HomeworldShots
HomeworldShots.net is a long-running image archive dedicated to the Homeworld universe and the community that grew around it.
Keeping the visual side of Homeworld alive
Homeworld has always been a remarkably visual series. The ships, concept art, promotional material, community screenshots and fan-created work are a large part of how people remember the games.
HomeworldShots grew out of the simple idea of keeping that material together rather than leaving it scattered across forums, personal sites, image hosts and old hard drives.
Over the years I have collected, organised and maintained images from across the Homeworld universe, both for myself and for other fans who still enjoy exploring the history of the games.
More than screenshots
Despite the name, the collection is not limited to screenshots.
It includes promotional material, concept art, wallpapers, renders, community images, modification projects, physical models and other visual material connected to Homeworld and its community.
Some sections follow the individual games, from the original Homeworld and Homeworld: Cataclysm through Homeworld 2, Remastered, Deserts of Kharak, Homeworld Mobile and Homeworld 3. Others preserve material from community projects and fan creations that would otherwise be increasingly difficult to find.
A community album as well as an archive
HomeworldShots has never been intended as a private collection hidden away on a server. Member albums allow visitors to upload and keep their own favourite Homeworld images, while community albums preserve material from places such as the old Relic forums and other parts of the Homeworld web.
There is also a dedicated wallpaper collection which gathers images large enough to be useful on modern displays, regardless of which part of the main archive they originally came from.
Old images, old links and disappearing websites
Image archives have the same problem as any other long-lived web resource: the internet forgets things surprisingly quickly.
Forums close, image hosts disappear, project pages are abandoned and old screenshots gradually become harder to locate. Keeping HomeworldShots online therefore became partly an exercise in preservation, much like HomeworldAccess.
Not every image is historically important by itself. Taken together, however, they document more than twenty years of games, community activity and creative work around the Homeworld universe.
What lives there today
Type: Image archive and community gallery
Focus: Homeworld visual history and community material
Content: Screenshots, artwork, renders, wallpapers and archived community images
Coverage: Classic Homeworld through Homeworld 3
Community: Member and community albums
Status: Active archive and ongoing project
The site continues to grow whenever useful or interesting material turns up. There is no particular ambition to make it a complete catalogue of every Homeworld image ever created; the goal is simply to keep a useful, browsable collection available instead of letting worthwhile material quietly disappear.
