Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Flipside on May 15, 2005, 06:36:43 pm
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Either I am greatly mistaken or the release of the Homeworld Source code has appeared to be a bit of a damp squib....
http://homesource.nekomimi.us/
Strange really, considering the excitement and activity that the FS2 source release produced?
Maybe you need to be a member of the Relic Forums to see more, but I don't think it likely.
Does anyone know of any group taking the bit between their teeth for this? Just more out of interest, but Homeworld was such a good game, imho better than H2, that it strikes me as odd that nobody's taken it on.
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Is there anything we can steal from it? :p
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The Homeworld community has always been a bit more fanboyish in it's makeup, with very few people willing to commit to something as expansive as an SCP would be. There have been more abortive attempts at HW mods than you can shake a stick at. Also, unlike our god-like coders:D, most of the programers over there don't take kindly to criticism, positive or negative.
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i don't think there is that much incentive to do stuff though. Homeworld has already had a sequel that wasn't released not too long ago, and there's likely the be a third one. The SCP actually got off the ground since there was NO chance for FS3.
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plus I imagine all the fanbois were driving anyone else out who didn't think that HW was teh perfect™ that they never bothered to create a list of things to change/improve
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Im gonna go a little bit OT for a sec but does anyone here know any good self education programs for programming?
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Those who would be most likely to do that kind of stuff were probably disappointed in Homeworld 2, and left the community for more interesting pursuits. Leaving the fanboys who occupy it now.
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It's because of the license.
Wheras FS allows for free distribution of the source code and all modified versions of it, IIRC Homeworld source code is restricted to those who sign up for the Relic Developers' network, and distribution of modified builds/source code is not allowed.
I suggested in a 'let's bring back HW 3!!' thread that the fs2_open engine could be used, as they were already talking about using FPS engines, but to be frank, no one really listened - unsurprising as I only had 1 or 2 posts. (Err, I think I still do. ;) )
I think one dedicated programmer really could program a Homeworld-esque system in Freespace. When you get right down to it, most of the key differences between Homeworld and Freespace are graphical, and involve pretty tricks with numbers. That isn't to say there aren't fundamental physics and gameplay and AI differences, but once the core stuff is in, it'd be easier to tweak those to match Homeworld's. (I hesitate to say "easy", because nothing with the AI is ever easy. :p)
Eh, well, pipe dreams and all that.
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I think having both HW2 and a number of other similarly themed space-RTS games (Haegemonia, Nexus in particular) would also reduce any desire to modify the HW1 code.
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That and its Homeworld1, which is fairly outdated and it would seem pointless to upgrade it to be a pseudo HW2 when HW2 is already moddable.
Freespace2 was very lucky in that there were dedicated programmers who were fans of the Freespace saga. I don't doubt that without a few select members of the SCP, it would of never really gotten off the ground and FSO wouldn't have come as far as it has.
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At least someone is porting Homeworld over to Linux:
http://www.thereisnospork.com/projects/homeworld/
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Damp squid...? Never heard that one before :)
Anyway, HW1 was always considered to be "better" than HW2, I believe, due to the storyline, interface, etc. HW2 is more of a multiplayer game.
In relation to the source code: I've actually browsed around, posted, and checked out various things in the Relic community relating to the source code and any subsequent activities relating to it.
It turns out that not only are there very few people who actually posses the talent necessary for something such as the SCP (which is obviously not the case here), but the source code is very incomplete. I.E: Hardly usable. Someone did get it to compile, but it took a long time and a lot of hard work.
Basically, the code released was pretty much unusable, in that it took too much work to get it to run, work that, unfortunately for the HW community, required the community to be much more close-knit than it is.
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Ahhhh.. that would explain a lot, I would have thought there would at least be a move to make modding the game more accesible to people without having to use about 12 different programs, for Example 3dx would export the geometry, but never got the textures right, and you had to do all sorts of wierd stuff, I got put off modding homeworld because of that.
Oh, and it's damp squib, a squib was the bit you lit on a cannon, and if it was damp, the cannon wouldn't fire, was a big problem during sea battles ;) I don't know where I pulled it from though, haven't used that phrase in years ;)
LOL : And just for the heck of it :-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squib_(explosive)