Official HWU Release

[LeviathansWrath]

Okay folks seeing as chris isnt around to update the main HWU thread ill start one that i can control and update as needed. Heres the long overdue stuff.

Now current goals i believe that can be done for the mod, first off get all of username|SF stuff working, i believe crates are still there only issue, more up to date ships that i believe starscream can be able to do, overmind is currently texturing the taiidan ships that SC made so once those are done ill intergrate them into the mod. Lastly at the moment i can think of getting beast infect beam to work. Question to those that play the mod would you like the stock taiidan to remain once those ships are done or replace them with new taiidan? And i forget to mention this i managed to get a bunch of special attack abilities for certain ships to function again, or at least as close as hw 2 will allow. Those being said are the heavy corvette burst attack, missile burst for missile corvettes, missile volley for missile destroyers and lastly the siege cannon for the kuun lan.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/homeworlduniver/

Now heres the link for the current version.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/hom...0.big/download
ALso heres a link to main thread in case anyone is lazy to click back etc.
http://forums.relicnews.com/showthre...2-DL-available
Overmind is texturing starscreams taiidan ships btw so he should have stuff done whever etc.
In addition if anyone is having trouble try some things, fresh copy of hw 2 and patch installed.
Set race box choose from above aka where default homeworld 2 races used to be if that makes sense for ya.
check hw 2 log and post it for us, we cant help if we cant see what the log says.

Now for MP i recommend either gamespy if you can or go with tunngle, tunngle is far better than hamachi and has mod support unlike gameranger, all you do is download, install, make username and go, tunngle has game lobbies just like WON used to or gamespy, all you do is find the lobby where your friend is or friends and launch game you wanna play and start a lan game, also if the game you want to ply doesnt have a lobby of its own thats okay it doesnt have too, you can go to any game lobby and play whatever game you want, just make sure your friend etc is in there.
http://www.tunngle.net/community/fil...etup-v4325exe/

And heres the command used on the icon to run hwu.
-mod HWUniverse-1.0.0.big
at moles request i got screenshots of ingame ships for each race. ALso keep in mind untill we can get ahold of chris cause he has the current version stuff im posting will be missing things that were finished, like navlights are missing from several ships that chris has are done.
First off Kushan since they are the good guys from hw 1.
Kushan
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Taiidan bad guys from homeworld one
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Updated
Shadowgaz gave me a link to his version which has what was missing which is what chris has so its current, tks shadow!

[Moleman]

Levi, if you can update the first post with spoiler tags and pics in the of game progress and concepts show the viewers some of the things

[LeviathansWrath]

Somtaaw The Mining Kiith
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Beast The subversion Entity
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Spoiler

[Siber]

If I were you I'd consider writing a new descriptive blurb for the first post to describe the project in its current state and the plans from here forward instead of preserving Chris's description of it that includes, among other things, a position nomination for Whisper2me and an urging to vote for HWU as 2009 mod of the year.

[LeviathansWrath]

Next team up are the turanic raiders, the stock homeworld 1 turanics didnt have a complete fleet so they were given the derelict in the outtakes.

Turanic Raiders aka Space pirates
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Progenitor Fleet
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[LeviathansWrath]

I just sent chris a pm requesting that he gets the official HWU release asap thou i can only hope that he gets on and reads it within a few months etc, but in the mean time im gonna try to get this older version up to speed seeing as chris is the only one with the current stuff. Overmind if you are reading this can you give us an update on starscreams ships? In addition im in the process of redoing research tree for the SOT team and getting navlights that are missing done.
Bounty Hunters
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Spoiler

[Shadowgaz]

Hey lavi, if your going to pick up from where chris left off you may want to take stuff from my release:
http://www.gamefront.com/files/21044410/HWU.rar
(has tmat and gravewells, ish)
also if you need the latest models from the Turanic and Kadesh mod by herbyguitar i have the 40+ ships in hw1 form ready to send if you need them.

[LeviathansWrath]

tks shadow and nice to know you still live and didnt become part of the beast :P

[Moleman]

Levi, i would suggest adding the new spoiler images to the main post description, as well take Siber's advice, Chris's description is a bit out of date

[LeviathansWrath]

i alrdy removed his thingie aka quote.

[Mikali]

I tried playing a skirmish in one of the recent updates but the game crashed after the loading screen. HW2.log complained about not finding the "invalid" build and research scripts. What gives?

[LeviathansWrath]

funny it hasnt given me any problems. Runs just fine on my end so dont know what to say about that.

[LeviathansWrath]

shadowgaz if you are still around can ya tell me what you needed me to remove so i can do the release. Been hooked on HOMAM 6.

[Pouk]

Same here, it crashes.

[LeviathansWrath]

can you guys post your hw 2 log or at least tell me what it says, ive found that if you have low virtual mem it will crash, had it at 0 cause was playing very old game that ran fine with that setting had to restart to system managed size and then the mod didnt have any issuses for me at least aside from random crashes.

[Pouk]

Tried to, but it didn't crash this time... Last time I couldn't get it start three times in a row.
So I guess it would help if I figured how to make it crash again... But right now I've got to check out that Somtaaw fleet of mine.

The only thing that was different is that the last time there was no race selector, the space was completely blank. This time it was too, but once I clicked on it, the "select above" button appeared out of nowhere. I made it visible for my opponent ai player as well and started the game. We both had random races, because I didn't expect to actually get to the game.
It probably has nothing to do with the crashing issue though, or I have no idea if it has, it's just an observation.

[LeviathansWrath]

Game crashes because the race box was blank always gotta fill it in cause HWU uses a very special race selection system if one or more dont have it filled in even the AI game will crash. Of course once you get past that just choose your races from the more options tab, and remember races get assigned to your positions. Hence when it says player 1 in the tab it means position 1.

[Pouk]

So it was just me not properly reading the instruction? Ok then, interesting to be on the other side, it's usually me who has to tell others to read the manual. Feel a bit ashamed...

Anyway here's the thing I don't understand. I've read the manual now (ok just the part about race selector) and I don't get why the bug is even there. Don't get me wrong, I know next to nothing about scripting, I can just bend the scripts made by others, not to produce my own, but I use a very similar or identical function (depends on if you based it on Mikail's Special Fleets) and I've never seen such thing myself when I used it. I select one fleet for player on position 1, another for player on position 2 and it's always there, it never dissapears. Each player has his generic ship that is same for all races (as your HS platform) and his unique fleet. So out of curiosity, what cause you the bug? Do you know why it does that?

[LeviathansWrath]

Have to ask chris or mole cause i wouldnt know the first thing about mikails script or scripting for that matter.

[Siber]

I believe, based on my dealings with similar systems, that bug is caused by having a profile that has previously played a skirmish game with a race option that isn't valid in the mod. It remember that race selection, even though it's invalid in the current context, hence getting you a blank race slot that you couldn't select manually if you wanted to.

[LeviathansWrath]

Yeah that sounds about right siber, anyways has anyone found any bugs in the mod so far? I have alrdy fixed the ram and beast mothership issues with dockpaths.

[Pouk]

Well Mikail's special fleets don't do that if there were previously invalid choices ...from some reason. And the script seem to produce the exact same thing. I'm just saying it might be useful to know.

Bugs? More like a list of things I know you must be aware of. Maybe i shouldn't even say them for that matter.
Somtaaw:
-I couldn't figure out if or how Mimic does his thing.
-There are bunch of research modules, research ship, but no actual research.
-The ore storage module thing (forgot the name) seem to do nothing (unless it increases a harvest rate or something similar). And it overlaps the other modules built on the same place.
-Worker could have a harvesting beam animation (and I'm pretty sure that's possible).
-Some turrets have missing subsystem icons.

I can imagine that this wasn't what you was asking about, if that's the case just tell me and I'll report only the actual bugs if I'll find them.

[LeviathansWrath]

Mimic doesnt work in HW 2 cause mimic ability doesnt exist, cant change ships appearance to that of another ship, as for the ore storage module that really shouldnt even be in, i guess its just something chris added in, regards to worker shadow can get that to work again in the version i had before i stopped modding it was working. Anyways im making a beta version of 1.0 for hwu for last minute bug finds with what i got now.

[Pouk]

Well why do you have Mimic in game in the first place if it does nothing? If you'd ask me, I would give him a cloak ability and combine it with shape shifting animation (CloakFieldActivate and CloakFieldDeactivate commands), no problem, sure you can do that.

[LeviathansWrath]

Mimic was in before i became involved with HWU, anyways ill just remove it from the somtaaw buildlist for now.

[Pouk]

Or you can simply just give it a cloak ability and forget about the animations (at least for now), that's just one line of code making it useful and roughly what it's supposed to be. But yeah, it's your call.

[LeviathansWrath]

Moleman or shadowgaz i need one of you if you can to change the main menu version number for HWU to v1.0.
EDIT
Shadowgaz suggested v 0095 instead just in case a certain someone wants to do the 1.0 himself, can ya guess who we are talking about hmmm?

[LeviathansWrath]

The new strain team created by durandel for the homeworld cata onslaught mod, ported by me. I realize most of these ships arent beastish that was do to durandel probably not knowing how to beastify them, thou now bloodfleet could easily do that if needed.

Spoiler

[Destraex]

Are you guys going to make those old hw1 models look good? I mean spruce them up with new sharders and textures?

[Stuart98]

Sharders?

[23-down]

Oh one thing I noted: The shadow glitches which were pretty much fixed in the last release with chris involved are back. So when you zoom in on the taii mothership for example you see it very clearly.

[LeviathansWrath]

Okay i got the update for HWU 0095 out, been awhile since i touched this but i have time now that igot banned from goons haven in T2. Anyways among the things that have been touched on since the last time is that the ram MS can now dock fighters and corvettes without any issues.
http://www.gamefront.com/files/21486...rse-0.0.95.rar

[23-down]

Nice I'm downloading it right now...

Any other changes or it's that it ?

Any progress on the HD taiidan ships so far? I guess Chris wont be returning any time soon again to texture them.

[LeviathansWrath]

he hasnt been on in a year now and reason why its only the MS, well for the most part is because last time when i was updating the file was corrupt cause of filefront.

[Moleman]

i actually spoke to chris a little bit ago, well kinda, i have a group pm with him in it on moddb and he happened to reply :P so he is still alive

[LeviathansWrath]

Moleman gave me the okay to do the official release but before that happens i would like some feed back on what people have requests, complaints etc that need to be changed. In addition for the new release i went and modified the RU harvest rates and increased them by 50 percent so they harvest faster right off the bat. Anyways if anyone has anything to say etc fire away.

[Stuart98]

I'd like drone frigates to be DRONE frigates. HW@ has done it.

[23-down]

If you did read my PDF then you should know it already.
if you didn't then here you go:

Wishes:

Adding Taiidan & Kushan light defenders make em a bit weaker and cheaper so that it stays balanced.
Adding Taiidan Colony ship which now serves as additional ship in the Taiidan Forces. little rockets will leave through the lower hangar section as it has been modified as combat ship since the Taiidan lost Hiigara and the majority of their forces. Beast gets that ship as well. The Beast variant will launch the larger Beast Missiles. It should be equally strong to Ion frigates or the Hiigaran rocket frigate to maintain the balance.

Integrating a random music player script which features all the music tracks of the 3 Hw games. Ask Homeworld @ mod for help regarding that.
Giving real Drone Frigates ask also Homeworld @ mod for support.

Giving the Somtaaw fighters their attack animations.
Giving the Somtaaw Harvesters their arm animation.
Ask PTV mod for help.

Fixing the Taiidan motership texture glitch. If you're unsure how to solve it maybe you could take the mothership out of an older FX mod release like 1.72. Model & textures were done by Relic so it doesn't matter if you take it. Besides Hw Fx mod has a newer better model for the Taiidan Mothership by now.

rescaling the Raiders Ascendant destroyer. It is smaller than a freaking frigate that's clearly a bug as it wasn't like that in the original Hw1 mod.

Adding a no research option into the game probably the biggest flaw this mod has till today. It endless & also useless research as 70% of the research requirements aren't working or doesn't make any sense. You could also lower the research costs if you're unsure how to implement a no research mode like we had it in Hw1.

Finishing all major factions and then focusing on the smaller ones like Bentusi, T-mat , Tobari etc. Those 3 factions are probably in 2nd advanced state but still miss a lot of ships. Maybe moleman & others can help you here with some models. Or we find some other older hw1 mods which had ships for that races so that they can get ported over as long as you get permission to do so.

Improving a little the entire AI behavior. Seeing how the AI plays in HWU it feels a little more stupid than the regular Hw2 AI. No hyperspace flanking maneuvers etc. It just spams pretty much at the moment and sits near their mothership or moves back & forward all the time till it finally decides to attack. Also you should check if all factions really build all ships regularity. Sometimes I get the feeling that they just mass produce 3 or 4 ship types only what is sad of course.

Then Chris forgot to port over a bunch of ships of Raiders Ascendant to HWU you should investigate on that. Read my PDF.

Suggesting to use the Taiidan variant dry dock for the Somtaaw. I think only Kushan should get the standing variant of that dry dock while Somtaaw get the sitting variant it would make more sense since the Somtaaw command ship is not a huge banana but instead a larger capital ship.

Eventually adding customised platform turrets for all factions which doesn't have any yet. Pirates can get easily the derelict turrets of hw1/Cata. Other factions should get something in their proper style.

One additional wish is regarding the Kadesh. I believe they should get a proper shipyard instead of the Khar-Toba spam but that's only my opinion.

Re adding the little torpedo balls but only for Capital ships like destroyers & cruisers. Also it shouldn't be that strong how it used to be in one of the older HWU versions. I think just by the visuals it is a great idea. It should be a research. Kushan, Taiidan, Beast & Somtaaw should get that possibility.

These are pretty much wishes mixed with some bugs I've found. Good luck and good that this mod will continue after all. Just make sure to find more people which will actively help you on that. Maybe even look elsewhere or write a newspost on moddb telling people that you search for teammates, modelers, skinners etc. which like scifi games something like that and promote it properly the moddb description says basically nothing and doesn't look very inviting at all with this massive text blop.

[Shadowgaz]

Ill help out lavi, ill do any missing icons and general ship and race balance work, but i think its best if you work on what you can for now then when you have done a fair amount compile a checkpoint big and then send it to see what i can add while you keep on working on the main release. It will be too much if you keep a large project for a long time without making periodic big files, because i know that file servers disappear and occasionally you have to wipe your hard drive.

[LeviathansWrath]

hey shadow good tos ee ya again, anyways im beginning to add in the missing HW@ ships.

[Stuart98]

Good. Are you going to examine the drone frigate code while you're at it so that you can see how it was done?

[LeviathansWrath]

Ill get to that when i get a working fleet for UNH up and running, right now i got them a functioning mothership and shipyard, with the ability to build UNH collectors.

[Stuart98]

AnyHW2 modding guides?

[LeviathansWrath]

there are some here on tanis and others around the web, this one belongs to chris but i hosted it up on moddb.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/a-homeworl...rsion-tutorial

[Stuart98]

Idea: Ask the creators of FX Mod if you can use their awesome plasma bombs and taiidan flagship.

[LeviathansWrath]

the makers of the FX mod do not share anything they make.

[Stuart98]

Why?

[LeviathansWrath]

they just dont bud, anyone that has asked them to use something from their mod have been turned down.

[NunoDRKS]

Hey Levi,

You know, you just reavivated my childhood dream, when I worked on the Tobari 3 years ago...
Too bad chris isnt here anymore.

Anywho, nice to see you all...

[LeviathansWrath]

Should be either today or a few days from now untill i get the official 1.0 release out. Almost done with the UNH team. So far the ships i got for them are as follows : Kushan mothership since their ms isnt textured, Kushan scaffold to be used as a SY, UNH Interceptor, UNH CLoaked interceptor, UNH light corvette, UNH Heavy Corvette, UNH Ion Corvette, UNH Assualt Frigate, UNH Ion Frigate, UNH Carrier, UNH Destroyer, UNH collector, kushan controller. I am having trouble with the UNH Cruiser and the UNH Missile destroyer, i keep getting an unknown fatal exit with both after putting in their weapon files.