Homeworld 3 Trailer

[GDS_Starfury]

the ease of the spatial control was what let the game be so immersive.  if they screwed that up....  how the fuck do you screw that up!?  it was the same god damn thing for 3 space based games already.   

[Destraex]

the ease of the spatial control was what let the game be so immersive.  if they screwed that up....  how the fuck do you screw that up!?  it was the same god damn thing for 3 space based games already.   

I have to admit though that 3D control has never been perfect in any game on a 2D screen. Any improvement over the original homeworld would have been amazing. Perhaps with more time than we had with the demo the new controls would have shown they had some merit. Will have to see when the game comes out.

What I can say is I was pretty much bored from the start with the demo. I was not wowed at all.

[Jarhead0331]

Can you explain your beef with the controls more? There were two options. A new version that has the camera based on your position in space so it's sort of like an "fpv" camera and then classic view, which has the camera exactly as it was in the original games.

I don't see the great calamity here.

Unfortunately, I did not get a real chance to fully explore the demo myself and I was only able to play briefly once or twice, so I'm curious as to your thoughts. Your opinion does not seem to be in the minority, which is certainly concerning.  

[Destraex]

Can you explain your beef with the controls more? There were two options. A new version that has the camera based on your position in space so it's sort of like an "fpv" camera and then classic view, which has the camera exactly as it was in the original games.

I don't see the great calamity here.

Unfortunately, I did not get a real chance to fully explore the demo myself and I was only able to play briefly once or twice, so I'm curious as to your thoughts. Your opinion does not seem to be in the minority, which is certainly concerning. 

You're right. On the face of it there should not be a great calamity. I think the calamity was with the way the camera was implimented vs what we are used to and how intuitive the new camera is. This is compounded by the cluttered battlespace amongst other things.
I should be clear that as above I only had a quick look at the tutorial and then played a few games of the new game mode warfare or whatever it was.

I found selecting units hard a lot of the time
I seem to remember that right clicking on something especially at a distance was very innacurate to outright not working at all.
I remember having a group of fighters selected and then trying to right click on a unit I wanted to move them to at distance. The right click was successful but for some reason they would not move. When I looked more closely the right click icon seemed to change to some other context. I suspect that they MAY have gotten the context the wrong way round. By this I mean that instead of movement or moving to attack being the default, that many special commands are the default right click and that a key may have to be held down to initiate the now alternative move command. Remember these were just my initial impressions which I did not investigate too much because I did not enjoy the game.

WASD did not seem to work off the bat for me and I only resorted to trying to use those keys because the camera was not moving for me properly. It was a strange sensation to feel like you were stuck in the middle of space unable to move your head so to speak. Claustrophobic even. Part of the problem here was the default camera movement speed both in terms of turn rate and forward and backwards motion. This made it feel like the game was moving 10 times faster than you could react.

Here is a shot of the tutorial. You can see how they would prefer you to hold down CTRL and left mouse then create a bounding box to then release and have units attack anything inside that box. The battlefield in the demo is far too cluttered to do this and the distances involved make you wonder how far units will range forwards to attack enemy targets. Great idea, very clumsy to impliment and counterintuitive as right click is usually attack rather than left mouse. However they needed left mouse because you need the right mouse button to rotate the camera.
I did not bother with this but I imagine that it's a real pain to try to hold CTRL and left mouse while rotating the camera with right mouse button.
The alternate is to select an attack unit.... use the camera to slide around finding a target and then hold down CTRL and left mouse button and bound a box around them.
This could be really cool if you could select say 10 ships of varying classes and bounding box attack multiple enemies and those classes each focussed on their most appropriate target.

The way it used to work is you would simply group your units and right click on enemy targets and once done they would automatically find another. This seemed to be a little bugged in the demo as sometimes units seemed to run out of code and sit there until they were specifically attacked.


This is a screen from the camera movement in the tutorial. Looks simple but had the effect for me of just meaning I was constantly having to focus on ships and zoom around constantly adjusting until I was comformable observing my units working\fighting. Now I think they would have wanted a free camera because you need to move around a battlefield that is now full of terrain. With regard to terrain I think I remember spinning the camera and ending up with the camera INSIDE the terrain, which made perspective hard and kind of disconnected me from immersion. I can see why they did this because the alternative is having the camera bumped around by the terrain all the time.


Another great idea they had was that they have a grid to allow players to get their bearings. However this grid was 2D and really just serves to show distance rather than height. This was a missed opportunity as I have seen grid used really well in other space games to show HEIGHT which is one of the main challenges of space games with 3D movement.
This just had the effect for me of making the whole battlefield look like a cluttered city, while also reminding me of being in the SENSOR mode. The feeling of space was gone.
So basically the GRID appeared IIRC whenever you had a unit selected, which for me was almost ALL the time because you know, I monitor stuff when playing an RTS. There is never a reason not to have a unit selected unles you are taking screenshots. I guess the art department wanted me to have a cinematic experience and just let everything do what it wanted while I tossed away control to see the glorious events unfolding in front of me?


The game looks crude and seems very simple at a glance. But it does have a pop up CARD system. The card system really irked me. What is such a gamey mechanic doing in what seemed to be a game modelling physical space gameplay. Now we were back to mobile game random poker machine reward gameplay probably thought up by somebody who did a gaming degree and was taught that every game needed particular elements.

Here is an example of cards popping up mid game in your face while you are fighting. I cannot remember if they were related to completing objectives or some arbitrary thing like kills. But they certainly had nothing to do with physical in game artifacts being captured. They just seem to be parlour game style rule sets that add nothing to the game for me that could not have been added by the research tree.


Here are the research trees... oh wait they are simply upgrades that appear individually under each ship type. No more global upgrades? The upgrades seemed to be similar to the CARDS in that a fair few of them were simply buffs or spam skills. In other words you press a button every 30 seconds or something to keep having a buff with no autocast. Although autocast has been allowed for other things.
Just look at those wonderful distance models. Squint. LOD seems very total war like. Which means more camera movement to be able to see things.


I of course tried to use the standard keys I knew. Presing H to get harvesters moving is now B I think. I am sure there is a reason for this.

Lastly I highly recommend this video. The gent is of the same mind about total war as me and now Homeworld3. However I do understand he probably has a negative outlook like me (which means a technical mindest in my experience rather than a marketing one). This video got posted something like 20 times in the HW3 discord appealing to the devs to listen.

What I am afraid of is that my initial impressions and lack of motivation thereafter to bother learning what was just a demo may have stopped me from learning what is actually an elegant system. Once learnt it may have been a glorious if overbearing system. I think they need to do a lot of work. Especially around the camera around terrain. Some smart camera controls are needed here especially.

We can unlock some nice starting fleets and avatars for the game though... no spoilers here at all...
I wonder if starting fleet bonuses stack with research bonuses. These things seem so arbitrary and out of story... not that I know the story.








Lovely ship textures... at either default or higher.... look at that detail and compare it to older homeworlds. My main problem with the ships is that these days is that simple models are made and efficient GPU effects are used to flesh out the details. The ship designs I am sure will grow on my but mostly seem to be a derivation of a single multiuse hull with a flat top. Weapons being situated on top or at the front for the most part. No modules were able to be targetted.

[Jarhead0331]

I think its a new system that is going to take some effort to get used to...whether one finds that worth it, I guess is subjective. Seems to me they tried a lot of new things ,while still giving players the option to resort to the old.

I certainly agree with the notion that the maps are too cluttered. I've been concerned about this since the first screenshots were revealed years ago. It did distract and make it hard to locate and command your ships. In the middle of heated tactical engagement, this was a real problem.

In any event, I hope the devs do listen to some of the criticisms and make adjustments for the better. They've got a lot of pressure on them to live up to the legacy of the first two games. It can't be an easy position to be in.

[Destraex]

I think its a new system that is going to take some effort to get used to...whether one finds that worth it, I guess is subjective. Seems to me they tried a lot of new things ,while still giving players the option to resort to the old.

I certainly agree with the notion that the maps are too cluttered. I've been concerned about this since the first screenshots were revealed years ago. It did distract and make it hard to locate and command your ships. In the middle of heated tactical engagement, this was a real problem.

In any event, I hope the devs do listen to some of the criticisms and make adjustments for the better. They've got a lot of pressure on them to live up to the legacy of the first two games. It can't be an easy position to be in.

Yeah I agree. Fingers crossed. I really want this one to be good. But I fear that a combination of less focus among game devs... it seems more to be "just another job" for most these days rather than a passion. The whole 4 day week thing and the focus on the internal teams life, art contests and raising the companies social media profiles rather than an absolute geeky hard core focus on the game just make me kinda sad. We love these games but I always get the feeling these days the developers are much MUCH less invested. That's the feeling these CARD systems and skill buttons give me. That somebody with no investment in the franchise worked on it like it was any other programming job. They got to eat ice cream at work and have every fifth day off. I dunno. I imagine Blackbird Interactive to be a stereotypical google style company with beanbags and such working from home 4 days and having the 5th day off. That's probably overly synical though.

I do recall people saying that early in the development blogs their was mention of the devs saying story and artwork were the priorities for the game.

Did you get a chance to watch the video?

[GDS_Starfury]

I like where the changes are going.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/homeworld-3/changes-demo-feedback

[CaptainKoloth]

I like where the changes are going.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/homeworld-3/changes-demo-feedback

I'm still skeptical since they are basically silent on the terrible controls and camera (other than mentioning "minor tweaks"). Despite all the disclaimers demo inevitably have I have yet to encounter one that has ever really differed in any noticeable way from the final game, especially this close to release. I hope I'm wrong.