Star Wars: Warlords May Motm feature - Homeworld 2 Game

[page=Introduction]
Star Wars: Warlords has the admirable goal of putting the best Star Wars space navy combat experience into Homeworld 2. If you don’t understand what I mean with space navy, I’m referring to large space ships like the Empire’s Star Destroyers and the Rebellion’s Mon Calamari heavy cruisers. The mod takes place from an RTS standpoint, in deep space, letting you command ships as small as T-65 X-Wings up to massive Executor class Super Star Destroyers and Torpedo Spheres. The game covers the Clone Wars through the Rebellion, and the Expanded Universe’s New Republic war with the extragalactic Yuuzhan Vong invaders. This tactical masterpiece, I have to add, was done almost entirely by one man, who has created more in this mod that many teams do over the course of many years.

The smallest ships you command are starfighters, like Tie’s and X wings. These fighters are best used en masse against Capital Ships or for dog fighting other fighters. Next up are Corvettes, like Princess Leia’s blockade runner from Episode IV. Many of these ships are useful for fending of fighters, or capturing enemy ships. Following the Corvettes are frigates, with about 30 guns up and more and the first real useful capital ships. The cruisers are ships the size of a Star Destroyer, (Around 1-2 Kilometers) and pack the largest punch yet. Many cruisers have hanger bays for carrying fighters or repairing them. The super capital ships, like the Executor from Episode VI are incredibly expensive, but are capable of devastating many smaller ships in one volley.

[page=Gameplay]
Warlords is played from an admiral’s point of view. You’re responsible for the overall command of your fleet, although like in any RTS game your units won’t just sit still and let themselves get blown up. The ships in your fleet do show a fairly good ability to defend themselves, although picking targets is best left to you, the admiral.

The game currently has 4 playable “races,” the Rebel Alliance, the Empire, the Yuuzhan Vong (A badass race that uses living ships originating from a series of books), and the Militia (Basically pirates, armed with ships destined for the scrap heap and star fighters rebuilt from scrap.) The Clone Wars Era ships are also in, although only in rough development form.

Each side is a little different than the others. The Empire’s ships are the biggest, have the most concentrated firepower. The Alliance’s ships are shielded better, and are usually smaller, but are also augmented by captured Imperial ships to provide that extra heavy firepower. The militia’s ships are basically outclassed by everything else on the star field, and just don’t have the punch needed to match the Imperials or Rebellion head on.

The Yuuzhan Vong ships are simply the weirdest and most unusual ships in the game. In the series of books they come from, the Alliance has won the war with the Empire and reduced the Empire to a tiny Remnant only to be invaded by extra galactic beings with ships formed out of a living coral. The Vong ships aren’t equipped with shields, but instead protect themselves with miniature black holes projected near the hull to suck in missiles and laser blasts. These projections make it difficult to fight the Vong without overwhelming them with firepower. Fail to bring enough ships, and you’ll only see your volleys get sucked down to interstellar nothing. It’s aspects like this that make the mod feel a little unbalanced at times, but the mod is also trying to somewhat follow the Star Wars cannon so for those

Battles are similar to in most RTS games, although there is a “deathmatch” mode. The deep space maps are quite large, and its often faster to transverse them via hyperspace, despite the cost on your resources this requires. Also keep in mind with hyperspacing that certain ships are capable of creating an interdiction bubble that prevents other ships from entering hyperspace. This can be used both offensively, in order to trap the enemy and form the equivalent of a deep space wall and defensively, to protect your flank from attackers coming near.

The large number of available ships to build means it’s a good idea to keep track of what your enemy has, and to counter it. All ships have an ingame description, so if you don’t know much about Star Wars vessels, you’re saved from building total farce units.

Currently the mod has an experimental single player campaign, but with only one mission. The “Player vs. Computer” option is available however, and the computer can put up one terrific fight. In this mode there are even limited objectives, like a mode where you act as a privateer, capturing enemy merchant ships.

While Homeworld 2’s online matchmaker doesn’t work with the mod, there is an IRC channel to find opponents with, or you can just toss the mod to a friend.

[page=Graphics]
The graphics for Warlords are simply impressive. All the model geometries are detailed and complex for everything no matter the size. The Star Fighters like Tie’s and X wings look just as good as the organic looking Mon Cal ships or the various Star Destroyers in use by the Empire.

Textures are good as well, and especially good for the more organic looking Mon Calamari and Yuuzhan Vong ships. The Vong ships are especially well done, looking every bit like space going coral reefs. The black hole singularities used for shielding by the Yuuzhan Vong are very impressive too, giving an effect I hadn’t expected from Homeworld 2 at all.
One thing worth noting is that the polycounts for many of the models are very large. Between the large polycounts, large textures, and large unit numbers you NEED a killer system to be able to play a smooth 6 player game with the highest unit counts. If you’re getting less than satisfactory performance, just turn down the graphics levels and unit limit until you get a smoother frame limit.

[page=Sounds]
There really isn’t much to say here. The laser shots sound like they’re from Star Wars, and there was a music pack available at one time (currently offline for technical reasons.) The only downside in the sound department is that there are still a lot of the already annoying stock Homeworld 2 sounds left in the mod right now.

[page=Interview]
I also had time to Interview EvilleJedi, the mod's creator.

Can tell us about a little about yourself, who you are, and how you got into modding?

Eh, I'm in my mid twenties, have degrees in computer
architecture/semiconductor design and control/embedded systems and am
currently looking for a job.

I think the first game I modded was a submarine simulator, a casette
game on a VIC20 called warfish. At some point later on I got into map
making for FPSs and then eventually RTS games.

Whats Your favorite star wars movie/game/media?

Empire Strikes Back would be the choice for favorite movie.

Personally my all time favorite Star Wars game is Tie Fighter, and
recently the KOTOR series has been very good.

I've read most of the books and can definately say that my attitudes
towards some of the older ones have radically changed as the years
have gone by, they tend to seem very minimalistic... The newer books I
find are much better. (at least a few)

What inspired you to do Warlords and do you feel intimidated working alone?

Well the inspiration originally came from an old lucas arts game
called Rebellion (Supremacy in Europe) I had started a mod for that a
long time ago that instead of the rebels fighting the Imperials, it
had the Imperials fighting each other (this was supposed to take place
before/during the Dark Empire comics) The important bit about that
mod was that it felt more sensible for a game, people wanted to have
huge fleets of comparable warships crushing each other to dust...

I did a little bit of modding for Homeworld 1 when it came out, but
left the scene because initially there were no tools. I came back to
it when Homeworld 2 came out, did a little bit of work for the SWNR
team and then set to work on Warlords.

I'd say another inspiration was from Total Annihilation, simply for
its complete disregard for 'balance' and its disgustingly large unit
list.

From the very start Warlords was intended to be comprehensive and the
main idea was to let balance be damned. Essentially see how things
work out with 'official' stats and then tweak the variables to make
sense for the universe, rather than to have specific counters to
everything (I really hate 14 unit games where each unit is the perfect
counter for another)
Additionally the intent was to be true to scale (which ended up being
slightly altered because of engine limitation) I would have loved to
have had 1000's km weapon ranges, but oh well.

the final bit that I wanted to do was give the player options,
different eras, limitations resourcing methods or lack thereof, even
options that make the game grind to a crawl, if you want 200 star
destroyers, put it on unlimited and watch your framerate plummet....

working alone is frustrating sometimes simply because there are tasks
that are much better performed in a group and many things that could
be done simulataneously, but it does give unprecendented control... I
think my major gripe is that a lot of times I just say 'its good
enough' and throw it in. very few times have I actually bothered to
spend more than an hour or two texturing a single ship and it shows.

Where do you see Warlords going in the future?

Part of the current project is to release a mini mod that only covers
the clone wars, I figure more people will be exposed to this since it
is a smaller download and is much more focused.

As of right now I am getting to the point where the initial
development goals are wrapping up and I'm getting anxious to move onto
other projects. I originally had plans for single player, but
unfortunately the complexity and lack of developer support in making
this means that it probably will be very limited or not happen for a
very long time (I'm almost certian I won't be doing it personally)

If some other game comes along that fits the concept I may port the
mod. There are some features I may work on, but it depends on my
personal life. I currently plan on finishing off the ship list I set
out to do and maybe add a few random cool things in, in total there
are probably another 20 or so ships that will be in the mod after the
current release. Though in reality there isn't much more to do so even
though it may seem like I'm quiting, I'm just running out of stuff to
do.

Nevertheless most of the art assets will eventually be made publically
availalble. There was too much work involved to let it sit on a hard
drive. Many of the ships in the mod may have not been modelled before
or if they have been, they are either two low or high poly to used
effectivly, or in a format that isn't convertable easily. If nothing
else they can serve as reference to the community. It also depends how
far along my next project gets...
Were you afraid of legal issues with Lucas when you started the mod?
Initially I talked to some people at TheForce.net since they deal with
all of the fan films and help organize a lot of fan events. They have
a pretty good idea what Lucas Ltd will do and not do in regards to
enforcement. I also had a pretty good idea that since so many star
wars modifications exist I was probably in the clear. At the time it
didn't look like Lucas Arts was up for a RTS game...
Any advice you can give to modders?
Learn how the engine works, learn why the developers made a game the
way they did. Try to be able to learn and do as many things as
possible. If you can script, model and texture you are sure to get in
a good mod, or if all else fails, make your own. I have seen so many
mods fail simply because the person that started it was an 'ideas man'
and had no interest in actually learning the guts of what they wanted
to do. Don't let yourself become that person.

Most importantly READ. read every bit of documentation you can find,
read every tutorial that is remotely related, every thread. you won't
need to ask questions if you do a little leg work up front and then
you can walk into a modding scene and say ' I can do X ' instead of
' can someone do X for me?'

What tools do you develop with?

the importing process essentially requires an ancient version of maya,
but the models were made in 3d studio r5 and the textures in photoshop 7.

Any parting words you have?

Lime. Octopus. Envelopes.

Thanks!