- Table of Contents
Intro
Homeworld 3 was one of the highest-budget and most anticipated games from the Steam Next Fest February 2024 demo lineup but it fell short due to multiple issues.
“Homeworld 3 (B) is easily the most anticipated game of all on the list and while it has beautiful graphics and audio design, the incredibly bad control scheme makes it hard to judge anything else in the game properly. Gameplay could be fun but you can’t tell because controls are out of whack. AI may be mediocre but once again, it is hard to judge whether the devs nerfed it to help players cope with the bad controls. Is UI plain bad or is it my frustration with controls speaking? The devs appear to be well aware of the massive problem and they postponed the game’s release. Let’s hope the extra time will be enough to bring Homeworld 3 to its maximum potential.” ~ Steam Next Fest 2024: 56 short reviews of the best demos, Game Whisper
Many players had the same sentiments and it looks like Blackbird Interactive listened carefully, delivering an update on the game’s progress on March 28, 2024. It essentially addresses all the major problems Homeworld 3 had in the aforementioned demo.
Homeworld 3 changes ahead of release
Terrible controls are the first thing all demo players noticed and it received special treatment from the devs. In the post announcing the changes, they outlined multiple ways of getting the controls to feel better:
- Nearly every single keyboard input is now rebindable
- Focus Target is now triggered by simply pressing F
- The game now has 2 default hotkey presets – one Modern and another (Legacy) that replicates Homeworld 2 scheme
- Swapping hotkey presets after rebinding a key won’t reset the rebind
- Return of the classic attack move
Control issues and camera issues were basically enabling each other and the devs took a peek in those systems as well:
- Increased movement and rotation speed of the default camera settings
- More granular control over the camera settings
On top of those problems, HUD pissed off just about everyone who played Homeworld 3 demo and that didn’t slip past the devs’ watchful eyes:
- HUD scale slider added to the menu
- Ship sizes will not be messed up anymore
- Ship size scaling based on camera position can be turned off
- Selection box is more accurate so you don’t accidentally pick more ships than intended
These are the highlights of the changes but the devs went more in-depth to explain all the good stuff that is coming on May 13, 2024.
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