The Warlords Mod (Developer Interview)

[Cain]

Ok Ismael ... you asked me about those SW pictures. They are from this mod Warlords - Link. I have here an interview with the maker of HW2W - Eville Jedi. This interview is for a pc magazine (*LeVeL) in my country but they didn't fully publish it cause it is to long or the chief redactor is MIA.

 

Here it is :

 

How hard it is to mod HW2 ?

 

Eville Jedi: Many people seem to think HW2 is this impossible to mod game, but in reality once you actually spend a few minutes reading you can start giving ships new weapons or changing their health or speed. The karos graveyard LINK wiki has tremendous amounts of information on what each command does and how files are organized. Also the relic forums LINK have many threads and links to tools and tutorials that help out (unfortunately search is disabled on the board) One of the things that has been frustrating is the fact that Relic, the company that made HW2, split with their publisher, Sierra, on very bad terms, this effectivly prevented Relic, who is very good about supporting their mod community, from giving us more than a few tools and documentation (though it is pretty complete except to those of us that want everything )

However, there is a steep learning curve for some things, especially FX and fully custom models and animations.

 

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/albums/GoodScreenshots/ss00021.thumb.jpg

 

What exactly do you need for modding HW2 ?

 

Eville Jedi: Depending on what you are trying to do, even one of the most popular mods, PDS, started out with the big file extractor LINK and notepad. That's pretty much what I started out with. To go much futher you need to get the RDN toolkit (availble off of relics RDN site with a registration) and that gives you tons of documentation and samples along with the FX editor. To actually replace models you really need, or need to know someone, that has maya 3 or 5. The best bet is to snag an art student at a university for this task since they will probably have the most access to this. You can model and texture in any program you wish though as long as it exports to .obj and .psd files.

 

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/albums/GoodScreenshots/ss00465.thumb.jpg

 

How much did Rebellion play a part in your future skills and desire to mod HW2 ?

 

Eville Jedi: The original 'Warlords' mod was in Rebellion as a Imperial vs. Imperial game. In fact, Rebellion got me out of map making for fps's and into modding RTS games. Also many of my early models were used for art in the rebellion cards (which are found everywhere now heh) and what it really got me into was hoping that a 3d space RTS would come out for star wars...

 

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/albums/GoodScreenshots/ss00452.thumb.jpg

 

Warlords is this sprawling, unbalanced mod, why did you decide to do this rather than do a very polished and focused mod?

 

Eville Jedi: Really the point was to make a game that no game company would ever risk making. The idea was to be comprehensive and let things be unbalanced. There is no forced balance in warlords and at the same time there are units that are plain worthless and underpowered. It is also an attempt to see what would happen if you had 500 X-wings vs a super star destroyer, a fully armed one at that. Even if it does cause the game to lag on mid-range systems. The point is, I can do that and a game company could not. Maybe, just maybe, there are other people out there that will put up with the bugs in the slow down to see how things work when they are not artificially overpowered and I think those are the ones that play the mod.

 

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/albums/GoodScreenshots/ss00259.thumb.jpg

 

Are there any things you wish you could do with the mod, but for whatever reason cannot?

 

Eville Jedi: Plenty. One of the biggest complaints I have is that Homeworld 2 has nearly no scripting support for individual units. I'd love to be able to make units have player created names, battle fatiigue, veteren abilities and so on. The other thing I wish I would be able to do is have a few of the work arounds used to get some ships to work (especially the super star destroyer collision detection) to be hard coded. This would increase performance dramatically. There are other things like multiple battle areas, power managment and things like a conquer the universe mode that would be very nice to have if they were possible

 

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/albums/GoodScreenshots/ss0vv0259.thumb.jpg

 

Speaking of 'conquer the universe' what do you think of Empire at War?

 

Eville Jedi: I really hope its fun, especially the mechanic of planetary assault. I do think it is a little limited with 20 planets (they could have made a random terrian generator to populate the galaxy) but if they polish the game enough I think it will be very popular, especially with the rebellion community. I plan on picking up a copy and after playing it, seeing what possibilities it has for modification...

 

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/albums/GoodScreenshots/ss00456.thumb.jpg

 

Do you plan to step foward ? I mean moding the latest SpaceStartegy game - Nexus ? Since it comes with a full modding package included. LINK

 

Eville Jedi: I took a look at nexus, but I found a few things that would not be compatible with what I was trying to do with warlords. The major point being that nexus is much better suited for small engagements and the other being that their normal maps don't support mirrored or intersecting UV's grrr... (not that I don't know why, but it would require a lot of work)

I'm not saying that I wouldn't work on a newer game, but it would be drastically different than what was done with Homeworld 2

 

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/albums/GoodScreenshots/ss00010_001.thumb.jpg

 

In the future do you plan to release a StarWars vs Star Trek option ? (the fans will appreciate this).

 

 

Eville Jedi: In fact there is a ST vs SW mod in the works! However we are really looking for dedicated trekkies that can texture (we have a good number of federation ships modelled, but I have next to no knowledge on the ST universe) If we get a person or two that would be interested (post on the relic boards) we could have a test release within a few weeks. (rebels, imperials, yuuzhan vong, borg, federation, dominion) It will be a seperately downloadable mod and balanced so that it is more fun to play between the races.

 

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/albums/GoodScreenshots/ss00013.thumb.jpg

 

What are the future plans for Warlords ?

 

Eville Jedi: The current plan is to continue finding and fixing bugs, finish off the shiplist of what was planned (also updating some of the older material), working on the yuuzhan vong and move into fleshing out the prequel era ships for the upcoming movie. Also experimenting with gametypes and single player missions a little...

 

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/albums/Development/V19torrent.thumb.jpghttp://warlords.swrebellion.com/albums/Development/v19comp.thumb.jpg

 

Any known bugs in your latest version? and what HW 2 patch is required to play? ( I need to supply that and I don't know if there is one new)

 

Eville Jedi: The latest version of the mod is 0.45, and it requires a legal copy of Homeworld 2 with the 1.1 patch (for mac users we are still working on issues, but there is a crack team at macologist trying to figure out what is going wrong between the PC release and the mac release)

 

Currently there are some small bugs, mostly with the introduced yuuzhan vong units, and some ships that aren't exactly finished yet. There are also some scripting issues that will be addressed in a small patch in a week or so (involving how many resources you have and some ship AI tactics).

 

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/albums/Development/aethresprite.thumb.jpghttp://warlords.swrebellion.com/albums/Development/venator4.thumb.jpghttp://warlords.swrebellion.com/albums/Development/lucrehulkdcs.thumb.jpg

Edited January 26, 2006 by Cain

[Ismael]

Thanks Cain it is a great interview. I hope we will have one day Eviles Jedi also here Now I only need to find a HW2 game

[Stellar_Magic]

WARLORDS ROCKS!!!

 

Perhaps another thing I should ask Eville is if he's ever taken a look at making some units for Bridge Commander. That game would be great for putting together a Star Wars Capital ship command simulation.

 

Hmm, he's looking for some Trek savy individuals for adding the Star Trek stuff. I wonder if he's got a clue as to just how big that could get, Federation, Dominion, Borg, Ferengi, Cardassian, Romulan, Klingon. Well if anyone can reconsile Star Wars and Star Trek fairly, I might give it a go.

[Ghostly_Substance]

I loved the both mods and I just wanted to point this out for the people who like this kind of ship

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/albums/Development/leviathan.sized.jpg

 

Star Destroyers owned every other ship

 

and what the heck Weirdest things I ever saw. YOu guys sure have lots of time on your hands

- http://warlords.swrebellion.com/albums/Development/ytie.sized.jpg- http://warlords.swrebellion.com/albums/Development/xtie.jpg- http://warlords.swrebellion.com/albums/Development/tiewing.sized.jpg

[DarthCycle]

Wow, the graphic quality is awesome. Great details and light effects.

[Admiral Cotla Charre]

Wow, I just downloaded this mod and gave it a try, its absolutely amazing! Kudos to the mod-team! Send me a PM if you want to have a game sometime... Hehe, playing this just makes me cry out for February 2006....

[Ghostly_Substance]

if you have version .45 then sure i'll join you Damn to much laser fire caused my game and a friend to get out of sync. We both had the Executor when I was suposed to get the Soverign. Well my friend said when I disconnected everything I had went KABOOM. Well at least I helped kill off couple Rebels and their fishsticks

 

Well anybody happy enough to have a online game add me on msn if you have it or as the above poster said, pm

[Hadoken13]

i love you evil jedi...the new .5 test releases are super-fantastic!!!!

[Djarid]

Love the Uglies!

[DragonShadow]

Love the Sith Cruiser...I wish the mod would work for me. Whenever I try to play, it freezes on the loading screen as soon as it hits 'Universe' and crashes. Or it finishes loading and then crashes. Anyone know why? The help/complaint thread on warlords.swrebellion has been locked... Edited March 13, 2006 by DragonShadow

[Stellar_Magic]

Is your copy of Homeworld patched.  You have to have it patched to 1.1 before it will work.

[DragonShadow]

Is your copy of Homeworld patched.  You have to have it patched to 1.1 before it will work.

 

Yes. I made sure of that before I installed. I had to get a no-CD crack for it because it wouldn't play off my game disc for some reason. I thought about trying to get my money back because I couldn't find a crack that worked. I did though, and after I restarted my computer the Warlords mod worked, but the Clone Wars one doesn't. Could the cracked exe be a problem?

[Stellar_Magic]

I've never gotten them both working at the same time.

[fortune faded13]

so thats not for EAW?

[swgbex]

Nope

its for Homeworld 2

oh and i think i have gotten clone wars and the normal one to work installed at the same time.

[GabRaz]

Umm, I know it's not Empire at War related but does anybody have a link to the .5 test version of Warlords?

[Lord_of_the_Sith]

What this mod laks is : a good Ai, A campaign and SW music.

[Evaders99]

AI is something Eville is still working on. It takes a lot of work with so many ships and is quite complicated.

Single player campaign is something slowly being worked on, but the majority is still getting all the right ships perfect.

SW music probably won't be distributed anytime soon

[Lord_of_the_Sith]

Hmmm good news.

May I ask where did you take all the infos and moldels for the mod ships?

Maybe screens, photos ect. I need them for my EAW mod which has all the ships, converted by stainer mod team but I'd like to change the icons.

When the Ai will be ready I will reinstall the mod as I love it and really like a true challange.

Thx for the amazing work.