The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

It seems like we talk about how bad SC3 was more than we talk about it's much better prequel, Star Control 1.

I have never played it, and I was wondering what it's gameplay and graphics were like. If I'm not mistaken, it was for several different computers and the Sega Genesis, so in some screenshots the graphics look like they'd be on an Atari 2600 and others look as good as UQM.

I know the game is set in the first Ur-Quan war that the Alliance is supposed to have lost, but I'm guessing in this game you can actually win. As far as I know there was no deep storyline or alien communication like there was in SC2. But I think you still gathered resources and went to other planets to mine them?

I'm sure many other people besides me would like to know more about SC1.

I've played SC1 - you can get it off abandonia.com and run it through dosbox (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1).

I'd never be able to get that to work. I tried with SC3 before.

The game was basically melee like in SC2 + a strategic mode. The strategic mode had a couple of different default scenarios, which you could modify yourself (which was basically changing the text of the story and which ships one of the sides could build).

TFB did Star Control for the Amiga and PC (and later Genesis); these versions are quite similar to each other and to Star Control II (a lot of code in UQM seems to derive from PC SC1, via PC SC2 and then 3DO SC2). The 8-bit conversions (C64, Spectrum and Amstrad CPC) were done by other people and only vaguely resemble the original (partly due to technical limitations).

SC2's SuperMelee is essentially SC1's Melee with more ships and the added ability to choose your own fleets instead of having one of each Hierarchy ship versus one of each Alliance ship.

The SC1 full game was based on scenarios describing part of the original Alliance-Hierarchy war. Each scenario was played out on a (rather annoying 3D rotating) starmap with a few dozen stars or so; each star had a planet that could be useless, life-bearing or mineral-rich (and in addition possibly contained Precursor artefacts that upgraded the ship that discovered the artefact). Each player took turns moving their ships around (from a star to a nearby one), building new ships (if they had a starbase), building colonies to resupply crew (on life worlds), building mines on mineral worlds to produce resources to build new ships out of and fortifications to slow enemy movement down and prevent enemy craft from destroying the aforementioned colonies and mines. If two opposing fleets met in a system, ship-to-ship combat ensued.

MobyGames has a lot of screenshots of SC1 (http://www.mobygames.com/game/star-control/screenshots).

Running SC1 through DOSBox is very easy. You're unlikely to have the problems you had with SC3.

For some screenshots from older SC1 versions, you might want to look here (http://www20.brinkster.com/pariahpress/starcon/main.htm), at the resident SC1 historians homepage.

Looking back at your comments on SC3, it looks like you were either trying to run the Windows autorun or setup program for SC3 under DOSBox; hard to tell from your description. If this is the case, you're unlikely to have that sort of problems with SC1, as nobody really expected games to use Windows back then, so it didn't.

Ok, maybe I'll try with SC1 sometime.

Novus hit the nail on the head with his description.  Personally, I thought the scenarios were fun (prior to SC2 coming out), and I liked the concept of having precursor artifacts upgrade your ships.  Nothing like having a mycon/ earthling get a speed upgrade, or the 'synth get extra crew/battery.  I ended up buying the genesis version recently, and boy was I disappointed.  I don't know if the conversion to the genesis ruined it, but it was terribly slow (much slower than I remember).  I can't recall if the PC version was like that though.

-Kwamp

Yes, it was much slower. (I played this version myself.) Fred addressed this in the recent chat:

SC1 was okay, but getting used to the spinning 3-D map was
a pain an running in a DOSbox was very slow.

Other than that, all I can really say was that it was a little
like playing checkers and Super Melee. The games were
usually over quickly.

Oh, those old-school memories of Star Control 1.  It was so long ago...

The frame rate is a lower frame rate (e.g. because it's DOS :D), so the ships are slower too, and there isn't as much color depth as SC2.  The full game involves colonizing, and moving your ships individually across asteroids, with the main objective consisting of destroying your opponents starbase; honestly, I've never mastered the full game; I always did the melee.

The Cyborg is a nice feature too; you can make both sides computer-controlled opponents, and choose the ships yourself, and they duke it by themselves.

It's a fun game, and it's still entertaining to press the space bar when selecting a ship in practice mode, to see the ship specs and bitmap pictures of each ship in detail.  It's worth checking out.

EDIT: Cyborg, not Psytron.  Psytron chooses for you; cyborg fights for you; computer controls completely.  Indeed, it has been confirmed...

I thought Psytron was the reverse: the computer plays the strategy parts for you and the fights are human-controlled (unlike Cyborg control, which is what you describe).

Ok, here it is kiddies! 
http://4filehosting.com/file/39956/Amiga-Nut-zip.html (http://4filehosting.com/file/39956/Amiga-Nut-zip.html)
 66MB.zip.
Windows only, sorry Linux dudes. This is basically WinUAE coupled with all the games I ever installed on my home Amiga, and every .adf I created from the top games.
Just unpack and drop the Amiga Emulator folder on the root of your c: drive. At first boot, the program will test your video card. You may get an error regarding missing kick.rom file. Just click ok, and then uncheck the “start in quick start mode.” (This will prevent error message in the future) In the configurations menu, just double click the setup you want. F12 gets you back to the menu anytime. All house-Amiga configurations will boot from a virtual HD. (my Amiga on a CD_ROM)

Games:
--(.adf commercial)--
Armour Geddon
Another World
Shadow Of The Beast 1
Shadow Of The Beast 3
Dungeon Master 2
Lords Of Chaos
Lords Of Chaos EK1
Lemmings
Lemmings2
Mega Motion
--(HD commercial)--
Eye Of The Beholder
It Came From The Desert
Monkey Island 1
Monkey Island 2
Star Control 1
There are at least 100 more, cool, freeware games on the HD in this collection.
Also: sometimes the system may want a different disc or maybe you’re getting bold and learning to use this emulator with .adf’s you’ve downloaded. Don’t worry! Just press F12 and go to the floppy drive menu. There you can select Amiga disk files and place them in the virtual floppy drives. (All adf files are in the disk images folder.)
Last thing: Games like Monkey Island and Star Control require a code wheel to play. Check out Paul’s Goodies folder for help on MI. I did not include info about the SC1 code wheel. You can find help online, or catch me in arena and give me your phrase and I will give you the answer. Then just keep your computer on! Sorry for that, but I can’t give it out. (Professor Zorg's Instant Etiquette Analyzer)-google it
Have fun.

Or you could use the snapshot feature in WinUAE to save the state of the Amiga.

Thanks, that's awesome!

As for "What was Star Control 1 like?" I'm sorry I haven't had time to answer this question before now. The short answer is Star Control 1 was to me a bliss that has unfortunately been diminished by time. Not for me, mind you, but for sharing with other people. The game is so old that unless you played old school games new players have little chance of enjoying it.

SC1 was a game like no other. Where SC2 was a space exploration/rpg with an arcade melee, SC1 was a chess-like strategy game on a rotating 3D starmap with an arcade melee. And if you want more of my thoughts on the game (with a small history lesson) I wrote the SC1 review on abandonia (http://www.abandonia.com/games/en/143/StarControl1.htm).

Novus: The snapshot feature does not work very well when using a virtual HD.
The best thing about this collection, is all the configuration work has already been done.
 

Good point; I never did try using snapshots with virtual HDs. Apparently the problem is that the machine state and the hard disk state can easily get out of sync due to the buffering performed on hard disks (which is seldom used on floppies); making the HD read-only probably helps. In any case, I should have tried it with your HD image before suggesting it.

I made a little Zorg solver (http://uqm.stack.nl/zorg/) (javascript required).
It is based on the DOS version of SC1; if any of the other versions has a different code wheel, it won't work there.

And if you ever find yourself without a source of answers, use "TRUST" as your answer. It's the correct answer 1/24 of the time, which is more than any other answer (much more for some answers).

That's pretty neat Meep-Eep…  There is something like that in the collection for the Monkey Island Games btw.

Did anyone else notice that the word in "Cixelsyd" the Zorg puzzle thing is Dyslexic backwards? Anyhow, It'd be neat if someone could convert SC1 like Ur-Quan Masters, with the added option to play as SC2 ships too :p.

Anyhow, I've played the Genesis variant, which was really slow, but seemed to function alright, but still, the 3D map = blargle <_<.

Nice find.

For those who've never done Professor Zorg's quiz, some of the introductions to the questions are rather good too ("spin the Wogl" in particular).
Below are all of the introductions:


Makes you wonder what happened to Procyon IV in the Ur-Quan war; it's a rather cold azure world with heavy tectonics in Star Control II.

Funrom?


Betelgeuxian? Syreen?

Ooh, teleporters. Note that "Anthropophagite" would translate to something like "man-eater".


Star Control at its best.

This happened to me once.
Where's an exploding console (Star Trek-style) when you need one?

The Ur-Quan have arrived!

Here here! I've actually done a whole thing about this, mission based levels, co-powers, storyline. I can't help it. I love the SC1. You're pretty cool, Neonlare.
And then you stopped being cool.

Meep-eep, didn't you get those off PoNaF somewhere?

The quotes? I got them out of the SC1 data files.

Ahaha! I counter-attack with... An ACTUAL 3D map! See what I did there? :P.

I've checked Meep-Eep's Zorg Solver: http://uqm.stack.nl/zorg/ (http://uqm.stack.nl/zorg/) against the code wheel for the Amiga version of SC1, and they seem to be identical. So, I guess that's all you need. ;D

The nuances of the game detail that you guys are picking up on, is both frightening and amazing at the same time.   :o

I've found that (at least for the version I downloaded from abandonia, which I insist on using the .exe with copy protection on it because I'm OCD about stuff like this) the answer is related to the premis, not the alien gibberish. (though I may have just been lucky so far, or again, it could be the version I downloaded)

Also, for people who are having framerate issues, you should really try DOSBOX. To play StarCon just type in (minus quotations) "mount c C:\example" (where C:\example is the drive and directory where you put StarCon). Then type "c:" to change DOSBOX's selected directory, and finally type either "starcon.com" or "starcon.exe" to run the game (one of those doesn't have the copy protection, I can't remember which).

And if you still have framerate issues, you should change the cycles line in your DOSBox.conf file (it's really just a fancified .txt file) from whatever number it's at (or auto, which is what mine's set to, but I don't *think* I'm haveing speed issues) to 3000 or so (which is what DOSBox says it's running at when I'm playing StarCon).

EDIT: Also, I still somehow am still amazed by how good old midi sfx can be (even without a proper midi card, or perfect emulation). I really shouldn't be, after all, I did grow up playing games where all sound in a was modulated beep of some sort, but I still find it fascenating just how much can be done even with an internal speaker.

Probably a Betelgeuxian, as the Syreen (as far as we know) haven't been stationed at Betelgeuse yet (that happened *after* SC1, after all)...
Makes you wonder though what the Ur-Quan did to the Betelgeuxians...

Hmm, I always forget: Was the Vogon Constructor Fleet copper or yellow, in the books?

Uh, as the one who uploaded that archive to Abandonia, I have some bad news. Anything you type in will work. That test has been hacked. You could input nothing and it would work. You're not lucky.

I could always look it up, but I'm sure I remember they were yellow in the book, like the color of construciton equipment. (In the movie they became a sort of grayish for the gag later at vogsphere.)

Ah-ha, that makes much more sense. I did think it was kind of odd that Pages of Now and Forever didn't have a proper codewheel.  :P

I'm using a Genesis emulator on my Sony PSP and gameplay is pretty snappy.

Snappy? Is that good or bad?

Uh, "Smooth", "Quick", and "Responsive" are all adjectives I would use to describe it. 

Could just be what you're playing it on...