The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

As an old 5,25 incher which copied his SC2 to his once ever-so-large 40mb HD i must express my sincere gratitude to you, for reisueing this alltime greatest spacefaring game. The SC2 made me look differently at many things... especially humor  :).
For as much as i tried till now the redoe seems bugless and clean. And i must say the music is even better at times as the original one.

...but, like many of us who made it through SC2 and enjoyed ever bit of the *juice* it has i wondered about a certain option. If you have the game engine it would be theoreticaly ever so easy to change the basic space of the game, thus creating a whole new game. We all know how SC2 ends... the old man narating in the shadow of a large spaceship saying "This is a completely different story...". I never stopped wondering what they had in mind... and what a dissapointment SC3 was.

So the question put simply is:
"Could you make a whole new game on the basic of this SC2 game engine?"

A new game that would retain the basic game enviroment of SC2, but contain a whole new scenario of emminent doom and subsequent deliverance, packed in nice gfx with a scent of stomach-ripping humor.

Yours,
J.W.

Yes you can.  Many have tried.  Few look like they will succeed.  Here is the best example I can think of.
http://tw-light.berlios.de

Ah, but timewarp doesn't use SC2 code (thankfully).  SC2 wasn't written to be modular, so I wouldn't put any hopes on its codebase being an engine for anything else.

Well... When UQM goes 1.0 (Hopefully they won't go through 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8 and 0.9), and when it has XML data not compiled into the .exe, it'll be moddable.. And a new Star Control should be able to get made with that, yup... With some work... :P A lot.. :)

I seem to recall someone (someone in charge, that is) saying that the next version will be 1.0 after the current (0.4). Is this correct?

Definitely possible. And definitely a lot of work. I keep seeing fan-made projects popping up all over the place ("I'm making a sequel to..."), but I can't really recall any of these announced projects nearing completion. At least if you don't count Monkeydang's "games" as completed. :P

It seems a lot of people underestimate the amount of time and skill it takes to make a computer game. Heck, it would be a big project for one person to make a computer version of the board game Monopoly. I would think twice before deciding to embark on any game project of this magnitude. I don't want to sound like a sour grape here, all I'm asking is this: take a look at the number of "fan-made" projects out there, and compare this to the number of finished games. Do the math.

I completely agree about the "magnitude" of work required to make a worthy a-la-SC2 game. Its sure no easy work. But i see the difficult part only in the story, the GFX itself shouldnt be that much of a problem.
* Enlarging the existing SC2 space is i think not such a big deal, all is allready there, the planet types, the metals, the biocrap, the energy elements, adding new would be a piece of cake if you ask me.
* Creating new "aliens" is a matter of equilibrium between the ships in the arcade aspect, but only difficult part is to make the new ships and create the "outlook" of the races, to look comparable to existing SC2 races and add the apropriate dialogues and music.
* Adding a bunch of quests and missions should also be relatively easy, since the game engine is allready there.
* As for the story, SC2 has more then enough clues to make a new one... like bringing back the old Sentient Mileu races, the fallen Burvixti (sorry for the spelling), the SC3 story - secret of  Precursors - made anew, the Pkunk/Yehat story, the Ur-Quan comeback., the secret of Mark IV ship, the Ur-Quan finding Dynnhari (spelling again). Or look at Slylandro, Melnorme and other "history" reports, there is more then enough material to work with. <Or just take a good look in the Kohr-Ah trophy pit, more then enough material there>.
* Not to mention all other possible aspects like mining, refitting the ships, developing tech even etc... that could be added.

If there would be such a project i would be more then ready to take part in it, cause i find SC2 space a true pearl.

Yours,
J.W.

It depends. It will be 1.0 when everything we want in is in.
It's not unlikely that before then we decide that there's enough new stuff to release another version. And that can happen more than once.

Just don't make it like ADoM (version 0.9.9.gamma X)  ;D

Wow, not until now did I see the unintended double entendre.  :o

Or triple: "back in the old days when men were real men usin 8" and now you're stuck with 3.5" ;D

i think its time for the piles of organized punch cards and SUV sized machines to come out and play ;D

Hard drives that could walk...