ARS Technica: How Homeworld Almost Got Lost in 3D Space

How Homeworld Almost Got Lost in 3D Space

On this episode of War Stories, Ars Technica sits down with Rob Cunningham to revisit the groundbreaking 1999 3D real-time strategy game, Homeworld. When Rob and a group of friends founded Relic Entertainment, they set out to marry the gameplay of Command & Conquer with the feel of Battlestar Galactica - all in a full 3D environment. On top of the everpresent memory limitations of the day, the team needed to get creative in figuring out how to orient players when, in space, no direction is up.

Watch this video on The Scene.

Back when it was a new game, I loved Homeworld, although like most such games it was too difficult for me to have ever completed even once.

And after having watched this video, I want to play it again. I wonder if there's a way I can play my old disc. Unfortunately, it's PowerPC Mac software and my modern Intel Mac doesn't have an emulator. But maybe there's a way. If you know of a solution, please let me know.

Dork Tower: Why you should be a fan of something

Amen.

Project Unity: 15 game consoles in one big wooden box

Project Unity is one person's method for creating a multi-standard game console. He takes 15 different console motherboards, mounted into a single wooden box, along with custom-built hardware to select the active board and to allow a single custom-built controller to work with them all.

It's not pretty, but it works. It must've been fun to design and build this.

Repairing a Rock Band guitar's tilt sensor

Last week, I decided to play Rock Band. If you don't know anything about this game, you might just want to stop reading now. If you have played the game, you are probably aware that in order for a guitar/bass player to activate the "overdrive" feature, he must either tilt the guitar into a vertical orientation or press its start button. Although some players disagree, I find that it is far easier to tilt the guitar than to press the button.

Well, since the last time I played, the tilt sensor in the guitar broke. No matter how much I tilted the guitar, the overdrive mode would not activate.