The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

When i started I got to earth I went to the moon base first. I don't know what I'm suppose to do with it. then when I got to the Starbase I could never win in the battle. i don;t know how to shoot to! PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First, I would practice a bit in Super Melee to get a feel for the controls. Practice flying the Earthling Cruiser as this will be your primary combat ship early in the game.

The Earthling is nice as its missiles home in on the enemy. So just point your ship in the general direction of your target and press Fire!

As for the moonbase, the Commander will explain that for you.

Alrighty first off, you go to the moonbase, this provides you with resources you'll need to upgrade your fleet. First I'd recommend you land on Jupiter's moons and clean them out too, as well as Mercury, they have radioactives which are the second-rarest elements in the game. Once you've arrived back at Starbase, you'll have to face against the Ilwrath Avenger, now the Ilwrath isn't that hard, as it's busted some crewmembers and damaged its cloaking device, so the best course of action would be to pick the Earthling Cruiser which looks like a Star Trek ship. Pressing right-CTRL will enable you to fire missiles, while SHIFT uses it's point-defense laser to zap asteroids, fighters and other things which will be thrown at you from other ships at some point in the future. In this case, once you've picked it, run away from the Ilwrath while still spitting nukes, make sure you face the Ilwrath but turn a bit to the side when firing as this way he won't be able to use his Hellfire Cannon to blaze them down before it hits him. Usually two shots will do it, and afterwards Commander Hayes and his Starbase will join you, and tell you what you should do to liberate the galaxy.

Thanks a lot!!

Personally, I use the [ and ] keys for my weapons. I like it better for some reason.

Maybe because if you tap shift repeatedly Windows complains about it. My does, at least.

I wonder if there's a way to get UQM to disable Windows' keyboard accessibility features while it's running. DirectX does have an option for this, but UQM no longer uses DirectX for compatibility reasons.

In any case, RTTFAQ for a fix.

UQM never used DirectX directly. It uses SDL, and SDL picks its backend, which still will be DirectX on Windows.

I really need to proofread more carefully. I meant SDL, not UQM; SDL used to default to DirectX graphics/input, but switched at version 1.2.10 (http://www.libsdl.org/release/changes-1.2.html) for compatibility with 64-bit XP, Vista and some laptops.

Even the code TFB released on which UQM is based used SDL.

Going by that changes file, only the (default) video backend of SDL was changed. I assume SDL still uses DirectInput for input.

The input code actually seems to considered part of the video code (src/video/windx5/SDL_dx5events.*). The UQM keyboard test says the driver is "windib", not "directx".

I just read what it said on the box and found "Deactivate Sticky Keys Toggle". ;)