The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Evening all, fine work on the project, my utmost moral support, played in the old days etc. etc.

Now then, 1 comment: a journal feature (outside the orriginal game I realize but essential to most modern RPG/adventures) would be a terribly handy device.

1 question: Is there any particular walkthrough/faq/guide that goes beyond the bare requirements of victory to explain in a pleasurable way what is possible to do with the many different races and enemies of the game?  All suggestions (with links) appreciated.

1 possible bug: during the syrene quest, after going to beetlejuice and talking with the young lady I had learned (from a generally unsatisfactory walkthrough) that she was to give the name and coordinates of her former homeworld but to my recollection this never occured.  Nor (also according to this particular walkthrough) did the Arilou ever mention the Syrenes, and so in both instances I simply followed my own recollections and the quardinates given in the guide.  I found this method somewhat unsatisfactory.  Edit:  Ha!  Fool that I am I have ignored the search funtion on this forumn and even the simple etiquite of browsing.  I do appologize, though I will note my support for some addressing of this discrepency in some future release.

Thank you all for assistance and comments.

I used to think that an in-game journal would be cool, especially since the Captain would have computers at his disposal, but after playing several recent RPGs with in-game journals, I realized that I never got as intimately involved with them as I did with the games that I had to write my own notes for (SC2, Zork Series, King's/Space Quest, etc).  Since I new I could always find the information, it never got commited to heart...  :-/

So, while it is nice to have a journal, I think it's actually better for the playing experience to have the player make their own journal.

Baldur's Gate II is a great game with or without a journal. But I think culture is right, sometimes I didn't pay attention and the journal saved me. But think what would have happened if you lost your notepad... not nice.

thats when u refer to the internet

Mmm good points all.  I'd still appreciate any advice on a comprehensive walkthrough.

Ha-ha! Yeah...juice!
Actually it is Betelgeuse.

Hug,sorry,I'm so evil...

A movie and childrens cartoon has permanently warped my perceptions of certain large red stars I'm sorry to say.

Also I think the PDF of the roleplaying PDF will do nicely.

PNF's files section (http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/files/sc2.shtml) has what you require.

Also, I seem to recall that Sage made quite a handy map for the whole thing, didn't you? While back anyhow.

One thing that I miss when playing is the old paer map (mine is somehwere, but this is a big house...). I wonder if it'd be possible for someone to scan the map in A4 pieces, so that it'd be easily printable? I used to have all my notes on the back of the map, and circle all the important planets with my own notes... Great fun...

Some of us don't consider A4 to be "easily printable" =)

I really ought to be plugging my project (http://uqm.chumbucket.org) more, eh?

The Hyperspace map (and all the utilities built into that alone) are, as far as I know, 100% accurate, so you shouldn't have much trouble locating items and homeworlds with that. Until I get special world data from Bwahaha (whom I haven't seen online in quite some time), the planetary database is ~99% accurate. Granted, you won't need to see the layout of the planets to find the items, so it's unneccesary to reference.

I meant in the context that most home and school printers are set up for A4 pages. That way you could print out say 4 pages, glue them together, and presto you have a map!

Not around here they aren't... It's all 8.5"x11" (21cm x 28 cm) letter paper here.

FFS, just get a paper and print it! lol

You weird people... I didn't know there were different paper standards in different parts of the wolrd  :-[ . I thought the A4, A3 and whatnot were pretty much universal... Ah well, a new thing learned.

Um, to the best of my knowledge, that's the definition of A4 paper.  It's called A4 in Europe and Asia and 8.5" x 11" (say: Eight-and-a-half by eleven) in North America, but it's functionally the same thing.  

Am I wrong?  I've been using them interchangeably for years.  (Note: born in Canada, live in Japan)

Ahha! So  I was right, and rthe A4 rules supreme! For your contribution to the thread, and my veneer of infalllibility I shall buy you a large pint of Guiness in our very own Starbase Café!

Um, no. I've used A4 and 8 1/2 x 11 paper at the same time, and there is a slight difference. A4 is skinner and taller than 8 1/2 x 11. The advantage of A4 paper is that it uses the "golden proportions" so that when cut in half it maintains the same proportions, just in a different scale. This, by the way, is called A5 sized paper.
In America it's hard to get A4 paper. We just don't make anything easy in the states.

Darn. No Guinness for SA then. Silly overseas people and their silly paper. Still the point still stands that some european whizkid could skan it in  A4 incements, and some overseas whizkid could scan it to howevermanyinches*whateveramountofinches. Or one person could do both, seeing as ity doesn't matter to the computer HOW you scan it, it only mattwers when you print it.

IIRC, A0 paper is defined as a rectangular piece of paper in the proportions 1 : sqrt(2), with a surface area of 1 m^2.
A1 is half of that, A2 is half of A1, A3 is half of A2, and so on.
So:
A0 = 1.189 x 0.841
A1 = 0.841 x 0.595
A2 = 0.595 x 0.420
A3 = 0.420 x 0.297
A4 = 0.297 x 0.210
A5 = 0.210 x 0.149

Btw, this proportion is not the golden ratio, which is (1 + sqrt(5)) / 2, which is approximately 1.62, while the ratio for the A series is sqrt(2), which is approximately 1.41.

Addition: I see that this is in fact an ISO standard, and you can find it at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html
Appearantly, the official sizes are rounded on one millimeter.

Old versions of the Jargon File noted that the POSIX standard was printed on A4 paper and was "known in the USA as 'the Ugly Red Book that Won't Fit on the Shelf' and in the Europe as 'the Ugly Red Book That's a Sensible Size.'"

Most printers can't print on the entire surface of the paper (my old HP Deskjet won't even touch the bottom inch or so), so you'd have to leave some margins. So, you could scan full A4 pages, but with enough overlap to allow American and Canadian users to print to US Letter (which is a bit wider, but shorter).

What's all this talk about scanning?  PNF already has a scanned version that's 2281x2710 pixels.  Just use GIMP or some other image editer to crop the pieces to the appropriate sizes...

Edit:
Even better, there's a zipfile named sc2map.zip that contains 4 high quality pngs already cropped enough for letter & A4 sizes (8.2inx9.4in / 20.9x24.1cm)
http://www.fileplanet.com/dl.aspx?/classicgaming/starcontrol/sc2/sc2map.zip

Americans have THEIR OWN PAPER SIZES?!

This is pure madness, I tell ya. Though I think I've seen a paper holemaker thingie which had two, almost equal sized slots. One for A4, and the other had some sort of a stupid acronym such as TIASA (this is a stupid acronym).

I find it amusing that several of my countrymen have never heard of US Letter. They have obviously not experienced the joys of printers screaming "LOAD LETTER" at you (which of course, you can't load as you don't have any). This usually indicates a configuration problem in the printer driver settings. ;)

The best A4/letter troubles come in the academic world;  many Graduate students in the USA are from European or Asian countries, and they keep sending print jobs that expect A4 paper.  This makes the printer scream the opposite of Novus' example: "Load A4"  Then they keep replacing the letter sized paper with more letter sized paper.  Eventually, they give up and report a printer failure.  All they would have had to do would be to press "go" to make the printer think that Letter is A4.

I'm in the USA, and if I really wanted to, I could make my documents format for A4.  I wouldn't be able to print them afterwards, but the option is at least there...  I'm kind of surprised of people not having heard of Letter Paper.

(Legal paper is another thing entirely, and probably should be going into the dustbin with furlongs and slugs... no, wait, furlongs are still used for horse races...)

I believe there is a menu item called "Page Setup". You can instruct the program to use arbitrary paper sizes. When entering the US, switch to US letter; when leaving, switch to A4.

If this is not available outside mac, I am astonished, and I laugh at the foolish systems which do not use it.