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Homeworld 2 Demo Released
Thanks to Blue's News for the info that a PC demo of Homeworld 2 is now available, offering "a sample of Relic's now-gold space-based RTS sequel... [including] a tutorial, two solo missions and a pair of multiplayer maps." Mirrors of the 141mb demo include Gamer's Hell, IGN Downloads, Worthplaying, and a BitTorrent links via FileRush and GameTab.
Another BitTorrent from GameTab. GameTab seems to download faster than the Torrent in the story.
Torrent Link
"Engineers do the work of man, Physicists do the work of God"
I was playing homeworld, and enjoying it. The 3D representation and interaction was awesome. There were some maps that were harder, and some easier.
But one map so killed my enjoyment of the game I had to quit. If you aren't familar with the game, a decent part of it is acquiring raw materials from asteriods. The resources carry forward from one map to the next, which is nice. Anyway, on one map, you pass through an asteroid field, and you have to protect your ships from getting damaged from the asteriods. Nevermind that in reality, Asteroid fields are not very dense. Ok, I can handle that. BUT, you can't gather resources from the swarms of asteroids hurtling at your ships! These was a completely BS thing to do in the game. Probably an overreaction on my part, but it represented a artificial situation.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Homeworld 2 looks great and I am excited for the release. I like how they made the demo multiplayer capable so I can try it online. Everything seems better, and they have a new rock/paper/scissors design so that Homeworld 1 strategies are gone. This is a new game with new strategies, UI, and graphics. Relic fixed the original game with this release, and hopefully they will continue to balance it as online strategies are discovered.
I find it funny how some people criticize that there is "nothing new." They must be looking for something radically different like Apes in space. I am one of those people that really do not need that much innovation in new titles. I want my favorites remade with new features and new graphics.
Right-click the desktop; select 'Properties', then the 'Settings' tab, then the 'Advanced' button. Go to the tab that has your video card name on it, i.e. GeForce 4 Ti 4600. It should have a line on it that indicates what bus mode your card is using. For mine, it showed 'AGP (PCI mode)'.
In this case, what you'll need to do is to download a new AGP driver for your motherboard. For mine, an Asus A7V266-E, I needed the Via 4-in-1 driver, which included the AGP driver among other updates.
Once I updated that, the demo ran smooth as glass! I promptly re-clicked all the expensive shading options and bumped up the resolution, of course.
Does anyone feel anything strange about the new user interface? For some reason it feels much more cluttered then it needs to be. Like before you would right click a ship to see it's own menu but now, we have one giant menu that everything uses, so when a unit you're using can't do one of those things another can, you have a greyed out button wasting space, and you have to click through the menus to see the abilitys for each unit. And is it just me or are interceptors not buildable in singles? I swear ordered one and got a whole squad... it's a nice feature but i think id also like to be able to build one by itself. The reasearch and other menu's also add to the clutter, as they don't take you to a cleaner simpler menu but add on to the screen along with the toolbar. Making the research and upgrade menus take up the whole screen also kinda added to the immersiveness for me, as if you were on the ship looking at a control panel or something. I'm a little dissapointed at the graphics, I thought it would look alot better from homeworld 1 seeing as i can run on full graphics with a 1.4 athlon 512mb ddr and geforce 3. I totally miss the old mouse clicking style... and I can't seem to find the option to go into pilot view. Homeworld is my favorite RTS right behind Total Annihilation and perhaps the underlooked Dark Reign. I can only keep telling myself that it's just a demo... oh yeah and also tell myself that there will be plenty of quality star wars and robotech mods...