Homeworld - Back from the Dead: The game - Games

[QUOTE=Sprockethead;49646835]So how about these Galciien units. [/QUOTE] Who the hell are the Galciien? I only know about the Gaalsien... :v: Jokes aside tho, keep in mind that they had years of unlimited access to hundreds of wrecks carrying various pieces of technology. When you don't have to fight over the things you want to study it becomes alot easier to focus on reverse-engineering. [editline]1st February 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=Trainbike;49647691]So what's the deal with the skin selection thing in skirmish / multiplayer? Are there any alternate skins you can unlock yet or is it just a thing they plan on doing DLC for or something?[/QUOTE] Probably DLC or (hopefully) workshop skins.

[QUOTE=Viper123_SWE;49647836]Who the hell are the Galciien? I only know about the Gaalsien... :v:[/QUOTE] Whatever, The space arabs.

Oh shit [editline]1st February 2016[/editline] Nono mister! [editline]1st February 2016[/editline] Someone call K'had Sajuuk!

Sorry, No K'had Sajuuk. Only Kapisi. Bend over, here comes Kapisi's cruise missile.

I thought the biggest obstacle was recreating the beast effect in engine. I remember reading that the way they pulled it off originally was comparable to jumping through a flaming hoop on a unicycle while also on fire yourself. [editline]2nd February 2016[/editline] Doesn't help that the original code is gone too.

Well the beast effect was simply cross fading between two models, it was in part cobbled together from salvage code. Most major problems with the game came from pathing and how much of the engine was hard coded. Working with the Homeworld engine at he time wasn't easy, since most changes required you to recompile the whole game. Cataclysm over all involved a lot of hacking together elements of the game engine, but the end result gave it the best functionality of the Homeworld games. Given Gearbox has added lua extensions to the Remastered engine, I don't think it would be too of difficult to recreate beast transformation. The SFX and sounds are the hardest part. Homeworld 2's engine and Remastered are highly guilty of sound clipping, which is they cut off sounds suddenly. Just watch the Destruction of Kharak and compare it to Homeworld's. The Taiidan voices cut off suddenly in Remastered, while they overlap in Homeworld. It makes the Remastered one sound a lot less chaotic.

As long as they make a fully working time compression system to accelerate/delay the time, it will be fine.

It shouldn't be too hard to make a time compression system. You can do it now with cheat engine, though it breaks the sounds for a while. On the other side, still seeing if there's anyone interested in building a mod. What I really need is someone who can model/uv/texture better then I can.

[t]https://cdn.discourse.org/gearbox/uploads/default/original/4X/7/4/7/74704996e682f25de04cf5edebad66a97e4c1cff.gif[/t] God damn such a tease

That's a HW2 squadron though? I don't remember there being problems with their behaviour, just HW1 formations

No, they are hw2 units being used as individual ships like HW1 They cycle through several hw1 formations

[QUOTE=Bloodshot12;49728894][t]https://cdn.discourse.org/gearbox/uploads/default/original/4X/7/4/7/74704996e682f25de04cf5edebad66a97e4c1cff.gif[/t] God damn such a tease[/QUOTE] Those clouds down there must be going at several times the speed of sound

[QUOTE=Bloodshot12;49736361]No, they are hw2 units being used as individual ships like HW1 They cycle through several hw1 formations[/QUOTE] Previously their formation was dependent on tactic. That's how HW2 squads worked. Now they'll assign formation based on formation. So it's a step up.

Since HW2 just calculates chance to hit, what does changing tactics even do in HW2? Just increase their chance to hit for an increased chance to be hit, in the case of aggressive?

[QUOTE=Morbo!!!;49760241]Since HW2 just calculates chance to hit, what does changing tactics even do in HW2? Just increase their chance to hit for an increased chance to be hit, in the case of aggressive?[/QUOTE] I imagine that's the case. It's a simple solution with the same results.

[QUOTE=Morbo!!!;49760241]Since HW2 just calculates chance to hit, what does changing tactics even do in HW2? Just increase their chance to hit for an increased chance to be hit, in the case of aggressive?[/QUOTE] It doesn't change weapons at all. It just changes attack pattern for fighters. All other ships, tacits just sets engagement range. On passive/evasive ships won't engage unless attacked. On Neutral they'll engage enemy who come in range and support friendly units. On Aggressive they'll move to engage enemy ships who enter their sight range and will support nearby units that are under attack. Tactics are basically meaningless, since aggressive means your units will ignore orders and run off. Passive/evasive makes them sit there and do nothing half the time, and the other half they'll ignore what passive is and fly off somewhere. No reason to leave neutral tactics really. And no matter the tactic, your ships will fly off when you don't want them to. Compared to Homeworld, where tactics had an actual effect. Evasive changed how strike craft moved and provided a small speed boost. Evasive ships would attempt to dodge incoming fire at the cost of having minimal weapon up time. Evasive didn't do anything for capital ships, and increased fuel usage for strike craft. Non combat ships in evasive will run away from enemy units. Ships will not return fire without an order in evasive. Neutral ships would automatically fire on enemy who come in weapons range, but usually won't move from their position. It gives average up time on weapons and strike craft will do some evasive maneuvers. It lives up to its name, it's neutral and behavior is even. Aggressive changed a number of things. Strike craft will not take evasive maneuvers and will instead opt for maximum weapons up time on target. Capital ships will automatically move to engage enemy units that come in range and will chase them down. Strike craft use up more fuel and will die faster, since they will just fly straight at or circle the target, making no attempt to dodge incoming fire. Non combat ships on aggressive won't retreat or flee from enemy units either.

Oh, I thought he was talking about the mythical patch, not how HW2 works now. I wouldn't be surprised (and I certainly hope so too) if they made it so in an emulation of HW1 tactics raises/lowers evasion chances. But yeah, in current HW2 all it effectively does is set how aggressive they are with automatically attacking units. It did a lot more in HW1 but Gunner's already covered it.

[QUOTE=Morbo!!!;49760241]Since HW2 just calculates chance to hit, what does changing tactics even do in HW2? Just increase their chance to hit for an increased chance to be hit, in the case of aggressive?[/QUOTE] there're thankfully mods which restore the HW1 'physics' in HW2 for HWR and it's more fun ;)

So here's a ship I've been working on for a long ass time, as in the last two weeks. This is why I need I real modeler and texture person. I just need someone to help make the mod. Mainly in modeling and textures. [media]http://imgur.com/a/nTKCX[/media]

[QUOTE=Gunner th;49761102]It doesn't change weapons at all. It just changes attack pattern for fighters. All other ships, tacits just sets engagement range. On passive/evasive ships won't engage unless attacked. On Neutral they'll engage enemy who come in range and support friendly units. On Aggressive they'll move to engage enemy ships who enter their sight range and will support nearby units that are under attack. Tactics are basically meaningless, since aggressive means your units will ignore orders and run off. Passive/evasive makes them sit there and do nothing half the time, and the other half they'll ignore what passive is and fly off somewhere. No reason to leave neutral tactics really. And no matter the tactic, your ships will fly off when you don't want them to. Compared to Homeworld, where tactics had an actual effect. Evasive changed how strike craft moved and provided a small speed boost. Evasive ships would attempt to dodge incoming fire at the cost of having minimal weapon up time. Evasive didn't do anything for capital ships, and increased fuel usage for strike craft. Non combat ships in evasive will run away from enemy units. Ships will not return fire without an order in evasive. Neutral ships would automatically fire on enemy who come in weapons range, but usually won't move from their position. It gives average up time on weapons and strike craft will do some evasive maneuvers. It lives up to its name, it's neutral and behavior is even. Aggressive changed a number of things. Strike craft will not take evasive maneuvers and will instead opt for maximum weapons up time on target. Capital ships will automatically move to engage enemy units that come in range and will chase them down. Strike craft use up more fuel and will die faster, since they will just fly straight at or circle the target, making no attempt to dodge incoming fire. Non combat ships on aggressive won't retreat or flee from enemy units either.[/QUOTE] Oh wow, I never realised just how neutered it was. My favourite tactic in HW1 was to divide my strike craft into to groups; one set to evasive and the other aggressive, and send the evasive ones into a fight first so they're drawing the most fire while taking the least damage, meaning the aggressive group weren't in as much danger while maximising their damage output. This is why I played HW1 classic when I got remastered, cause that shit is basically impossible on RM/2. Thinking about it now, the utility of formations is diminished without this system too - With strike craft, they'd determine how many of them would be able to engage a target simultaneously vs how closely grouped together they are. Does the mod Dwarden mentioned replicate the evasive/aggressive maneuvering?

I'm sure there's a function somewhere that can add modifiers to tactics, though it wouldn't be quite the same. The problem is the HW2 engine just doesn't have the ballistics behavior and detection of HW1's engine, so there's no way to make ships actively dodge fire, even if you do mod projectiles in. They'd have to rip out the existing weapons code and add more to the movement behavior. Now they already ripped out the movement code and replaced it in order to get formations to work, but the game is still relying on static attack patterns. They'd have to overhaul ship behavior next to include weapon avoidance behavior. Then upgrade the game's projectile system.

Ships didn't smartly evade fire though, they just wiggled around indiscriminately as long as there were enemies in range. You could easily emulate that specific game mechanic by making them a formation wiggle around for visual effect and then giving all incoming fire an accuracy debuff. Another nice thing using that same system would be an accuracy buff to incoming fire if a ship is stopped or flying slowly. This way you can have the HW1 situations where if a ship just sits still then heavy guns can hit them perfectly fine. While I think it would be cool if projectiles were just straight up physical, I still believe you can simulate a lot of the same behavior close enough that in practice it'll be more or less the same thing.

There's a multitude of collision and projectile tracing problems with the engine that prevent you from making all weapons effective projectiles. Missiles will go through targets in cinematic, and weird behavior sometimes causes them to not impact a target. Since all projectiles have to be done as missiles with no tracking, there are some problems there. There's also no leading behavior, so attack patterns have to be modified so that ships will actually hit each other. Ships didn't smartly evade fire, no, but their movement wasn't entierly random. They would move in response to turret tracking. It all happened in a simplified manner, but ships did respond to tracking in motion. I've also been working more on my models. I've got the base model for one faction's frigates down. I just need to texture it, then work out the variants from there. Screen shots later.

Was listening to some stuff recently, and Adaigo for Strings came up, and I immediately recognized it as the song used when Kharak was destroyed. Was kind of cool.

We finally have news on the SUPER PATCH and holy crap is it a SUPER PATCH. If you had a problem with the Remastered version of Homeworld 1, it's been addressed. Formations are not only back, but so are physically simulated projectiles such that if an interceptor sits still it's toast. Tactics actually affect how ships fly, and that matters now. They've rewritten absolutely ridiculous amounts of the Homeworld 2 engine to get to where they are. Gearbox are calling this "A Remaster of a Remaster." Here's the rest of the info. [url]http://www.fistsofheaven.com/gearbox-homeworld-remastered-patch/[/url] [img]http://496bggz4ark3ubkj71823w5t.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Homeworld-Remastered-Patch-Formation-Ballistics-Animation-Fists-of-Heaven.gif[/img] [t]http://496bggz4ark3ubkj71823w5t.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Homeworld-Remastered-Patch-Formation-and-Strike-Craft-Behavior-Fists-of-Heaven.jpg?id=6210[/t]

They took them forever, but better late than never. I'm surprised, I thought they just eventually went silent.

Holy fuck. I can't believe they even added back the ballistics. This is like a HW1 fan's dream.

I honestly think it's amazing they've spent that much time & effort on something they had no obligation to do.

[QUOTE=Kickasskyle;50371716]I honestly think it's amazing they've spent that much time & effort on something they had no obligation to do.[/QUOTE] While they have no 'obligation' to fix it, it's bad that it was a problem in the first place. I haven't played the original (only the remastered version) but they left out what seems like integral parts of HW1, so it was pretty much broken in a way. Finally solving it is great but it should have been like this at the start. I know it was due to the engine limitations, but they could have at least given some indication that it was being worked on.

Considering how long it took them to implement these features, I can really see now why they didn't have them on release. The preview builds that came out in the few months before release still varied pretty significantly in terms of content, so I had always assumed the Remaster had been in full crunch mode to desperately meet its deadline, and it showed in certain places. Despite Homeworld being a venerable brand, and despite some notable recent entries like Grey Goo, RTS still aren't some hot topic money maker, so I can see why the Homeworld team may have been short on funding and manpower - but it looks like they didn't lack tenacity. Definitely exceeded my expectations at least. Kinda curious about these parts tho: [quote]This paves the way for ‘intelligent’ formations: when you bandbox select a group of ships and punch in a formation, the ships arrange based on classes and weaponry. [...] if the destroyers were Kushan instead of Vaygr, the formation would be different due the firing arcs [...] formations can (and will) differ based on race [...] modders will have the ability to specify formations for different races, ship classes, or even tactics.[/quote] I was doubtful how intelligent those "intelligent formations" would be, but the later part does give me the impression they put a lot of thought into it. That's so much more emphasis on formations than any of the Homeworld have ever had. [quote]Formations will also have a cap on the number of units that can enter a given formation; but ships will automatically form multiple formations iif the number selected is greater than the number that can enter into one formation.[/quote] If the number is reasonable, I think I'll be mostly fine with this. Having a 30-fighter-sized claw formation was hilarious, but this does sound more useful for actual gameplay. [quote]whenever a ship starts to go down you’ll see all nearby vessels work frantically to clear the blast radius.[/quote] Seems like a great change, I can really see that giving battles more "character". [quote]nebulas and gas clouds will make an appearance in the maps, rather than just as a backdrop. You’ll be able to fly ships through them, and they’ll be somewhat obscured, based on the nebula’s density.[/quote] Oooh, I wonder if that'll actually lend itself to some dramatic-looking ambushes or whether it'll just be a small detail. Probably the latter, but we'll see I guess. [quote]In fact, before we even started our balance patch the community had released multiple re-balance patches for themselves. We actually contacted those people and asked if they wanted private access to what we were doing, if they wanted to help us make our balance [changes] [...] That also probably explains why some of the balance mods in the community haven’t been updated recently, because they sort of work for us now *laughs*."[/quote] Very curious about this one. Doesn't happen every day that a dev team works so intimately with community modders. I wonder how it will change ships with healing abilities, those do seem to be a persistent problem. [quote]there’s no way for us to make the Homeworld 2 engine work on multiple CPU cores, and the math required to implement a more advanced collision engine would just bog down a single core too much”. That means superstructures, such as those found in the latest REARM mod, won’t be able to exist anymore[/quote] I do wonder if this will just affect a few outlier mods or actually hamper all complex mods. And whether it may have something to do with the lack of different armor values for various ship parts that rewarded different attack plans in 3D space.