The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

After playing Mortal Kombat Chess, I have to wonder... Has anyone considred
UQM Chess? Alliance vs. Ur-Quan matches. Half chess game and
half melee. Two ships come together, fight a melee battle and
the winner gets the square.

Taking into consideration the Re-Masters project, I would be interested
in knowing how hard this would be to develop.

Wow, I didn't even know there was a Mortal Kombat chess :D

UQM chess would be a nice idea.  I'm not much of a chess player though  :-[

It would be very nice to play.  Like a queen and pawn fight, and now the pawn now has a chance of winning :D.

Oddly enough, such a thing has already existed for years; I played it on an old DOS box in the early 1990s.  See here:

http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/sc1/

Here's a similar discussion (http://timewarp.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7&highlight=chess) from a good while back about making a game mode like chess in Timewarp (http://timewarp.sourceforge.net/).  So far, it's never been implemented. :)

Also, Archon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archon_(computer_game)) was one of Paul Reiche III's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Reiche_III) (of Toys for Bob (http://toysforbob.com/) fame) early creations.  It's kind of like chess, but each combat action is fought in real time.  Some of the design elements from Archon went into Star Control 1's strategy mode. 

Speaking of TimeWarp, what's happened to it? It seems to have suddenly dropped in activity, I'm wondering if what's hapening with TfB hopefuly making a sequel has something to do with the sudden inactivity...

But returning to the subject.

I'm not too sure if it'd be interesting, sure there's some tactics involved but the MK Chess Mini-game wasn't exactly wonderful, but then again with the Rock-Paper-Siccors thing that goes on in SC, it might work very well. Only time will tell.

Back in the early days of my involvement with Timewarp I proposed a remake of Archon using Star Control ships and Star Control melee as a sort of dual tribute to TfB.  My tentative name for this was 'Starchon'.  'fraid not much came of it though.

Trivia note: MK Chess was part of MK Desception. Sort of a side game to
give people something else to do. It wasn't very chess-like in the
way the players moved and there were spells and things which made
the game less like chess and more like Final Fantecy.

I think it would be possible to make a small chess game, using
the images from UQM. (Is this allowed?) And use the existing
Super Melee code for the mini-battles.

It would be, and as Decode pointed out, this would be called Star Control 1.  Or a remake of Star Control 1.  Which would be really cool.

Pretty much. SC1 with more ships and a chess board.
Perhaps one of the developers could tell me if it's possible
to run a Super Melee battle as a function?

It's not that simple; even if you have the UQM environment running (graphics, audio et.c. systems initialised and running), you still have to set up the data structures to describe the battle you want and then, finally, call Battle().

Take a look at src/sc2code/encount.c as a starting point; it's pretty close to what I guess you need.

When I read this my hand found my forehead so fast, it was the smack heard round the room. Talk about cyclic.

Star Control 1was meant to be Archon in space. Get it? stAR CONtrol. By design. But the full game option, the Star Control Chess part, proved to be quite unpopular, so when Star Control 2 was made the rotating starmap and turn based strategy was abandoned.

Mortal Kombat chess was also inspired by Archon.

Now this guy think's it's an original idea, when really it's going back to Star Control's roots.

Now, maybe if the rotating starmap was abandoned for a flat board with planets in occasional places (like the powerup squares in Archon or MKC) the desgin would be more popular.

However, I've said it before and I'll say it again, I really liked the rotating starmap. All I think it needs is to be rotatiable in every direction so that players can get a feel for what the next path would be easier. If in a move you zoomed in on a star, centered your view, so that near by stars were more obvious and path ways became more clear, people would be able to get into it better.

Really, I think it's a fantastic idea.