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HW1 engine release and HW2 tools release.
[September 19 2003]

The Homeworld 2 RDN tools, along with the Homeworld 1 engine will be released on RDN on September 26th, 2003.

I'm actually rather surprised that they'll be releasing the HW1 source code, but it's not unwelcome. I imagine that we'll be seeing some kickass mods to HW1 as a result.

Nice.

Wheee.

Maybe someone will do a source port to linux, improve the engine vastly, etc etc, like Doom. The engine isn't that badly out of date, and would be very useful.

Random thought...HW1 source code projects and FS2 source code project...perhaps they could join forces and create a variation on Alliegance.

MAybe someone could do some cool versus Mods with this?

Pu-239 wrote:Maybe someone will do a source port to linux, improve the engine vastly, etc etc, like Doom. The engine isn't that badly out of date, and would be very useful.

Maybe Hell will freeze over as well. I'd wager the HW engine is vastly more complicated than Doom's.

It's OpenGL, which is a plus, but there's a bunch of other DirectX calls in it that would make life difficult.

phongn wrote:

Pu-239 wrote:Maybe someone will do a source port to linux, improve the engine vastly, etc etc, like Doom. The engine isn't that badly out of date, and would be very useful.

Maybe Hell will freeze over as well. I'd wager the HW engine is vastly more complicated than Doom's.

It's OpenGL, which is a plus, but there's a bunch of other DirectX calls in it that would make life difficult.

It will be months before we see anything really big come out of it, but I'd wager we'd see alot of things people have wanted for years coming out soon(Along with the usual halfass mods which add one gimmick).

Finally, that stvssw mod thats been kicking around for ever will get finished.

STvsSW is dead, it got turned into ST and SW mods, but they tried to remake one at one point, really 2, one for HW one for Cata.
B5 mods may just come back, we haven't seen a major update in 2-3 months from Great wars, the TC has been dead for more than a year, Mofas and DV died because CP didn't feel like doing all the work. Though I suspect that HW2 may take up more of the modders time.

Does this include data files, since I'm thinking of buying the original, but it's sold out on Amazon, and there aren't too many on Ebay(also the stuff on Ebay may have changed hands so many times and scratched, etc)?

The Game of the Year Edition is $10 at most stores. It's hardly worth going to the trouble of getting a used copy off of Ebay.

The RDN release will not have the datafiles, just the engine.

phongn wrote:The Game of the Year Edition is $10 at most stores. It's hardly worth going to the trouble of getting a used copy off of Ebay.

The RDN release will not have the datafiles, just the engine.

Can't find it at any local stores. Guess I'm unlucky. Obtaining winmodem driver is first priority though.

Pu-239 wrote: Can't find it at any local stores. Guess I'm unlucky. Obtaining winmodem driver is first priority though.

Want me to get it for you?

phongn wrote:

Pu-239 wrote:Maybe someone will do a source port to linux, improve the engine vastly, etc etc, like Doom. The engine isn't that badly out of date, and would be very useful.

Maybe Hell will freeze over as well. I'd wager the HW engine is vastly more complicated than Doom's.

It's OpenGL, which is a plus, but there's a bunch of other DirectX calls in it that would make life difficult.

Platform independence does not realy depend on complexity of a program but how much the programmers used platform independent libraries and features. Generaly a program that is written with portability in mind is easy to port to most platforms with a few minor tweakings.

However if the reverse is true than it is very difficult to port. There is a lot of difference between the various compilers and operating systems out there so code that compiled with windows and Visual C++ is unlikely to compile with GNU C++ on linux unless it was written with portability in mind. Just imagine compiling a win32 app on linux. It is impossible.

So unless Homeworld developers wrote the program with portability in mind it has to be rewritten extensively to make it work on linux.

Regarding OpenGL it is just the graphics component. There is stuff like OpenAL, OpenIL that are behind their DirectX counterparts. DirectX is the best win32 gaming tool ever.

I know that OpenGL is the graphics component. However, Homeworld used DirectPlay and DirectSound quite extensively, which makes life more difficult to do various things. I also doubt that HW was written with portability in mind.

Homeworld modding is going to go almost entirely to HW2 if its even close to as moddable as HW1, which it is supposed to be.

Howedar wrote:Homeworld modding is going to go almost entirely to HW2 if its even close to as moddable as HW1, which it is supposed to be.

Except that if they release the source code and developers tools, HW1 will be far more moddable than HW2, and allow things that will still be hardcoded in HW2.

MKSheppard wrote:

Pu-239 wrote: Can't find it at any local stores. Guess I'm unlucky. Obtaining winmodem driver is first priority though.

Want me to get it for you?

Maybe... but I don't have a credit card, bank account, or anything, so I might have to ask my sister to do so. Need to wait awhile to save up lunch money, since my mother won't let me buy games .

Pu-239 wrote: Maybe... but I don't have a credit card, bank account, or anything, so I might have to ask my sister to do so. Need to wait awhile to save up lunch money, since my mother won't let me buy games .

Meh, it's $9.99 at my local best buy. I can probably buy it for you, and drive
down into Virginia to deliver it personally if you can get that much cash together.

SirNitram wrote:

Howedar wrote:Homeworld modding is going to go almost entirely to HW2 if its even close to as moddable as HW1, which it is supposed to be.

Except that if they release the source code and developers tools, HW1 will be far more moddable than HW2, and allow things that will still be hardcoded in HW2.

Only if people want to rewrite the engine. There are features in HW2 which would need to be written into the HW1 game. Basically, it would be people writing a whole new game with the HW1 graphics engine, which is pretty outdated.

Besides, my understanding is that there is little hardcoding in HW2.

phongn wrote:I know that OpenGL is the graphics component. However, Homeworld used DirectPlay and DirectSound quite extensively, which makes life more difficult to do various things. I also doubt that HW was written with portability in mind.

Agreed. BTW did you run a dependency walker tool on the Homeworld executable to see what modules it is linked to ? That way you know for sure what DLLS a program is linked to.

No, but I am almost positive that it's linked to many of the DirectX DLLs.

phongn wrote:No, but I am almost positive that it's linked to many of the DirectX DLLs.

It is.

phongn wrote:No, but I am almost positive that it's linked to many of the DirectX DLLs.

While it is possible to use OpenGL for graphics and DirectX for input it is actualy rather rare. I would not be sure about Homeworld untill I dissect the executable. Since I do not posses Homeworld I am unable to examine it. Perhaps you should try.

If you have Visual Studio try running the Dependency Walker tool, that should give you a precise idea of what is going on. If you do not have Visual Studio you may try writting your own tool. MSJ has some excellent articles on this topic.

Also the use of DirectX would involve ATL and COM. I am not well informed about the implementation of COM on Linux. This could cause serious compatibility problems.