This game has a video driver issue with Win7/Vista.. all efforts on our communities part have been fruitless to get this old girl off the ground. We would love it if the GOG community would help out with anything constructive that might bring her back to life.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/HEAVY-GEAR-II/28990359948

As far as I know the issues with the game seem to be more related to the actual hardware rather than drivers or the operating system in use.. I think I remember reading something about the game needing a 'fixed-function' 3D accelerator to work properly?

Fixing something like that would probably require access to the source code, and/or some sort of Direct3D 6/7 to Direct3D 9 wrapper.
Maybe it could be run using a software renderer?

Hopefully GOG will be able to make a deal with Activision / Dream Pod 9 / Paradox Entertainment / whichever company currently holds the rights to the game.

I am no software engineer more marketing/sales type.. I know enough to be dangerous..lol

But I believe you are correct in what you are saying as the problem for HGII.. there are 270+ folks on our page who would love for any solution to this problem to come forward.

I'm one of them :P

I think the cause of the graphical issues the game is having is that current graphics cards apparently don't have proper hardware support for something called a "W-buffer" - a function similar to a Z-buffer, used to determine the draw order of objects on the screen.
Modern graphics cards use some sort of emulation for the buffer (which may be why the game still runs at all), but it is somewhat inaccurate, and as HG2 shows doesn't really work very well.

It'd be really good if we could get some people who actually know what they're talking about to take a look at it (everything I'm posting is just pure guesswork).

I think it's more realistic that Activision makes a sequel, then us getting it to work. But if someone finds a solution and it ends on GoG, that would be awesome.

I didn't see them offhand on that Facebook page, so are there some pictures of what kind of graphical errors there are, e.g. do they make the game pretty much unplayable? "'Rage' on ATI cards" level problems?

Or is there some kind of list of cards that run it ok, and which don't?

I've been meaning to re-install the CD versions of both Heavy Gear 1-2, just to decide do I try it on my newer laptop, or should I dig out some old desktop PC (one has ATI Radeon X800 card, another one has 3Dfx Voodoo 2 card... and I have access to even one old Pentium-133 system with the first 3Dfx Voodoo card...) Of course I'd prefer playing it on newer HW.

I remember there were some graphical issues already with the first HG when it was released, some black boxes with either Voodoo 1 or Voodoo 2 cards... I don't know if they happen on new HW as well.

Here's one example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MN7hESSgas

It makes levels that take place around buildings (and maybe lava) quite annoying.

EDIT: As for graphics cards that run the game correctly, my guess is that nVidia's Geforce 6xxx, maybe 7xxx-series cards are probably the most recent that will work (the 8xxx-series and later definitely have issues). As for ATI/AMD, my guess would be the X700 - X850 series or earlier.
I can confirm that it works on a GeForce 6200GT and a Radeon 9550.

It is basically unplayable.. in multiplayer you have to be able to see the full screen. If it was just artifacts no one would care..but this is like a kaleidoscopic hell hole.

I have got as far as getting the game installed and to the intro screens, connected to servers..able to set up the gears etc.. but as soon as you launch it crashes or looks like hell.

Oh and odds of Acti ..rebirthing this? Slim to none me thinks!

I see I'm not the only one with this irritating culling issue...so it's tied to a lack of W-buffer support on modern graphics cards?

However, my issue isn't just a graphics problem. The game is notoriously crash-happy, especially on my flagship machine where entering the options menu or trying to start an instant action session is enough for a crash-to-desktop.

On my older WinXP box (Athlon XP 3200+, 2 GB DDR-400, GeForce 6800 Ultra), it's more stable and lacks the culling problem depicted in that video, but will occasionally crash abruptly in the middle of a gameplay session.

Activision Win9x-era releases always have to be such a pain...at this rate, I'll have to build a dedicated Win98SE box.

That's my guess as to what's causing it - if it isn't the w-buffer then it's probably something else that changed or was removed from graphics cards around 2005-2006. Heavy Gear 2 had a few issues (though fewer than some modern games :P ) even back around when it was originally released - they're likely to show up more frequently on newer operating systems and hardware.

I simply want the old girl to get off her feet again.. this place seems to be the best chance she has right now. I know its probably not an easy prospect, but man this game was a miles store of her time. Torso Twist ..faced paced ..stock and customization.. there used to be 40-50k people playing this game way back then.. in those days it was huge!

Besides rollerblading mechs, what made this better than the MechWarrior series in your mind?

In the comments of the Youtube-video you linked, someone guessed it could be more about drivers (implementation) than the HW. Do you think likewise?

I was thinking... since there is also a Linux version of Heavy Gear 2 which uses OpenGL instead of Direct3D, is it possible it'd work any better with new hardware (on Linux, of course)?

http://www.lokigames.com/products/heavy-gear2/

I think I saw the Linux version in some flea market a couple of months ago, maybe I should check... Back then I was thinking "Man, who would want to buy THAT?". Maybe I will after all... :)

I consider them fairly equal myself.

I like the stealth system, gear customisation, zero-G / space missions, mutliple methods of movement and stances, range of weaponry, etc.
It also still looks fairly good even with the flickering inverted-visibility-of-objects problems HG2 seems to have at the moment.

I'd insta-buy Heavy Gear 2, MechWarrior 3 and Starsiege if they were released on GOG (I own retail versions of each of them but they don't work 100% with new hardware).

It's possible.. part of the reason I think it's based on changes in graphics hardware was that a few years ago I had two computers running the same version of nVidia's graphics driver on Windows XP - one computer had a Geforce 6200 installed and could run Heavy Gear 2 without any issues, the other had a Geforce 8800GT and had the depth-culling / Z-buffer / W-buffer issues we have now.

It might work better - porting the game from Direct3D to OpenGL probably would have involved re-writing most of the games renderer so it probably doesn't have the same issues as the Windows version of the game.
I wonder if it would work in a virtual machine running some version of Linux?

EDIT: Sorry about the double post.