The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Greetings,

    I have been playing UQM for maybe 3-4 hours so far and it has been masterfully done.  Bits of new dialogue are *almost* indistinguishable from the classic game (original Accolade) and some of the new touches are very nice (new menus, being able to "rewind" conversations without using the summary, etc.).  However, there is one thing I'm having trouble dealing with so far and I'd like to suggest that this be made a controllable option for users.  I can't deal with the smoth zoom in melee.  I am a Pkunk and Arilou jockey and therefore do almost all my fighting at close quarters.  With the old version the stable zoom meant that I could do all my careful manuevering and take out Marauders without a scratch.  Now, I'm having trouble taking down even 2-3 before dying.  Any thoughts on this?  The old click zoom was inconvenient in the way of "surprise planets," but that was something I worked into my unconscious flying strategy.

                                                           -Moo.

OMGWTFBBQ!! IT'S -MOO. FROM FIZZBAN'S KEEP!

Now -Moo., the smooth zoom is to your advantage and you know it. There is probably a prefix you can put into the game to make it have three camera settings, but I think you're better off adapting. Why exaclty was it easier before?

I agree the blocky zoom was easier, as it provided you a yardstick. You could easily distinguish the zoom levels, and then figuring out distances became linear.

As it stands with continuous zoom, you basically have to invert the size of your ship to get the length scale.

Concrete example: the best range for Spathi fighting Kohr-Ah was at the outer limits of medium-range zoom. Stay at that range, and you have enough time to dodge but your missile range is still long enough.

I can quite easily see how the Arilou could have similar issues.

I am curious why UQM was not made the way as the original - After all - were they not trying to almost copy the game? (I must be missing something...)

UQM was based on the later 3DO version of the game, not the original PC version. It has many features the PC version didn't, like voice actors, altered music, and animated CG intros and endtros for the game (which didn't make it into UQM because of rights issues). UQM is a mixture of 3DO and PC features, but all of the 3DO bells and whistles aside from the movies are, I believe, available by default in UQM. The UQM team has publicly stated that they aren't making any real gameplay changes of their own to the game; their goal is to create a faithful re-creation of the PC and 3DO Star Control 2 and leave the modding and improvements to others.

I should be fairly simple to change smooth zoom into block zoom.  Instead of passing the raw distance of the ships to the zoom function, you could process it first with a few if statements.

Shiver,

    You have the advantage of me as I don't recognize your handle from The Keep.  But, in any case, as Death_999 said, the blocky zoom served to provide short-range ships with a constant environment in which to maneuver and attack.  Slipping between Marauder mines, Dreadnought blasts, or even Broodhome shards requires a stable perspective.  At least, the past 15+ years of playing melee have been based on the old perspective.  I'm sure I can acclimate to the new zoom, but it renders most of my previous experience worthless.

                                                                         -Moo.

I agee that ranger was easier under the old zooming system. However, i've found that my over-all performance has become much better with the smooth zoom. Heck, yesterday I butchered half the 300 Point Armada with a Yehat. Perhaps not the greatest battle of all time, but one of my better moments.

Back when I was a regular (and let's be honest, a kid), I went by "Bane". I left because the people I chatted with from there were elitist pricks and the forum itself had been drained of activity. But none of this really has anything to do with you so it's not like I'm passing judgement here.

Seeing as how this is the first time i actually played the game, I couldn't imagine playing SC2 with blocky cameras.=/

I used to watch my dad play it back when it was released, and since that was when the game first came out (I cant remember the exact date) and now I am relatively still a kid (14 and 7 months). So yeah, any difference between the PC and the UQM edition is totally beyond me. The only thing i dont like about the 3do is the lack of the Metachron, as well as some other small bugs.

Edit: Completely unrelated, but this is my 100th post =p
Joined July 1st, and this is August the 4th, so thats about 2.85 posts a day....Wow, I'm such a spammer!

It seems like TFB left the old blocky zoom in the code, just deactivated. If you know how to compile the code, this is how you can enable the old mode (perhaps we'll make this an option some day) ("patch -p0" in src/):



Index: sc2code/starcon.h
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/sc2/sc2/src/sc2code/starcon.h,v
retrieving revision 1.16
diff -r1.16 starcon.h
28a29,30
> #define OLD_ZOOM
>
Index: sc2code/process.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/sc2/sc2/src/sc2code/process.c,v
retrieving revision 1.16
diff -r1.16 process.c
31d30
< #ifndef OLD_ZOOM
33d31
< #endif
267,271d264
< #ifdef OLD_ZOOM
< static VIEW_STATE
< CalcView (PPOINT pNewScrollPt, BYTE next_reduction,
<               PSIZE pdx, PSIZE pdy)
< #else
275d267
< #endif

Ah, yes!  I remember "Bane," but you're right....that WAS a long time ago.  I think when I showed up, you were starting to fall away in "attendance" already, so we never talked much.  Oh, well.  I'm sure a fair percentage of the people I know would file me under "elitist prick," but your disclaimer was appreciated.  =)

Meep-eep, I have zero knowledge on tweaking the code as you described.  Thanks for trying though!  And, personally, I would look forward to "blocky zoom" being a customizable option for the average player.

Everything i know about computers is self taught and I'm not old enough to attend a real course, so i'm pretty much dependant on the local egg- i mean technical guys to help me and others out. Thanks for trying though, when this becomes an option i will definately give it a go to see what i missed.