City of Heroes on Mac
Overview
There are two Game Clients supported to play Homecoming:
- Homecoming Launcher, which works on older and newer Mac systems from Intel to Apple M1.
- Island Rum, specifically made for Intel Macs up to Catalina.
Requirements
Essentially any post-shutdown (ie, post-2012) Mac will work.
Specific to Macs using Apple Silicon (M1), the Rosetta 2 library will prompt to install when playing City of Heroes. This is required as Rosetta 2 contains X86 emulation instructions City of Heroes needs to function. Graphics support from Rosetta 2 on a M1 will emulate the Intel HD Graphics package (with similar options that aren't supported on Rosetta 2 disabled).
Homecoming Launcher
Install the HCLauncher on Mac. The install package comes with PrivateWine, so no separate Wine install is needed.
Help configuring and using Homecoming Launcher on Apple M1 systems is available here, or on Intel systems here.
Island Rum
Instructions for running Island Rum the Mac installer and patching utility for Homecoming: City of Heroes is available here. The author continues to support and maintain the installer on the Help & Support forums. Same as Homecoming Launcher it automates a WINE install for you; it would be possible to create your own WINE install if for some reason Island Rum is unusable.
Historical pre-shutdown
NCSoft Mac client
This section contains information that no longer applies: the TransGaming Mac Client is unusable to play Homecoming: City of Heroes/Villains. It is provided for historical purposes.
- Main Article: Mac Special Edition
The Mac Special Edition was implemented with TransGaming's Cider Portability Engine, which acted as a "wrapper" around the game software, enabling it to run on Intel-based Macs running Mac OS X.
November 7, 2008, saw the beginning of the Mac Client's closed beta testing. [1]
Boot Camp
This section contains information that no longer applies: Apple will be retiring support for Boot Camp in a future MacOS release, and it is generally easier to use WINE to play Homecoming: City of Heroes/Villains. It is provided for historical purposes.
Running City of Heroes through Boot Camp is exactly like running it under Windows. Because it is running it under Windows. Boot Camp is Apple's officially supported method of dual booting a Mac computer.
Prior to the Mac client, Boot Camp was the preferred method of running City of Heroes as there were no extra emulation layers.
After you've installed/patched Windows on your Boot Camp partition, you can copy the client from an existing installation location or DVD, or grab the updater and download the current version.
Read about the Windows game client here.