The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I thought more people should play this game, so decided to do something about it.

http://www.livepublishing.co.uk/retro/retro14.shtml

It's a two part feature, meaning the second part is in the next issue.

It contains the full UQM game for free on the cover disc, an in-depth round up of each and every SC game ever released (and not released),  including the old 8-bit home computer versions, plus I have an interview with the great ones. Thats right, Paul and Fred were kind enough to answer some of my questions.

It speaks highly of the games, highlights the plight of the series, talks about the unreleased version as well as briefly looking at TFB's other games.

Hopefully it should allow everyone to get to re-experience this great game, and generate interest not only in SC but also Toys for Bob.

Special thanks must also goto Mr Vandenboom and Derrenbacker for their assistance in creating this article.


So go forth SC fans and spread the word, since I wont be happy until everyone in the developed world has played this game.

is it in shops now?

Nice! :)

I assume the remixed music didn't make it onto the coverdisc?

van den Boom

Sorry, that was a typo in my post.
I didn't mean any offence, I know how annoying it is to get your surname spelt wrong, just look at mine!

In the article you are credited as:
"Serge van den Boom" Should the "van den" part also be capitalised? If so I can still have it changed probably.  :)
Again, sorry about the typo.

I downloaded all the remixed music, and all the extra material bonus packs too. So unless my boss decided to leave them out, EVERYTHING currently available (v0.03) should be on the disc. It might not automatically install the remixed music though. But I try and get everything.



EDIT:
could someone post this on PONAF as well? Thanks. :)

"Serge van den Boom" is correct.

So how are you handling the installation?
(It's 0.30 btw, not 0.03)

This is great...

I am a regular reader of the great "Retro Gamer" magazine, and Star Control sure deserves to be in the cover...

I'm just curious about it... is the version provided the oficial 0.3 release, or is it the current CVS? By now I guess there are already major differences between them. ;)

I am looking forward to read the article. Thanks.

Awesome! Will the article be avaliable online? (I live in the US, so I woudl imagine it's more difficult for me to get a hard copy.)

Last time I spoke to my boss, he said he was looking into it running off the CD, but failing that he said he would set it up as a 150mb installation. I gave him all the remix packs too (all 6 of them), so hopefully they will be on the disc.

So far though, everyone on their forum is psyched, I am forever surprised at the amount of people who claim to have never even heard of this game.

Its just V0.3, the one I downloaded about a month ago. But there are links to the site so people can get any updated version.
Hopefully the article text will encourage them to keep an eye on it.

Retro Gamer does get released in the USA, 10'000 issues a month I think... but they do eventually put the article online. Failing that, you can order it directly off their website, it is a bit pricey though due to the difference in exchange rate.

Still, I'm hoping plenty of people get to play this now.


Erm... Has anyon posted this on PONAF?
Also, would it sound arrogant if I asked Mr Derrenbacker to put this up as news on his site?

If they're running it directly from the CD-ROM, or using a custom installation procedure, I strongly suggest they use a recent snapshot (http://uqm.stack.nl/files/snapshots/).
All they'd have to do is use a replacement .exe file and add one .zip file to the content directory.
The most important things they'd gain:
- intro and victory sequence
- increased stability
- several non-critical bug fixes

The intro and victory sequence are probably the most important. Without the intro, a player will miss part of the backstory, and without the victory sequence, the player will miss the conclusion.
Version 0.3 was already pretty stable, but would consistently crash after a few hours. If the player saves regularly, that's not really a big problem, but with a recent cvs version there won't be a problem at all.
The non-critical fixes are for problems that may slightly annoy people, but do not make the game unplayable.

While the CVS snapshots can in theory be less stable, such instability is usually very temporary. If there's no new snapshot a day after the most recent one, it should be pretty safe to use. If there *is* a new snapshot, that may also mean there's just been more work done. In such a case you may want to check in the cvs logs (http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=12074) what the change was for.

It's a bit late for the current version, since the CDs have been manufactured....

But I will post links with this info for all the readers, since if it's as easy as you say, they should appreciate it.

I take it then that after installing, the average reader just follows the instructions with regards to the snapshot and everything should work?

Thanks for the info! :)

Well, if they're playing from CD then "adding one .zip file to the content directory" gets a little tougher... for the rest, yes.

yeah they would have to download uqm or make an iso and use deamon tools.

You really don't need to do any trickery with ISO images. Just copy the files from the CD to the hard disk. It's not like UQM has to run from the CD due to copy protection. ;D

they said they were going to make it run from cd....also iso's aren't hard....

You're missing my point. Instead of using several programs that don't belong to the standard Windows installation to create an image of the entire CD (which probably contains a lot of other stuff), edit that and mount the image, you can simply copy the files other to your hard disk with Explorer or whatever, put the updated files there and run the game. Why make a simple process hard? For a regular user of Daemon Tools, I suppose the procedure you describe is not much harder than my suggestion, but it's still unnecessarily complex and inefficient.

UQM doesn't care whether it's installed on a hard disk, a network drive, a USB memory stick, a CD-ROM or a RAM disk as long as it's in a file system that the OS can read files from. Configuration data is written to the user's home directory; the installation directory doesn't need to be writable, like in any sanely written major modern program. Retro Gamer isn't as far as I can tell making any changes to UQM to make it run from CD, so their copy should run nicely from the hard disk.

I understand now.

Following the publication of this issue of Retro Gamer we should expect lots of new visitors to the site.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to post a message in the "news board" about it?

Maybe tell that UQM is being distributed with the lates RG, and a link to the procedure to update the version to 0.33.

Something simple that could help the "newbies" getting along with Star Control 2.

;)

Yeah, it would be easy for people to just copy the files over directly from the CD. I doubt they've done anything to the overall file structure.


Otherwise, yeah, putting it in the news section would be great!
I included links for the site and even quoted your mission statement.
Should be an influx of new fans hopefully.

A news mention on PONAF would be great too. :)

Also, you should find the actual article itself interesting. I really wanted to highlight the fact that SC2 wasn't a game made in the normal fashion, it was born out of sheer hardwork. I think when more people discover that they went without pay for 6 months while making it, it will change their whole perception of the game.

Didn't Fred Ford state on IRC a while back that the "6 months in Alaska without pay" story was exaggerated?

This is the sort of news that's usually posted there. And someone mailing it to him is usually how he gets his news.

As for the UQM news page, we haven't posted things like this there before. It's really been purely about the UQM project itself. Now your article does have a relation to the UQM project, but unless I'm very mistaken, it's more about Star Control in general. sc2.sourceforge.net is not a SC2 fan site. It's a site about the UQM project (though SC2 fans do hang out here, as you may have noticed). And without a link to the actual article, a news item would be more of an advertisement than anything else.
Note that this is my personal view here, and not of the UQM core team.

He did indeed.  He said the "not being paid for six months" part was 100% true, and the "disappearing to Alaska to finish the game" part was a fabrication by the publisher.

As for whether this is "UQM News" or "Star Control News", I'd think that the fact that the game is being distributed with an issue of a gaming magazine would be highly relevant to the project.  You gentlemen have made mention every time a Linux distribution of any reasonable size includes UQM in their list of packages, so how would this be any different (other than the obvious "game magazines are not Linux distributions" angle)?  From a project perspective, it's another place for people to go and get a copy of the game.  I'd argue that it's best to let people know all of their options.

It would also be, as nightshadow pointed out, a great place to put info for newcomers about getting the 0.33 version, so they can see the nice intro/outro, and play the game for more than 85 minutes at a time.  ;)  At a bare minimum, I'd say bump the "CVS snapshots" story on the front page back up to the top so that it has a better chance of being seen.

just put it in the news...it won't hurt you.

Actually, if you put it in the news, with a clear explanation saying:

"People who bought Retro Gamer #14, welcome to the site and to easily update your copy of the game with the new CVS snapshot etc etc etc follow this link...."

I could then simply link directly to the front page here.

Otherwise I'll probably just quote meep's post from above.

In all, the intro isn't THAT essential. Besides, my boss said he was going to include it as a seperate video on the next disc probably.

Those who love the game should be able to investigate a little further.



Otherwise, so far people on their forum have been VERY excited by the cover disc. I think people will love it once the word gets out. Particularly useful for those unable to download the massive 100mb worth of dialogue.

Oh, and since this is page two, I might as well link to it again:
http://www.livepublishing.co.uk/retro/retro14.shtml

Once someone has read it, Id love some feedback on the actual article. Oh, and as for the 6 months thing, I was going on what they told me, I'd never heard about the Alaskan thing.



EDIT:
By the way, while my article is about Star Control, the cover disc game is "UQM", it is your project. So I think its VERY relevant to the site: "Magazine features our UQM project on cover disc"

etc.

Excellent article (I've been reading Retro Gamer since issue 3) and cracking game (v 0.3 plus remixes and starmap)

I've never played SC before despite owning a copy of SC3 (which included SC1 & 2 for free) for years.  It was at the bottom of a pile of other CD's and forgotten about until I'd read this article.  

As a bonus, it turns out that SC 3 still works under XP.  I was gobsmacked, and quite impressed all round.

Looking forward to part 2 of the interview.

Glad you like it.

I actually have'nt recieved my copy yet (and it will take another week due to me living abroad), so would you be able to tell me how many pages it takes up in part one?

Actually, if someone could scan my own article in B/W and email it to me, I would really appreciate it. Mainly since I have no idea what people are actually reading yet, and Im quite curious as to what editing they did. I also want to know WHERE exactly they put the thank-you boxes.


Also, Serge, stop fooling around and put this on the news! :)
A magazine distributing your UQM project is surely a good thing. Also, I linked to you guys and gave you some good praise.

Ok, your will be done.

Yay!

Thanks Serge, that's great!  :)

As well as the link to this site in the printed article (I got some scans the other day) I have also put it on the forum of Retro Gamer so more readers should hopefully stop by.

In case your interested, there has been quite a bit of good feedback, and many people haven't heard of it are currently enthralled by it and talking about their first time through.

So the hard work of the core team is certainly appreciated.

Well done guys!

So do you know now from where it is played? Directly from the CD-ROM, or from the hard drive?
I'm asking this so that I can be a little more specific with the upgrade instructions.

Egad, did noone tell him about the UQM Loader for Windows?

http://www.markvera.net/uqm-loader/uqmloader-1.1.zip

Much easier to have people download and run to alter their settings than having them alter shortcut properties.

I would've told them myself, but their forum expects you to register first!  The horror!

Eheh... glad you choose to put it in the news page.

I expect RetroGamer to arrive here (Portugal) in a week or so. I will give my comments to the article later.

Thanks.

Will this eventually be published on the internet? Maybe I'll buy it, but I don't think it's in any American stores, at least not where I live..

I think someone said they will get around to it eventually.

Ok, the next issue is arriving for those that subscribed....

Meaning you can read the exciting second part of my article!  :D :D :D

Also, the USA *should* have recieved the mag by now.... it normally takes about a month.

But, if anyone else wants to, feel free to scan it, and put it up here.
Its probably totally illegal to do that, but I wont tell anyone if you dont. ;)

Enjoy the second part people. I can only hope that more people are playing this game now.... and if the world still isn't taking notice with it being given away free on amagazine... well, I give up then.  ::)

(someone please tell me the UQM core team has been flooded with praise for their hard work porting it)

I wandered down to my local mega-bookstore yesterday, and while I was there, I decided to see if the UQM issue of Retro Gamer had made it to the U.S.

They're still selling Retro Gamer #11 in the stores around here.  Which means short of special ordering the issue, I won't get to see it on newsstands for several more months yet.

It's alright.  I'm a patient guy.  :)

I have finaly had the chance to read the whole article (divided in 2 issues), and I can tell you... it rocks!

Mr. Szczepaniak has covered the most important points regarding the Star Control universe, altough I might have liked a little more detail on the game itself (SC 2).

Thanks for a wonderfull article.

Does anyone have a link to this article that they could post? I'd love to ready it