The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

does anyone know of a progect like this for the first one? I want to try it without buying a system.

You can find a downloadable version of SC I by looking on google, original software, but on my computer it was really choppy and hard to use. I don't remember if the original was, but...

they all seem to be gone.

There are ROMs available of the genesis version which can be played with PC emulators, but as far as I know these are still privately liscensed. That would mean that downloading such a ROM would be considered illegal unless you already own a Star Control genesis cartridge.
(At least that's the way it works here in the US.)

Here's the DOS version. I found it very easily...

http://www.abandonia.com/game.php?ID=143&genre=strategy

thanks. ;D

umm, i know your trying to be a nice guy and all, but there shouldnt be any links to copyrighted material. dont want to offend the gods...Fred and Paul.

~DEFIANT

[edit] grammer

umm.... "shouldnt there be no"? anyway I get your point sorry.

It looks like a "serious" site, so i guess the game is no longer protected by copyright, or they were granted permission by the copyright holder...

it's abandonware.

It was abandonware when it was first released, wasn't it? My brother's friend installed it on our computer. Oh, wait...He put SC II on there as well, so he might have just been pirating it... :-/

So, yeah, I downloaded SC1 the other night. Been playing throug ha dos emulator. I have a question.

I haven't played SC1 before and I'm wondering, what's with the
ship movement? I mean, when your viewing the tactical screen and
the ship moves... I don't understand why I can move in a direction one time, but not another time. Is there a way to bring up a .... roadmap of the
area, so I can find the quickest was from point A to point B?

The best advice I could give to someone just trying starcon for the first time would be this:

Setup the game so that you play using the "Psytron"; that lets the computer pick the strategy for you.  Then watch what it does, and fight when it gets you into one.  ;)

After a short time of watching it used, the starmap's use and function, as well as how the turns work, becomes quite clear.  And once you find yourself openly disagreeing with the psytron's decisions on your behalf, and can rationalize why, it's time to take off the training wheels, as it were, and go it alone.

Abandonware is a nice concept, but unfortunately most software that people claim is "abandonware" is actually still protected by copyright. I guess it really depends on your definition of Abandonware, though.

At any rate, my guess is that either Atari or TFB now holds the rights to SC1. If TFB holds the rights to the code and content (I'm certain they don't own the name) they may choose to release them at a later date. If it's held by Atari, good luck.

I don't know what Fred and Paul would think of you downloading and playing SC1, but remember that piracy is still piracy, "abandonware" or otherwise. I admit that I enjoy playing so-called abandonware games, but I've done a little research into copyright law and learned that simply because the game was "abandoned" doesn't mean you're allowed to freely distribute it.

Of course, this may not apply in contries other than the US. I know very little about international copyright law.


When I first played SC1, I was having a problem figuring out the navigation too. I realized that I had been conceptualizing the starmap wrong- it is a rotating 3d map, and I looked at it as a crazily bouncing 2d map. Not sure if that's what your issue is, but that helped for me.

Ahh. that might help. Yes, I thought it was a swining 2D map. I'll
go back and try again, slightly enlightened.

Personally, I like the SC1 map better than the SC3 3D map.  lol

It takes a little bit to get the hang of it, but it's useful.

The SC 3d map was horrible. Just like nearly every other aspect of the game.

Things I would have added:
- The ability to fix 1 or 2 or 3 stars in place so that the rotation will not move them (if you fix 3, the starfield can't rotate...). This would help greatly with staying oriented.

- having the stars occur in constellations and clusters would help A LOT in keeping stuff straight, and it would also incidentally make physical sense (not as if that mattered much). In any case, it would be consistent with SC2. So not only did the map have problems, the starfield itself had problems.

- ability to consider only stars within a certain radius

Clusters, yes. Constellations, no. They're just in a close angle as seen from Earth, but they can be very far apart in distance.

You're confusing TrueSpace astronomy with HyperSpace astronomy. The term for a close grouping of relatively few stars (say, anywhere from two to ten) in HyperSpace *is* a "constellation" -- repeated many times in SC2 dialogues and the manual. Of course these groupings are, likely as not, artificial distinctions made for the purposes of star travelers -- like states or counties in Earth geography -- but they certainly do represent real distances and real proximity.

They almost certainly do *not* represent the TrueSpace definition of a constellation -- a grouping of stars defined against Earth's night sky -- since the starmap they're defined on is an absolute grid rather than Earth's sky, and since they don't match up at all to the TrueSpace constellations they're named after. Like the names for the constellations themselves ("Centauri", "Aquilae", "Sextantis") the term "constellation" is just a convenient borrowing from TrueSpace astronomy to represent a sort-of-similar but different concept.

In astronomical terms, the whole of the starmap in Star Control 2 probably represents one "cluster", if that term is applicable in Hyperspace. Clusters contain hundreds of stars and the distances separating them are very wide.

I don't actually remember the SC3 starmap very much, but considering that Death_999 was talking about things making physical sense, I don't think he's talking about HyperSpace (which appears to be 2D in nature anyhow).

As for the rest (naming of constellations in HS in SC2, etc), that's not under dispute.

My 'physical sense' idea was simply that the map was way too evenly distributed to be random. Also this differed strongly from the distribution of stars within hyperspace in SC2. Why would the Kessari quadrant have evenly spaced stars in total contrast to our quadrant?

Obviously, distance comparisons to TrueSpace are, well, thoroughly vapid, due to the immense distortion of Hyperspace.