New Homeworld game (re released)

Skerries

shots fired across console peasants bow

VinLieger

I just remembered, new Homeworld means new Star Wars mods!!!!!

Gbear

VinLieger wrote: »

I just remembered, new Homeworld means new Star Wars mods!!!!!

Steam Workshop support. :cool:

Also, Star Trek, Mass Effect and everything else from this poster.

Kiith

Ah, i'd kill for another Sacrifice of Angels mod.

Gbear

The trickle of videos from PAX continues:

More extensive gameplay footage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRtqy0CGur4

They chat about the process of redoing everything, some new features, a good look at the new unified UI for the 2 games and some fun anecdotes.

More chat about the process of redeveloping the game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jgc695vvSk

Kiith

So both engines are running in the same version of the game? Interesting. Was confused there when the single player was from Homeworld 1 (Garden of Kadesh) and the multiplayer had Homeworld 2 ships.

It looks fantastic though.

Gbear

Kiith wrote: »

So both engines are running in the same version of the game? Interesting. Was confused there when the single player was from Homeworld 1 (Garden of Kadesh) and the multiplayer had Homeworld 2 ships.

It looks fantastic though.

Not only that but there's a unified multiplayer with the 4 factions.

Kiith

Yeah, just saw that. Taiidan vs Vagyr? Sounds good to me

Reggie.

Just got email stating the game will be delivered by March 2nd

Kirby

I watched those PAX developer demo's and I feel they don't do the game justice. They could have sold it more but the fact that their entire audience is already invested means they didn't have to :P.

Still, I feel that most of the masses wont have played the game and they missed an opportunity to explain why this game is different from the rest of the fodder on steam.

Regardless, I've already bought my copy.

Gbear

Latest trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA7FbYAmrX0

I'm actually going to bawl when I boot this up and I hear the start of Agnus Dei.

Cookie_Monster

Is it just me or does that not really look much better than the original?

gizmo

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

Is it just me or does that not really look much better than the original?

I'm sure you're not the only one but you'll most definitely be in the minority.

Polycounts on the models, texture work and lighting are all noticeably improved across the board in all the footage I've seen thus far.

Cookie_Monster

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

Is it just me or does that not really look much better than the original?

Without a comparison, it doesn't look much better to me either

nesf

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

Is it just me or does that not really look much better than the original?

They've seemed to kept the original models or stayed extremely close to them. I do see a big difference, especially on the mothership where there were many large flat low res surfaces before. I can see why it wouldn't immediately look like a huge improvement though, the ship models are all fairly simple things compared to what's more common today as they were meant for much less powerful computers. But if they changed the models much there'd be a lot of upset fans of the original.

Varik

the thing with these "HD" remasters is that they look like we remember but we're remembering them with a hell of a lot of nostalgia.

Gbear

It's important to remember that Youtube videos are compressed and it'll look a lot better on your PC, particularly seeing as it'll be for sustained periods rather than little clips.
It'll also be in glorious 60fps, not to mention higher resolution if you're lucky enough to have the relevant hardware.

60fps...? Surely the original had no problems reaching that

nesf

Deleted User wrote: »

60fps...? Surely the original had no problems reaching that

Most Youtube videos don't.

gizmo

Deleted User wrote: »

Without a comparison, it doesn't look much better to me either

Did you miss this from a couple of weeks back?

Kiith

It's definitely a big improvement on the original, but not as huge an improvement on the 2nd one. I played through both recently enough, and still can't wait for this. It's just a shame that we coulnd't get Cataclysm included in this. If only they hadn't lost the source code. Maybe a modder will do it one day.

Even just hearing that music in the new trailer makes me happy :P

nesf

nesf wrote: »

Most Youtube videos don't.

So...? What is people's obsession with 60fps recently. I've been running games at 70+ fps for literally decades now

Gbear

Deleted User wrote: »

So...? What is people's obsession with 60fps recently. I've been running games at 70+ fps for literally decades now

The point is, it'll look better than in the youtube videos.

Reggie.

Feb 25th can't come quick enough

gizmo

Kiith wrote: »

It's definitely a big improvement on the original, but not as huge an improvement on the 2nd one. I played through both recently enough, and still can't wait for this. It's just a shame that we coulnd't get Cataclysm included in this. If only they hadn't lost the source code. Maybe a modder will do it one day.

Even just hearing that music in the new trailer makes me happy :P

Which, to be fair, isn't particularly surprising since they've built the package on a refined version of the Homeworld 2 engine. Even with a decent amount of work on the rendering side there's only so much they're going to be able to accomplish without a substantial rewrite of the engine, something that is beyond the scope of this kind of project.

Hopefully the mod tools aren't heavily delayed anyway, be interesting to see what a new generation of modders can put together.

Gbear

Gbear wrote: »

The point is, it'll look better than in the youtube videos.

Ah right. I completely misunderstood. I thought you were suggesting the old game had a low fps.

nesf

Deleted User wrote: »

Ah right. I completely misunderstood. I thought you were suggesting the old game had a low fps.

Nah, Youtube has a bunch of encoding and fps issues that means some games usually look worse than they would on your PC in videos. What you're looking at in a video has been compressed twice which can affect things. It's not normally a big problem with most games unless the discussion is about visual fidelity or someone's trying to talk about framerate jumping being an issue for them when the video has been re-encoded at 30fps by Youtube.

Kiith

Ooooh

Reggie.

6 more days

Skerries

why has this type of game not really been tried since?

I know we have the likes of Sins of a solar empire but they are 4x games and not pure rts fun like this was

Gbear

Skerries wrote: »

why has this type of game not really been tried since?

I know we have the likes of Sins of a solar empire but they are 4x games and not pure rts fun like this was

RTS in general seemed to have died out for a while.

It was pretty slim pickings between about 2007 and 2015.

There were a few companies making decent games like Relic and Blizzard but not many others.

With the explosion of the indie scene, kickstarter and all that, I think the market is more fluid than it was and can better cater to what is a pretty niche genre.

I think Space has gotten cool again as well. The last decade and a bit had a pretty poor showing on the big budget sci-fi front - Star Trek basically died and there was the Star Wars prequels as well. In the last few years it seems to have dusted itself off again in popular culture.

gizmo

Skerries wrote: »

why has this type of game not really been tried since?

I know we have the likes of Sins of a solar empire but they are 4x games and not pure rts fun like this was

Because they are (or at least were) expensive to develop, hard to get right and there's not a massive market for them.

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident was the closest we got off the top of my head and while it reviewed well it didn't exactly set the world on fire.

We also had the unfortunate situation where the developed best aligned to return to the genre was owned by THQ who didn't own the Homeworld IP.

I hope that mission where parts of space was irradiated is easier or at least clearer. I had a ton of trouble with that when I was younger.

Gbear

A brief rundown for anyone who's new to the game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMWn4btduJE

The_Valeyard

I lost so many hours to this game,

I shall be buying again!!

gizmo

Hype building...

Gbear

TotalBiscuit is currently streaming skirmish games for anyone who wants additional hype.

Dunno what time he's on til.

Kiith

That looked like a lot of fun. Didn't realise there was a horde mode type thing.

Reggie.

Gbear wrote: »

TotalBiscuit is currently streaming skirmish games for anyone who wants additional hype.

Dunno what time he's on til.

Cheers for that just spent the last hour watching the skirmish

Gbear

Kiith wrote: »

That looked like a lot of fun. Didn't realise there was a horde mode type thing.

I was cooking so I missed most of it.

Isn't that pretty much what AI skirmish is regardless?

They had a normal fleet as far as I know. I caught the tail end of the previous game where he destroyed a Vaygr mothership.

He was getting swarmed at the end because he upped the difficulty.

The bounty system is interesting. It did seem like he was getting far too much money though - even with 7 carriers he never would've been spending all the money.

Not sure what it'll mean for multiplayer.

helimachoptor

Kiith wrote: »

Ah, i'd kill for another Sacrifice of Angels mod.

Do you mean the ST episode?????????????

nesf

Gbear wrote: »

I was cooking so I missed most of it.

Isn't that pretty much what AI skirmish is regardless?

They had a normal fleet as far as I know. I caught the tail end of the previous game where he destroyed a Vaygr mothership.

He was getting swarmed at the end because he upped the difficulty.

The bounty system is interesting. It did seem like he was getting far too much money though - even with 7 carriers he never would've been spending all the money.

Not sure what it'll mean for multiplayer.

I only caught the start of the stream. The "Easy" AI (I think that's what he was playing, or the middle one) looked dumb. Re: Multiplayer, they're basically repeating over and over that it's not done yet so I imagine there'll be a balancing pass based on data from after launch which isn't the worst idea.

Gbear

A fascinating podcast here with some of the guys who worked on Cataclysm. Their current company is called Kerberos (which I can only assume refers to the guard dog of the underworld in Greek).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXmfcXz-dZM

They had some very interesting things to say about a remaster of Cataclysm.

It was their opinion that the loss of the source code just isn't in any way a big deal and that Gearbox pretending like it is is purely down to them hedging their bets and waiting until HW:R releases and they see how it sells.

They also gave an open invitation to Gearbox to have them come back and work on it.

It might've just been some self-promotion and wrangling for work but they're working away on a few indie games of their own so I don't really think that's the case.

They also talked about a game they're developing called Kaiju-a-go-go, which sounds a bit like X-Com in reverse, although it's in real time.
You're some sort of mad scientist that sends these kind of mecha-kaiju down to earth to wreck the gaff.

Gbear

It looks like Gearbox are Gearboxing things up a bit with the collectors edition.

They've cut out quite a bit of the content they initially promised (see comparison here).

They did qualify the initial artwork for the CE as being subject to change but they've taken it out and are now selling it seperately.

I'd say a lot of those who bought the CE did so on the back of getting things like an artbook.

I don't think they deserve massive criticism for it but it does suggest that all the waffle Pitchford comes out with about doing it for the love of Homeworld was never going to get in the way of the business side of things.

He's not someone who comes across as genuine any time he's interviewed.

The real take away is to never pre-order, of course, and if you're getting burned by things like this you only have yourself to blame.

gizmo

Is that not an art book in the middle right image? If it is then the only difference is that it's not in the mini hardback style of other smaller artbooks released as part of CEs over the last few years like Rayman Origins, Dark Souls etc... There was a game guide touted in the original release too so it could be that?

Where's the galactic map, keychain, unit cards though? Whatever about changing the format of the art book, flat out cutting such content is grounds for a refund from any reasonably retailer, no?

I got bit a few years ago when Warner Bros released a horribly cut down version of the Arkham Asylum Collectors Edition in Europe. They replaced the cool bat shaped boxed with a terrible cardboard related one. Straight back it went to Play and I got the US region free version from CD Universe for the same price.

As an aside, I'll be buying the **** out of that art book. :pac:

The_Valeyard

helimachoptor wrote: »

Do you mean the ST episode?????????????

I think he means the total conversion mod for homeworld and sins of a solar empire, that converts all the units to Fed, klingon, romulan, etc factions.

Kiith

So this is out tomorrow

Reggie.

Kiith wrote: »

So this is out tomorrow

That's the theory

Says 30 hours from now on steam which is effectively tomorrow night

jumbobreakfast

people estimated that it would be 6pm our time tomorrow but you never know it could pop up at midnight tonight