The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Is there any difference between the two versions? Or is the port 100% of the 3DO version, including voices and such?

It is a 100% port of the 3DO version, and eventually you will also be able to switch it to be like the PC version instead (not that there's that huge a difference)

What WAS the difference? I only ever saw the PC version.

Overall, not much -- the plot, etc. is still the same, but (off the top of my head):

• First and foremost, all the aliens actually TALK to you, in glorious full speech.  However, this is a mixed blessing.  The Starbase Commander sounds absolutely perfect (to my ears), but other races aren't as fortunate.  For instance, the actor who read for the Kohr-Ah should have read for the Ur-Quan, and vice-versa (IMO); and the Utwig and Orz are downright annoying.  And some of the line readings are, shall we say, "less than inspired".
  
  
• Some of the music was remixed, or even replaced outright.  I think that in all cases this was for the better, but some disagree.
  
  
• Some of the colours are different.  The lander reports are green instead of blue, the Kohr-Ah F.R.I.E.D. attack is blue instead of orange, and the flagship tail is red instead of yellow.  In all cases, I think these are improvements, but some may disagree.
  
  
• The planet lander stuff is different -- for the better.  You can simultaneously scan for minerals, energy and biological (you had to manually scan for them in the PC version) and the amount of screen real-estate given to piloting the lander is much improved.  On the downside, all the planet scan info is displayed pictographically, which is non-intuitive.
  
  
• bugfixes -- e.g., no more lander cheat.
  
  
• Unloading minerals at the Starbase and the Melnorme credit reporting were improved over the PC version.
  
  
• new intro and ending, all 3-D rendered and such.  For all the flashiness, I found the intro much less effective than the simple phrase "and the Ur-Quan were winning."  The ending was really cool, though, although it didn't have the "outtakes" that the PC version had..
  
  
• new menus -- I'm not too happy with them, and others have complained as well.  Not sure why they were changed, but they were.  C'est la vie..

I like the Utwig.. I think they're SUPPOSED to be annoying, whining about their poor Ultron all the time.  I definately agree with you about the Orz, though.. ugh.. it is *frumple*. For the most part, when I think of the voice of the various races, in my head I hear the SC2 version... the Orz are just about the only one I vastly prefer the SC3 version instead.

I like the ultra-friendly game show host voice of the VUX in SC3.

Spathi Commander Niffiwan was really good too. I hated the way they made the Spathi look (not to mention the Syreen, too... I thought they were supposed to be hot?) but the Spathi voice acting was great. I love when he's telling you about when they first land on whatever their first planet is, and he tells you about the creatures they saw. "Okay... BUNNIES"

CRITICAL QUESTION: Is there a pictograph dictionary somewhere?

As for the music... I'm worried. I really liked the original music.
And what I've heard of the menus is, shall we say, retarded.

Now if I could only get it to run... grr!

There's a command-line switch to have it use the old music, if you must.  In the newest CVS there are also command-ine switches to have it use the PC-style text-based planet scan reports and menus, which are VERY cool..  So fear not, it's all being taken care of in UQM..  :)

As far as the scanning is concerned, will it be a best-of-both-worlds hybrid, or just the old PC version? I would have liked one-step scanning.

Whoops, I mis-stated the facts; the switch is for the planet scan REPORTING (e.g., no pictographs) the scanning still works in a manner consistent with the 3DO version.

In the Soviet Revisionist tradition, I have modified my original post to be accurate.

All of this is very easy to do (currently just hit space while scanning, and it'll do it without the sweep).  But having hundreds of command line switches for all these minor options would be ridiculous, so we'll need to wait for a configuration method to get written, before little things like that are added).  Perhaps I'll work on such a thing.  I dunno.

Sorry but when I played throught the 3d0 version and then returned to the pc the 3do version was far superior the text just doesn't do justice to the voices-which seemed to fit every race if the race was annoying the voices where annoying even the lack of emotion in the kor rah voices where great if you where looking for a heartless race

The reason the menu and planetary information was changed to use icons was because the 3DO version was designed to run on a TV which is hard to read small text off compared to a monitor.