The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

What are in the plans for 0.7.0? Here are several suggestions (from me and others that posted them in this and in other threads)

• netplay lobby
• ability to watch netplay
• sc1 full game mode with optional rotating 3d map
• different music in different places of hyperspace
• ability to use music other than ogg
• Somehow make it less likely for newbies to get stuck in the full game, like adding parts of the gameplay FAQ to the manual, or including the scanned starmap perhaps.
• Use UDP in netplay (to compensate for alephresh's lousy intarwebs)
• Get permission to use the name "Star Control"
• ability to record/play back melee matches
• The inclusion of the alternate Utwig voicepack, by Lance_Vader and Vlaagar, as a bonus package (similar to the remix packs), would be a really good idea in Vlaagar's opinion
• Melee recordings should preferably either be stored as human-readable "scripts" (so that we can make up recordings we didn't actually fight) or a utility for converting them to and from such scripts should be provided.
• Ability to name savegames

post more ideas, I would like to see them.

Great ideas!  Please let us know when you have playable versions ready for us to test.

Two words: Open Source .

Explanation: Ogg is an open source format, formats like MP3 and WMA are not (please correct me if I'm wrong).

I intend to start work on that in November. I'm slightly overloaded at work right now (as usual).

Not in the immediate future, but may appear as a lobby feature.

Not likely in the near future. The rotating star map of SC1 was IMHO the most annoying aspect of it, and implementing the SC1 full game is a lot of work.

As Meep-eep notes, this is easy, once the music has been composed.

UQM also supports the original MOD music. Adding support for other MOD-likes shouldn't be too hard since UQM uses MikMod.

I don't think using UDP instead of TCP is going to miraculously compensate for a bad connection. What sort of problems do you have?

I've seen lots of starmaps in previous conversations, could we pick one (spoiler-free, preferably with content equivalent to the map included with PC SC2) and include it in UQM?

ability to record/play back melee matches

I just HAD to register back to say this!

1. The inclusion of the alternate Utwig voicepack (http://www.mediafire.com/?0dnlumwagml), by Lance_Vader and me, as a bonus package (similar to the remix packs), would be a really good idea in my opinion.

2. Melee recordings should preferably either be stored as human-readable "scripts" (so that we can make up recordings we didn't actually fight) or a utility for converting them to and from such scripts should be provided.

P.S. I'm probably not going to delete this Redux account, though I'm probably not going to post anything else either.

The rotating star map was a joke.  sorry for not making that more evident.

Ability to name savegames

Frequent packet loss. Netmelee would work fine for a while, then freeze, then go back to normal, and so on and so forth. I don't think going UDP would fix the freezes, but the crazy thing is that they are often very lengthy -- sometimes five seconds, sometimes ten, sometimes over a minute(!). IIRC, meep-eep suggested that using UDP might alleviate this.


I'm afraid I'm too young a forum member to know these. :-\


Hi Valag!

I see. Taking over handling retransmission could help if TCP at either end switches to ridiculously long timeouts, which makes sense if you experience connection losses of a few seconds often. Still, even in this case, I suspect you'd still get similar delays with UDP (i.e. some link on the way is just plain dead). Another thing is, you'd essentially have to reimplement the functionality of TCP on UDP to get UQM running on UDP (you need to prevent reordering and loss of packets, anyway); the only obvious improvement I can think of right now is starting retransmission earlier if a packet is missing; tweaking some TCP parameters might help, but that would take some looking into.

You can see some of the work already done here (http://sc2.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/*checkout*/sc2/trunk/sc2/ChangeLog).

Desirable, but noone of the core team is currently working on it (because this one can be done by people with relatively few knowledge of the UQM internals, and there are enough other things that do require such detailed knowledge).

All nice wishes, and certainly things that are on our long term todo list, but you'll be lucky if you'll get even one of these by 0.7.0.

This is beyond the scope of the UQM project.

This ability is useless unless someone will actually make this music. Noone has indicated any intention to do so. But if they do, the code will be trivial (at least for a single alternate track).

This should not be too hard to add, but it is not a high priority for us, as Ogg Vorbis currently suits our needs. I can understand that people would want to substitute their own mp3 music, but mp3 support is a legal quagmire. We might at some point support an external music library, but probably not for 0.7.0.

AngusThermopyle is working on a brand new manual, which is looking to be very good. You can see what he's got so far here (http://bugs.uqm.stack.nl/show_bug.cgi?id=727).
A new starmap containing the same information as the original paper map should be included in 0.7.0. In later versions, we may even make it possible to view such a starmap from within the game itself.

Maybe around 2009, when the trademark expires, if TFB picks it up.

I don't think a voice pack which replaces a single voice should be an official add-on. Maybe as part of a larger project. Although this is just my personal opinion, not speaking for the core team, and I might be persuaded given sufficient arguments.
And I haven't even listened to this specific voicepack; it would have to be of substantial quality to get the core team's seal of approval.

You do realise that such a script would contain just the input events, and if you chance some input somewhere, you might need to change every input that follows?
I think that you'd really want some more advanced tools, like having UQM extended with save states, extreme slowdown, frame-stepping, and input macros.
Either way, this seems more like a separate project, for another team.
It would be nice to see some UQM video(s) on tasvideos.org (http://tasvideos.org/) though.

If there's one todo item that must eventually be completed, it's this is it; this is the only functionality that the original SC2 had (the PC version at least), but UQM still lacks.
But we made this item dependant on some other functionality, which won't be in 0.7.0, so this one will have to wait too.


It can take a long time before TCP starts resending dropped packets. By using UDP UQM can decide when to resend. And the data that UQM needs to send per frame is so little that one UDP packet can contain data for many UQM frames, so each packet can duplicate the data for a number of past frames. This means that even if a packet is dropped, the next packet may already be available and contain all the information that is needed to continue.
Increasing the delay in between the generating of the input event and the processing (the "input delay"/"net delay" setting), will then reduce packet-loss induced lag (in addition to the latency problems it serves to solve now).
As long as we use TCP, duplicating data is useless, as TCP packets are always received in order. (Subsequent packets are delayed until the preceding ones have arrived.)

- Remix pack 4 completed? IIRC, It seemed to be missing *only* 2 songs, of which one sure is going to receive a lot of flak.

You have a good point there; the IP header is about an order of magnitude larger than the actual data (including game state checksum), so there's little reason not to retransmit the five last frames or so.

I think that a very important UI issue to be solved is, in melee when you are picking ships on a blank space, it should default to the previous ship that you selected. If you have 3 or 4 of one ship on a team, (or 14!) it makes such a huge difference in terms of time and repeated tasks to not have to move all the way down with the ar row keys to pick the same ship over and over.

In the PC version of SC2 this was the default behaviour.
Please fix this!

Thank you
-psydev

About the 'alternate Hyperspace tracks'... did you actually have any in mind? There are several already made tracks floating around, and I can imagine some being more appropriate to certain cases than others.

On the subject of a netplay lobby,

I've actually started making a simple proof of concept, with both server and client implemented in (wx)Python.
I'm using a simple text-based protocol, pretty much inspired by the Spring (http://spring.clan-sy.com) lobby protocol (http://spring.clan-sy.com:8202/lobby/protocol/ProtocolDescription.xml). It doesn't do all that much right now, and I only started it to get used to wxwidgets in combination with non-blocking sockets.
Anyway, if anyone is going to start building a lobby, please let me know :)

As I mentioned, I'm just about getting started on a netplay lobby myself. As far as protocols go, Meep-eep and I were working on something similar, although we don't have an implementation yet. The current plans are, essentially:

• Protocol text-based over TCP, similar to the protocol you linked.
• Client side integrated in UQM (written in C)
• Server side also in C (one thread per client).
• Initial feature set: connect, specify a name and a fleet (taken from existing fleet choice), add self to list of challenges, update list of challenges, wait for someone to challenge you or challenge someone.

Lots of other features have been suggested, but this is the minimum usable subset.

Here's a suggestion that should actually be easy to implement ...

... provide text-only (no voice) dialog alternative that restores original PC dialog. There were a couple useful hints (such as the location of Syra) in the original dialog that were taken out in the 3DO version.  Would make the game more what it was intended for newbies.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Michilus: You may want to read this old thread about the subject (http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=3369.0), if you haven't already.

What I'm concerned about now is that Michilus decides not to work on this because there's someone who's already announced to be working on it, and then you postponing the project if you don't have the time after all, thus wasting the opportunity, and the momentum.
If you'd both individually work on it, then one person's work is going to be wasted -- we only need one lobby. So it might be best if you two could find a way to work on this together. Perhaps doing the design of the system collaboratively in the Ultronomicon?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "existing fleet choice". Why do you have specifying the fleet as a minimum requirement anyhow? It's something which could be determined after the connection has been established, as it is now.

Could be worth trying.

Yes, that could be left until later. In any case, what I meant was that the fleet shown as belong to a player would be the one he has selected before activating the lobby (i.e. the initial client would not support changing the fleet while in the lobby).

No it wasn't. That was real. SC1 full game is a great idea. Best ever. Make it net playable and I'd freak out.

Seriously, people aversion to SC1's rotating starmap is just for those gamers who can't visualize what isn't infront of them. So howabout this, When you select a ship you can see 3 steps away from it the stars that are connected. Would that make everyone happy?

If anyone is actually planning a serious realization of a SC1-like full game as part of UQM, it would make more sense to integrate SC2 ships and scenarios into it.  And since that would move it away from being an exact duplication of SC1, I don't see why the rotating starmap would be a *must*; such a game could work well with a SC2-style 2D starmap, too (not to mention, that would simplify coding).   That say, I'm not bothered by the SC1 starmap as some seem to be.

[EDIT] - Anyway, another idea for 0.7.0:

• Making modding easier by moving more hard-coded stuff to easily modifiable text files?  I'm thinking about this chiefly in the context of modding the starmap and related stuff, I suppose - homeworld/device locations, event-dependent sphere of influence movements, etc...

I liked the rotating map, also, but i knew that most people didnt. so i thought i would make a joke about most peoples dislike of it. also, i didnt even mind it on sc3, i just stoped it when selecting the planet to go to.

I would like to see support for 1440x900 resolution. The changelog mentioned something about aspect ratios, is this going to help at all?

If i'm not mistaken, the original SC2 was in 320x200 resolution (or something like that) which IS actually 16:10, the same ratio as 1440x900. So surely it wouldn't be that hard?

Otherwise it looks blurry on my LCD

Already there. RTFM; you want the -r and possibly -k options. As for aspect ratio, UQM follows the 3DO version at 320x240, which matches standard 4:3 monitors and nobody cares enough to relayout the entire screen for 16:10. Besides, PC SC2 had a 4:3 screen at 320x200; unlike your LCD (and most modern displays), the pixels weren't square.

Actually, it probably still looks blurry, because the game is rendering to 320x240, possibly upscaling to 640x480 with some vaguely sensible scaler and then doing, at best, a bilinear rescale to the target resolution. Depending on how your monitor scales non-native resolutions, running at 640x480 may be preferable to running at your display's native resolution.

That's even more or less one of the goals of the UQM project (http://uqm.stack.nl/wiki/The_Ur-Quan_Masters_Project_FAQ#What_are_the_goals_for_the_The_Ur-Quan_Masters_project.3F).

OK, I actually have a suggestion for 0.7.0 for gameplay:

   I know that there is debate about whether it's a good idea or not to have a "planet warning indicator". I don't think it should necessarily *always* tell you where a planet is. However, I think that if you are zoomed in, and would normally be able to see the planet in the zoomed out battle screen, then you should know where it is while zoomed in. I think this is fair, especially for the post-battle ditty, so you can avoid hitting it inadvertently! (Why should you be so focused in on your ship at the end of battle that you can't see around you? I understand it's good dramatic effect, but it shouldn't cost you tactically. If the planet is within "one screen", then I think it should show up on a scanner as a blip.)
    I think a planet indicator on the side of the screen would work well, perhaps changing in size depending on its proximity.

Sounds like a pretty good idea actually. Except UQM is a port not a mod

The ability to employ random seeds for random maps.

"Hard Mode" (Increased A.I. difficulty, higher RU costs, less time to stop kohr-ah, etc. ...or whatever)

About the different Hyperspace tracks again...

I quickly cut and looped an example of what I personally had in mind for the hyperspace music before visiting starbase.

http://koti.mbnet.fi/tibe9mm/testi.mp3 (http://koti.mbnet.fi/tibe9mm/testi.mp3)

That is a 10 second loop from "Unicron's Theme" in the old Transformers movie. I figured the flight in hyperspace would be interrupted so frequently before visiting starbase that a very short loop would be the best for it.