#7

I think they should build a new engine and use it to remaster Cataclysm and re remaster Homeworld.
Not necessarily in that order!!

Petition for releasing Homeworld: Cataclysm Remastered
#8

The is quite old news, and also utter non-sense. I won’t even attempt to detail why - virtually anyone with game dev experience understands this to be hyperbole and nothing more.

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#9

You are incorrect, Blackbird did not do it wrong, Gear Box did, you need to figure out who the various developers are dude.

#10

I got the impression that they thought Remastered was done by re-creating Homeworld 1 & 2 in a modern, modular engine, like Unity or UE4, in which case it’s kind of understandable that they would think it wouldn’t be too much more work to build on that foundation to do Cataclysm as well. Had they realized it was a retro-fitted Homeworld 2 engine, I think they’d have acknowledged that getting Cataclysm going in it would be a fair bit more complex and time consuming.

#11

i do believe HW shipbreakers was being developed using unity. but i don’t think the cata devs were implying that they would use the hw2 engine engine at all. they were just saying that having the source code is not a prerequisite for doing a cata remastered, and if gearbox reached out to them, they would be interested.

@bitvenom, as a game dev myself, i call bs on that statement. feb 19th is hardly quite old, considering hwr was released on the 25th. as for being non-sense and hyperbole, i find that hard to believe coming from 2 very established, veteran developers with multiple titles under their belts. just my opinion though.

#12

Nope. Hyperbole. Game dev or not, we just did a remaster - there is nobody more qualified to weigh in on the difficulty of the task. I think it’s more that they would love to try it, not so much that it wouldn’t be hard or expensive or time consuming.

Using the existing engine would be crazy because Cata was on top of HW1, which we didn’t really touch - so all sorts of stuff would have to be rebuilt, recreated, etc. Doing it on top of Remastered would be easier - but have issues with the ‘HW1’ stuff - Strikegroups instead of large group formations, etc. Art-wise, now that we’ve created the systems and it is all mostly defined (which was far from the case during dev), they’d have a much less difficult time. It is though still a TON of new artwork.

As for using a new engine - that’s no better. Tons of work to rebuild the old game logic systems - some of which are far, far more complex than you might imagine - tons of work to create new assets from the old ones - techniques and configuration of that art has changed or would create new problems to solve, etc.

There is ZERO chance the final product would be successful or functional and on any fair budget and still be called ‘easy and quick’ - zero. Period.

I’ve been making games for 20 years, have tons of shipped titles on almost every platform in existence, and I call it Hyperbole.

13 Likes
Petition for releasing Homeworld: Cataclysm Remastered
#13

believe me, i know exactly what is involved in trying to rebuild cataclysm in a new engine :wink: , it is not easy… but not impossible.

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#14

OP was talking about easy. And that’s the whole idea - I believe Dave’s position is that there’s not enough profit in remastering the game as it would possibly cost more than sell. It’s too much risk, if I understood properly.

So “getting Gearbox attention” is not as small thing as it sounds, as it’s a decision the whole studio will have to pay unless it’s a huge success.

#15

I’ll be controversial, hate me if you will for what I’m about to say, but I don’t miss Cata at all.

Gameplay-wise it did some very interesting things. Modular Mothership, these shield Drones and Leeches etc.
But it didn’t have too many units. The Corvettes were just two conjoined twins fighters (what the hell?) and there were some very oddly imbalanced things as Siege Cannon, Super Acolytes, Nomand Moon, Naggarok. And by imbalanced I mean literaly comic book over the top impossibly powerful. Cringeworthy imbalanced.
And a Ramming Frigate? Well, that was a thing…

Visual aesthetics-wise it was bad and sort of amaterurish (this is the part of the criticism I was warning about in the beginning).
The ships didn’t look like they had a clearly defined shapes, they looked rather like random blobs made by starting modders. A bit naive. And the wide proportions in all dimensions didn’t leave much space for a sense of scale. Everything was just too damn bulky. It had proportions of toys.

Is this a good design?

Doesn’t this look like a toy?

Does this look mature and professional to anyone in the world?:

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Ramming_frigate.jpg800×600 130 KB

And just what in the bloody hell is that? Seriously? Are we all looking at this thing saying “yep, that’s legit. Top notch art, a piece of history”, just nodding in admiration with a straight face?

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And to close it off, take a look at the Somtaaw badge and honestly tell me it isn’t the cheesiest thing:

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The game had a good music. I did like the thing with Bentusi, that surprised me, that was a chilling moment, I’ll grand them that. But other than that, I don’t miss it. And I didn’t find it very professional, it was a level or two below the rest of the Homeworld games. A power fantasy with naive aesthetics, as if it was created by an immature imagination.

-A plot for an 80’s cartoon. A flesheating virus with stolen voices that you fight with ramming frigates (because that’s obviously the safest approach), with a superultra Yamato siege cannon and with fighters that join together morfing into Acolytezord. In the middle of that there’s a Death Star superweapon going bad. And you fight this all with colorful toy-like ships.

I’m sorry if I stepped on someones sacred memories, I really am. But it really wasn’t as good as you remember it.

2 Likes
[MOD] REARM V2 WIP thread
#16

@Pouk I’m currently playing the game and I love it. And I actually enjoyed it more so than HW1, because it added a lot of neat features that should have been in HW1 Classic, although HW1 Classic is still an epic game and both are miles better than HW2. The story was focused on a kiith, so things were supposed to be scaled down and kept small (the smaller fleets made the game harder on the higher difficulties).

My only criticism of Cataclysm is that it’s very easy to get a high count of resources early on: by the latter 5-6 missions, you won’t need to harvest again.

I would avoid suggesting that we’re all remembering the game wrong, because it’s a false statement only based on your own opinion of the game, rather than that of the majority.

3 Likes
#17

Well it’s not a false statement only because you say it is. You actually do the exact same thing with that.
You literally said, my statement is false, because it’s my oppinion.
By the same token, why couldn’t then I say that your stetement that my statement is false is false, because it’s your oppinion?
By your logic everything everyone ever said would be false.
The difference between what I said and what you said is that I actually made a case and explained in detail why I’m holding that possition.

And how about keeping the story small? Cata wen’t crazy. There’s nothing small about a demonic superorganism with a Death Star mixed somewhere in the plot.

Often you need to remove some portions of your collective body of work in order to elevate it. To get rid of the weaker links to make the product better for it. And Cataclysm was a weaker link, it was very immature and I do say the Homeworld is better without it than with it.

#18

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#19

Feel free to counter my points one by one.

#20

This topic again? I guess I’ll just link my old post on the subject: http://oldforums.gearboxsoftware.com/showthread.php?p=4713076#post4713076

TL;DR, I think Cata is a net positive to the setting and a lot of fun. If the positives outweigh the negatives is an entirely subjective judgement and can’t really be proven either way.

4 Likes
#21

You pretty much nailed it in your review. I hold many of the same feelings about the game.

#22

You pretty much said the exact same thing I did. Or to be chronologicaly correct, I pretty much said the exact same thing you did.

A sidenote, it makes me think what @ratamaq’s point was. He called my assesment BS froms start to finish and upvoted you calling Somtaaw ships ugly and their textures fairly unpleasant and you using the words as hyper gimicky and one-dimensional.

We both said that fleet is small and we both liked the music and particular parts of the story. Perhaps you see it differently, which is very well possible, but I can’t find a single thing we dissagree on.

Here’s my other post where I agree on the “startrekiness”. And in that one I haven’t yet read your review either:

#23

Yeah, that’s why I summed the post up the way I did. We both see the same negative qualities in the game, but we give those and the game’s positive qualities different weights. While I’m sure we could quibble over minor points if we dug down deep enough, we seem to broadly agree on all the concrete details, yet reach different conclusions about the game’s total worth. Which isn’t a contradiction, just the nature of entertainment. No need to call someone else’s honest opinion on what they do and don’t enjoy ■■■■■■■■.

#24

Fair enough, I see what you mean. The personal value and enjoyment.
Although I don’t know whether your last point was targeted to me. If it was then the other debaters are far more guilty of it than I am.

My point was that Cata has a lower aesthetics standards and level of quality. And that’s something you definitely can asses objectively.
I am minority, I don’t think otherwise. But being minority doesn’t make me wrong. These ships are naive and noticeably less professional than the rest of the franchise. For instance the meat texture you’ve mentioned is a great example of that sort of naivity. That’s an objective criticism.

But sure, it has a place in people’s heart. I don’t disrepect that. And I get people enjoyed it and it has a subjective value to them, no doubt. I didn’t mean to offend anyone and I hope I clearly stated that in my original post.

But a ship design in a game about ships is neither a mere detail nor subjective.

EDIT: BTW you’re an author of HW:@, you can’t hide that you have a great sense for ship design. I love your stuff and I know you know what’s genuenly bad. :smile:

#25

Yeah, that’s not aimed at you.

And yeah, while I do think that there’s still a large subjective element to how bad they look to any given person, it’d be very hard to argue that Cata’s ship, in both design an execution, are at least a cut below Homeworld 1’s. Trying to remaster those ships would be an outright herculean task, because their problems go a lot deeper than not having enough polygons or textels. I’d not try to say otherwise. Where the judgement call comes in is saying “Homeworld is better without it than with it.”. In terms of art design I’d tend to agree, but in pratically every other respect I’d rather have HWC than HW2. Which probably isn’t a surprise, since you’re familiar with HW@ :wink:

P.S. I’m actually probably the team member who has contributed the least to the mod’s visual design, but I like to think I’ve learned a lot about how good ship design works from my teammates and the other artists it’s brought me into contact with.

1 Like
#26

Well actually I could start drawing diagrams about length to width/height ratios, about overall shape vs extruding details proportions, quote something about psychology of shapes and effect the proportions have on the human perception of scale and disect it perfectly rationally…
I might even do it, but I have a strong feeling no one is interested and they’re rather waiting for me to finally shut up. :slight_smile:

Hmm, I do like HW2, so there’s another difference. I also do perfectly remember that the first sentence in your mod descrition is “Born of a dissatisfaction with Homeworld 2”. :slight_smile: