I swear I’m still around, honest

Haven’t had much time to work on anything recently. My day job sent me off to Arizona for a week, which was admittedly pretty cool, but not really related to this blog. So, moving on!

Been playing Homeworld Remastered. It’s still really janky, such is the problem with porting Homeworld 1 into an updated Homeworld 2 engine, but it’s still Homeworld and it’s still fun and it’s still evoking the same feelings the original game did for me. Also nice is the ability to make custom emblems…which of course means its time to put emblems from other sci-fi properties into it…

Yes, I am still a huge nerd. And while it’s still broken in a lot of respects, Gearbox and the modding community are doing a lot to fix it, so I think in time it’ll be great again. Plus the game looks gorgeous.

On the art front I’ve been doing more enemy designs, specifically making some enemy fighters that look more like modified mining craft:

In this case, the cannons on the front were originally drills. I’m still working on more designs but this week I’m also getting more into the actual tech of the game. More to come later.

Great moments in Balance-Breaking history

Possibly the biggest problem that faces many game designers, especially those that design an FPS or an RTS, is making sure the game is balanced properly. In strategy cases that means no one unit will automatically trump all others no matter what, and in FPS cases the same applies for a weapon. Despite the best intents of even some of the greatest developers, balance-breaking weapons and units sometimes slip through the cracks, and I thought I’d take the time to point out some of the ones I’ve personally encountered.