The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

My friend recently got an XBox 360 and showed me the XBox Live Arcade. Very cool! This seems like a perfect place for the Ur-Quan Masters.

Is there any plans to port it to the Live Arcade?

The inevitable answer is "Sure, let us know when you get it working."

In all seriousness, of all the possible ports you could've asked for, this seems the most unlikely.  Even if someone WERE to hack together a port of UQM for the Xbox 360 (you know, when hell freezes over and the devil's selling snowcones) I'm pretty sure Microsoft is not gonna host a convenient little spot for it on the internet.  I don't own an Xbox 360, but from what I understand about Live!, all games are hooked up through a network run by Microsoft.  I don't think they'll take kindly to "hackers." ;p

Just out of curiosity:
In this "Live Arcade" do you see any open source games there?
Or are all the games on a pay to play basis?

As a side note, didn't someone get it working on the regular X-box? Running under a Linux enviroment or some such? Is this at all possible on the 360? (Not being involved in consoles I have no idea wether the 360 works in any way similar to the original).

Also, Bio asks a good question. Somehow I don't see MS putting any opensource stuff up on their arcade.

"Also, Bio asks a good question. Somehow I don't see MS putting any opensource stuff up on their arcade."

I've heard that the Xbox 360 is supposed to be more like a PC, with surfing capability and such. Maybe this would allow you to stop by sourceforge and download something, but maybe not. (I don't own a 360.)

I'm given to understand that they got it working, but unless there have been some major changes in the way licensing works, they can't distribute the result without violating somebody's copyright.

(Side note:  UQM, unlike, say, the Linux Kernel, does have the "or (at your option) any later version" clause intact in its license.  I haven't been following it too closely, but I think driver-lockdown issues are one of the current points of contention.  Expect huge flamewars to erupt on this subject all over the gaming Internet when GPL3 is actually released.)

The 360 is a Power-based chip that can run an x86/DirectX emulator.  DirectDraw 5 (What SDL for Win32 uses) would probably work in the Backwards Compatibility mode.  I wouldn't wager large sums on it, anyway.

MS is unlikely to support open-source games, yes, as a matter of corporate policy, but the Live division may take a different tack if they think they can use it as a selling point.  I wouldn't wager even small sums on it happening, but I wouldn't wager large ones on it not happening.  Time will tell.

There are "indy" titles that have made it into x-box live. Actually I've only heard of one, but ti's getting rave reviews. Infact, it is a the moment reportely the only reason to own a 360, cuz it can't play any of the good X-Box games, and only has, what 7 titles in it's native format.

But anyone thinking that means every indy title out there is going to be approached by M$, wake up. The one title that made it to x-box live got there because it was original written by a single author who they could pay off.

The complications with bringing UQM to the x-box acrade are far more than I think M$ are willing to go through, unless ol' Billy boy is ghost posting on these boards.

With the MS "Creator's Club" this idea becomes about 100x more plausible. They'll let anyone homebrew a game and port it over to the 360 for $100 a year for the service.  A dedicated fan could port it, I'm sure.

And I wouldn't call it impossible to get it published on XBLA from Activision either, if all the correct legal issues are in place, it could be FAR easier than another console. After all, Doom just got ported to XBLA.  ;)

Okay, earlier skepticism alive, and thread necromism forgiven, this idea since it was first launched, has gained validity. With Toys for Bob under the wing of Activision, Activision COULD support a port of this game to the XBL.

The question is why would they? It seems the petition has lost all momentum. Convincing the parent corporation that a commercial release of UQM is financially viable has all but disolved. Without that they would have no reason to believe this would yeild a return on the investment of time and money.

Besides, do you really want Activison swooping in here, dropping a legal-ese e-mail on the UQM team, and taking all that's been done on UQM away from us without even a thank-you? Do you honestly belive this would IMPROVE the franchise? I suppose if they were serious about resurecting it with TFB at the helm, that's be good news. But this old curmegon thinks that is just a sad fantisy.

I don't think there will be an UQM ported to the 360 anytime soon.

There was once talk about porting UQM to the first XBox, but I don't know how far they've actually gotten...

I've been trying to port the melee to C# (to run on Xbox eventually using XNA) ,  
its pretty damn hard,   SOMANY custom classes :(
So far I just have a ship that moves around, using the same sc2 code
I am not that good of a programmer tho    anyone else trying?

As I recall, that was simply running UQM under Unix on the X-box. At least that's what has been said earlier in this same thread. You know, if you haven't read through it ;).

On a more serious note, if you mean porting UQM straight to X-box, I've nebvver heard of sucgh a project. Sounds very problematic.

I am writting a recreation of UQM in C#. Check my links below.