5 (non-MB Air: no fan means downthrottling on excess heat, so stick to one) or M1/M2, you should be fine to run three instances.

 

I know this is of secondary importance to getting the game to run at all.  If you get HC Launcher to manage to start this should help.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Tock
MultiInstance help

[Zefligsamdoo]

Thanks, @Tock.

I'm simultaneously frustrated and glad to hear that news. I'm glad to know that it CAN still run on this 2015 MBP running 12.6.3, but I'm frustrated that this just makes it more of a mystery. I can't seem to get to the bottom of it. Still no action. Other people have suggested their ISPs are the problem. So I switched to my cell phone's hotspot (TMobile) last night, for sharts and giggles. No change in behavior. Haven't been able to run the game since Friday during the day. Thanks for the input!

[Tock]

I don't mean to dump on a prior post but Wine has nothing to do with ISP use.  If it's a network issue, you should be able to get at least to the login screen and once you try to enter a password it won't continue.

 

In Island Rum or HC Launcher, see if adding "-console 1" as an client argument helps.  This opens a second window (which may need trickery to switch over to it and see the output) which may tell where the client is halting in the loading process, or if the client loads normally and there's something else wrong. For example, silly stuff like the Wine window isn't present while the client is actually working, or the window is out of bounds on your display and needs to be brought back to the monitor somehow.  (If the console shows "Done loading." the login screen should at least be visible.  Also, don't worry too much about errors on resources not found or graphics driver issues, those don't 100% go away even when the client works.)

Edited April 10, 2023 by Tock

[lemming]

I'm on Linux, but at one point I was having issues with getting the launcher going and wound up using this command

:
PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60
wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Games/Homecoming/bin/win64/launcher.exe > ~/down/hclaunch.log 2> ~/down/hclaunch.err &

Something like this might help diagnose it at least.   I found a bad popmenu for example (though that didn't stop the game from starting)

[Zefligsamdoo]

@Tock: Great input. Thank you! I'll focus my efforts on the new HC Launcher. Mine's a 16Gb Core i7, and I can just run 2 instances with tuned-down graphics. It's sufficient for some farming and whatnot. It's passable. It works. It just isn't pretty. 🙃

@Tock and @lemming: Full disclosure, my first and only encounter with Wine/Homebrew has been CoH, so I'm a lot less familiar than I'd like to be when facing these kinds of challenges. I hate feeling like I'm fumbling around in the dark. That's for all kinds of troubleshooting.

@Tock Where would I add "-console 1"? At present, I just double-click my IR icon, etc. I noticed in IR's Options there is a field for "Wine Cmd," but nothing I insert there persists beyond closing the Options window.

And @lemming I'm a little lost on making the wine command (with LNX directories) functional on my mac. I try to run it in Terminal using /Applications/coh/bin/win64/launcher.exe as my path, but no hclaunch file exists, so it only returns an error message. I presume the command is supposed to be producing that file? As in, the purpose of the wine command is to create an error log upon executing "launcher.exe?"

Furthermore... I'm just at a loss as to what broke between Thursday and Friday.

Thanks to both of you for your contributions!

[Zefligsamdoo]

Well... I'm guessing something happened to my wine install somewhere along the way. I went back to square one, again, uninstalling both Island Rum and the HC Launcher. Then I navigated to https://www.sysnettechsolutions.com/en/install-wine-macos/ and followed their instructions for running the scripts necessary to make my machine forget that Wine and Homebrew ever existed. Literally, just copy-pastes provided in the article. Then I did the same for their instructions for installing wine/homebrew. Finally, I downloaded the HC Launcher from https://islandrum.eekstudio.com/mac-installer.zip and installed it. Finally-finally, I wanted to continually eliminate variables and vectors for breakage along the way, so I skipped the included shortcut and went straight to launcher.exe and executed. HC Launcher—and CoH—are now running successfully.

I want to reiterate that I am not a terminal or wine user, so I have literally no reason to have modified anything incidentally in either. To my knowledge, nothing should have changed from Thursday last week to Friday. But something apparently did. At any rate, it's a pain the arse, but a fully clean slate and do-over were apparently all I needed.

EDIT: Almost forgot to acknowledge the utility of that error log! I figured out what I was doing wrong in Terminal and was able to launch "launcher.exe" with error logging. Opened that text doc and discovered that it couldn't find Wine. Said it wasn't installed. That's what prompted the complete do-over. Again, still unsure as to what broke (there was evidence all over my Mac that Wine and Homebrew were, indeed, installed), but the wipe and re-write fixed it.

Thank you both for your help!

Edited April 10, 2023 by Zefligsamdoo

[lemming]

Great!   Yea, my commands produce those logs, but you figured out a way to get logs.   I haven't been an Apple user since the 80s, just every so often wind up looking at them for others.  (easier now that they're more Unix like)