Homeworld Source

Motherboard died. Waiting for RMA number. I'm posting this from my cell phone because I have no other way. I am just letting you guys know I didn't die. ;-)

I got the whole issue sorted out with my server. Now I can properly pull crap from the root directory. A bad side effect of this is now I have to reorganize my sub-folders so I can have my navigation work properly. Here is an example of basically what I was doing and what I am doing now:

• homeworldsource.com/index?page=downloads
• homeworldsource.com/downloads/

Okay, work on the website is going to screech to a halt until I can figure this issue out. I have some main pages that I use for formatting and things of that nature, and I've got them in the main directory. An issue I'm having is I can't go into sub-directories and call these main pages because my document root isn't set to the main directory where all my stuff is.

Example: http://homeworldsource.net/test/

This is my sad face.

Also, if anyone knows anything about PHP and this DOCUMENT_ROOT var, let me in on the secrets lol.

http://homeworldsource.net/tutorials.php?page=install_gr

So you got Homeworld installed. That's all fine and dandy, except Sierra shut down the WON servers years ago. What do you do now? Install GameRanger! With it you can again play against your friends in an epic battle across the galaxy! [online gameplay not rated by the ESRB]. But no, seriously, GameRanger isn't that bad at all. It's a very lightweight program and has a ridiculously easy to understand interface. The only thing I don't like about it is that you can't use the command-line options (as in you cant use triple, so the front menus will most likely flicker and give you seizures).

Anyway, GameRanger can be found at the following link, which was cleverly named:

http://www.gameranger.com/

Finally got it done. Had some video issues, but found the command-line settings to automatically change it so it's all good. This is a short post, but it's info is invaluable (to those who want to play Homeworld at least).

http://homeworldsource.net/tutorials.php?page=install_hw

Next on the agenda: VPN tutorial so we can all start playing online.

Figured I'd throw in a "+ Miscellaneous" post since so far it's been all Homeworld stuff (that and even though the Homeworld install worked, I ran into some problems. Somehow I fixed them, but I don't know how, so I don't want to post up a tutorial just yet). I talked to a buddy of mine who is extremely in the know of what's going on with Egypt because I couldn't really grasp all the bullshit on TV and the lengthy articles were too long to read. So, to sum it up as much as possible:

Dictator of Egypt (whom we [the USA] sell lots of weapons to) hates the fact that his economy is shit, so raises the prices of commodities: food, water, etc., which was the straw that broke the camel's back. People started rioting, but then turned on each other (old government vs new government [the Muslim Brotherhood]) which is kind of stupid but whatever. So, this unrest is spreading throughout the region, and if the Muslim Brotherhood takes power, they are most likely going to go to war with Israel. Egypt is pretty much the major military in the region (as USA is to the world). Isreal doesn't have a large military, but they do have nukes. And they would probably use them without hesitation. And once people start using nukes, it's pretty much game on.

WWIII, coming soon to a "theater" near you. (lol get it? theater? it's a pun!)

Your thoughts are always welcome. :)

Good news for all you people wanting to get back into playing Homeworld: the install worked (after some issues here and there):

http://homeworldsource.net/

First major update complete. I've got the major functionality of the site worked out for the most part. You will get some 404 errors but as long as they are in the same "theme" as the website it's okay. Those are pseudo 404 errors I stuck in the PHP code so it wouldn't freak out when it was trying to find something that didn't exist. You will notice on the news page there are a lot of "Untitled" posts; those are the reason why I made this blog, because I couldn't get the code to take the stupid data lol. Once I get around to it I'll have this blog feed into the site.

Next step: get a tutorial on how to install homeworld on windows 7. I don't know if you have to do compatibility mode or whatever, I haven't google searched it yet, so we'll see how that goes. Anyway, poke around a bit. It's mostly Lorem Ipsum, but as of now the site is really kind of in proof-of-concept mode.

Also, I don't know if people thought I made the video for the game in the last post, so just to clarify: I didn't. :)

Today is my day off. Lots of coding for the site. So much, in fact, that my eyes are currently twitching while I type this. Honestly, this isn't easy for me. I've been working on this on and off since '06, and by now I'm really wanting to get it up and running. The only programming class I had was sophomore year in high school, which was in 2002, so everything I know now was basically learned from w3schools and Google. I'm actually quite proud of what I've accomplished, seen as how it's an off and on project. Had I not commented like a good coder I probably wouldn't even be this close to finishing, since I would probably have a lot of "WTF does this do?" instances that would undoubtedly lead to delete-this-to-see-what-it-dooOOH-SHIT-I-NEEDED-THAT moments, so I can thank my coding teacher for that.

Anyway, progress on the site so far is I completed my dynamic page banner script and also the script that is pulling php files from sub directories. The ladder may need to be modified a little bit if I want to go deeper, but as of now things work. I'm throwing in Lorem Ipsum pages to ensure functionality is correct whilest "acquiring" a copy of Homeworld.

And here is a (terrible quality) video of gameplay with the credit song by Yes: