
Homeworld 2 Backgrounds - jrajav
http://simonschreibt.blogspot.de/2013/03/homeworld-backgrounds.html
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niles
Homeworld assets are on the block still from the THQ fallout. If you want to
save this game (and see a brand new sequel), go to the Kickstarter campaign:

Homeworld Touch (iOS/Android) and Homeworld 3 (PC/Mac/Linux)
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/teampix/homeworld-
touch-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/teampix/homeworld-touch-ios-
android-and-homeworld-3-pc-mac)

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PetrolMan
I started playing Homeworld again recently because I've yet to find another
game really like it. I was impressed, considering the age of the game, with
how good the ships actually look (until you zoom in too much) and how great
the backgrounds still look. The art is minimalistic and has aged amazingly
well. Most 3D games tend to have a very short period where they look good. The
fact the Relic created something that still looks pretty damn good over a
decade later is downright astounding to me.

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jamesaguilar
What always blew me away as a kid when I played this game was that the turrets
actually point in the direction they fire. That was a novelty at the time.
It's a great game (although I must say I preferred 1 to 2).

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icarus_drowning
The Point Defense Systems mod for Homeworld 2 is one of my favorite things to
play: <http://www.moddb.com/mods/point-defense-systems>

Adds more realistic weapon layouts, focusing on large capital-ship battles a
la the Honor Harrington novels. Looks stunning during actual gameplay:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-IPZhoM664>

I used to keep a Windows partition around just to play this game/mod.

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ep103
What does the pds do?

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GhotiFish
this game really was beautiful. More over, it was one of the last bastions of
game sci-fi I had.

The only thing left that I can find that plays with the beauty and scale of
the galaxy is eve online.

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vanderZwan
I loved how this game made me feel _tiny_. And to think that in the original
designs they were aiming for even bigger megastructures to really drive that
point home!

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arethuza
What kind of megastructures? I've had a very unhealthy fascination with
Orbitals being blown up since reading _Consider Phlebas_ at an impressionable
age.

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GhotiFish
Do you see the first example image in the story? The idea was you could have
ships interacting with structures of that size.

My guess is the guys at relic realized they had to deal with fully three
dimensional path finding and ran away screaming in terror.

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arethuza
Ohh - it does indeed look like a small Orbital :-)

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upthedale
How can I pull the backgrounds out into simple image files. I'd love to use
the top 3 images in the blog post as desktop wallpaper (but they're too small
- avoiding copyright issue perhaps?).

Or are they just in-game screenshots - small views of the larger textures
(explaining their tiny size in the blog?)

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wladimir
See [http://walter-nest.deviantart.com/art/Homeworld-2-Space-
Back...](http://walter-nest.deviantart.com/art/Homeworld-2-Space-
Backgrounds-200251891)

Note that the backgrounds are meant to map over a sky sphere, so they look a
bit distorted.

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wladimir
Using vertex colors with linear interpolation over triangles is an interesting
way to compress low-frequency images such as backgrounds. I had no idea that
they did this in HW2. It also looks surprisingly good.

The page is neigh-unreadable though, with all the moving stuff. Please add a
pause button :)

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windsurfer
Moving stuff? Do you mean the spinning skymap?

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wladimir
Also the renderings that alternate from wireframe to solid fill. It just
changes too quickly which is distracting when you try to read the text around
it.

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dtjohnnymonkey
About every 6 months I do some Googling to see if I can get Homeworld to run
on my Mac. I still have fond memories of playing it in my freshman dorm room
12 years ago.

This technique reminds of silhouette preservation techniques in computer
graphics that I had done for my senior project. Anyone know if it's related?

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the_french
There are many wineskin / cider wrappers that exist for HW2. The only problem
is that multiplayer won't work.

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bni
Also, sadly, wine does not have "pbuffer" support, that is used by HW2 to
render shadows. So it makes the game look a bit bland when comparing it to how
it used to look back in the day. I also think running the game in Parallells
or VMware has the same problem.

Im not even sure that current gfx cards and drivers support this under Windows
7 anymore.

<http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25495>

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pippy
This technique was used on the PSX in the Spyro franchise. They used vertex
based backgrounds it as texture memory was limited (only 1meg, half of which
was used up by the double buffer). It created gorgeous backgrounds in the
game.

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dlhavema
I have to agree, Homeworld and Homeworld 2 were Amazing, Gorgeous, Epic games.
The only game that ever came close to having that kind of a visual effect on
me was Half Life 2 and the crazy stuff they did with their engine...

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laumars
The original Unreal used to wow me in terms of scale and beauty as well

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ceejayoz
Man, I miss Homeworld. I used to help run the Relicnews forums/site (and
Relic/Homeworld Universe prior) and it's remarkable how much the visuals have
stood up to time.

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hipsters_unite
This is great! I've been using HW2 screens as backgrounds for my computers
since I was a teenager... still hasn't been bettered.

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sebnukem2
So there are images on the blog post? I don't see anything, just text, even
from different browsers.

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teamonkey
They're hosted on iminus.com which is blocked by my work proxy. Could be the
same for you?

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sebnukem2
Ah yes, it's very likely. Thanks.

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L0j1k
The most beautiful games in history, hands down.

