Heavy Gear 2 running on Windows7 64bit

Yup, it runs. Barely. It wasn't easy to get it to run either. There's a two issues I can see though.

First of all, if I try to customize the controls, the game crashes. That might be more related to the fact that I have a LOT of joystick buttons and axes... maybe it's choking on that. I don't know. But it crashes when I try to configure the controls.

The second is a show stopper. As you can see in the video, the world is rendered inside out. At least that's the best way I can describe it.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• heavy
• gear
• windows
• 64bit

[urizen123]

Hi there Lucas, just wondering if you ever made any progress with the culling issues on Windows 7?

[luccaskunk]

@urizen123 Name's Lucca, as in the inventor girl from Chrono Trigger, not Lucas, and no, I haven't, sorry.

[NoedigJK471]

I remember when I played in this training, also I remember this one time I saw a Gear wearing a Santa Hat when I was playing the training level sometime later about a few months after my first training, it was so strange!

[luccaskunk]

@NamelessFragger Ok, I found a source of legitimate copies of the Linux version. However, if it's the video card that's responsible, doing it this way might not work. The reason I thought Wine might work is because it's translating the calls.

Now I'm also curious about trying to run it on Parallels on my Mac, see if it works ok there.

Anyway, I'll let you know how the Linux version works out. In the mean time, there's a number of copies of the Linux version on Amazon

[luccaskunk]

@NamelessFragger an actual official linux version sounds ever so vaguely familiar... I'll see if I can locate any copies...

[NamelessFragger]

@luccaskunk

The Wine approach? Tried that already, didn't work.

But I know that a NATIVE Linux port was indeed made years ago by Loki Software (a developer specializing in porting games to Linux), using OpenGL and all. Whether it has any compatibility whatsoever with modern distros and drivers is anyone's guess...but the even bigger issue is finding a copy of the Linux version to begin with.

[luccaskunk]

@NamelessFragger Well, if you want to give it a shot, just download and burn an iso of Ubuntu. Get the system's video drivers bumped up to the nvidia proprietary ones (since you're on an 8800 GT), then install Wine, install DirectX to Wine, and run from there.

An alternative might be using a DirectX capable version of VirtualBox or VMWare to install a dummy version of Windows and run it like that. It's not the same thing, might give different results than wine, but worth a shot I guess.

[NamelessFragger]

@luccaskunk

I'm well aware that the CPU isn't the culprit; I just mention it out of habit to give an idea of how old the whole machine is. I also had the feeling that it's the GPU because when I tested an HD 4850 a long time ago, HG2 wouldn't even get that far; it would just crash before the loading screen!

I've thought about the Linux approach myself, but I have no idea how I'd get and set up the Linux version using a Windows version CD to find out if it'll work better or not.

[luccaskunk]

@NamelessFragger Sorry, I had a twitch going on. Yeah, it's the video card causing the culling.

I can't help but wonder if running it on Ubuntu with Wine won't yield better results regardless of video card.

[NamelessFragger]

I see I'm not the only one having this culling issue on a modern system (Q6600/8800 GT/Win7 64-bit).

HG2 does run more stably on my older desktop (XP 3200+/6800 Ultra/WinXP) and doesn't suffer from culling problems, but has a chance of abruptly crashing in game.

At this rate, I'll have no choice but to build a Win98SE box specifically for games like this. (What's with Activision Win9x-era releases being so finicky? Especially HG2 and the MW2 engine games...)