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.
[choral music]- [Rob] Looking back the creativeand technical challenge of Homeworldseemed so impossible at the time.Luckily we were allyoung and had no lives.We literally lived at the office.Everybody's girlfriend left them.We were all in.My name is Rob Cunningham.I'm the CEO of Blackbird Interactive.This is how we made Homeworld,the first 3D real time strategy game.[upbeat action music]I first became interested invideo games in the early 90's.It would have been about 93, 94,but my first ambition was to get into filmand you know, make movies.I got a job teaching drawingto some video game designstudents here in Vancouver.I got into video games professionallybecause a friend of mine Alex Garden,who was actually one ofmy students at the timein my drawing class,just asked me one day,hey you know,do you want to start avideo game company with me?And I was like, sure nothingbetter to do lets do it.So me and Alex and like fourother people got togetherand started Relic Entertainment.So when we started Relic,it was the summer of 1997,and we were all punks.I was 26.Alex it think was 20.We all got together at Alex'shouse one night to eat pizzaand talk about this game called Homeworld.He described it as a mergerof Command and Conquermeets Battlestar Galactica.The story is you're lost civilizationgoing back to your home world,and the gameplay is basicallyCombine and Conquer,but in space.So there'd be combat,production, resourcingset in this 3D environmentand that's what wasgoing to be new about it.Sounded super intriguing and super cooland you know,and I loved the RTS's of the dayand thought that this wouldbe a really cool new thingthat no one had really seem before.And it was like a week laterthat we actually went downto Seattle to pitch itto Scott Lynch at Sierra.We had just barely met each other.We really had very littlein the way of a pitch,but Alex was super enthusiasticand contagious with his energy.After we left,we stood around in the parking lot.It was like an empty parking lot.It was a Saturday.There was no one thereand Scott phoned Alexon his cell and said,hey you guys are green lit.All of our lives prettymuch changed that day.I think it was like a month later,we had a whole bunch of moneyand started making Homeworld.Homeworld was a real timestrategy game set in space,but what was different about it wasthat it was actually in 3D.At that time in the mid 90's,RTS games were all top down camera.Essentially 2D worlds withsprites of the various assetsand vehicles and units moving around.Those sprites were all renderedrotations of the 3D model.So it looked kind of 3D,but it was basically 2D,it was like a slide show of 2D assets.The idea behind Homeworld wasthat we would not do that.We were going to do actual 3Dand at the time 3D was like a new thingthat was just coming out.So we had like doom anda couple of other gamesthat were actually in 3D,but this was going to be the first RTS.So the plan was to set it in space,so that you would neverhave to render the terrane.So the terrane wouldhave these huge geometryand texture sync and we wouldn't haveto worry about thatbecause we were in space,that was the idea.So therefore we could pile allof our budget into the shipsand the textures and the effects.Because of the 3D nature of the game,we were going to do,as close to a realisticscaling as we possible could.So in RTS's at the time,the vehicle that wasmanufactured by the factorywas like almost the samesize as the factory.A tank would come out of a tank buildingand the tank was like 85% of the sizeof the building it came out of,which of course is completely unrealistic.So we thought you knowhow great would it beif the fighters and frigatesand ships being producedwere being produced fromthese much, much bigger ships.None of us had undertakensomething of this magnitudeand of this level of technical innovation,and to be honest even when we pitched itand started production on itwe had no idea what we were getting into.[laughs]that beast just made itselfand we were along for the ride.The initial budget forHomeworld was $1 millionand it was supposed to take one year.That turned out to bethree years and $3 million,but every time we startedrunning out of moneyAlex would rush down toSierra and convince Scott to,you know free up another millionand we were all amazed thatthis magic was happening.Technically there was reallyjust one problem on Homeworld,and that was that it wasgoing to be a 3D gameand we were going to be set in space,and the camera was going tobe this mad orbital camerathat you could rotate around,and zoom in and out withunprecedented flexibility.No game at that time had thatkind of camera flexibility.Not even close.You could zoom right into a fighterand it would fill the screenand then zoom right outuntil it became three pixels,and that fighter had to fly in frontof a gigantic mothershipand texture had to hold up.That was a really big deal.There was hardly any graphics cards.There was the software version of the gamewhen we put it out.No one had solved theseproblems in hardly any games,much less a strategy gamewith so many assets on the board at once.We had to come up withall sorts of solutionsfor polygon count,for you know, texture budget,render space.Computers were totallycrap in 97 and 98, 99.I was kind of amazed anyonecould even run the gamewhen we released in it 99.Subsets of the camera problem involvedvisual orientations so youdidn't get lost in the game,making positive ID on ships sothat you knew who was where.The scale involved in thedifferent ships was so extremeand the distances were so extremethat we had to come up with solution forhow do you keep track ofeverything in a strategic game.In addition to the 3Dchallenge at the time,memory budget was a big deal.If I'm not mistaken,the entire texture footprint was like 32 megs.We had to come up solutionsfor texturing all of the ships,all of the effects,and all of the backgrounds as well.In the mid, late 90'sthere was no off the shelfvideo game development software,so everything had to be built by hand.So we had to build all of the toolsand technology that would run the game simright there in house.Because of the 3D natureof the environment,the player had to control the camera.We couldn't do a fixed camerafor this style of game.Would've just been impossibleto stay in control of your unitsand know where things wereon the strategic board.One of our big concerns wasthe players losing orientation,they wouldn't know which way was up.So Erin Daly designedthis magnificent camerathat too into account zoom levelsso that you could zoom in andout on ships very quickly.You could refocus on differentelements of the shipsand the environment basedon selection set and orbit,but then it was fixed at the poles.That way up was always up in the game.Aaron Kambeitz and I designedand of the art in the gamefrom the ships, to the backgrounds,everything about the in game environmentsupported this terrifying fear we hadof the player losing orientations.The famous banana mothership,the big vertical Kushan mothership,I designed that way becauseI couldn't think of a shapethat was more obviously up, downthat wasn't a vertical mothershipbecause it was cool looking,though I thought it was cool.No one had done that before,but it was so that the player,no matter where they were in the worldthey could look at the mothership and knowthat way is up and so you'renever going to get lost.Sam deal for the Taiidan mothership,which was basicallyjust a horizontal slap.Early in the game we knew we had issueswith respect to the renderdistance of the computer.Like you just couldn't draweverything in the world,and as units became smaller and smaller,we've realized quickly thatyou just couldn't tell what they were.So we implemented three basicsolutions to this problem.The firs was an LOD orLevel of Detail systemwhere as the unit became smaller on screenas the camera zoomed away from it,the geometry and texture of the unitwould switch betweendifferent versions of itselfat lower polygonal countsuntil it got basicallysupper tiny at LOD 4.You know, now we're talking about a thingliterally three pixels across on screen,but because pretty mucheverything turns into a blobat three pixels,we had to hand exaggerateeach ships profile at LOD 4so that its silhouette signaturefrom maximum zoom distancewas still recognizable.So this sounds barking mad,but it actually worked.The LOD 4 of the Taiidanfighters for example,they had these little wings on the backthat you know, thesilhouette was very importantthat each ship had its own characterand you could tell what everything was.At LOD 4 the wings were likethree times the size of the ship.So we just basically did thatwith every ship in the fleet.The second thing we did was,at the very limits of the render list,even with LOD 4,it was really hard to tellyou know, who those guys were.Especially when their like swarming aroundin a great big like spaghetti bowl.So we implemented what we canthe tactical overlay system,which is inspired by the airtraffic control radar screens.There were these little symbolsthat corresponded to each class of unit,so that you had feedback onwhat the hell was going on in the game.And the third and probablymost difficult solutionto this 3D render and visualidentity game board problemthat we had,was Erin Daily's solution forwhat later became the sensors manager.So in the early part of the game,the plan was you wouldhave a render sphereand then when units got tothe edge of the render sphere,they would create a newrender sphere elsewhere.You would have to manually toggle betweenthe two render spheres of the gameand we called them away missions,kind of like you know, like in Star Trek.When the guys what downto the planet or whatever.That proved untenable almost immediately,but Daily came up with a great solutionwhere all of the render ballswere rendered in a singleepic render sphere.This was inspired by the mini mapthat would usually happenin the bottom left handcorner of the screen in RTS's.We actually tried that and wehad this like 3D globe thing,but you couldn't,it was impossible,you couldn't see anything there.It was like thousands of units fightingin like these,in this tiny little corner of the screen.So we abandoned the mini mapand went with a full screen mini map.Which we later called the sensors managerand each of the units Fog of War,was rendered as a bluesphere in that environment,and then we made it like sound cooland Ruskay gave it that iconic,[imitates zoom noise]sound when it zooms in and outand it was like this awesomesort of 3D digital map environment,and it became a very important partof the strategy of the game.Those three things are more or lesshow we solved this huge challengeof creating a 3D environmentfor a space strategy game,but not completely being confuted.When we started the companyand we started the game,because we were so young and inexperiencedwe had no idea what we were up against.So what that created wasa production environmentthat was kind of insane,and the pressure was so highthat the first solutionthat we had to come up withfor each problem had tobe the final solution,and there was no iterativeprocess what so ever.These things would come outof no where and be final.There's kind of an amazingthing that happens thoughwhen a creative and technical endeavoris put under that kind of pressurewith those constraints.Something intervenes andjust makes you come upwith something great,just because you have to.It's kind of hard to describe,but it's kind of like that whole thingwhere like the sketch isbetter then the final piece.It's like all of Homeworldwas just one huge sketch.Looking back in the time since then,some things have changed and some haven't.The creative process hasn't really changedand you know, how you really make a game.Like you plan it,there's pre-production,production, post-production,bug fixing.However, the technology base totally hasand the systems and the shear horse powerof everything involved.When looking back atHomeworld 1 to Homeworld 3,which we're working onnow here at Blackbird,it's sort of this amazingjourney of this creative process.Which is basically kind oflike this background rhythmthat has just never really changes,but then running past it isthis insane technological,slow motion explosion that's happening.So like for example,the things we're doing nowroutinely on Homeworld 3,like literally everyday, were,and this is going to sound flakey,but they were dreamsthat we were having aboutHomeworld 2 in 2001.For example,massive megalithic structuresjust covered in detailthat like motherships wouldbe casting shadows onto,and strike craft wouldbe passing in and outof the nooks and cranny'sand you know, atmospherics,and like terrane gameplay in 3D.Like these were dreams we werehaving in the early 2000's,which were absolutelyimpossible to execute on,and we tried and we failed,and they couldn't be done.and Homeworld 2 got totally canceled,and then restarted andthen we made Homeworld 2essentially as kind oflike a visual upgradebasically of Homeworld 1because that was what wastechnically possible in 2003.Early in Blackbird's historywhile we were still in my garage,THQ went bankruptand they were the owner ofthe Homeworld IP at the time.So I thought it would begreat if we could get the IP.So we had our legalteam unbundle the assetfrom the bankruptcy proceedingsso that we could bid on it and buy the IP.Because I thought you know,it's going to be worth nothing.Like no ones done anythingwith this thing for years,but as soon as we unbundledit, it became you know,public knowledge and soon thiskind of bidding war happenedand we got outbid like immediately,like blown totally out of the waterand it went to Gearbox forI believe 1.3, 1.35 million.We couldn't believe itand I congratulated Randyand I was like hey you know,why did you guys buy this thinglike you guys are developers,you do like Borderlands andfirst person shooters and stuff?And he's like we're just fans,we you know,we just didn't want it to go to someonethat was going to mess it upand I was like well that's great.You know thank you for that,what's the plan?And he's like we have no planit was an impulse purchaseyou know Mattel wanted it and I wanted it.So I was like hey man you know,we've been building this thingin my garage called hardwareand it kind of looks andfeels like Homeworld,you should check it out.And so we showed it to Gearboxand the Gearbox team thoughtit would make a good prequelto Homeworld 1.Because it's set on a desert planetand so that's what we didand that became Deserts of Kharakand that's what launchedBlackbird Interactive.So the Homeworld story is kind of bound upin the story of Blackbird Interactiveand Relic and kind of weird actually,now that I think about it.I think the title has aged so wellbecause of the uniquenessof the tone and the vibethat it captured.- [Homeworld] No onesleft, everything's gone.Kharak is burning.- [Rob] There's some cinematic elementsto the experience of playing Homeworld,with the scale and the elasticityof the visual experiencethat really transcend the artisticor technical achievement form 99,that still holds up today.And the emotionalconnection that people hadwith the title back thenalso kind of transcendsthe medium in which itkind of came through.Like people you know,looking back rememberit better then you know,then it actually wasbecause it touched themand that feeling you hadwas just so unique and iconic.It's not like anything else.