Players meet Homeworld

[Cherel]

As this community was -and still is- really related to the Homeworld universe, and whe have more than 2 years -I think- of posting, a question came to my mind:

How did you found HW? what made you pick this game instead of another one? Was it just luck? a review? an advice? did you see a screenshot in a magazine?

As this game has grown so deep in us -In me at least- I would like you all to share our experiences about this... "first contact"

[TheGlove]

Well, when you create a topic like this, it's expected you actually tell YOUR story right? I just picked HW1 up at a local supermarket.

[Cherel]

yes, it is true... but I wanted a starting post withouth the story and I did not want to double post

I'll post my story later, I want to have spare time to write it with nostalgia

[Nerath]

It's all because my best friend got laryngitis and something like the flu when I was at her house over Spring Break. It was the most annoying situation -- I rarely see her, and then she got sick -- but her mom insisted on dragging our subsequently dormant butts to Wal-Mart. Where I saw this box sitting on display.

Home World. It did look like two words on the box. So I decided that it would be good to occupy me over break, and I bought it. I had some spare cash, why not. The graphics looked snazzy, and I had never played a starship strategy game before. Shoot, I didn't know what an RTS was. I just knew "Home World" had good graphics, a seemingly good plot, and was very sci-fi.

So I bought it on a whim, took it home, and plunked it in my CD drive.

And subsequently played it for several hours straight. I'd leave it on at the end of a level, harvesting all the resources in the empty level while I did something else, so then I'd come back and have a truckload of RUs for the next level. And I forced myself to like that song at the end, which at first I didn't like because of the lead singer's weird voice, but then it grew on me and I love it. I spent forever in the Kadeshi levels, because I didn't notice the obvious enough to kill the fuel pods. I salvaged my butt off and had fun with multibeam frigates.

And I owned the world much more slowly than everyone else, but I did own it.

As for Cataclysm...well, that's another tale, but it took me forever to find it. You'd be surprised. It was ONLY at GameStop...which, at that time, was about 1.5 hours away from my tiny little town...see, my best friend lived 2.5 hours away; that's how I got Homeworld, out of town...

[Cherel]

Ok, my story.

A long, long time ago, I was a child who loved playing with one of my friends at his house. He had been crazy for games since he owned NES and showed me "Super Mario Bros"

He used to buy weekly magazines about videogames. And I used to read these when I was in his house. One day, a magazine come with a "game gide", a walktrhough about several games. One of these was Age of Empires II. And I have always loved the Age of Empires series since I discovered the "AoE:Rise of Rome" demo.

As I owned AoE, he allowed me to take the guide to my house for a careful reading. When I finished with AoEII, I went on with the other games in the guide: "Pizza Syndicate", "Seven Kingdoms II"... and "Homeworld".

I was a science-fiction fan. And when I started reading and looking at screenshots... It looked amazing! the opinions about the game in the walkthrough were really possitive, and I was really excited.
One of the things I really felt surprised was a pic featuring an asteroid between the camera and the mothership. It really was a 3d game! and then 3d formations... x, wall... the close up shots of ships really impressed me. They were so dettailed... and you could tell the function of every part of the ship, as if they had been designed in a realistical way. These designs were completely original! I remember dreaming about the taidan ion frigate.

There were shots featuring most of the ships near generic articles like "Capital ships: tactics" but these were not labeled with the ship dey displayed, so I had no idea of the kind of ship i was watching. As I loved drawing starships, these designs were a real font of inspiration and a standard about how capital ships should be like (non center positions for bridges... things I had never thought about)

The more I read, the more excited i was. "escort tactics" "fighters: tactics" a ship for each role, a formation for each situation. Space stations. Hyperspace travel... I remember steering at a pic taken to the end of the mission 1 cinematic, it is, fighters in delta formation in front of a resourcer, with Kharak behind of it. The sense of scale was amazing.

I found myself dreaming about batles involving these ships, star wars style. they changed totally the way I draw starships. I knew what was going the gift I wanted for Christmas.


And when I played it for the first time, it was not great.
It was even greater.
Full 3d camera control, and an extreme sense of realismn. (or at least, it seemed realismn to me at this age :-P) turreted ships, scale, the ships did not increase their firepower due to having a better weapon class so that there were 9 or so weapon classes, but they increased the number of turrets instead. These concepts were totally new to me.

And then, the story.
you started playing due to the graphics and the posibilities 3d control offered... but it was the story what hooked you. I remember playing the first two acts of the campaign and thinking it was very real and logical -I mean, testing jump engines by travelling towards a ship sent 5 years before with traditional engines and all things explained in this amazing pdf that came with the game seemed totally logical to me. The tests and dialogs really added the touch of realism necessary for a space game. And harvesting all resources around the area took time! you might leave as soon as you wanted, but you could stick to the level and harvest, repair, and leave when ready. This means you can also run when your objectives were complete. There was no need to eliminate all enemies. You had a goal beyond this.
In addition, having to wait for the smallest ships to dock with the mothership to jump was a really nice touch.

In mission 2 things started to get wrong. You were able to come out alive and thought about getting back and telling your people about it. I expected a "rest stage" I mean... this is the safest place of space for me... Things were already wrong and some sistems of the ship had to be activated -standar engines in the mothership, for instance- I thought I would come back, momship would be repaired and maybe we would defend the scaffold from a small raiding force before leaving again towards Hiigara.

(And I had never played a game which made you go back to the first stage as soon as you beat stage 2, by the way. This concept really felt original)

And then mission 3. This mission was a real shock for me. I mean... the surprise I had made me feel atached with the people into the criotrays...
And when mission 3 was over... I felt fear. But it was not the kind of fear you can experience in Survival Horror kind of games. It was fear about those things to come. It was the fear caused by responsability. You knew the fate of your people was in your hands... and it was so real... You experienced this kind of fear to the unknown you can only beat with determination.

by then I was sure this game would have me hooked forever. And it does. It is one of the very few games I've beaten, in fact.


I still have this "stragegy game guide" next to the keyboard. it is my treasure :-P

[gremdek]

first contact - demo from magazine, and then for a long time no homeworld. I couldn't buy it in here.
And I got homeworld cataclysm at last, but not original homeworld. After two or three years I bought original homeworld, there was a reedition.

What can I say more, it's the best game I've ever played.


I play one more game and nothing more: Operation Flashpoint.

bye

[arlia101]

i was originally hooked on star trek armada 1 & 2, and any mods i could find for that. maybe 3 years ago in stores i saw the homeworld box, and thought 'hey, that looks prettygood' and that was it. then i saw the review of HW2 in a game magazine- think its the same one you have, cherel, because i got the AoE demo, too lol - and was totally awestruck by the screenshots.
a couple of months after that i saw Homeworld marked down as 'game of the year edition' and finally got it. i was stunned by the graphics and engine, totally unused to the control after ST:A. then came the missions; well, i scraped by the last raiders mission with one ion frigate... wasn't doing very well. so i gave up for a while. then last year i pulled it out again, not willing to totally give up, and having nothing else to play since i modded Armada to death-literally. i looked up a strategy guide online, and the first thing that hit me was that i could steal ships. i thought, well, duh! after the 3rd mission?
so from there i got along pretty well, eventually got the official guide off amazon and downloaded, and became religiously devoted to, the game music. And, of course, i finally stumbled into the PaperStarships site while browsing around Homeworld Shipyards.

[Cherel]

arlia101 said:

then i saw the review of HW2 in a game magazine- think its the same one you have, cherel, because i got the AoE demo, too lol - and was totally awestruck by the screenshots.

The magazine I picked was related with HW1, not 2 (like all my explanation) I don't think it is the same one, however... unless you live in Spain and used to buy "Micromamía" :-P

[Enterprise-E]

Interesting, my knowledge of HW is also in relation with ST: Armada. When i first read about HW in a gaming magazine, i thought "wow, i must have this game when it comes out". But as time passed, i learned of ST Armada, and (being a huge fanatic of ST) bought that game instead of HW. For a long time ST Armada was my favourite game... then a bit (1-2 years?) later i saw HW for bargain price. i remembered how much i looked forward to it, and bought it. It was about the time i got ST Armada II, but for some reason i tried HW first. Armada II was forgotten on the instant. And soon my all-time favourite game changed, and became HW... i started loving those ships, even to the point where i started drawing and designing HW ships isntead of ST vessels. On the long way i read all descriptions on HW Shipyards, everything in the manual, and above all, i began worshipping the dreaded Taiidan Heavy Cruiser.

Well, and You probably know of my HW related internet activity, so it's not necessary to type it in here.

HW is still my favourite game of all time, and it is unlikely that it will change anytime soon.

[Cherel]

HwShipyards became my main page too. Everytime I opened Internet explorer, It was displayed there. Everyday. It was replaced by google after realizing was not going to be updated after HW2 came out.

[TheGlove]

HWS is down now...

[Nerath]

...Seriously? I go to it randomly about every month or so. That really stinks -- I hope it comes back up soon.

It's sad that Homeworld is slowly fading into the distance. Yes, there are loyal fans, but HWS hasn't been updated since 2004, I think, and Vivendi bought Sierra and something else bought Relic. But of course, we will always keep it alive.

[arlia101]

yeah, all the site is is a banner, now
they actually went down twice, after the first time i tried downloading their archive to have around ... but i didn't even get a whole section of links before they went down again

Cherel, yup, you're right lol
looked at the mag again, gameInformer

[TheGlove]

Actually, THQ bought Relic. And yeah, this is probably the end...

[Enterprise-E]

HW has already been killed by the big ones (Sierra vs THQ). The only hope for a new HW game/movie/stuff would be if Sierra would sell the HW IP rights to someone else (to meeee), who would treat them better.