The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

XFormPLUT (GetColorMapAddress (SetAbsColorMapIndex (CommData.AlienColorMap, 1)), ONE_SECOND / 2);

Now you know.

So it has something to do with the Mmmrnnhrmm (sp?)?  If not, then what's with the X-Form?  Damn robots!

And here was me thinking it was because of YFormPLUT (GetColorMapAddress (SetAbsColorMapIndex (CommData.AlienColorMap, 1)), ONE_SECOND / 2);

Thanks!  ;)

 ::)

I seriously fear you people.  ;)

Um, doesn't this only answer how it turns purple, not why?  (Yeah yeah, call me a party-pooper if you must.)

I think the correct answer to the why question is "because TFB decided it should".  :)

The answer is simple.  Over many, many years of business dealings, the Melnorme obviously have learned to keep a straight face.  This, eventually, lead them to not being able to show facial expressions at all, and thus, decided on another method of showing thier emotion / intentions, which was the colored background of their ship.

...yes. But it's a joke. Get it? Humor? Funny ha-ha?

My theory:
A red bridge is for greetings and such, for when the Melnorme are all laid back and stuff.
A blue bridge is for when they're angry and also "able to see their weapon consoles more clearly".
Therefore, a purple bridge would be for when they're trading - between those two extremes: in the mood for being nice and kindly offering information, but also wary and suspicious of attempts to cheat them.

;D lame, I know.

Well, obviously. Come on... tell us something we don't know, meep-eep! :)

Maybe it's just me (it usually is), but I always figured that if you could actually pay the credits the Melnorme would say something like 'So we can sell the information about it !  Thank you for being so curious, Captain !'  ;D

There aren't enough biological life forms or rainbow planets to get 1 million credits.

Heh, you should pay a million credits and they just say "We just like purple."

Unfortunately, you can't have a million credits without modifying the source code.  I used a hex editor to play around with RU's and credits.  My first attempt, I gave myself about 5000 units of bio data and then sold them.. If I remember correctly it got up to something like 32,000 and then reset the counter back to zero.
After it hit zero, it still incremented, so I wound up with something like 26,000 credits.. still WAY more than enough.  Also, you CAN have over 250 million RU's, although that is kind of excessive.

Just thought I would share.

Arcain.

Nope. The correct answer is because R == 0 (in an if statement a few lines above that XFormPLUT in melnorm.c).

Now you know both how and why!

It's been established that you cannot buy the information from the Melnorme - It's just another of the humorous touches the boys at TFB added to keep us entertained.

Simple!

If the player buys all information and gets infinite RU from one of the races, there still is a point of selling data to the Melnorme.

The purpose is not to sell the information someday; the purpose is to continue receiving information when there no longer is an advantage for the player.

We can't buy information on the Melnorme's psychology, physiology, mental powers, and possibly omnious plans either which is too bad - it has the potential of being the funniest material in the game and explain why they hang out only at huge stars.

Thread necromancy alert!

Beep beep beep beep!

Somebody roll out old sparky. And where's my tommy gun?

Um, you guys, I have to speak against the whole idea that it would be "funnier" if random unanswered questions were answered.

The answers to personal questions about the Melnorme might indeed be funny but they might also be lame. They'd have to be pretty funny to be funnier than the whole setup of the Melnorme rather unsubtly shoving you away from asking personal questions by making the answers "readily available" for a ridiculously and impossibly high price.

Also, "purple" is not between the two extremes of red and blue, in real terms. As pure frequencies, red is a very low frequency of light and blue a very high one. The color we call "violet" (the blue side of purple) is further on the extreme of high frequency light than blue. The color "purple" (a more reddish color) is, so to speak, an optical illusion -- it's a color that no individual frequency of light corresponds to but is only visible when you're seeing both red and violet frequencies of light at once. So purple isn't a neutral color between red and blue -- it's either a more extreme version of blue or it's red and blue being mixed together, at equal intensity. If we take the emotional-states theory, it's either the Melnorme psyching themselves up for more intense action than combat or it's them getting psyched up *at the same time as* they're being welcoming and friendly.

Either one works, but the color in the game does look more violet to me than purple, which suggests that the Melnorme conduct trade negotiations with an even higher degree of seriousness and intensity than they do when fighting for their lives. I find that appropriate.

I gotta say, this rez wasn't as good as the previous one.

But purple looks like it is somewhere between red and blue. Maybe it's a matter of perception.

That's what Art said; even though violet is high-frequency light ("bluer than blue"), the human eye perceives a mixture of blue and red. Monitors generate violet as a combination of blue and red. Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/) has a nice article on colour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour) that explains this.