The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

There's quite a bit of talk about modifications to UQM (or a new game). I'd like to try making an add-on/modified UQM. Anyone that is interested in contributing, let me know here (preferably by private message). I have been doing programming and graphics work.

The two major things I would like to add are:

1. Increased difficulty
- Which will cover many of the suggestions made in other threads

2. A new side-quest
- This will most likely involve a new device or two, and perhaps a new race.

id like just better ai for all ships. but keep the behavior of the races true. thats about the only thing, right now, that comes to mind.

~DEFIANT

Much of this (not involving ship AIs) involves twiddling various constants.  Instead of just "having a hard mode", I would suggest you try to make a patch that reads all of the values for world-model constants out of a file, and then uses them consistently.  Then "hard mode" becomes just another add-on pack.  So does "easy mode".

Such a mod will need to hack/extend the resource system, and as such would need to be completely rewritten after 0.4.

I have said this many times, but instead of changing this game, make a different starcontrol game. Much harder, I know I know, but you can work with your own coding, and so on.

I know that would take more than one person, but maybe you can come of with a frame or something.

Talk with the member "HentaiZonga"(I think that is the name...but if you search by letter, you won't find anything similar to it), he already did it when there was 0.2v but stopped and disappeared when 3.0v came...You might get few good tips from him.

I was thinking of having the parameters selectable in the game. I'm also aware of the problem concerning the resource system. The 0.3 system is not particularly easy to work with. I've made some progress, but I've also wondered how far the team has managed to change it, and what the final plans for that are? What will the new system be like?


Yes, but you don't seem to understand. I am interested in a new SC game, but I don't want to take on that large of a task, not right now anyway. What interests me more at the moment, is trying to add things that I think would be fun in the existing game. Also, making a whole new game would require writing a whole new SC story, which takes much more planning than add-ons.

Are you interested in game-design, or coding.
You could make a frame for a game, like decribe the main objective, some side quests, some other characters, and how you see the game design.
Of course, it could be for nothing if noone wants to help you take on the task.

Do you have any specific ideas for your Mod?

Coding is a necessity, but I'm more interested in game design.

Yes, I have some very specific (and some rather vague) ideas for the mod.

I'm making some progress. For anyone that is interested, I could use help evaluating what I have added so far. I am interested to know, for example, if the random Ur-Quan/Kohr-ah fleets invading Sol are too small, too infrequent.. etc.

Currently working:

Setup Menu
No known bugs.

Options:

X Double cost
Costs are doubled. This means crew, fuel, modules, ships.

X UrQuan/Kohr-ah agression
About a month after the Ur-Quan probe leaves, Ur-Quan and Kohr-ah ships will begin regularly appearing around Earth and the Sol system.

? Probe multiplier
A higher value means that after visiting the starbase, the initial number of probes will be higher than normal. This option is only partially tested.

? Years to Kohr-ah victory
Years until the Kohr-Ah begin wiping the races out. Untested.

? Sa-Matra guards
This is the number of ships the player must defeat. The value is applied independently to Ur-Quan and Kohr-ah ships. Untested.

Personally I think the time limit the game has to begin with is fine. The rest of the ideas sound really good though. So, where can we get a copy of your changes?  ;D

Yeah, the "Years to Kohr-ah victory" is just something I included since it was trivial. It might make the game harder... then again it might just mess things up.  :P  ;)

I need to find a place to host it... any suggestions? I'd better start looking...

Lightman - you can host it at my site if you'd like (http://uqm.chumbucket.org).

I'd like to see your menu, actually.  That "setup" option is intended to eventually handle what eventually becomes the command-line options.  Or is this just a variant of Paxtez's?

Oh another thing you should put: VUX warp near you in the campian too, not just in super-melee.

Bwahaha: Thanks, that would be cool.

As a temporary solution, the files are available here:
http://www.freewebs.com/lightmanuqm/


I expected that the "setup" menu was going to be for that, I just needed something to work with at the moment. Try it out and let me know what you think.

Paxtez's?

Lightman - I've created you an FTP account on the website, and e-mailed you the details.  Let me know if you don't receive anything, given our communication issues in the past.

And don't touch Sage's stuff, or he'll crush your testicles into oblivion, apparently.

I was wondering if you'd post the source code along with the Win32 binary? I'm running Linux and would like to compile the code for testing. Also, is UQM+ based off the 0.3 or 0.31 UQM code?

Thanks.

To get a patch, install CVS, do a CVS checkout of the sc2/src directory, put your changes into that, then run "cvs diff -u" in the top of the src directory.  The output of this command will give us something we can actually study and work with.

Paxtez had a patch that put things in the setup menu -- this is present in our bugzilla repository.

Ok. I'd never used CVS before, but I just tried it out and I think I've got the hang of it. It might be optimal to try doing a merge from the current source (without replacing my changes) and then make a patch. I will also want to clean things up a bit... __int32 won't do, you know. ;)

Zeep-Eeep, I used the 20040208 CVS (v0.31)

Goodie. Now, is there an FTP account somewhere so I can get your UQM+ source?

32-bit integers are DWORDs if unsigned, SDWORDs if signed.
The full information there is in src/sc2code/libs/compiler.h.
If you run into difficulties making the code work right, join our IRC channel on irc.freenode.net (channel #sc2).  There's often a developer or two hanging about there, and there's always someone idling who will *eventually* answer. :)

I have a problem with it, it won't run I get this error message only readable from a dos-prompt, at least it doesn't continually loop the reads as follows.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SDL driver used: windib
SDL initialized.
Intializing Screen.
Set the resolution to: 640x480x16
1 joysticks were found
The names of the joysticks are:
     Microsoft PC-joystick driver
Coping default key config file to user config dir.

The Control scheme for UQM has changed since you last updated key.cfg.
(I'm using control scheme version 1, while your config file appears to be
for version 0.)

Renaming keys.cfg to keys.old and retrying.
Copying default key config file to user config dir.

The Control scheme for UQM has changed since you last updated key.cfg.
(I'm using control scheme version 1, while your config file appears to be
for version 0.)

Renaming keys.cfg to keys.old and retrying.
Error: Something went wrong and we were looping again and again so aborting.
Possible cause is your content dir is not up to date.

C:\Program Files\The Ur-Quan Masters\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I also can't find keys.cfg or keys.old and I have disabled windows tendency to make hidden files dissappear.
NOTE: I'm reintalling from scratch from the serversif that works I'll leave this here as note to people with the same problem.

I got it working keys was missing got the cvs here if anyone needs it
http://www.4u-servers.co.uk/~striker/
weird.

There is one immediately noticable thing after you meet the security drone it doesn't reveal the Ur-Quan's Sphere of Influence or was that intentional?

If u want to make a hard mode allow ships chasing u to follow u into starsytems and q-space portals half the game ur running from people anyway.

Hyperspace travel doesn't use any fuel is this intentional or is this a result of one of the mods settibgs are as follows:
yrs 2 koarah vic 4

Probe multiplier 2

charity ships half

rainbow world guards 1

Sa-Mata guards 4

Double Cost on

Illwrath earth patrol on

Spathi reluctance on

Ur-Quan\Koar-Ah agression on

Hope this helps

Thanks for the feedback...

That first error you got is probably the result of not having the most recent content dir. I am running a 0.3 install without problems

The Ur-Quan's Sphere of Influence isn't supposed to show up after meeting the probe.

The fuel thing is a bug. It's fixed.

I also added Rainbow World Guards. New version online here...
http://www.freewebs.com/lightmanuqm/

*Pokes around, looking for the source code.*

Oh well, maybe later. I usually wouldn't mention this, but since UQM is
GPLed, isn't it manditory for you to post your modified source code?
I'm sorry. I don't want to come across as an arse, but I do want to see the changes.

He's provided us with a patch against current CVS, but wants to clean up the code a little before it's done.  If you *really* want to see it *immediately*, come on #sc2 and I can DCC it to you.

I tested out the patch a little, and cleaned it up a great deal.  Linux users may acquire the patch and additions at http://www.stanford.edu/~mcmartin/uqm/uqmplus_032.tgz
Decompress it in your top level directory (above src), build.sh uqm depend, then build.sh uqm.

This patch is against current CVS, but as it is a unified diff it should still work for awhile.

lightman -- your C environment completely hoses the MSVC project files, so later patches should only be against src/sc2code if possible.

Michael: Thanks for the help in making the patch.

Zeep-Eeep: As Michael mentioned, I wanted to get the source cleaned up a bit. I hadn't posted it before because the source is likely to fluctuate and also because I wanted to reach a stage where I felt comfortable with a real release. I just put the .exe up in case anyone wanted to try it out as I was working on it.

Thanks very much to Lightman and MM. I'll take a look at it tonight.

I think I've found a bug in the "plus" version. This only occures when the entra challenges are OFF. When I went to attack the Sa-Matra, my ship "touched" the battle platform in the solar system view. Then, when the talking pet was supposed to tell me how to fight the Sa-Matra, the game crashed. I tried this again with the same results. When I turned the challenges ON, the game played normally. Here is the terminal output:

Found timestamp file: comm/talkpet/talkpet.ts
       'comm/talkpet/talkpet.ct' -- 152 bytes
       'comm/talkpet/talkpet.mod' -- 98500 bytes
_GetMusicData(): loading comm/talkpet/talkpet.mod
   decoder: MikMod, rate 44100 format 18
SpliceTrack(): loading comm/talkpet/talkp073.ogg
SpliceTrack(): no voice ogg available so setting speech volume to zero
Switching to stream comm/talkpet/talkp073.ogg at pos 0
Switching to stream comm/talkpet/talkp073.ogg at pos 0
StreamDecoderTaskFunc(): finished playing comm/talkpet/talkp073.ogg, source 6
Segmentation fault

Ok... I'll have a look.

Just a little thing.  Your website says public domain, but uqm is GPL.  There's a big difference.

Yes I suppose I ought to address that before the hordes of GNU fanatics storm my house with pitchforks and torches...

I hear you. While I'm a big fan of the GPL, I've released software (my own, from scratch code) to be met with howls of anger and buring torches by the Open Source community when they found it wasn't GPLed. I figure if I want
to give my code away sans-license, that's my business. Guess I was wrong.
I like the GPL, I release most of my code under it, but some people are
a little....fanatical.

It's even more entertaining when they claim the BSD license is "less free" because it grants the recipient more rights.

In similar news, the "Paranoia" game is being rewritten by the original designers...

Yikes. The BSD license "less free"? Crazy.

Anyway, after some work, I managed to add a new race to the game. Incomplete, but still a working test implementation (in this case, the "Black Spathi Squadron", built with the original spathi stuff). One of the first things I did was add new devices to the game and that was easy. The difficulty options are also good to have.

What this means is, I have all the things I need to begin adding one or more new side quests. I could really use some help in this... with ideas, graphics, conversation, story, etc. etc. Basically, everything that could go into a new side quest.

Let me know if you're interested. My e-mail is lightman AT bluemail.dk

Idea: When you enter quasispace with an Orz ship on board there should be some sort of event announcement... I spose the best would be if the color of quasispace changed... say to yellow... but if thats not possible one could have a text announcement about "spatial instability". Then in quasispace worm holes would kinda start blinking in and out of exestence... or if that's not possible with the game engine one could have the game display slow moving ships following you... just with worm hole ish gfx to em instead. 9 in 10 chance that when one encounters one of the worm hole thingys one would get a random encounter with some kinda space monster... But 1 in 10 chance one would get transported into a sorta quasispace looking place just with a blue or perhaps black background. There would be 2 objects in this place: a worm hole where one enters that leads back to quasispace... and a little way from the hole a drifting derelict Androsynth ship. You can at any time exit this place via the worm hole... but if you do the disturbance in quasispace stops and you can never get back to the place with the Synth ship again. One can also go over and touch the Androsynth ship... in which case a lander report comes up (like when you touch the starbase orbiting the Chmer world) and says something about having explored the ship, there being some spots of servier damage, there being no bodies, about having found a heavily damaged copy of the captains log, the log saying something about odd ghostly occurrences, the crew going nuts, and a final inchorent phrase about "having to kill myself (or leave, or kill everyone else, or something) before the *things* get me". The lander party should then say something about some parts of the computer system still being intact and it being possible that if one could get it back to earth starbase one might be able to unravel some of the secrets of Androsynth technology and then there should be some comment about it being "real creepy over here" and "I'm getting a disturbing feeling I'm being watched". Then there should be a dialog choice of either "take the ship on board for salvage" or "get the hell out of here before something happens to us". Either way immediately after that you should get a message from sensors about there being something huge coming towards us as near as sensors can tell from all sides. The radar should then show a ring of hyperspace signatures closing on one with an ETA of around 20 seconds, more than enough time to get back to the worm hole which leads back to quasispace. If you stay till the hyperspace signatures get to you the screen should go blank and back to main menu... or if someone feels like rendering it it could display a picture of the Vindicator broken and burning in the background with a human body floating in space in the foreground in a small cloud of frozen blood and the slightest suggestion of a manta shape hovering against the blackness near the Vindicator... then back to main menu ;D If you go back to quasispace without the Synth ship everything should go back to the normal game story... But if you bring the ship with you several "interesting" things should happen: (1) The Ariloo should refuse to have anything to do with you as long as you have the ship... saying something about you being contaminated (2) Every 5 or 10 days or so you spend getting to earth there should be a high chance of one of the following things happening: (1) 1-20 of your crew vanish into thin air. (2) One of your ships (not the Orz or Androsynth ships) mutenys and has a 50/50 chance of either just leaving with a message of something like "My God! Their coming! We must get away!" or of fighting you in which case they say something about having to destroy *them* before they kill us all. Once you get back to the starbase there should be a report from the science team that they have managed to retrieve the design specifications for the Androsynth Guardian and can now build them but that the one you retrieved has vanished in some sort of spatial anomly/explosion. At this point the game goes back to normal with the exception that you can build the Androsynth Guardian :D


I would like to note that the designers of the game originally intended for there to be unusual occurrences if you took an Orz ship into quasispace with you, but never had the time to put it in. Of course I doubt they intended to give one the ability to build the Synth ship  ;) But then I seriously doubt anyone will object to that  ;D Also this leaves the Orz/Androsynth mystery intact and in my opinion makes it even creeper. I do hope you can use this and if I can do anything to help please let me know.

Orz Brain didn't I see something similar to this earlier?
Something about finding lost Ansrosynth?

Someone else segested that one might find live Androsynth in the Orz's dimension. I personaly dislike that idea and prefer the derlict ship idea.

Agreed. Fred said there are no Androsynth, only Orz. He didn't say there are no Guardians, only Nemeses.

I do dislike however the idea that a human could captain a Guardian. We don't have the cranial wiring for it. And I mean that more literally than usual. If we can't reverse-engineer the more conventionally constructed StarRunner, we sure can't reverse-engineer a reconfiguring ship like a Guardian.

Maybe we could build them but not get the special to work. That would be useful for some things... maybe.

Two nitpicks:

1. Androsynth are humans.
2. It's not that we can't reverse engineer it -- it's that only native captains can fly it in combat.  So we wouldn't be effective with Guardians because our Naval schools didn't teach us how to effectively command them at those timescales.

As he said... They were built by humans... And while the Synth are sposed to be more intelligent I never saw ANYTHING about psi abilities. So what do you mean cranial wiring? Also it seems to me one could revamp the control parts of the ship for normal humans. The Eluder would only have been reverse engineered but in my story the computer would at least partial blue prints for the ship. Much easier to tinker with than something that has been reverse engineered.

I am talking about the integrated implants androsynth all had. It seems reasonable that these would be intimately involved in the process of information exchange with the ship. You can see that they pull levers, but there are no visible screens. So any human reverse-engineer could have to do all of his work with the reverse-engineered device having no feedback aside from a wireless broadcast which could easily be lost due to the probable high entropy of the signal.

Integrated implants?  I just assumed that they were flesh & blood, but built from a better genetic stock.

The Orz "bad-things-in-quasispace" has been on the list from the start. I definitely want to add it, I just haven't really started on it yet.

I never heard anything about implants.   ???  You sure you don't have em confused with the borg?

Hmm. I guess that ear-covering headgear was just really reminiscent of the cyborg assistant that Lando Calrissian had at Cloud City, and that was an implant (and an out-plant, if you will)... but looking over the history I don't see anything about anything but genetic modification...

D_999 - Are you referring to a implant like the one in System Shock 2?

I have never read anything beside genetic medifications for the androsnyth. However, does that mean it does not exist? I don't know, it makes sense why humans can't pilot androsnyth ships if the "andy's" HAD implants. Otherwise I don't know....  

O maybe once the androsynth were a separte species away in space they decided to create a implant. They were smart enough and if that is the case then that would explain why it is not known to man.  

Maybe, being clones, they have a special mental link with each other.
In the captian view, it shows multiple Andros piloting their ship. So I
think that they all work together naturally. Which would be very efficent, but hard for humans to duplicate.

Than all the humans would have to do is have radios.

YOU try flying a ship where all you can do is hit the turn left key, and have to relay the orders around manually. For battles on the time scale of our naval battles, it would work. For a fast ramming ship like the Androsynth, it would be a dismal failure.

Now, since some people don't seem to read, I will reiterate: I saw the funky metallic headgear they were wearing in the pictures, and an association was made to the cyborg in The Empire Strikes Back. That's all.

True, It would work for docking, but it would result in disaster for battle.



I am sure I am not among those people. I am the master of reading!  ::)

It just seems to me that if they had one it would be in the manual.

I tried HentiaZonga's mod a while and again yesterday I remember why I stopped using it It disregards acceration and top speed values making the first fight incredably difficult fighting a ilwrath avenger with equalized speed and acceleration making ships with strong weapons and high-turning rates the ideal ships.



Actually the science crew at Sol could toy with the ship and figure out the controls by trial and error i would assume the implants they have would have to do with visual aide, I would assume the base would implement viewscreens as an altenative makeing the vessel slightly larger (perhaps make the sprite 10% larger) give it about 18 months 2 years before u are able to builds and pilot one of these technilogicly advanced vessels though.

And the Avatar beam's range... Just unfair  ;)

I've noticed something if you save on and UQM+ while travelling though  hyperspace and then load it in UQM your ship "slides" meaning it travels but is facing the wrong dirrection. Odd, I'm curious as to why probably a slight difference in the coding of game saves as mods are no longer present and are certain ones you can't reactivate namly Probe multiplier and Ur-quan/Koar-ah Agression. Is there anyway (within reason obviously) to program the setup screen to prompt upon starting of a new game and to play a modified game without having to go to setup to restore your settings?

What exactly do you mean? The options in "setup" are stored in the savegame and loaded with everything else. I don't see any point in forcing the setup screen when you start a new game, you can just as easily go to the menu yourself.