Homeworld: Cataclysm

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Homeworld: Cataclysm

Developers
	Barking Dog Studios
Publishers
	Sierra Entertainment
Release dates
Windows	June 30, 2000

Homeworld

Homeworld	1999
Homeworld: Cataclysm	2000
Homeworld 2	2003
Homeworld Remastered Edition	2015
Homeworld 2 Remastered Edition	2015
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak	2016

Key points

Re-released on GOG.com as Homeworld: Emergence due to "Cataclysm" being a registered trademark of Blizzard Entertainment.

Remastered version unlikely due to source code being lost.

General information

Encyclopedia Hiigara - A wiki for everything Homeworld related

Homeworld Shipyards - A fairly old but big Homeworld fan site

GOG.com Support Page

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail		SecuROM 4 DRM.
GOG.com

Essential improvements

Patches

A full list of all available patches can be found here.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
GOG Galaxy

Video settings

Graphics option	Option	Notes
Widescreen resolution		See Widescreen resolution.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)		Determined by the aspect ratio (see Widescreen resolution).
Windowed		See Windowed.
Borderless fullscreen windowed		See Windowed.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)		Force from the graphics card control panel (use the OpenGL renderer).
Vertical sync (Vsync)		Use the command line parameter /triple
60 FPS and 120+ FPS		No frame rate cap.

Widescreen resolution

Widescreen can be enabled by changing the ScreenHeight and ScreenWidth registry keys in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Sierra On-Line\Cataclysm.

Widescreen mode requires the use of the OpenGL renderer as D3D has rendering errors with widescreen. Enabling OpenGL can be found further down the page in the "Issues Fixed" section.

For Windows 10 x64 you need to be run the program as Admin for the registry entries to be created (right click properties on the application under compatibility set run as administrator).^{[citation needed]}

Set resolution in registry[citation needed] Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Sierra On-Line\Cataclysm Edit the ScreenHeight and ScreenWidth values to match your chosen resolution. If the resolution doesn't take effect after doing the above, try running the game in Administrator mode.

Windowed

Add -window to the game's path. For borderless fullscreen windowed mode add -noBorder as well. If you do not use -noBorder you must run the game at less than maximum screen resolution or it will crash.

Input settings

Keyboard and mouse	Native	Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.

Audio settings

Audio options	Native	Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
German				Retail only

Network

Multiplayer types

Type	Native	Notes
LAN play
Online play

Connection types

Type	Native	Notes
Matchmaking
Peer-to-peer
Dedicated
Self-hosting
Direct IP

Issues fixed

Severe Lag in Menus

a. Use OpenGL rendering b. Run the game with command line options /nofastfe /noglddraw

Enabling OpenGL rendering on Windows 8 and later

OpenGL rendering can solve severe lag problems in menus but in order to get OpenGL to work you need NT4 compatibility mode. This is problematic on Windows 8 and Windows 10 because NT4 compatibility mode is no longer offered by default. For Windows 8 and later use the Homeworld hardware acceleration fix to apply NT4 compatibility mode. Download the zip file. Extract the contents and follow the instructions in the readme.txt.

Game runs on wrong screen (multi monitor set up)

Simplest fix is to use the Windows shortcut SHIFT+WINDOWS KEY+ARROW KEY to move the game to the screen of your choice. You may have to alt tab back to the game afterwards.

Other information

Command line parameters

The following command-line parameters may improve quality on newer systems, or enable extra functionality:

Parameter	Description
/triple	Enables OpenGL triple buffering, improves graphical quality and removes flickering at higher resolutions. Use unless it causes problems.
/enable3DNow	Enables the 3DNow processor instruction set if available. Use unless it causes problems.
/enableSSE	Enables the SSE processor instruction set if available. Use unless it causes problems.
/disableAVI	Disables the intro movies when the game starts.
/nofastfe	Disables the fast graphical frontend. Use this only when having graphical problems like flickering
/noglddraw	Don't use DirectDraw to setup OpenGL renderers. Try this is you're having problems getting OpenGL to work.
/safeGL	Don't use possibly buggy optimized features of OpenGL for rendering. Try this if you're having problems getting OpenGL to work.
/heap BYTES	Allows the game to use up to BYTES bytes RAM for the heap since by default the game isn't allowed to use much. 256 MB should suffice: /heap 268435456 but if you have more, try raising it to 1 GB: /heap 1073741824

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
Direct3D
OpenGL	1.1
Software renderer
64-bit executable

Middleware

	Middleware	Notes
Multiplayer	Sierra.com, WON

System requirements

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	95, NT 4.0	98
Processor (CPU)	Intel Pentium II 233 MHz	Intel Pentium II 350 MHz
System memory (RAM)	32 MB	64 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	80 MB	600 MB
Video card (GPU)	4 MB of VRAM	12 MB of VRAM