Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Rampage on June 04, 2002, 07:51:53 am
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I have been waiting to post this for some time now. I have noticed that many of the members here at Hard Light Productions are also members of the dying Homeworld Universe. Its message boards are not as active as the ones here.
I have seen many threads regarding Homeworld and Homeworld Cataclysm and MODs and renders regarding these games. So I can safely mention that HLP already has an active Homeworld community in the background of things going on here.
With Homeworld as a space-science fiction classic, I strongly suggest that HLP make a home for Homeworld here.
Please consider my request. Post below if you have comments.
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Yes, we should have a forum for HW. I like the game...I love the game..I... Never mind...
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Hmm, this is pretty interesting - it's actually bringing up a point far larger than just creating a forum for HW... here's why:
At the beginning we started the site with a view to focussing on modding the FS universe and then after a year or two introducing FL to that equation. FL has fallen through (for the time being) although we've been to wrapped up in everything to remove the content from the front end. IW vaguely replaced it but there seems to be limited interest in it (and the real modding and so on is still discussed over at the Infogrames forums - which are much larger and well supported (and focused) than ours.
What you really need to do is clarify what you mean by "support" for HW (or any other game, since anyone can argue "75% of HLPers play Quake so we should support that as well". If you mean just creating a forum for it then would it really be used? Would we also cover HW art? modding? tutorials? I have to admit to not knowing jack about actually modding HW itself so some new staff might be required (certainly considering what kind of busy lives everyone has at the moment).
Could we actually start supporting a great many multiple games? could we do justice to that support (as opposed to just creating a page or two about it and saying "yes, we support Homeworld". What about hosting? if we started supporting another 2, 3, 5 games then we'd certainly grow but would we be able to justify our hosting? Most if not all of the other 3DAP sites are focused on one game or game series alone... and Homeworld and Freespace are certainly different universes and genres.
If enough people can come up with a good enough arguement then this can certainly be given careful consideration. Otherwise I fear we'd be spreading ourselves to thinly or would loose the sites focus (which admitedly is more geared toward art now, but should be balalnced soon).
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Well, for one thing FS and Homeworld have quite a bit in common, while Quake has little to do with anything, and for another both have smallish, specialized modding communities while Quake has, on my last estimate, more fanboys than there are people alive at this moment, and could do without a new modding community. HW has one, but it's not much of one, and we could probably bring something to that.
And we hardly need worry about spreading ourselves thinly. The official FS forums are effectively dead (or really dead now, I guess), so we don't have much of a recruiting pool- however, if we go HomeWorld, we can attract existing members from that community to bulk of the ranks of the HW modders. And, failing that, little or nothing of the FS community will be lost anyway- nobody already here is gonna leave because we have or don't have HW forums. As of right now, we're a smallish community supporting modding for a mildly popular but quite dead game- little else. HLP is getting old, despite the hope of user FS3 in a year or so, and expanding our focus to multiple aging games could only benefit us- besides, what happens when we run out of things to do in FreeSpace?
All in all, I think we have more pressing issues (such as actually getting a mod archive online), but since adding a HW community won't slow any of that down, really, and we really don't have any prospects of anything new and exciting happening for a good while. At the very least, this will be an interesting experiment. At best, HLP comes out better than ever, with twice the user base and twice the experience and equipment. Sounds good, no?
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Homeworld 2 is coming...might be cool to look into.
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Hmm, that's a good point - since Homeworld is becoming a series there should be an influx of new people drawn by HW2... I suppose coverage of the FS and HW games and art exclusivly could be a possibilty...
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No. That's what the relic boards are for.:p
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I don't vote for HW boards, Relic's own boards are quite active and already does have large community.
Look at IW2 forums... see? Yes, there nothing to see, it's dead...
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IW does NOT equal Homeworld!
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I agree with Stryke. If nothing else, we'd bring more people into the FS Universe, particularly with HW2 on the way (*drool*).
Plus there are the cross-community modding projects on both sides - TAP here, and the FS --> Homeworld MODS too.
:yes:
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Yeah, I agree. I don't see any harm in brining a Homeworld forum to HLP. And with Homeworld 2 on the way, I'm pritty sure it'll get a lot of traffic!
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I voted yes...Because the game rocks and it can be modded prety easy and since it's space stuff interest wil proberly be perty big and it proberly gives allot of opertuniti for new hosted projects.
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Modding HW is fairly similar to modding FS... few differences.. but not many.. mainly just the animated bits of ships.... instead of .tbl files and .vp files its .shp and .big files... pof=peo/geo etc...
As for RN.. no.. thats a somewhat sterile environment.. the mere mentioning of warez results in a one week ban...
I vote yes..
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No. We've been through this before with Red Faction. There's already a Gamespy site dedicated to HW.
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Thing is, RF and FS share only a creator- there's no legitimate saying that because you liked one, you'd like the other. Not so with FS and HW- they really do share a LOT, particularly since most of the aspects people here dig in FS, though it is a shooter, also appear in HomeWorld, though that is a strat. I-War was never really big, had no real modding potential (script editors are almost as bad as nothing at all, and there was not much motivation even to bother struggling with what there was), and was similar to FreeSpace only in the general genre. FS and HW have a lot in common that these other games just don't.
Anyway, there really is nothing to lose form broadening this community's focus. So it didn't work with I-War- and? Did we lose anything for trying? Does that rule out the possiblility that HLP can ever change, can ever be anything more than a FreeSpace Modding community?
And just because there's already a place for it doesn't mean that we shouldn't open up to it, or that it might not need some... help. This might apply, in, say, the case of the ST games, where, should we open up a section, we'd only be one of hundreds of communities, but HomeWorld doesn't really have a solid base like that, and what it has is rather dependent on the manufacturers, and thus prone to all sorts of unpleasant collapses (Imagine if the VBB had been taken down without FreeSpace Watch or HLP established and well known.)
And after all, FreeSpace already had communities when Hard Light came around, too.;)
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
And after all, FreeSpace already had communities when Hard Light came around, too.;)
None were on Gamespy. That's the thing, there's already a Gamespy site for HW.
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Originally posted by Shrike
None were on Gamespy. That's the thing, there's already a Gamespy site for HW.
Which is dying...
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trash the IWar 2 boards, and replace them with Homeworld boreds... they will hopefully get more posts
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HLP is already growing to more of a community. So why not cover homeworld. For me (at least), because GS already has one just won't do. We're a kickarse community, we can do better than a Planet site, right??? :nod:
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Don't get me wrong, I love HW. I even used to be an extremely active member of the community, and still am.
However, I really don't think that there should be a HW board on HLP, because we'd only be pulling members awaay from the main community to bolster ours=makes the general community probably smaller, especially there.
However, I'm pro if we relax the moderation, or at least keep it to HLP standards in the HW boards.
I say this because the Relic board moderation sucks.
It's too strict. I was banned because I said a phrase more than three times in one post....
My 2 cents...;)
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Who says they cant post at both places? I do... RN, HWU, HLP, VWBB, LWG, WS, CS, a bunch of others..
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Some good points from both sides - the cons strongest point being that we might shrink the "main" HW community if we started supporting it (this is assuming we do really well at it and everyone loves us of course). More importantly as Shrike said GS doesn't like having more than one site covering a game - thats part of what I meant in my first post here. It would change the exact nature of the site so we'd have to ensure we could continue to be hosted here etc...
On the other hand we have a lot of great potential around here, a good base of the people are fans of both FS and HW and we do have cross-support (total conversions for both games) being done.
Let's see how this goes...
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Originally posted by Thunder
More importantly as Shrike said GS doesn't like having more than one site covering a game
Don't tell them. ;7:D
Wait... they are watching this site.
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there are OTHER boards? *screams*
[chant]
All hail HLP!
May HLP rule all!
[/chant]
Bah, I suck at goofing off, I'm only good at pissing darkage off...
Really, I voted yes because of all the HW sites that I've seen dying and forums not living up to what they should be living up to.... HLP already has TAP hosted, and there's a small HW congregation holding around there, hardly... and a HW part of HLP would help out this part, and increase intrest for FS(which has been mentioned already).
I don't really see any cons to this deal actually... other than Gamespy might disapprove... but as Thorn said, the GS site for HW is dying.
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Originally posted by Unkown Target
However, I really don't think that there should be a HW board on HLP, because we'd only be pulling members away from the main community to bolster ours...
The reason I started this topic is that there are a lot of Homeworld players, even MODders here at HLP, just working on Homeworld in the background. If we can provide an active community here at HLP for Homeworld, these people won't be in the dark anymore. :)
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It's a popular game that a bunch of people around here play and render and MOD. And its sequel is coming out. And we could use a new game around here.
Yes. :nod:
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Maybe you could talk to ceejay about it, if HWU does go under, maybe we can find a home for them here....
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I would like hw forums because I would probably mod that if I could find the time to learn it, and if I go to another board, thats another URL I have to remember...
But anyways, we have an incredible modder base as-is, and if we could get more, just think of the possibilites (me thinking of reciprocity in HW...that would just be sweet...)
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HW forums are on the whole a good idea.
If there's already a GS site....
How about a merger? That way we even get staff to handle the extra load!
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Hmmm, this is dodgy territory. I was with the homeworld community before I came to HLP so I'm somewhat familiar with how the game is modded etc.
Modding HW is somewhat limited, unless any major change has occurred, making campaigns for HW is not possible. Making models for it is also a whole different barrel of monkeys from Freespace but you're ultimately looking at something which could go the way of Starlancer.
Starlancer has a small community and no matter how dedicated it is the people there don't have the motivation to create a lot of content and so the lancers reactor, one of the few SL related sites left is basically serving as a news site for freelancer. Basically what I'm saying is that this kind of thing could be good for a short while but interest may just dry up. I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade but if you really want to mess with HW the relic boards are much more capable of helping you out.
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I think the idea of a home for Homeworld 2 would be more appropriate.
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Back in the days of yore, when it was actually was a kinda kewl place to go [the RBB], I managed to find out that it is possible to edit the Splayer missions, as long as you don't change the objectives around. So that means you could have the same mission, but with different placement, etc.
I'll try to find the link to it, but it's long gone, hidden somewhere in the RBB archives, hold on...
EDIT: Never mind, it seems that the archive never included the MODing forum...
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Originally posted by Unkown Target
Back in the days of yore, when it was actually was a kinda kewl place to go [the RBB], I managed to find out that it is possible to edit the Splayer missions, as long as you don't change the objectives around. So that means you could have the same mission, but with different placement, etc.
I'll try to find the link to it, but it's long gone, hidden somewhere in the RBB archives, hold on...
EDIT: Never mind, it seems that the archive never included the MODing forum...
It was called the 'Homeworld Extreme' project (HWEX). I know this because I was part of the team working on it. All of the archived material I created for it (5 or so models) died with my old hard disk. I wrote the plot and a guy called Charvell was doing the editing. It was showing promise until the team basically floated apart.
We could switch the ships in the SP campaign, edit the time that they entered and mess with some of the animation sequences (Charvell figured out how to edit paths). Besides that we could mess with the maps. All events had to remain as they were hard coded but with a little inventiveness we created an intireley new starting mission. It never got any further than this though.
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'S true, I just found out how rigid the SP setup is... I assume the MP version supports ship mods, at least, but right now you can't do much with plot, so it'd be kinda a basic community. I move we put this discussion off until HW2 comes, since we honestly don't know what that'll have (I wouldn't hold my breath, either). Anyone who wants to mod HW ships can do so just as well here with or without a forum, since there's really no moddability to support. It'd be like giving a C&C game a modding community, or pre-extractor (alas, evidently current, as the WD exctractor is really too primitive to use unless you made the thing) E2150.
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Homeworld is a very vibrant community considering the last game in the series is two years old(HW:Cataclysm). Before you ask it's harder to mod for that the original.
To get a taste for that community; Relic Forums (http://forums.relicnews.com) they have a copy of a chat with the developers concerning HW2. Suffice to say it's coming out in 2003, will be VERY modable, and will supposedly shake the RTS scene as much as the original did.
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That'll be tricky - since nobody can do what they did with the first one again, the level of expansion is huge. But it still looks very promising - if only we had more information!
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They(Sierra/Relic) said more info would be released in a special press release after E3, so look for it any day in the next 6-12 months:p .
Actually I would look for them to release info as soon as the furor from E3 has died down, probably about August. Though this is only a guess.
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"HLP - Bringing Modders Together" - anyone look at that motto recently? I don't see it saying anythng about Freespace-only, or anything like that. If I were to extrapolate upon what I know of HLP, both past accomplishments and current capabilities, I'd say that we have an excellent argument for "supporting" any future game that is "heavily" moddable.
Obviously, we would only go for certain elect games, but it's the focus on MODding (and art) that is where HLP resides.
As far as GameSpy already having a HW community: so what? When I browse around HLP, I'm not on Gamespy. Oh, it may be hosted there and all (and we all appreciate that fact, don't we? Yeesss... :p ), but we're not an integrated part of the GameSpy network. Take away every link to or mention of Gamespy from the frontend of HLP (not the URL's, silly!), and the site would be the exact same.
So, with that said, we would not be "supporting" HW games for anything other than potential render material and MOD capability, right? So why should GameSpy have a problem with that?
Bottom line I want to get to is this: If HW2 is revealed to be as MODdable as FS/FS2 are (without the source code release), then we should seriously[/b] (:D) consider "supporting" it.
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I agree- and I have serious doubts that Gamespy'd raise a stink, anyway. If they did, well, we either take down the HW part or we move on to someplace else. We can decide then, hey?
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Bring HW to HLP!
BTW, this may just be me, but I'm getting a little pissed at the current trend in developers' strategy when they make games. MODing used to be a sort of underground thing, reserved for the gaming extremests and die-hard fans, where you could go there and talk to others just as knowledgable as you are about computers, and not have everyone raise a stink about some less-than-satisfactory work. Now, with the current trend, [sarcasm]I just can't wait until all the "cool" guys, all the popular, party-going, music-mastering, I-don't-know-anything-about-PC's-except-that-it's-cool-to-MOD-and-make-music, guys. No offense to any of those ppl. who might be residing here now.;)
What I mean is, it sort of takes the fun and magic out of MODing games when it becomes mainstream.
Anyone else feel like this?
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Originally posted by Unkown Target
Bring HW to HLP!
BTW, this may just be me, but I'm getting a little pissed at the current trend in developers' strategy when they make games. MODing used to be a sort of underground thing, reserved for the gaming extremests and die-hard fans, where you could go there and talk to others just as knowledgable as you are about computers, and not have everyone raise a stink about some less-than-satisfactory work. Now, with the current trend, [sarcasm]I just can't wait until all the "cool" guys, all the popular, party-going, music-mastering, I-don't-know-anything-about-PC's-except-that-it's-cool-to-MOD-and-make-music, guys. No offense to any of those ppl. who might be residing here now.;)
What I mean is, it sort of takes the fun and magic out of MODing games when it becomes mainstream.
Anyone else feel like this?
Actually I have exactly the opposite view, too many people with genuinely great ideas have been put off by the sheer difficulty of modding on occasion.
I remember building models for xwing vs. tie fighter, it was often so difficult to use the only program available (ACE_DXF) that I gave up. I built two models for it before getting miffed at the fact that it just wasn't worth the time and effort.
Making missions for it was a different story, the mission builder was great, I made a bunch of missions that played well and were pretty straightforward to set up. I had a lot of fun doing that and I stuck at it :nod:
As soon as anything gets some 'cred' value it becomes the target of hype, it's always happened and it always will.
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Yeah but dont forget, we can mod better than them :D.
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Originally posted by Zeronet
Yeah but dont forget, we can mod better than them :D.
:lol: Well that goes without saying. :wink:
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Originally posted by Unkown Target
Bring HW to HLP!
BTW, this may just be me, but I'm getting a little pissed at the current trend in developers' strategy when they make games. MODing used to be a sort of underground thing, reserved for the gaming extremests and die-hard fans, where you could go there and talk to others just as knowledgable as you are about computers, and not have everyone raise a stink about some less-than-satisfactory work. Now, with the current trend, [sarcasm]I just can't wait until all the "cool" guys, all the popular, party-going, music-mastering, I-don't-know-anything-about-PC's-except-that-it's-cool-to-MOD-and-make-music, guys. No offense to any of those ppl. who might be residing here now.;)
What I mean is, it sort of takes the fun and magic out of MODing games when it becomes mainstream.
Anyone else feel like this?
I'm exactly the opposite. Modding keeps the game going even when its 4 years old...
Half Life, Freespace, Homeworld.. just a few examples....
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
I agree- and I have serious doubts that Gamespy'd raise a stink, anyway. If they did, well, we either take down the HW part or we move on to someplace else. We can decide then, hey?
They already did when we wanted to bring in Red Faction.
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No, no, you've got all worng!
MODing=goooooooooooddd, it's just that I think that it's becoming too mainstream for my tastes.
Basically, it's going to become like MP3's: at one point they were reserved only for the geeks and PC-phans (not geeks, simply guys who had a life, just really liked the computer;)), and terms like bitrate, codec, peer to peer, etc, were really only kown by an elite few. Now everybody, including the computer-illiterate, brain dead, b33r-swindling jocks know about them (no offense to anyone who takes this the wrong way, or thinks I'm insulting there great-granduncle, Flash Jon;))
Now, terms like object, reversed faces, extrapolate, LODs, etc, are going to be not only the property of the people who fought to learn them, and learn to edit games the hard way, but also the dumb-as-a-nail jocks who got pampered to.
My 2 cents...
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Originally posted by Thorn
I'm exactly the opposite. Modding keeps the game going even when its 4 years old...
Half Life, Freespace, Homeworld.. just a few examples....
Exactly...regardless, properly modding a game is never going to be easy... i have Max Payne, which includes a fair amount of tools and documents for modding, and I've never really been able (or, to be honest, particularly eager) ot make anything worthwhile.
But good front-end mod support is what keeps a game alive... as well as the aforementioned, theres Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, etc.......
Of course, depends whether Gamespy wants a dedicated Homeworld site - especially as the sequel is looking set to be a very big game.
At the moment, HLP is (sadly) a bit of a niche site - it only caters to a 3 year old (albeit classic) game, IWar2 - which wasn't massively sucessful AFAIK (and there's very little activity on the forums here,anyway) - and the unreleased Freelancer.
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Well, UT and Q3 weren't very good for the non-modder either.
Sure, they had a huge ability to be modded, but it was the almost the same story as FS-the end users, the elitests, had to program their own...erm....programs in order to MOD the game-they weren't catered to, they weren't given a get-out-of-jail-free card, they had to work to get what they wanted, which makes what they did so much more infinetely amazing and enjoyable to play.
Wheras now, all you have to do is make your ship, press button A, and, boom, it's in the game. It's the Windows ME of the MODing world.
Basically, I hate it when things become mainstream-anized, becuase it eventually becomes simply a ploy to get money, and not a labor-of-love by people who like to do the work. What a bigger example? Try the Spider man movie and the spider-man web-blaster toy that shoots either silly string or water that you see on TV.
EDIT: And another thing (boy, you're just getting bored of me, aren't you:D), games that can't be modded, shouldn't be modded. Sure there are a couple exceptions, but the general rule is that the community doesn't love it enough to spend the time and effort to program a MODing tool for it, then it doesn't deserve to be MODed.
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Niched is not a word for it - we're the one comic at the back of the comic store under the re-releases of Spiderman with the dusty cover and the special limited edition seriel number!
As for GS and Homeworld - it might be prudent to see what happens after HW2 is released before choosing whether HLP covers it or not. It would be nice to cover it but sometimes that's not enough and I think this is one of those times.
See how it goes.. see how it goes....
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Actually.. HW2 might just be the kick HWU needs to get going again...
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HWU could use anything
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Originally posted by Thunder
Niched is not a word for it - we're the one comic at the back of the comic store under the re-releases of Spiderman with the dusty cover and the special limited edition seriel number!
Yeah, but we're a collectors item! :nod:
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Yea, but we don't have a lot of issues:
HLP-The Begginning of a dream.
No.2: HLP forums
No.3: HLP Art forums
No.4:General Freespace
etc, etc,etc
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Spiderman seems prety l33t ! to me. Still need to see it:)
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Spider-man the movie=:no:
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Originally posted by Unkown Target
Spider-man the movie=:no:
If that =:no:
than Star Wars II = :headz: :snipe: :no: :no: :no:
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:nod:
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I think that's enough information to think about for the time being...