The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

As some of you know I’m making a mod of Ur-Quan Masters. This does not purport to be the sequel to Star Control II, but it does take place very quickly after SC II concludes and so can be played as one.

It’s called Project 6014, not for any good reason.

I will be driving this as best I can, but for it to be successful it will depend on the talents of the UQM community. In particular it’s art, graphics and dialogue that I need help with. I think I have the coding side sussed for now, although I will need AI for the new ships.

I have completed a working hyperspace star-map, with star names. I’ve also begun the daunting task of writing some initial dialogue for the seven known races that feature in this game

As far as practicable the Project’s construction will be concealed from the community as a whole. This way when y’all get to play it there will be plenty of fun surprises.

I’ll be creating some threads to deal with different aspects of this project, so keep an eye out for those.

I think it's great that you're moving forward with this, it'll be interesting too see what happens. Just a quick point, have you been in touch with Nicholai? His mod seems to have paused, but I'm guessing he has a lot o experience with modding the code that could be helpful to you.

I had great hopes for Nicholai's mod. A while back I'd emailed him and pmed him to see what he was up to, with no luck. Let's hope he's just too busy writing the story!

But really I think he's just given up, and this is why I'm having a go myself. If he does come back to the fold then I might not even need to do this.

The dialogue alone (90,000 words) will take over a year for one person to write. This is why I need help.

You might also want to hit up Scott over on PONAF and ask him to make a news pos tfor you. Those things sometimes reach dormant readers as well, and might shake a few of the very old-timers into action. Also good going with frungylovers, that would have been my next suggestion.

I might wait unyil this is more news worthy before i ask to make it news. It might be a bit presumptuous.

I've been rereading the threads associated with Nicholai's mod, and as he did I need to actualyl get somethign in front of people to get their enthusiasm.

Also, reading that stuff, it made me realise that he made a LOT of progress. I cant believe that he just gave up. I'm hoping that he's JUST about to emerge from the wilderness with his completed Spathi adventure.

Ooookaaaaay.

So this is what I've gleaned from various posts and PMs.

Contributors in approximate order of enthusiasm:

• Cedric6014 - coordinator and coding lead (????)
• edmund - fixing all Cedric's coding mistakes (i.e. actual coding lead)
• VileRancour - Ship Art, Comm screens
• Perytenlover (LJ) - Dialogue (Androsynth)
• Durandel - Alien art, ship art
• Son_Of_Antares - dialogue
• Jaychant  - Casual coding (easy stuff)
• Neonlare - Dialogue, Music, Sound, Graphics
• Elerium - Dialogue
• TheMisterCat - Music
• Sirving - graphics
• Tim - Storyline, dialogue
• Elivsh Pillager - Casual coding (hard stuff)

I intend to follow up with you individually when time permits. In the mean time feel free to do stuff :)

If you have "dialogue" next to your name and would like to assume responsibilty for a particular race, let me know which (be it old or new) and I'll fill you in on relevent plot details

And if you're not on this list but want to be, let me know what you want to do and it shall be.

I can't promise anyone that their contributions will make the finished product, but so far I'm extremely delighted with everything I've seen.

I may also have an extra voice actor/someone who could contribute to the storyline. No promises though.

I think you should make a website. Weebly.com is a good place for free websites (I use weebly for my sites) and you can use a free .co.nr URL to redirect to the actual website.

I've never made a website in my life. Learning how would consume too much of my time. I'd rather spend time on actualyl doing stuff

It's not hard at all. In weebly, you just use a simple drag/drop system. You don't even need to use HTML.

As far as I know, such systems are rather.. crappy..
Additionally, I doubt this project would need anything like that as of right now. The only thing that I see that could be useful is a wiki, and that's it...

Making a website for a project only delays it and puts focus on things that aren't needed.

How?

Because he'd be spending free time designing a website, considering what to post on it and what layout would look good instead of focusing on story and organizing his cohorts. Besides, what does he need a website for anyhow? He's got no art to put up yet, he can hardly post the story, and this forum serves him much better than creating his own. A website might be god for a large project that needs news bulletins and project progress posted, but Cedric is running a small operation that already has a natural focal point here. There's no point in having a website just for the sake of it.

I mean look at your site. It's got what, some pictures and music and explanation of story and units. Cedric has stated that he doesn't want the public to know most of that before there is a finished product, so he'd just have a page saying "I'm making a mod".

And I don't see the need to argue about how hard or easy it is to make a website when Cedric has already stated that he hasn't got the time or inclination for it.

If it becomes needed (website) , I'm more then willing to host it on PNF and help with whatever else might be needed.. just FYI  ;)

Thanks! can't see it happening any time soon, but it might be necessary of this plot development thing gets way too big for just me tohandle. I think it would be smart to have a forum for folks to discuss storylines etc

For the benefit of those working on alien design and dialogue. I'm going to write a plot development document.

Also, I think I might as well post the starmap. You can use it to get a sense of the new universe and where abouts your race might be.

Next question, how do I actually post an image on here? Helpful answers only please

Image tags. img in square brackets, the URL of the file you're trying to show, then /img in square brackets. You could have figured this out by quoting a post with images in it.

Thanks

Here's the starmap. I'm wondering if the Chmmr sphere should be a bit larger

(http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/2093/starmap01vr2.th.png) (http://img518.imageshack.us/my.php?image=starmap01vr2.png)

Hmmm I was hoping for something a bit larger like what Nicholai managed for his visuals

And here's a Comm screen

(http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/7499/chmmrcommyi5.th.jpg) (http://img8.imageshack.us/my.php?image=chmmrcommyi5.jpg)

And here's a the outfit starship screen (so far)

(http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/9425/outfitcc7cx5.th.png) (http://img8.imageshack.us/my.php?image=outfitcc7cx5.png)

Impressive, I really think that this is going to do well. Is there anything you would like me to help out with in particular at this moment?

Yep, write that Fjorn dialogue! As I said above I think its helpful if I keep track of plot developments in one doc and post to the writers so they know wtf is going on. This will be my mission for the next few days

Things that need to be done for a demo:

• New bio sprites
• New Earthling Cruiser and Syreen Officer Comm screens
• Introductory dialogue for Syreen, Commander Hayes and Earthling Cruiser Captains(nothing major). Oh and the ORZ. Anyone brave enough to tackle that? Or at least correct the feeble attempt that I will make?[

I guess main issue now is the Comm screens. I dont have too many graphic artists at my beck and call

You'd have to send me a small clip of the plot first, like just the basic introduction then I can take off from there to focus on the Earthling lines first :P

As for mod discussion I recommend the #uqm-arena on IRC freenode to talk. Also, I laughed "My ship is lame, can I get a new one?"

"NO."

Also I suggest we remove the Ilwrath and instead have them as pirates, it fits them more to be honest too. As the Thraddash have glassed the Ilwrath homeworld and their seat of government any surviving in space just live off capturing helpless vessels and torturing the crew, blowing up any ships, coming out of nowhere, fry it then retreat back into the cloak from whence they came. Perhaps some survivors have a cloaked station somewhere which was previously used to spy on Thraddash movements during their war now used as a Ilwrath pirate/temple base.

Imageshack hates people putting full-size pictures on forums. My advice is to get a Photobucket account, you can keep all your P6014 stuff in one place.

For the Earthling comm screen is there anything specific you were looking for? i.e things that should be in it? obviously a captain? the bridge? other crew?

Nope, let your imagination go wild. Priority will be a comm screen for the cruiser.  Might stick with Hayes for Starbase for old times sake

Yeah, Hayes would keep the Starbase, but make sure to remove the slave shielded Earth and replace it with an unshielded one (could splice the visible Earth in the SC2 ending) with ships flaring across the screen in the background and small flares in the background so it's a bustling homeworld.

The Captain's new ship would have to be kept where the old Precursor ship used to be for repairs though (side view sprite).

I'm not very good at starting things from scratch, but I could have a go at that "correction" idea.

I was just playing around with ideas on the cruiser comm screen, here's a quick throw together I made just to visualize my idea. thoughts?

(http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/xr/images/commander-standing2.png)

This is very interesting!

A few thoughts

1. Is this taking place almost immediately after SC2? Because it might be nice to have some starter (introductory) missions of using your Earthling Cruisers to protect colony ships from pirates (Ilwrath), expanding the Human sphere of influence.

2. I like the new map, it really shows some of the disorder and changes post Ur-Quan (at least from what we see).

3. Is the human sphere a bit too small? It seems hard to imagine Alpha Centauri not being in the human sphere, given that it was practically your backyard in the SC2 game.

4. I understand that the Human sphere can't get any bigger without overlapping with the Chmrr sphere, though that might not be bad either.

5. The explorer is gorgeous and perfect.

6. For the human cruiser bridge, have you considered having the back/back arrangement from SC1? Or is that unfeasable in case you are talking to a cruiser with only 1 crew member?

7. On the human bridge, I like Sirving's concept, it might be very SC2-like to have a large blow-up of the cruiser in the background (a status report with many flashing indices!) I think the bridge will be Vux-like, in a sense.

Anyway, these are my thoughts, take them for what you will. If you need people to think over story ideas, try to mull things over in the context of the SC2 universe, I'll look over any new forum and try to think of anything. Otherwise, just do what you are doing. I've been lurking for a long time and I think your project is very feasable.

I made some Hayes graphics mods earlier: http://mooses.nl/uqm/cmdrmod/

Hey that's a promising start! No reason that couldn't work. Looks like you've used actual photo images eh. Would it be hard to cartooniminise them?


An introductory mission could be a good idea for the demo (rather then just have empty space for people to fly around in)

Actually, spheres dont have to centre on homeworlds, so I could just shift it down a bit. I envisage the Earthlings to be a lot less powerful than Yehat or Chmmr

You can thank VileRancour for that, who with any luck is working on ship sprites and other related art as we speak

Thanks, the positive stuff keeps me motivated for sure.


Sweet! I've downloaded the .pngs. We can tick that off the list of things to do.

Thanks Cedric. I've looked at the postings by you and Tim, and I just took some notes on working the two ideas together.

Major unresolved plot elements from SC2

-the instability of the Chmrr
-the fate of the ancient races, e.g. the Taalo live
-what are the Chejensu and the Taalo?
-where are the Androsynth?
-if there are Androsynth still around, not caught up by the Orz, how was this done? Were they caught in a dimensional rift? A stasis field?
-what are the Orz going to do?
-are the Arilou really benevolent?
-what happened to the Precursors?
-what about some of the concept art ships and races

-can the Alliance still find a use for the Mycon

New Alliance

Major supporters
-humans (unofficial diplomatic leadership)
-Yehat (fair and even-handed) (strong presence)
-Chmrr (domineering) (strong presence)
-Supox (eager)(medium presence)
-ZFP (eager) (weak presence)
-Shofixti (eager) (weak presence)
-Syreen (medium presence, unless they are absorbed into humanity)

Minor supporters
-Utwig? (withdrawn)
-Arilou
-Thraddash
-Umgah?
-Spathi/Black Spathi?
-Sylandro
-Orz (until they dissapear or do something evil)

Neutral
-VUX
-Melnorme
-Druuge

Enemy
-Ilwrath (hidden pirates)
-Kohr-Ah (any survivors might be hidden pirates)

I like Cedric and Tim's ideas.

Let's look at the game in potential phases

Phase I

Introduction
-immediately after SC2
-learn about what happened in the immediate past
-Zelnick decides the fate of the Ur-Quan
-conduct missions as either a regular human officer or as Zelnick on behalf on Star Control

-missions include escorting colony ships to new stars, protecting trade lanes, and searching for the base of the Ilwrath pirates

-you may be rewarded with a Mark II human cruiser during these missions, as new Precursor and Alliance technology is integrated into starbase systems

-experience the increasing domineering nature of the Chmrr

-you can learn about who the Melnorme are here, or in Phase II

-once everyone has their economies back together, a mission to liberate the slave-shielded races from the other quadrant

-construction of Chmrr Explorer [this could fast-forward into the future, where Zelnick is brought out of retirement to engage in diplomacy to bring this project together)

Phase II - Liberation

-you play this either as Zelnick, or, if it is further into the future, as the young captain
-Explore the new stars and liberate races
-find precursor artifacts
-perhaps find things related to the Mark II
-find clues about the Orz, maybe the Androsynth as well
-Chmrr become evil

-ultimate evil in the form of the Orz puppetmasters emerge

Phase III
-need to fix Chmrr by finding Mrnnhrmnn and the Mother Ark (perhaps while fighting the Chmrr)
-perhaps the Taalo can help fix the Chmrr, since perhaps the Taalo and Chejensu were both Precursor creations
-can the Androsynth be restored to help fight the Orz puppetmasters?
-is the Precursor Cruiser going to be used?

That's all I've thought for now. I'll look over some other postings from the other board.

I think things that are planned to be done by TFB as major plot points should be left to them, after all this is sort of like a SC2.5 so to speak? So stuff like ultimate Orz we wouldn't touch, instead we'd get Hayes to say something like "the majority of the Chmmr fleet is busy restoring peace to our galaxy, eliminating Kohr-Ah and Ur-Quan ships that have remained since the Ur-Quan tailed it past the Magellan stars. They're also busy "pacifying" the former Hierarchy races.." so we can do our own plot however we can give the Chmmr more depth for say, a future TFB sequel. Might be good to ask TFB what they think about some plot points then expand on that.

Gonna comment on the list tommorrow.

oh, okay. Makes perfect sense, actually. I didn't know anyone had a line to TFB, but coordination with them is the best solution. Take care of the "interlude" between SC2 and SC3, helps develop some of the themes.

I'm just about done writing my plot development document. Very pleased to get people's ideas to feed into it. I’ve already taken on board a few things said by tim, vindicator and Zeracles over at PoNaF SCDB. Looking forward to Elerium’s input too, and anyone else.

This is a simple mod of UQM. And while I'm putting a lot of effort into story I have no aspersions of this being considered canon by anyone. I don’t see the need to communicate with TFB. This is just a fan project. However if they do have stuff to say I’d be thrilled to hear it!

I realise that there's a risk of me trampling all over the remaining unexplained plot leads. But you know, what else can I do? I want to make it a fun mod to play. And it will only be fun is there are new aliens to meet and mysteries to solve. When completed it should satiate everyone’s need for a bit of Star Control. And then TFB will release the REAL sequel. And we’ll all be as happy as Larry.

Happy to receive ideas for an alternate antagonist if people think that the inter-dimensional OrzMenace race is taboo ground.

Have completed a plot development document (2,900 words - phew). I look forward to contributions from folks to flesh it out.

I'll share relevent parts of it to people who want to write for certain races. But I won't share the whole thing with everyone. If everyone knows everything then noone will enjoy playing it.

It still needs a crap-load of work done...

I'd love to see leftovers from the original Chenjesu and/or Mmrnmhrm here.

From that chat logs I read, it seemed that TFB weren't really interested in the reviving the "dead" Milieu races (except for the Taalo). I wonder, could you include some of these dead races (artifacts, survivors?) since they might continue to be treated as dead in any potential sequel?

Also, like Resh said, it might be ok to add "strays" - leftover Chenjesu, etc...

But this is secondary, perhaps.

With everyone mentioning the "leftover" Chenjesu and Mmrnhrm, an interesting thought occurs to me. The Chmmr very pointedly say in SC2 that the process was incomplete, which leads to the dangling plotline of just how this will affect the new hybrids in the long run. What if some (or perhaps all) of these "loftovers" decided to continue to isolate themselves in order to complete the process for real? While the timeframe given in SC2 for this to occur is unrealistic, that could simply be because Procyon is ill-suited toward generating the energy required, especially through a slave shield; perhaps with Procyon freed or under the light of a different star, it would be more feasible to see results during the course of the game...

Just wanted to throw some things that were on my mind.

While under the slave shield on Earth, they discover a precursor base in Antarctica. This is one of the locations where the Ur-Quan had destroyed from orbit.  Before the slave shield went up.

But the base has been almost totally destroyed however upon closer examination they find plans for the Mark II. Since the base on earth is destroyed the plans would need to be plugged into the factory where the Precursor tug was built. Maybe with some modification to accommodate that task.

Maybe some more back story of what the Precursors were doing on Earth? that is if someone uses this idea or builds on it.

I mean there has to be a reason why all man made locations older than 500 years were destroyed. Maybe some back plot here as well.

I always thought that during those 20 years under the slave shield, that we'd be building a fleet of cruisers underground. Ready to take flight the minute the slave shield was destroyed.

Just some random musings from me.

Just my thoughts on the slave shielded earth, Looking at the human race getting stuck inside a bubble would tear things apart, I'm thinking more along the lines that earth would fall apart breaking down into wars. It would be nice to think that we would keep the good fight going; But why? they have no hope for those twenty years. Ok, so maybe things don't fall apart but some how I doubt we'd be building ships. More likely development of ways to crack the shield or perhaps teleportation? Also were mass drivers every tried on the slave shield? for that matter what is the slave shield and what keeps it going?

Vela and Unzervalt wouldn't work; the factory computer was transplanted into the Precursor ship before the start of SC2 so that Zelnick could actually fly the thing. And we all know how that ended... So there is no way to run the factory.


I always thought that the Ur-Quan did this to destroy any remnants of a planet's history in order to break the resolve of the inhabitants. With no physical trace of history except the fusion bolt impact craters, it wouldn't be long before subsequent generations can only relate to a time when the Ur-Quan were in control. I can only assume that Earth is not the only planet this occurred on.

Dead confirmed dead should stay dead, even in the fan projects. Because that's what they are - D.E.A.D. IMHO it kills the story if you always have reoccurring characters/villains that get killed yet survive tnx to some impossible twist of fate and do so like 5 times in a row...just kills that good story feel :P

As with the "dark elf syndrome" :P let me clarify: once upon a time in d20 universe all dark elves (drow) were evil. Piloting, spying, poisoning, stealing and assassination were their national sports. Then because some players thought it would be cool to play them as characters the Wizards of the Coast turned them into chaotic good because, gee, who wants to play an evil character? *blink blink* and now the whole race consist of chaotic good rebels/dark avengers. And that is a trend in many many games/comics/movies/etc. I think that such sort of conversion simply sux. >:( Evil guyz stay evil. Good guys stay good, but can become evil. Evil NEVER becomes good. Amen.


I SO like this idea, this is so awesome! Peace loving scientist turning to borg-matrix-robots-combo crystalline omnienemies...SOOO good, I just adore when the good guyz fall to the dark side~.~ Cedric you should definitely go with this in mind for your story. I can already think of tons of great dialogs and ingame events concerning the "Chmmr Treason".


That's what I'm saying - It doesn't say anywhere that they were utterly annihilated, just that they are missing. What if the Orz when they "climbed up" from *below* to our truespace instantly recognized their intellectual potential and offered them a deal they couldn't refuse; the andros were forced to accept it (or they did it willingly?), and were transported to the "Orz high mind" dimension of origin and assimilated/addopted to further help the "Orz cause",  whatever that may be...and their story can continue from that point on. It strengthens their "slave and oppressed" theme and explains why the Orz get pissed if you ask too much about andros; they learned about their fate on Earth and while they don't want to provoke humanity they are more then ready to protect the newest addition to their unified community.

On the new races and implementation of the same in the Cedrics project - what are the restrictions and guidelines? What we can do/design/write and what we should rule out at the start? I sincerely hope that you'll stay true to UQM when addopting new races, meaning  aliens are extraterrestrial cool looking aliens, not humanoids with calcium sedimentation/malign disorders all over their skull/faces. I'm just asking cause I have a few race/ship design ideas...

As for the dialog - what's the start point for us "writers"? And how should we divide our work - by races/events/places... - and where can we compare ideas/concepts? And where can we get any (or all) info about the story? Hints would be enough if I'm told what course should we be heading.

I would also add here that I'm interested in the storyline as much as I am interested in the game dialog; want to contribute as much as I can, in the best way I can, because I want to see Cedrics project polished, done, warped, packed and ready for download ASAP!  8) Hope this one gets done, it sure has the potential...

Also props to Vindicator, that's an awesome summary of the current storyline (is it the current storyline? I joined a bit late so I need to backtrack a bit :P )

Is there anyone programming on this project as of yet? I've been meaning to start my own mod project, but with a different project view (no new aliens, for one) and have been developing a few tools (currently have a rudimentary Starmap editor (placing stars only as of yet). w32 only (unless I get Mono to work with this)) to make things easier. I'm currently just exploring through the code (I haven't really found the "grande structure" in it yet, so exploring will probably continue for a while) and doing random mods here and there, with various success, so I'd like to get in touch with whoever is programming on this mod to share tools and information on how to mod properly, and ideas on what might not work here and there. Additionally, I could help out with this project as I get the feel of things, and then later on branch off into my own mod..


As for the mod's story, I strongly suggest whoever is developing the plot and alien designs to read up on some Known Space (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known_Space). SC2 steals from Known Space, so you might aswell do the same. I'm pretty sure that SC2 was so brilliant just because the creators are very sci-fi literate, and I'd say that if you'd want to craft your own alien designs, you'd have to be pretty sci-fi literate, too (perhaps that's also why I won't ever introduce new aliens to a mod of my own, since I'm not sci-fi literate at all... :P).

As far as the 'dead races' go: can't you send the Thraddash off towards the Kohr-Ah, get the Aqua helix, and then send the Ilwrath off towards the Thraddash, and whilst they are travelling end the game? I'm not sure how the "Chmmr working on your ship" thing goes (2 weeks, right?) and if the Ilwrath would still be moving towards Thraddash space, but if it's possible to end the game whilst both races are still alive, you could use that scenario and keep both of them alive in your mod. This, in my opinion, is a far more elegant solution than the "few survivors" solution most people seem to think about...

As for leftover Chenjesu/Mmrnmhrm: I doubt that the Chmmr would consider not including them into their new hybrid race: they seem to really think that Chenjesu+Mmrnmhrm hybrid = 'worth' more than a Chenjesu and Mmrnmhrm not in a hybrid. Ofcourse, there's probably less Mmrnmhrm than Chenjesu, so you might see a few Chmmr around with 'less Mmrnmhrm in them', so to speak.. But still, I doubt any vanilla Chenjesu or Mmrnmhrm still exist. And besides, what would you actually want to do with them, plotwise, anyways? The Chmmr most likely contain both the Mmrnmhrm and Chenjesu information/thoughts/etc, so talking to a Chmmr means talking to a Mmrnmhrm, but with the added thoughts of the Chenjesu. I bet they can single out the Mmrnmhrm 'mind' if they need to, and thus you could probably 'talk' to a Mmrnmhrm but with a Chenjesu 'attached' to it......

As for the Chmmr process being incomplete: I very muchly like this to be the main focus of the entire plot. As for my possible mod, I'd have the Chmmr 'protect' everyone (Chmmr fleets/SOIs pretty much wherever there's a significant population) in the New Alliance of Free Stars, and eventually some logic goes wrong (process incomplete, so the Chmmr aren't very.. stable) and they become more 'evil', yet the same kind of 'evil' that made the Kzer-Za also the good guys, in a way.
Someone mentioned in some other thread that perhaps the process being incomplete suggested that they were still developing factories, ships, etc. But I think myself that the process being incomplete means that the process of the Chenjesu/Mmrnmhrm culture integration/hybridization isn't fully complete yet, whereas all the techonological achievements/mergers have been finished already. Thus, there might be some internal struggle, perhaps in the same way that the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah struggle internally...

Wow thanks for your input guys. I'll address some of your comments/questions

I agree. No races will be resusitated from death. There are some races where it is plausible that they are still alive though.

Yep, there will be some broken Chmmr to fix.  This was the very first thing I thought of when I decided to do a mod. Completing the incomplete process. They won;t be evil though, just more difficult.

Haven't quite figured out how to treat Androsynth and Orz yet. I'm leaning away from making the Orz fingers the cornerstone of the plot, so as not to annoy people. They might just play minor roles, while keeping the intrigue going. You've got an interesting idea there.

It might take a little while!

If you're keen to be involved in the story you should sign up at PoNaF SCDB. I've been hammering out the story with Eth and Zeracles over there. We've been PMing. Happy to add you or anyone else to the mix. I need to re-write my plot dev doc to incorporate some major changes so when I've finished it I can send it your way.



As for programing, the method seems to be this:
1) I do as much as I can (which is hardly anything).
2) I get stuck.
3) I ask edmund to rescue me.
4) He does
5) Repeat

It's not the most efficient but there isnt actually that much programming to be done right now. It's mostly story development, dialogue writing and art/graphics that needs attention. It will be a different story when we attempt to implement some of my more ambitious ideas - eep.

Edmund has a good grasp of the UQM code whereas I don't. I know how to make simple 'mod' changes like altering dialogue and the size of SOIs, but other than that I have no clue. You should PM edmund. He doesn't say much but he does lurk. He's also extremely helpful.

Another programmer would be very helpful down the line. Right now we have some file sharing system set up so we can maintain the project's integrity. Tortoise or something? It works a treat. We could explore adding you or others to this maybe.

You're right. There's an array of reasons why this wont be as good as SC2, and that I'm Sci-Fi illiterate is the main one. I'll have a  look at that link though.

It will be very important - much like the quest for the Ultron and Utwig bomb are important in SC2

Ok, change the the destroyed base on Earth to include a computer that survived.  For me it doesn't have to be concrete plausible to make work for the story. There all always to fit in in with minor tweaks that still can be believed. I just loved the Idea that Earth played a larger picture in the universe then just beating the Ur-Quan. Like having some connection to the Precursors... like in Stargate where humans have a connection to the Ancients.


Though I'm sure that the explanation for the destruction of man made objects older that 500yrs is just as you said, to demoralize us. I wanted to have a more mystery feel to it then just that. I like a good mystery... ;D

That's exactly what they did for SCnot3 and we all know how that one ended up. The story MUST be completely plausible with no gaps, mysteries and unanswered questions yes, but gaps? No.

Let me clarify... I to believe there should be no gaps. What I was trying to get across was that the story could be made to work with what I had in mind. Draxas found a hole in my story, I tweaked it to make it work. See no gaps, no gaping holes. That's how I meant it to come out but I see how I wrote it and now understand how you took  it. Does that make sense?

Wow... been a while since the last post huh...  Well if the projects still going, here's my two cents. I hope to be able to help out, while i have no coding or graphic arts expertice (and i know you don't need any more dialouge only people)  I am willing to learn, have a wacom tablet, and i could probably persuade (give money) to my sister for her to design a web-page. My views might be a bit different seeing as i just got into the ur-quan masters sometime last year (and beat it last week). I don't think we should go for a "starcontrol 2.5" If our game contradicts the TFB sequal (if there ever is one) then that's just tough cookies. We should  get into what happened to the androsynth, the purpose of the rainbow worlds, who the taalo are and all that good suff. One of the things that made SC2 so great was it's immense depth and persistent world. We just have to avoid making the plot half-A**ed, either it's just a bunch of BS like SC3 or it lacks the epic detail of SC2. Now heres an outline of all my ideas:

Ilwrath: I think that the ilwrath attacked the thraddash, but the thraddash fleet was already weakened by Ur-Quan and the captain, and the Ilwrath killed so many Thraddash that they didn't have enough sacrifices to appease Dogar and Kazon and immediatley turned to the Thraddashes neighbors, the Umgah and almost immediatley after that recieved a message from their divine gods of torment to return to their homeworlds. Then they became pirates in order to seek new races to torment and resources to replace the ships lost in the costly war with the Traddash. *refer to druuge*

Spathi: After the Sa-Matra was annighigalated the U-quan sent ships out to rally together the battle thralls, Seeing the spathi imprisoned on their homeworld, they sent a Kor-Ah (the ur-quan and Kor-ah temporarily teamed up, i'll get into that later) task force to take down the slave shield and destroy the Spathi. Being so terriefied when a fleet of black ships arrived and broke down the impenitrable shield the spathi sent all of their eluders out in one sweep attack, many of the spath ships were blown up through friendly fire but the Kor-Ah forces were defeated and the Spathi were forced to rejoin the new alliance.

Thraddash: The combined Ur-quan Armada, sent small task force to contact the Thraddash fleet which was so utterly destroyed that the force outnumbered their pathetic armada. Seeing the black ships the Thraddash immidiatley gunned up for war (there where ur-quan ships too but culture 21 after the captain's war and the ilwrath war considered themselves independent of the hierarchy and loved to show their former masters all that they had learned in the previous conflicts. But then a thraddash philosopher came up with the idea that, since the thraddash were already vanquised before the batlle even began, there was no need to fight, they had already learned their lesson and should escape the onslaught. He was excucuted as a coward of course but the Thraddash were forced to consider whether or not the inevatible result of them being vanquished meant that they already were, was capability the same as actual reality? At the Thraddashes final stand (the world with the Aqua helix) Half their fleet gunned their reenuk afterburnes and high-tailed it out of their. Ironically the other half, which were utterly vanquished, provided the thraddash enough time to escape to spathi space where upon they immediatley attacked the Spathi, the Spathi, becoming so frightened they attacked back, and the Thraddash were in awe of how the Spathi's cowardly tactics lead to victory. Culture 22 formed only a week after culture 21, dedicated themselves to the Spathi, who taught that that cowardice lead to a surviving and flourishing race, the thraddash ships should stay out of the way of enemy fire and fire their afterburners right in their enemies faces to get away when they got too close and destroy them. The Thraddash became like the Shofixti to the Yehat, This system worked for a while, but despite their cowardice the Thraddash remained warlike (as the spathi put "seeing cowardice more like a battle tactic than a way of life"), and began to rebuild thier fleet. This made the spathi a bit uneasy. The captain must return create a new culture that seperates the Thraddash and spathi.

The Druuge: While the druuge homeworld is not in the game map, they set up a star base within the games stars (not coincident;y in a mega-giant star system where the melnorm also are) that they bought from the Syreen in return for resources the syreen would use to rebuild their battle fleet. *SPOILER ALERT*

The Druuge are basicaly funding the Ilwrath and Kor-ah pirates, who trade slaves in return for rescources and in some cases Mauler starships (which both the ilwrath and the Kor-ah see as cumberson, clumsy, and downright awful vessels). The Druuge will refuse such claims and captain can who them wreckage from a mauler starship (attained form either pirate groups) they will become angry and say that it is not their reponsibility to check where upon their goods come from. *Soiler end*

You should be able to sell artifacts and crew in return for more artifacts, starships, and fuel. If the druuge leave, the pirate raids will end, just throwing that out there.

The Melnorm: they will from an alliance with you if you get rid of the druuge (haven't really figured that one out yet) You can learn that that are really the mael-nom from the sentient milieu.  Their philosophy evolved when they discovered it wasn't fair what the ur-quan were doing and decided that if anything wasn't a fair exchange for better or for worse, it was wrong.

*SPOLER ALERT* The Black Spathi: kind like a race of stunt doubles. they where the ridge-crest errr backbone of the spathi fleet, their pilots were so cowardly that they survived many battles and destroyed many starhips in the process. The Pkunk will explain that they became so cowardly that they wrapped around and became brave, like the ilwrath. They are a combat thrall but will gladly go with the alliance if it means bravely defying their overlords. The capatain must send the black spathi on a secret mission (before the other races find out about their existance ) to attack the Thraddash and overthrow culture 22. The Thraddash then join the black spathi in culture 23 where the black spathi happily take the, under their wing.. er... claw? *spoiler out*

Ur-Quan (both)
When the Sa-matra was destroyed the Ur-quan race, for the first time in millenia, new true fear. For the first time in history the Kor-ah and the Kzer--- the green ones--- joined forces. After all the battle thralls in the sector failed to respond, the kzer-ka (right?) agreed that the species of the sector were a threat, and needed to be destroyed. The combined forces however were overwhelmed. (mostly pyscologically, after the Sa-Matra was destroyed, they were in shock and  terror) after there fleet was halved by alliance races in 3 weeks, they retreated from the sector. Some stayed behind and became the Kor-Ah pirates. The Pirates were dissillusioned about the fate and superiority of the ur-quan race but because the alliance destroyed ur-quan dominance forever, they hate it with a passion. After the Druuge leave they join the Crux (or another hegemonic organization composed of the VUX, Mycon, Umgah(only if the captain insults the umgah), yehat terrorits *refer to yehat/pkunk* and another insectiod (they kinda look like these guys in my drawings http://tommyyune.com/presto/journeyman3/imagegallery/J3-TSA.Jhess.cu2.html but not completely..) race that the VUX made first contact with and convinced that the Alliance, namely the human race was composed of bigoted and evil people. Back to the Ur-quan... Some time after they retreat, (not immediatley when the game starts) they loop around and attack the Utwig, Slylandro, Supox, and ZFP forces. (the Utwig Supox adn ZFP retreat, and the captain can save the Slylandro's but. They have two slave races helping them, the Androsynth who replicate artificially and the Ur-quan control their reproduction and another race uplifted by the ur-quan who emit a gas on their homeworld that sterilized all of them, give them starfaring technology, and keep in line through the promise of a cure. The captain has to re-initiate a doctrinal war, and during that get their battle thralls to defect to the alliance. Once this is done (depending upon the players involvement in the doctrinal war) the ur-quan will either leave swearing to return, leave and both groups go their separate ways, or a small group of them will join with the kor-ah pirates to colonize a small group of stars while the rest leave “hoping than no circumnstances force them back to this part of the galaxy. I want to be clear that getting rid of the ur-quan  DOES NOT END THE GAME. It’s more of a sidequest really.

Umgah: One of the early missions should be to make formal contact with the Umgah homeworld on behalf of the alliance, this can either end with the Umgah joining the alliance, remaining neutral, or joining the Crux. It would be cool if this was somewhat of a moral decision, is it best to have the Umgah as an ally despite the cruelty they can show toward other races when playing practical jokes, leave them alone, or fight against their evil ways.

Androsynth/Orz: *MAJOR SPOILER NO JOKE TURN BACK NOW* As I said before the Ur-quan capture some Androsynth survivors, The Orz basically are the ultimate evil the Spathi talk about in the previous game. The orz are not composed of cells and cannot truly be seen by the human eye because they do not reflect light. Instead the orz project a mental image of how they want to look to the viewer a “smell”. The orz suck out the souls of other races to feed on, play with, and be together with. The orz are not aware that this practice is harmful to others. When the Orz came through the portal and made contact with the Androsynth, they formed an alliance, months afterward the orz began the process of sucking out the Androsynth’s souls. Some of the Androsynth survived and fled into another dimension like quasispace, they choose the nearest portal but because of temporal and space differences between the dimensions did not come out for a very long time and when they did they were above the sector of space the player had accesss to in SC2. When the Ur-quan fled they ran into the androsynth survivors and re-subjugated their colonies. When the Androsynth enter space the Orz start to bug out and go crazy but when they join the alliance the Orz all vanish. Orz ships can then be seen in quasi-space and they attack on sight. *ok it’s over*

The Crux: as I mentioned before I think that there should be a Crux, not like the one in SC3 but more of a counter for the alliance. The player must get each of the Crux races to join forces with the Alliance in order to stop the ultimate evil from destroying everyone and everything in the sector. This is more easily done if the captain eliminates the VUX and the Mycons

The Mycon: I just want you to think how the mycon responded if you said: “If Juffo-wup finds nourishment in decay, than must there be non to decay, lest the hot light burn out?”

The VUX: Are ZEX and DAX alive? Probably not. But it would be cool if you had to talk to their ancestors. The VUX are the defacto leaders of the Crux and obtained the sun device from the wreckage of the sa-matra (well the device was somewhere in a nearby system because of the power of the explosion). They use this to control the Mycon and threaten to drop it in any alliance members space so that the Mycon will invade them. Once the Captain tricks ZEX’s son into giving him the sun device than the captain drops it on the VUX homeworld and the Mycon are drawn to it and this causes a confrontation between the Mycon and the VUX who eventually attack each other and the entire Crux falls apart. The insectoids and Umgah can then be convinved to join the alliance.

The Faz: you remember the mhrmhrm, well it turns out that they are a Faz creation. After the Ur-quan slave shielded them they never returned. The Faz, after their hierarchy ship did not come on it’s routine mineral drop off, initiated their scheme. They designed and build mechanical sevants to mine the nearby star systems, and for years on end they had their machines search sector after sector for a way to take down the slave shield, when a mhrmhrm ship makes contact with the Chmmr, the Chmmr instruct them on how to do so. The Faz have become cold and bitter due to their many generations of slavery, and first try to order the chmmr to due their bidding. This causes the chmmr to become even more difficult and the captain convinces them not to follow the path of hatred taken by the ur-quan after the dynnari. The Faz then help in completing the process.

The Yehat:
Even with their new queen the clans remain wary of one another, and stay in their designated sectors of space. There are frequent terrorist raids by the zeep zeep (I think) clan who are still loyal to the veep-neep queen as true rulers of the yehat. After the Crux treaty the yehat terrorists can be convinced to rejoin the rest of yehat society, which is undergoing cultural changes because of the Pkunk. The result if a serious and fair society focused on the grand and spiritual meaning of things. The Shofixti become jealous of the Pkunk and will become neutral unless the player intervenes and the cultural influences of the Pkunk are shared wih the shofixti as well.

The Slylandro: One of the returned probes brought the Slylandro the coordinates of a rainbow world. The slylandro remembering what the Melnorm had told them used their probes to contact the melnorm and traded this knowledge for the ability to modify their probes programming. This way the Slylandro can use the probes to harves minerals to build more… probes and other things should the slylandro wish to do so and collect bio-data to trade with the Melnorm. Those gus are biology nuts huh? When the ZFP, Utwig, and Supox retreat to Cmmr, Earthling, and Syreen space, the Slylandro cannot follow. The combined ur-quan armada attacks them but they use their probes to defend Source. The captain can warp in and save the Slylandro’s but from the ur-quan dn in return the Slylandro will provide specifications for their probes (with missles now too!) to add to the captain’s battle fleet as well as data on mineral rich worlds.

The Utwig: I already talked about the Utwig and the Supox and ZFP retreating, well things get a little crowded and the Supox enter human space, and the ZFP and Utwig enter Chmmr space. The Utwig lose faith in the Ultron because they couldn’t defeat  the Ur-quan dn the Captain must restore their faith.

Whew... that took a while... hope some of my ideas are used. Oh and i forgot to mention my cousin is a music major and would help with the sound track. thanks!

Crikey Scorpio803, thanks for your interest!

It's funny because I was about a day away from posting an update on here. Keep an eye out for that

I didn’t realise that I had neglected this thread for so long. You’ll find a bit more recent dialogue here:


Anyway, I’ll send you a P.M. in the next day or so. Check your messages

sweet, i got your pm, thanks. Bummer that the Utwig, ZFP, and Supox have to be dropped. Aw well... it would probably be better if they were just name-dropped and the Slylandro explained their fate:
1. They were totally annighalated
2. They got away?
3. They're still fighting and if the ur-quan aren't thrown into a war then the slylanfro tell you they are eradicated, ZFP, then supox, then Utwig.
I still like the druuge starbase idea... :-(
Alright, i'll end it now before it turns into five pages... anyways, what were you reffering to with "here:" I assume you linked to a new thread or something but i can't see it...

EDIT: wait, no thraddash? NOOOOOO!!!!!

Scorpio, I'd say that monster post you made is material for you to make a mod of your own. Go for it!

I think there are several things in your ideas which don't make sense, but your post is too long that I'm not going to go through again to point them all out.

Also, you know you can actually hide spoilers?

Below are several very belated responses to the rest of this thread.



That's a pretty odd idea – why not make a new channel instead? Possibly a secret and/or private one?

To me, it makes most sense for the Earthing sphere to encompass the Centauri constellation, Sol, and Sirius... and anything else that fits in that ring.

Playing as Zelnick should never be an option.

Um... no, evil can definitely become good. It's called redemption.

Oh, one other thing... this is the second time I've seen someone transplant the bottom left corner of the original map into the top right corner of a new map, and that doesn't really make sense to me. I feel like there should be a lot less stars below and to the left of the SC2 map than there are within it, whereas above and to the right there should be a lot of new stars. Is there a way to expand the map and make it four times bigger, so that the entire SC2 map is the lower left quadrant of a larger map?

Whether this would be desirable for Cedric's mod, of course, is quite another matter. I just think it's a more logical way to do it.

Go for it!

This is something i have already considered. While i would love to do so, i don't really think i have skills required, like a basic understanding of C++... besides, it seems that if more people collaborate on a single project, it gets done faster. Not that i'm crossing that option off or anything  ;)


Hmm... now that you mention it.... i'll go through it sometime and proof-read. thanks for the in-put


You could just expand the ring, and have it overlap with the chmmr ring, kind of like the mhrm and the chenjesu did in the SC2 map.

ALSO:

expanding the map while retaining the original stars would be great, this would allow more of my ideas to be incorperated into the project. It would probably change game-play though, because to get around that big a map would require enourmous amounts of fuel (not to mention planet landings). Maybe fuel would be less RU, or because you have a different ship it can travel farther with the same amount of fuel. Oh, and thanks for showing me bout the spoiler thing.

Oops - here:
http://www.star-control.com/forum/index.php/topic,1736.0.html

Try not to let all the cats out of the bag by the way, I PMed you for a reason. No need to spread everything around the forum (like race info)

Yeah, this is what I think as more natural too.

If you look at the starmap (the paper one that came with SC2), you'll see that the galactic core is in the "northeast" direction.
The Ur-Quan subraces travelled spinward/antispinward, and each managed to traverse one half of the galaxy. So they would have started in the "northeast" end of it (where their homeworld is*), and met each other at the opposite, "southwest" end, which is our local space in SC2.

Canonically, we can expect Pkunk space to be on the edge of the galaxy or very near it. So there would be empty space in around 3/4 of Cedric's starmap, but since this is not a canonical extension of the SC storyline, I guess we can accept this and "forget" about that coreward-pointing arrow :P

*and likely the homeworlds of some old Milieu races, notably the Faz, Yuptar and Mael-Num (Melnorme)

Could you explain why the direction of the core means there are no stars south west of pkunk space?

There is a much greater density of stars in the south-west corner of the original starmpap. The stars are very sparsely scattered along the north and east

I've extended what seems to be a high density cluster of stars into the new starmap. Why would the clusters stop at the edge of the new starmap

Also, the galaxy is 100,000 light years wide.  while over this scale star distribution may become denser, over the relatively minute section of space in the SC universe (maybe 1,000 light years wide) its is quite plausible for there to be dense clusters further out from the core.

Remember  - the galaxy has spiral arms. it is not an even distribution of stars getting denser and denser

And I'd like to point out that, while this is not a canon extinension, it's aim is fit in seamlessly with the canon that does exist.

I assumed that, since both Ur-Quan subraces did a semi-circle of the galaxy in opposite directions and this was on the other side from where they started, that this area of space would be on the galaxy's edge. Good point about the spiral arms though.

/delurks

I love what I'm seeing and I'd love to help. I can write dialogue if you need it and do some voice acting too if that's what you require. :)

Thanks for the offer. Voicing acting probably isn't really a goer sadly, as, apart form the gargantuan labour effort, it would be too hard to recreate the original voices from UQM.

Would be happy for you to contribute some dialogue at some point. At the moment I am concentrating on the things that will enable me to get a demo out (i.e. graphics stuff). When I've done that, I'll turn my mind towards plot development and dialogue.

Send me your email in a P.M. if you like, and i'll send you some more info

Okay, time for an official update.

Not much in the way of pretty pictures to show you, except this:

(http://i50.tinypic.com/2450j5s.jpg)

So if you look carefully there is a Chmmr Explorer flying around a star system rather than a Precursor Flagship.  Yes, yes I know that sprite graphics aren’t of the highest quality – but they’ll do for the meantime. That is about all I can show you visually that’s new.

But at least I can tell you that work is continuing. The immediate aim is to squeeze out a downloadable demo so you can all fly around the universe I’ve created and even talk to a few aliens.

These are the things that need to be done to achieve this:

•   Navigation in truespace and hyperspace with Chmmr explorer (partly done)
•   Chmmr explorer outfit starship graphics (done)
•   Chmmr explorer ship yard graphics (not done)
•   Introductory dialogue with Yehat (done)
•   Introductory dialogue with Syreen (mostly done)
•   Introductory dialogue with Shofixti (done)
•   Introductory dialogue with Chmmr (done)
•   Introductory dialogue with Earthlings (partly done)
•   Introductory dialogue with Melnorme (done)
•   Introductory dialogue with Orz (not done)
•   New Comm screen for earthling cruiser (not done)

Other nice-to-haves:
•   Graphics and intro dialogue for one new alien race
•   New Comm screen for Syreen Penetrator
•   New Comm screen for Syreen starbase
•   Melee capability with Chmmr Explorer

So as you can see it’s the graphics side that I get stuck at. If anyone out there has the inclination and ability - sing out!

If you'll send me the outfit screen , I could try to draw the shipyard in same style .
I've begun working on the earthling comm screen already .
Timeframe for both - unknown , I'm somewhat busy lately ...

I'm pretty sure Earth is fairly close to the edge of the galaxy, relatively speaking, but there would definitely be stars further out. I personally would expect the stars to be a little less dense along the left and bottom of your map, because it's the edge of the galaxy. But it's your mod, so don't worry too much about it.

Assuming the image Here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:236084main_MilkyWay-full-annotated.jpg) on wikipedia is representative, then there are plenty of stars between our happy little Sol and the edge of the galaxy as a whole. We're not right on the edge and neither are we basking in the middle.

And that's good too apparently, the sun is sitting in the galactic goldilocks zone between the areas where too far in would be too unstable for our happy little planet and too far out would render us metal poor.

The image is definitely worth saving by the way, it's a 5 Mb hi res image of our galaxy... worth noting down when thinking about the galaxy as a whole ;)

When do we get to download and test drive this thing?

When all the mostly dones and not dones turned into dones (refer above) :)

I'm wondering what fraction of the distance from the galactic center to the rim does the SC2 starmap cover.

Edit: Also I found this from Valaggar on the Ultronomicon: The galaxy has a diameter of at least 27646 standard HyperSpace distance units and a circumference of at least 86808 distance units.
Edit 2: if it takes 100 fuel to go from the top of the starmap to the bottom of the starmap, and if there is ten distance units in each unit of fuel, then the starmap is 1000 distance units wide. That makes it that the starmap is 1/27 the distance from rim to rim, or 1/14 the distance from the galactic center to the rim.

Ah, but corewards is NE, so you want the diagonal distance. Fortunately pythagorus steps in here.

distance (corner to corner) = sqrt(h^2 + w^2) = sqrt(1000000 + 1000000) = sqrt(2000000) = 1 414.21356

27646/1.414 = 19.5516266

So more like a 20th of the diameter.

Makes you wonder why it took the Ur-Quan thousands of years to get here.

They were taking the circular route. Now for that, we want the circumference. We're about in the middle, so let's assume that the diameter of our 'circle' is 13823, exactly half of the galaxy's 'real' diameter. So for the circular route, C=pi x d, so C=13823pi. Feed that into google and we get...
43 426.2353

Now 43426/27646 is about 1.6, so there's your answer. They took thousands and thousands of years to get here because they were going possibly1 and a half times the galaxy's diameter, stopping every few years for a quick war.

Hi,
As I said to Cedric on PNF, I want to give a hand too. For the sake of not doing the same thing twice : have you begun something with the shipyard ? If not, please focus on the comm screen and I'll try to take care of the shipyard.
I had some ideas on the comm too, so another way we could do this is to share sketches and drafts...

A more technical question : where are we standing with color maps ? All the original images from UQM use indexed png, but I see that the new images in the repository (commander with unshielded earth, outfit) are full RVB. Will the game compile and display correctly with those ? (I know I could try compiling myself, I just don't have the time right now to setup the needed libraries)

I have not done anything with the shipyard .
About the pallette - probably very good question ... I have no idea ...

I've been a little worried about the palette side of things, but so far everything I've done graphicswise has worked fine. I compile it, and the new graphic just pops right in. I dont know if ths will cause problems down the track but I dont think so.

It seems to be good news on every side after all !
I've managed to compile the project, RVB images indeed work fine with the game (I'm on windows, have you tested it on a unix architecture ?), and I can tinker with the pics AND the ani files without having to recompile anything.

I think well-managed palettes will prove useful if you plan to use special effects like the one at the very beginning of UQM, when the Starbase has a radioactives shortage. Other than that, I have no idea.

I guess we’ll see. While you’re poking around you might be able to improve on base\content\nav\explorer_ip.ani. The last two numbers in each line represent where the sprite is centred. Right now, everything is a bit wonky when you twirl the ship around. I’ve been fixing this in a very labour intensive way. Must be a better way.

Also, if you’re not aware you can hit F5 and it will pimp out your ship. Very useful for debugging.

Aligning hotspots on images for UQM is terrible. If there's a solution to that other than brute force, I'd like to know about it as well.

Hi guys. It's good to see people actually working on new Starcon material. Regarding palettes: i believe that if you browse the bug database, there's a discussion of this issue (been through a lot of random UQM documentation recently in the process of contributing some patches and porting to maemo). IIRC the gist of it was that the paletted animated images are finicky to edit (because of the paletting) so unless you need that, just use standard color values and it will work fine.

Best not to maintain legacy handicaps and limitations in new material unless there's a good reason for it.

Keep up the good work. I'd help out proofing and editing dialogs for consistency but don't really have time to come up with fully new material atm. Send me a message when you have something for me to look over.

Pimping... yes, that's useful !

Try this :
(It's sis_ip.ani that needs to be modified by the way.)

Do I need some kind of authentication or login to commit ?

It's still done by hand though : I chose to focus on that big violet crystal and make it the center of rotation, so I simply took the coordinates of its center pixel in each image.
For the future ships, I'd suggest to choose very carefully the center of the rotation in your image editor when you generate the rotated ships from the original one. I'll work out the maths and write a bit of code that generates the new centers, shouldn't bee too hard if the rotation is well done in the beginning.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/Alvarin/UQM/earthling-0.png)
This is what I have done so far . It is currently using 25 colours , but will have more once I begin animating the monitors and stuff .
Can you compile this image and verify the colours don't get off ? How many colours can I use at all ?
Any general critique about it ?

Yep gimme a few days

Well that was a presomptuous statement, I hadn't taken into account that rotation of ships involved a complex resizing routine.
I can downgrade that to creating the .big, .med and .sml files from the height, width and coordinates of hotspot for the three first images, which is already some time saved.

As a side note you will , probably , need (unless done already) the Shofixty captain screen modified (probably just the main pic) because in the original it appears one big bodge job with wires all over , fastened with tape , broken panels e.t.c . wich suited Tanaka's backstory  , but not following ships .

Good thinking!
Hadn't thought of that
*adds to the list of difficult things that need to be done*

Actually it's much simplier than making one from scratch . You probably have the souce png , send the -0 to me I'l give it a buff .

Agh! Why are you inserting a space before every comma and period?

I am sorry, I am aware of this bad habbit of mine and do correct myself when paying attention to that. Unfortunately, I am not, most of the time...

Here’s another progress report

Based on the current rate of progress for the project so far I estimate that we are 8.6 percent of the way there. Given that there has been four months work on this (removing the 5 month hiatus), if we continue solidly until its done the project should be complete by September 2013.

But do not despair! Some renewed interest has encouraged me to believe that the rate of progress will increase significantly, especially in the graphics side which is the largest (and most fraught) chunk of work.

In better news, based on the above, a playable demo (with all the desired bells and whistles) should be out August of next year. A truncated version might be out as early as April if I lose patience and ditch the “nice-to-haves”.

Hi,

I'd like some feedback on the shipyard screen. So far I've built a vector model of what I think the explorer would look like, seen from the side :
http://benjamin.wack.free.fr/shipyard.svg (http://benjamin.wack.free.fr/shipyard.svg)
(you should be able to see this with Firefox)

Here's the result exported to a bitmap for the shipyard :
(http://i49.tinypic.com/2u7anna.png)

So my questions are :
Do you agree with the side aspect ? I've had to work from the above view by VileRancour, so all the "altitudes" are guesswork... and it seems he's not around anymore...
Should we stick with the wire-style view since there is no modding of that ship, or would you prefer if I textured it ?
How much fuel and crew is the explorer supposed to hold ? I can work on the graphical aspects of that too if you already know it.

Check your messages :)

Here’s another brief update

Superbutcherx has been a mighty warrior and has done heaps recent of stuff on this project including making a whole new dimension with associated alien interaction and dialogue.

The Chmmr Explorer is now usable in navigation and melee (except it doesn’t have weapons yet).

I’m really excited abut a demo release. I’m tempted to do it soon but I want to hold off until we get that elusive art for Earthling and/or Syreen comm. screens just to make sure you’re all suitably impressed.

A surprise visit from VileRancour to the forum has boosted my hopes but he’s an elusive beast.

Tata for now

Hey Cedric, I'm keen to help out on the project if needed. I'm an accomplished writer and love SC2. I can help with dialogue, races etc. Hit me up if you need a hand. Oh and I'm in NZ too if that helps :)

Cheers

Not another bloody kiwi

Sent you a PM - so have a look at that

The most recent pictures from superbutcherx look really exciting. Is it almost time for the demo?

Sad to say that those cool pictures probably won’t translate into universal doubling of graphics resolution for the game, or the demo. UNLESS we can figure out some way of converting thousands of .png files quickly.

As far as demo ETA – depends on how soon we can get a decent Earthling and/or Syreen comm screen. We’re not gonna release unless we get this as to make a release worthwhile we need new cool stuff to impress people.

And we’re only gonna accept art of a comparable quality to UQM comm screens

I'll second that. The demo will be 320x240.
Whilst it's been interesting to toy around with the better rez, the amount of PNGs that would need resizing is insane.

There are batch resizing programs I've used that can resize hundreds of images in a matter of moments, but even with those there would be some kinks:
- All the resized files should be put into separate addon folder and then write correct resource mappings for all of them, if we want to keep the old gfx available for other resolutions
- Writing new .ani files that contain correct  centering information for the new, larger frames
- Comm screen animations' c source code would need a lot of work to align the anim frames correctly
- And of course eventually: Actually drawing new, more detailed image frames, not just using the old 320x240 resized to 640x480

I'm pretty good with the stretch tool, I could probably do a few hundred a day :)

imagemagick should be able to handle that, wouldn't it?

If you guys are willing to stretch the original 320x240 to doublesize that'd be great!
Then the graphics could be incrementally enhanced, replacing the stretched gfx with completely new art slowly but surely, one at a time.

One thing to bear in mind:
There are several different algorithms for resizing. The one to be used should be a resizer that retains sharp edges i.e. doesn't blur.
That'd keep the original look of the graphics.
Whereas i.e. bicubic interpolation does make things smoother, it makes them also... blurry.

 I for my part rather look at a bit blocky and pixelated art, than plasticky blurred gfx that still clearly show that they're modified lo-res graphics.

From what I've read about this project so far (here, in this thread =P) it sounds very exciting!  I look forward to a playable demo, and I agree that upping the resolution is a lesser priority.  I think it's safe to say anyone who's interested in playing this game has already come to terms with the resolution used in the original SC2, so they'll probably be fine with a new game that has the same (admittedly dated) quality.

Well, after reading this entire forum and the entire forum on the other website at Star Control...I decided that I would like to help (if I can).  I don't know much that I think I could help the project with...here's my "resume": I don't know any C or anything like that...I only know how to access the uqm files...I know a little html...I have Flash 4 on wine (ooh...impressive...) and I can use it sort of...I don't have much experience in art though that would be my best shot I think...I can write pretty well I suppose...Well, if you give my several hours I MIGHT GUARANTEE to produce something useful for something important..somewhere in the game...at some point in the future.  So is all you need is Syreen and Human comm screens?  I hope you can provide some explanation to the player that - if you manage to get a Human comm screen - how that every human captain looks the same though I wouldn't worry about it too much. I guess the same goes for the Syreen?  Meanwhile, I'll reread the forum.  

Well, this mod seems to be at a great start and I can't wait to help or play the demo if I can't help.

I'd say one could achieve that using specifically "generic" face with no extra facial features, average size, color, hairstyle e.t.c
Another way is something SC3 did - visored helmet and big microphone piece, though they fluked hard with the brows, but that would be against the mellee captain's screen - if they don't wear it in battle, why would they in peaceful conversation?

**Cedric - it's not aimed against what you did, just my thoughts on the issue.

I just thought about it, and I guess if you get the basic comm screen, it wouldn't be too hard to just have a difference face and slightly different body.  You could have a shorter person, a man and a woman, different hair color, different skin color, different eye color...but thats making it a little to complicated.

That would be really great, but from what I know about the way comms are implemented, it would require some serious modding.

And how do you explain that all the other aliens all look the same ? I could easily imagine distinguishable features on the "faces" of nearly every other race.

Back on topic : someone has already done pretty advanced work on the Human captain, but as far as I know, both Syreen (a generic captain and a commander for the base) are still needed.

Yeah, but (at least, the way I saw it) was that alien's generally had similar faces (kind of like some animals) and we just took for granted that they were different individuals.  I guess it doesn't really matter...

What Quinabre said! Earthling is under control but I would KILL for a syreen.

Really appreicate the offer of assistance

We will need writers for sure. And we've had quite a few offers. Wont be worryig about that just yet though. We have enough amaturish written material for a demo release.

Just need the art! Feel free to have a crack at Syreen. Or even a random new alien if you wish.

Lest anyone thinks that this project is dead and buried, I should say that things are ticking along. The team has set itself a deadline of 30 September to have a demo released.

Yeah yeah I know I said April, but heck this time we really mean it!

I am happy to hear that!  :)

Nice Cedric! Keep it up.

Excellent work! I await further developments with utmost eagerness.

I'll hold you to that ! :D

I await with cautious optimism. On the other hand, I won't fault you if you miss it. ;)

Emailed my graphics to you!!

Anyway, Can't wait for 30th September... I just hope the demo can be out by then.

Definitely looking forward to seeing how this comes out. Good luck on meeting your deadline for a demo. :)

Duly noted that folks are looking forward to it!

I was wondering, where did you start using 6014? And why?

6014 is exactly the number of labour hours required to build this project

Really wow...
Ok, lets say that you work 2 hours a day, It will take 3007 days, or 8.232 Years...

And that's only if you work every day non-stop for those hours.

I'm amazed at the foresight required to register the name Cedric6014 long before this project was ever conceived   ;D

It's nice to know you where in it for the long haul, even from the start.

No that was merely a coincidence!

Actually I think I've worked it out to be around 3,500 hours. but I suspect it will probably bloat out to be 5,000 to 6,000


Lucky there's more than just me eh? Trust me you'd be waiting for ever otherwise esp since it takes me about 5 times as long to code the same thing as an actual programmer

And you'd have stick figures for artwork!

I think it's great for you to be dong this. I've often thought about doing something like this, but I can never work out how to make it run with the changes you've made... How to compile it...
I'm just rubbish with that kinda thing.

Now that is a confusing set of avatars :)

yeh, i suppose so...

Begin the countdown. 16 days, 20 hours, 9 minutes...etc. Honestly though, no pressure. I'd rather wait and see a good product then have a rushed one.

I remember thinking this was abandoned back when I was here.  It's great to hear that you're still working on it ^_^

I just saw a great Gameplay video.
It's looking great!

where?

No, I got it because I'm helping out

By the way Cedric, I sent the new ship again.

Oh, ok.  So it's pretty good, then? :)

yeh, it is

Countdown...?  Hm... wouldn't it be a good idea to make a widget about that?  I used to have a widget for the movie "Prince Caspian" (which turned out to be entirely disloyal to the book) but if I found that widget again (and its still there) or some other countdown widget, and make slight adjustments (I might be able to muster enough knowledge to accomplish such a "feat").
This might advertise (I mean like getting the word out) the mod...do we want that? 

Valos Cor

P.S. A widget is a little gadget application that runs on Windows and Mac OS (and sadly, not for Linux) like Yahoo Widgets.

Anyone is free to market/hype this as they wish. The only aspect that that needs some sort of control is the release of spoilers and sneak peaks and so forth.

I suppose I'll see what I can do.

So far... my progress is much farther along than I expected.  I have some experience with html and xml is very different but it hasn't left my head spinning. 

I'd like some advice, though.  What pictures should I use?  I think one of the Ur Quan Masters is good, we don't have to use any mod artwork so as to prevent the spoilers you mentioned.

up to you mate!

Well, after working for some time, (and getting interrupted) I finished a sort of "rough draft" of the widget.  I hope that someone here has Yahoo Widgets and can test it out for me:
http://www.4shared.com/get/V-Cxfh2R/Countdown_to_Project_6014_Demo.html

If it DOES work for you, could you look at the about section and the preferences?  Thanks.

If you're not going to show us anything new, don't bother marketing it.

Aw man... no compliment on how awesome a job I did on my first widget without the help of a manual? :'(
Just kidding...

It's good
One thing though, make the letters white because it's hard to see them.

Thanks.  You mean on the preferences with the Vindicator?  White made it worse, but blue was the best I could find... huh, black is perfectly fine...(well, mostly) ::)  I'm going to add an updater identifier or something that yahoo widgets wants then I think I'll put it on there.

never mind
worked it out


By the way, I thought the Demo was probably coming out on the 30th of September, not in 13 hours

Huh.... well, here it says 11 days 12 hours and 42 minutes... and if you were talking about the countdown screen, that has the option so I think I know what you mean.
preferences(new):
http://imagebin.org/114640

main:
http://imagebin.org/114641
these won't stay up too long.

For some reason I have -17 hours. I moved it to 30th and it came up with 6 days to go...

I'm confused.

Huh... so am I... perhaps I can release under the Yahoo widget testing grounds and tell them that its supposed to be released on the 30th... or not bother with the widget at all.

oh well...

How's everything going  Cedric?

Hello Hunams!  I am counting down the days and looking so much forward to the Mod!

I just cant get enough of this game!
Just had 4 nightshifts ans started to play again. I will never forget when i bought the original years ago!

Just to had more SC2 fun i just did the fuel thing ( With the Druuge) Never done that before   ;) It was funny!

I equipped my flagship now with only Spathi Eluders.
Now i am gooing into Kohr ann and Urquan space and i will try to terminate at least 1000 of there ships.
I will also try to reach 1 million credits for the Captain  :)

I do read this forum and the other Forum a lot , but i dont post as much as i rather keep on playing  ;D

I still think this is the best game that does exist on planet Earth!

As i said i cant wait to see this project!

Take care , I am gooing  into hyperspace again!

Greetings *Happy Campers*, Long time forum reader, first time forum poster!

I'm one of the artists on Project 6014, and I'm excited and a bit scared about the demo coming out!  I really hope you like the artwork I've done. I came across Cedric's mod when I was trying to see if anybody had started a high res mod of the game.  When I saw there was a fan sequel being made, my one thought was, "Don't screw this up!!!  That's sacred ground!" But then it occurred to me that the best way to see the kind of sequel I want was to join the team.  For any mod like this, if you feel you can make the game better, I encourage you to join the team and try.

I've really enjoyed working with these guys, and love the fact I'm working with some of the people I've admired from afar. I've played Elvish Pillager's Crazy mod, listened to MisterCat's music, and have admired Vile Rancour's art.  So I feel like a fanboy myself here.  My part is pretty much done, so it's really up to the programmers.  And Cedric's PC is down for the count so the others have a big challenge. I've got some non-spoiler art I've done soon. I created a high-res version of the Kohr-Ah Ur-Quan that's not even in the game.

Can't wait to see what you've come up with! :) Spoilers PLEASE?! =)

I haven't really followed this project at all, so it's nice to actually finally see something; especially since I might be interested in helping the project along.

On that note; how much of the project is done, and how much is currently completely decided on (as in plot line, etc)?

There's enough stuff to make a Demo. Quite a bit of it has been done, but there's LOADS of work left to do.
I also remember Cedric saying that he would be looking for Dialogue writers and possibly plot developers after the Demo's Release.

Hey! I noticed Cedric started posting my teaser art, so I guess it's okay for me to do the same! Woohoo!  Here's my artwork of the Syreen's (adopted) Homeworld comm screen.  Click the pic to embiggen!

 (http://th02.deviantart.net/fs70/150/f/2010/265/1/1/syreen_homeworld_by_dczanik-d2z8neq.jpg) (http://dczanik.deviantart.com/#/d2z8neq)

You can always check out my other artwork here. http://dczanik.deviantart.com/gallery/ (http://dczanik.deviantart.com/gallery/)

Wow, that's incredible :D :D :D. How long did it take to make that image?
Also, I hope it's possible to create an animation out of that one?

Nevermind I already got my answer for the 2nd question.

(http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/265/e/d/syreen_talk_animation1_by_dczanik-d2z8s4n.gif)

She's mesmerizing!

Ah. Crap! You beat me to it! Well, to answer your question. Yes. She is animated! Though in game comm screen is only 243x107 pixels. To give you an idea, of how small that is, the Ur-Quan Masters Forum image  is 400 pixels wide!

It took a while! Maybe 10-20 hours to paint the thing? It took me just as much time, if not longer, to animate it.

That is really impressive. Fantastic job.

That is some fantastic looking artwork. Can't wait to see more! ;D

Beatiful. I can see you've spent a large quantity of hours on those. Keep up the good work.

Fantastic! 

that is a Syreen lady with   who The captain would like to go on Holliday!
 sorry but if i remember the Syreen from SC3 ... and now this!

keep on Gooing Fantastic Artwork!

Wow!  This is absolutely wonderful!  So detailed, so wonderful!  That is really good!
The great quality of the picture sure represents the huge amount of time you spent on it!

no blinking eyes? that's a bit nerve wracking. lol Awesome looking rendition from the original. I actually like this a lot more... and as a side note, I think the love interest could have played more in the game... even though obviously the syreen as a whole is a huge part of the story.

*Syreen :)

The animation is broken up into several parts.  There's a talking animations that runs when she's talking.  That's just one. And yes, there is a blinking animation too.  But, to animate, I cut it up into squares. The eyes are one group.  The mouth is another.  So, she can blink, and talk or not talk at the same time. It makes it all more dynamic than a canned 1,2,3,4, animation.

Cool, so she is not blinking only when she talks.

I think she blinks every 2-3 seconds or so.  talking or not.  :o

Nice touch! :) How come she's not topless? :P just kidding.

Because we don't want kids thinking that tits actually EXIST, or something. ;)

Kids know tits exist from a young age. They just don't know it is nudity.

Plus, you might be a little destracted from the gameplay.

Those of you who've played timewarp (I'm not sure which specific version) should know.  Talana with her "bikini" was enough to distract Zelnick from the comm screen!

I'd be distracted too, even with that blue skin and green eyes. :P

I think that we should try and at least get a few girls playing, and tits are NOT the way to do that.

For that there is the 'Quan outline.

What if they're, ahem, attracted to their own sex?  Off-topic, I know. 

Yay, the 30th is coming soon :)

Didn't there used to be a lesbian that posted on here? Is she still around?  Or maybe it was a gay guy.  I don't remember now, all I remember was wondering why it was brought up.

And the ladies play this game for Zex and Hayes, if I understand correctly.  Why Zex, I'll never know.

I understand why they'd play for Hayes, but Zex?  Yeah...no idea.

In a word?
Tentacles.

Sure, let's make the next star control a viva pinata or something game ;)

The way this thread changed has me completely regretting saying anything about tits. : /
lol

tentacles...  ...as if.

The deep voice?

Man, this thread went to the gutter. But the 30th is coming up, heated fantasies or not. We'll be flying around running into all manner of exciting stuff in a whole new world!

Demo should hopefully still be out Sept. 30th, EST.  It's going down to the wire.  This may not  be the version we all wished for. There's a couple of small bugs we have to work out  :-[, but we really wanted to try to hit the Sept.30th date for you guys. There will probably be a 1.1 demo coming out a couple weeks afterwards.

Don't worry about the bugs.  If a game never has had a bug, its not a game, is it?  Am I right?

You could create a game that's so simple that it fails to have bugs.

For example: A command line based game where the goal is to guess the password to activate an evil robot's self-destruct sequence, and have 3 tries (if you type the wrong password 3 times, the robot kills you). This would be SO simple to make, it would be very easy to prevent it from ever having bugs. And although it's lame, it seems to count as a game in my book: there's a little story, there's a goal, you can lose, and there's a choice. Not a very fun game, but a game (if only a stupid game of half-impossible chance) nonetheless.

But of course, if it's a game that will actually be worth playing, it will almost definitely have bugs.

Yeah... I meant a game worth playing (in my gaming opinion).  Star Control, Vega Strike, stuff like that... 

Though if I were to create a simple commandline-game... I'd probably have a bug  :P

Yay today is the 30th :)

Well, I'll be busy so its not like I'll be the first in line.

As soon as the Aussies (Kiwis--is that right?) wake up.

In New Zealand it is now 4:30am on the 1st of October
We're waiting for the Americans. It's 10:30am there, so it could be quite a while before we get it.

We've aimed for midnight CST, but we've closed source updates already and it's down to compiling and packaging.
So if nothing goes amok, and it shouldn't, you guys may be spoiled a little earlier :)

I'm testing it right now. Looks awesome. I kept wanting to post, but dammit the game keeps bringing me back in.

I can't wait for this.

Wow, I am so excited!  This project was pretty much the overwhelming thing that urged me to join the forums to offer my services (though I probably would've joined if the project didn't exist) and I never really realized how long ago the project started!  Around 17 months ago, right?  It is amazing that it is still quite active after all those months and read it unfolding.

I try to tell people about the Ur-Quan Masters, but they never seem to have a clue what it is or care.  Do you think that if we encourage people to play the mod, it will make them want the original?  Though the mod might spoil the game...

People don't want to play UQM because it's old. If anything introduces UQM to more people, it'll be an HD mod, and even that isn't likely going to interest a whole lot of people.

Yeah...that's too bad.  I only discovered Star Control like 2 years ago and I had no problem with the graphics - I rarely do with anything.

Sorry if its been posted earlier, I browsed through with what limited time I have,

Was the demo released?  If so, can some one toss up a link?

Yes, you will find it in the General Discussions.  Here's a little shortcut  :):
http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=4863.15

Excellent, thanks :)

I would say we are about 10-15% of the way there. Based on our current labour resource (if you forgive the term) we are looking at two years away.

However, the main point of the demo was to encourage more people to help out, especially for, graphics, art, sounds/voices, programming - that sort of stuff. So if we can get a bunch of assistance with this I think that will dramatically reduce the ETA. Needless to say, we are looking for contributions of the highest quality.

Actually it seems like it might be a good time for a bit of a roll call. People's offers of help are sort of spread around various places (PMs, threads, forums, my email etc). Actualyl the amout of offers we've received has been really heartening.

I wonder, could anyone who's offered some assistance, or who can offer some, sing out and say what you can do? Then I'll make a decent effort to catalogue this stuff.

Time to start doing what I'm supposed to be doing and coordinating this beast!

I'm still willing to help. You've seen my artistic "skill". I wouldn't be able to help with something major, but something small-scale like the alien lifeforms (though you already have lots of new ones...) artefacts/devices and the sorts. I can also give a good critique- even though I can't storytell or draw well  myself, usually I have good suggestions and can fish out inconsistencies.

Do you need any writers? I cant write very fast, but what I do is usually pretty good.

I recall offering my own assistance. I trust you remember the details? My offer stands, of course.

I might be able to write a little dialog, though like ziper's it would take time. If I ever get a good microphone I could possibly do voice acting as well.

I can do basic rotation for ships and stuff (you know, Gimp editing).

And I want to do some dialogue.

I suppose I could put myself up here as being able to do some stuff: I have no ability to do programming or art, but I could take a crack at some of the other stuff if you like. I've actually done a bit of ameteur voice acting before for a friend's Starcraft maps, which turned out decent considering we had basically no ability to add effects or other post-processing to them. Unfortunately, I have no idea where my old microphone went, but if you're interested I can fish one up from somewhere or someone. Of course, I can also do writing / dialog / creative, but so can everyone else; I'm sure you're inundated with people wanting to help direct the plot of write dialog, but if you're really interested, just ask.

Just played it again. You can land on Beta Gorno II, where the Yehat say the Shofixti created a colony, but you cannot land on the Chmmr's Home Planet and Earth.

While I would love to help, presently, I have no time. Ask again on Jan 2nd...

*Writes down in calendar*.

You're quite a writer aren't you?

I can't ;). To do such a thing properly you really need native english speakers or damn good foreigners, and I'm not one. :P

Project 6014 patched demo available for download. Details here:
http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=4863.msg65921#msg65921

Hello all.  I grew up on both Star Control 2 and Carl Sagan books, so I'm quite delighted to see this kind of project in action.  Star Control 2 was an exceptional game for a fusion of reasons.  But one of the things that stands out the most in Star Control 2, to me,  was its exotic menagerie of aliens.  Most science fiction is a wasteland of hominid-like creatures with bi-lateral symmetry, but star Control 2 largely broke that mold.  If Project 6014 seeks to hold a candle to its predecessor, it wlll need to recapture this element.   

In this regard, I would like to help, perhaps.  Professionally, I am an evolutionary biologist. with a keen interest in plausable exo-biology.  I'm also a fluent writer and editor, and would be interested in offering my skill set to this endeavor.   Let me know if you can put me to use! 



 

Now that's a contribution offer you don't see every day !
It would be foolish to turn it down...

I've got a question for you though, but don't take it as a rebuttal. Many people have stated that what made Star Control so fun was that it didn't bother much with realism when it comes to physics, combat or astronomy. Would you say the same about its alien races, or do most of them fit into plausible evolutionary schemes ?

I have very big problem with Spathi on that account - the provided offsprings numbers are enormous and ther death rate shouldn't be hight, otherwise they would not be such cowards. They should have had depleted Spathiwa's resources quickly and gone extinct. Other races are quite plausible from what I can tell...

Maybe mortality is sky high and the only survivors are the very careful ones?

Not likely. If mortality rates were high enough to counter offsprings in the thousands, death would have to be SO commonplace that fearing it would be absurd. That is not synonimous with not trying to avoid it, but I am kind of sure in that scenario they'd develop Shofixti's mentality.

Perhaps the Umgah accidentally did the Spathi a great service with the Evil Ones?  ;)

An interesting question.  When you compare Star Control 2 to a lot of the science fiction of the day, I think it's actually a good bit more plausable in many ways.  However, it was tongue-in-cheek in such a way that prevented the player from ever considering it "hard science fiction."  For instance, actual dialogue with the various alien species was always very anthropomorphic.

As for the evolutionary descriptions of the game, they are pretty good too (though you have to compare it with other science fiction out there, which has a pretty dismal track record when it comes to biology.)  SC2 spent a lot of time going into the evolutionary background and physiology of the aliens you met, which to me, was very interesting.  They also took great pains to explain why human-like aliens (Syreen, Ariloulaleelay, etc) looked human.  Granted, Star Control 2 is still far and away from Ascendency when it comes to exotic aliens, it's still one of the best game around in that regard.

I think the important thing, in regard to this mod, is that the aliens you encounter should be odd.  I'll post a few concepts in this thread later today to give you an idea of what's bouncing around in my head.

I actually thought the Spathi were very plausable from an evolutionary standpoint.  In the world of ecology, you have two kinds of strategies that may evolve in a given organism: r-selection and K-selection.  An r-selected species typically thrives in disturbed, turmultuous environments and often produce numerous low-quality offspring.  They also invest lightly in their offspring.  K-selected species produce few offspring, enjoy late succession (stable) environments, and invest heavily in their offspring.

Which one does the Spathi sound like?  The r-selected species.  They evolved under highly unstable circumstances (the evil ones), they produce a high number of offspring (Fwiffo being part of a VERY large family) and parents invest little in their offspring (Fwiffo was spoken to only once by his mother.) 

Also, it makes very good sense that the Spathi would be profound cowards.  Selection was clearly favoring those whom had a high flight response because nothing they could do could defeat the Evil Ones.  In the evolution of behavior, fruitless behavioral mechanisms are always selected against, so in the Spathi, you ended up with a civilization of cowards. 

As for the Spathi outstripping their resources because of their high growth rate, this wouldn't likely happen because, as is true of all r-selected species, they tend to have a high mortality rate. 

Thanks!

The question then what would they do now, when the threat of Evil Ones is gone and I highly doubght there is any other dangerous life left on Spathiwa.

Yes, Umgah did do good, unintentionally, based on that biologicl analysis :)

Well, once they moved to their moon, they would experience something called "ecological release" in which the pressures that forced their evolution have been lifted (primarily predation, it would seem).  During ecological release, you find evolution in all kinds of interesting directions (very often, unfit directions.)  If they weren't intelligent and technological, they would experience mass die offs (think lemmings.)  Otherwise, they would devise some means to control their population.  I don't recall in game that this was ever addressed (probably not!)

Another possibility is that most Spathi are infertile, or there is a truly astounding gender imbalance. For example, if they're a bit like bees but that males are the workers and the females are few and kept in the center (rather than the other way around) then Fwiffo's having 10k siblings makes sense.

One wonders how an r strategy species develops high technology, though. Instinct-level literacy?

Yep, most smart species are K selected species.  However, there is a notable exception... Octopuses... which belong to the phylum of... Mollusca.  What are the Spathi most closely similar to on Earth?  Yep, it says so in the conversation text.  Molluscs!!

Hi Technolopithicus!    Welcome to the forum :)

I would like to help, but I've been busy lately.  I've been missing this forum...

I know you get lots and lots of offers for dialogue, but I'm a pretty good writer (or so I am told).
Um.. I'm a damn good foreigner!  That's if you count a foreigner as one  that moved to a place like the US since he was four and only went back twice or thrice!  Um... a recap of my other "abilities" that I've mentioned before somewhere in the forums is that I can program a little (not much) and am learning to create websites directly through html coding (its fun!). 

I'd love to help, if you guys need me.  I'll try out the patch tomorrow (as well as look at the other forums).

What a coincidence; I have been learning to create HTML and CSS code by hand. I can safely say I will never touch one of those over-hyped editors again.


Uhh... Back to the topic. Great job, guys! This just keeps getting better and better!

I remember this project from a while ago, and enlisted to try and help back then, but after a long period of silence on the forums I drifted from this place. So far this project looks amazingly polished. Are there any opportunities to help out with this still? I've developed my artistic and composition skills for music if you need stuff on this front. Amazing work so far guys, keep it up!

I think it was a rather hostile planet, since the evil ones were only on the planet with the Spathi for 100 years, and they couldn't evolve that much in that time.

So what's the state of the project? Is it done yet? Where's the download.

I suggest you update the first post in the topic so folks can find the latest news easy.

Ah. I think I was just checking out your videos.
There's a demo out which you can download here:
http://code.google.com/p/project6014/

The full game is still being worked on.
Let me know what you think. (I'm an artist on the game). 

Maybe you should keep an eye on the PNF RSS and the Starcontroller RSS for news? Or I dunno, check your PM's on the SCDB which I sent you when this was released.

Hello people, I am just a person who finished project 6014 demo right now. What can I say? It is great! It's something I wanted to happen for about 15 years - a sequel to star control 2! Liked everything a lot, althrough imho the Lurg ship is very tough - I managed to defeat the ending bunch of them only with explorer and yehat - others seem to weak for the task, and Chmmr are way too expensive - and we have to buy fuel at aching prices. Anyway, I am really looking for a full release, and althrough I probably can't help the task in any way, I can still say I support you developers people, so you may know that there are sc2 fans even in Kazakhstan  ;D

Keep up the good work!

Cedric, what's your next step? What do you do now?

Well there will be a long quiet period now I think, at least in terms of stuff that’s posted for people to see.

Some of the guys have been doing some really interesting graphics stuff which I am quite excited about.

I’ll be mapping out the story in the mean time. I have to be careful here as it is temping to just churn out half-assed dialogue just to tick something off. But I know how disappointed people will be if we end up with a lousy story so I’ll be taking my time.

It will be a while before any more pretty pictures are published on these pages I think, but that won’t mean we’re not secretly beavering away.

For now, I think you should all stop by #uqm-arena at Freenode and play some online melee!

By the way, did I ever mention that we needed some more talented artists?

Hi all,

Just made an account here for the first time. I replay the Ur-Quan Masters probably yearly, if not more often, and stumbled upon this part of the site sort of by accident, but...
I just downloaded and played the 6014 Demo and it was really great, full of fantastic surprises, I must say, you guys really know your audience.

With that in mind I'd like to contribute. If you need any more writers, let me know, send some requests for specific dialogue demands to exitapparatus@AOL and I'll get them right up. Writing is what I'm best at, and something I really enjoy, so let me know.

I'd also be interested in attempting some voice acting, again, if you have any specific requests let me know. I don't have any prior experience with voice acting but I am a professional singer so my voice is somewhat trained, I'd make sure to get it right before I sent it to you.

Thanks, and I look forward to any emails.

Hi all

I just wanted to drop a note and introduce myself. I'm one of the new contributors to Project 6014. I'm going to be working a bit with the code, and hopefully, providing some technical documentation. For now I'm going to be keeping notes on my blog as I delve into things. I suspect there are others who are trying to make sense of the source and maybe I can spare some of you some pain and trouble as I dig into this.

the blog is here:

http://www.davidneuburger.com/blog/?cat=11 (http://www.davidneuburger.com/blog/?cat=11)

if you use that link it'll take you to ONLY the project6014 related posts.

cheers!

So... I'm going to be busy for a few more weeks, it seems. Then I'm all yours.

Can't physics wait? This is important!  ;)

*crosses out 2 Jan in calendar.*
*re-adds to in "a few more weeks"*

Hi!
I'm an experienced programmer finishing my  MS in CS, with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence. I've worked extensively in C and many other languages. I'm familiar with versioning systems and other aspects of team-based programming. If you guys still need developers, I'd be happy to offer assistance.

Gidday there, thanks for the post!

Send me your email address in a PM or email and we'll go from there.

Hello comrades, i'm portuguese and i play SC2 since 1994, and i continue to play it for at least 2 times per year, i must say, UQM is simply the best tribute ever made, and project 6014 is everything ive been praying for the past few years!!! Im playing it and found a few bugs on the syreen homeworld screen, and the planetary system on Appolonius. i cant see or interact with the planetary surface biology (and the planets are loaded with bio...) kinda bumped in to a wall in the plot..... but it's magnificent!!! If i can be of any assistence (plot only) please feel free to contact me ;D "Red or Blue?" Laughed like crazy! Congratulations on the demo!!! :)

Can you please tell me where the rainbow worlds are?

You have the Zeta Sextantis from original SC2, draw imaginary line from there in an angle matching the original rainbow worlds locations, search for the same distances.

Or, if you want it spoilered, the locations are

I went to Parmenides and there was no rainbow world ::)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/Alvarin/UQM/parm.png

Oh wait, I figured it out - there are two systems called Parmenides.

Might want to rename one of them in the final version.

Would you be kind enough to post the coordinates of both Parmenideses (Parmenides's ? Parmenidesses ? Goddamn english plurals !)

Parmenides (without the Rainbow World): 585.5, 412.5
Parmenides (with the Rainbow World): 834.2, 485.3

Nice catch the GMPE. You should be rewarded by being allowed to eat the non-rainbow world one :)

Nice catch grand master! We will deal harshly with that bug.

And props to Alvarin forb using common sence to locate the actual rainbow worlds. I mean where else would they go?

Somewhere else that is not related to the Groombidge cross, but creates a different, also mysterious, also relevant to the fate of the Precursors shape?

Just a thought.

Could be plausible, if the game was taking place in entirely different location. But, as we have some portion of previously explored space, having new patterns that do not correspond with old ones would be... weird.

Perhaps the Rainbow worlds not only point toward something (Groombridge, or the galactic core), but also from something; perhaps something the Precursors left behind that they felt was much more important than the other random srtifacts strewn across the galaxy. Callbacks to SC2 are always welcome, but you don't necessarily need to adhere rigidly to everything that was established, especially with something as unknown and mysterious as the Precursors, their toys, and their motivations.

In case you need voice talent and artwork/design, I'm willing to contribute.

Hell yes we do.

Well spill Cedric! What kind of voices are you looking for? I would love to voice something (Any chance of me being an announcer at a Frungy game? :) )

I guerss its more the "artwork/design" aspect that I got excited about.

Voices are something we'll worry about towards the end of the project I think. There's nothing mroe annoying for voice performers to have to re-do there work becasue the writers change their mind about the script.

Maybe in a year's time well be lookign for voice actors!

Oh i can understand that fully, happens every time I read a script for one of my videos :)

Since you can't collect mineral ores with your landers, anyway to acquire more fuel? Or are you stuck with what it gives you by default?

Gather lifeforms, sell them to the Melnorme for fuel.

Tried the game , looks good. Some questions rise tough.

1. Regarding the shofixti. They say they havent found any new world to colonize. What about the water planet in Organon(the one syreen used in the mycon hoax)? It's right next to yehat space too, wouldn't this be perfect?

2. How many new races are in plans for the new rimward galactic area shown in game?

3. Are the arilou going to appear?

There could be some environmental toxin that nails shofixti while having not so bad effects on Syreen.

Or perhaps the Mycon were able to get some Deep Children in there during the battle. We don't know much about the tactical situation, but assuming they did get the things into orbit, they probably would have fired off as many as they could before being annihilated.

They could add some races, that are familiar to Starcontrol fans yet unseen so far:

Tarnoon: Read on the forums this race was cut from the game, they were originally going to be some kind of beetles with zen buddhism like religion.

Zorg's race: All of us SC fans remember zorg the copyright alien. Would be funny to see his race at last.

Friendly Neighborhood Stalker here!

Hope all goes well here, consider this my poking the beast to see how development is coming along (Throws water balloon at Cedric and team)

 No I don't expect much but when the beast doesn't growl in a while the best way to check if it is alive is to poke it with a stick (At least that's what that guy in Zeta Persei told me) :)

Zorg's race would be great!

Everything is ticking along nicely. But don't expect any exciting new releases any time soon.  :)
Most of the recent work has been on story development so there are no new cool art assets to show or anything.

Cool! Just remember to add that part to the game where I show up as the great and powerful Yohance  ;D

Played through the demo, and did a little exploration.  I found a few worlds with numerous creatures on them, covering the entire world almost, yet none could be shot. I can't remember specific locations, however.  The only other issue I discovered is when I had the cyborg on++ mode activated, the fight with the Lurg crashes the program if you select a Yehat as your ship. It will work fine until the yehat gets right up to or touches the Lurg bubbles. That's it as far as issues. Other than that, the game had me hooked, and I'm going to be watching (and playing) every release you guys produce.  I've been desperate for something like this for as long as I can remember....the developers have my fullest appreciation.

Utwig vs. Lurg also crashes the game. It happens whenever the shields are activated.

Been about a month so i think it is time.

*Arms a giant slingshot and fires a water balloon off at Cedric*

Friendly neighborhood stalker seeing how things are going, tell us about the ups, the downs, that strange rash you developed on your left thigh (not that i would know about that  ;D)  Oh and how the project is going too :)

Hey guys,
I'm new to (these) forums, but I just wanted to say that I found a whole solar system where, like DisdainFlame said, you bring your ship to the planet, it takes a few seconds longer to load, you scan it, and no minerals, no energy, and a million biologicals. You then proceed to land, and either there are no biologicals on the planet (with the signatures still showing up) and your ship "lags" around a bit, or there are a million biologicals and you can't fire your stun blaster... the system is Beta Messier I believe. Every planet in this system has the glitch, besides two, (At least on the demo I have, I don't know whether or not it has been fixed on the full version).  :-\

Now on another note, I really hope this project is going well! After playing UQM, I got hooked! I was looking around for a sequel to UQM (SCII), but couldn't find anything that looked good. I tried to play SCIII, but that game (to put it literally) sucks. No offense to anyone who likes it or the programmers/team, but SCIII had many problems. One was the stupid rotating starmap.... but anyways, enough of my rant. I've been playing through the demo and let me tell you that I am very impressed. I believe this has great potential, and maybe even convince Activision to let Toys 4 Bob to create a true sequel to SCII, not the (failed) attempt made by the creators of SCIII (I forget who made it). Anyways, I support this project and hope that everything is still going great!

Also, was wondering in the demo how far you actually let us go? I just started it, and, well, not to create any spoilers or anything  :-X, I just can't figure out what to do now, unless I've gone as far as I can in the demo.
Anyways, thanks for all your work on this project and I wish you the best!  ;D

Talk to Chmmr, they will provide you with some navigational clues, talk to the Shofixty to have some more. Correlate them and do some flying. You'll know when you get there. If you don't want to just finish the demo, there is some more stuff to do, like visiting some other allies and aliens.

Thanks for the detailed feedback, UQD. This bug has already been taken care of a while ago.
Like Alvarin said, explore, explore, explore. There are not heaps of content in terms of story in the demo, but there sure is a lot of nice bits to find if you want to immerse yourself in theSC2 universe again.

He beat me to it. But what he said in any case.

Maybe if you tell us what you've actually managed to see, we can then tell you what to do next

Hey!  I could help!  However, as I have mentioned before, my talents are as of right now undeveloped (saying "I don't have any helpful talents" just makes me sound like an idiot) but I learn pretty fast.  I have pretty good grammar and writing skills, though I get lazy oftentimes.  I could try recording stuff.  Audition?

I can't believe I missed the option to star the Google project page the last time I was there!  I am rather surprised there are only 15 people there.  Perhaps we should ask more users to switch to gmail.  Cedric6014, remember that widget that I was going to make?  When you have a set date for...I don't know....a beta version perhaps to be released, I could release my widget on Yahoo!  I would LOVE to help like that.

Thanks Cedric, but I figured it out. Just one of those, oh, I missed a planet.  :P Now that I beat it, time to explore  ;D Oh and thanks for letting me know Quinarbre, that was an odd glitch due to the fact that it seemed to be confined to that one system. Also, I don't know if anyone has told you, the
Anyways, how's the project coming along? Just was wondering, because the demo was great, and I would like to see a beta (or even a full version if you have a closed beta) come out sometime! I understand how difficult programming can get, I took a matlab class and some of the programs I have written have been complex to say the least. Other than Matlab, I really don't have any programming experience, but I believe that you said sometime earlier that you have the programming side covered. I appreciate what you are doing and, as I said before, THIS GAME IS AWESOME!!! Thanks for all the time and effort you and your team are putting into this project. I hope that it inspires a true sequel to this awesome game! Also, depending on where you need help, I can maybe help out a bit, either with ideas or proofreading etc. Being a Mechanical Engineer, I don't really get into programming (or coding for that matter) that much if you happen to have lost some people... but I am willing to help in any way I can. I also have some artistic skills (although it's been awhile). I hope you have had all of this covered and are just working on the story, which alone can take years depeneding on how in depth you are going, but I just thought I'd offer. ^_^

Sorry about yet another long post, but I just wanted to put that out there! I'll also put any other glitches I find in the demo on here, although I'm sure you've corrected many of them due to the long time since the demo came out and all.

Cedric wait! before you return to the fortress of awesome Star Controlness! Tell us how things are coming along, I need to no how many sacrifices I have to make this month to keep things going well :)

OK...

Things are ticking along just fine. The story is being finalised. This does NOT mean we've written the dialogiue. Or any dialoguie for that matter.

AS far as sacrafices go, a some goats and a sheep should do it

Really? Cool! I didn't think you were that far along with it yet


*Contacts his Umgah supplier* Will do :)

I logged in today specifically to comment on this (oh man! My account still works!).

This is probably the best fan-project I've come across during my time on the internet. The new graphics for the Lurg and Earth ships are spot on, nicely detailed and perfectly fitting with the game. It reminds me that I still really like these older, lower-resolution art styles. You look at hi-res art for modern remakes and they often look quite ugly (just check out the XBLA version of Half Minute Hero for proof that hi-res doesn't always mean nice looking).

The writing also is fantastic, not overdone, and fitting perfectly with the SC2 universe. I'm a little sad the Ilwrath and Thraddash (my favourite race) are dead*, but generally the writing here feels like more than just fan-fiction. It's faithful, but doesn't feel restricted. Some of the Slylandro dialogue was beautiful. Also, the Lurg dialogue was perfect. Good acting and nicely modulated. All in all this feels like a very professional and slick fan sequel. Gotta love the fan service too for their design!

Also! I like how the task in the demo requires obtaining two pieces of information to deduce a simple puzzle. It reminded me of the Syreen puzzle where you need to find the planet holding their ships, and you're told that it's located XX units of travel from a specific point, whereupon you need to investigate systems in that area. It's improved here though, since the general areas are marked on your map (very cool!). It's a simple though clever piece of design, and it bodes well.

I'm assuming the project is still on track? I haven't read through this topic, but I see recent posts so I assume so.

My only concern is that SC2 took FF and PRIII nine months of - if I recall correctly - 7 day weeks of 12 hour days, without any pay. Or something like that. Having seen the quality of this so far I hope the team has the motivation to complete it. Having recently worked on book (http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/book.html) with a group of writers, I know how much dedication a hobbyist project requires. I mention this not to be negative, but in the hope that acknowledging the magnitude of the task will steel the resolve of those involved.

Keep it up and keep us informed on the progress.

Otherwise... Are you accepting unreasonable suggestions from demanding fans? Because I am so totally going to be posting in that topic.


EDIT:
* I would have thought the Ilwrath and Thradds would be perfect to create a new symbiotic race. The Ilwrath love to inflict pain, and the Thradds believe that stoic resistance to pain is good. Surely they form the perfect S&M relationship? I mean, they complete each other. Plus, imagine a cloaked Torch. Or an Avenger that farts fire from both ends.

That's just a Thraddash after a trip to Taco Bell

So here's another friendly poke for the *happy campers* in the development team...

Is the project still making good progress? I understand if it isn't due to the fact that it's summer!!!, but how is everything! These forums have kinda died out a bit, and I was just wondering if progress was being made... if there are other forums that Cedric and team are posting on (more like where's their stomping grounds), could someone lead me there? I am new to the UQM forums and don't know other forums dedicated to this game, or even the mod. Thanks and talk to you soon!
 Oh and is there any coming soon? :P

Thanks for all your hard work,
Scott

The story is still being worked on. A draft version of the story was produced quite a while ago, but it's still getting polished and reworked every now and then.

There's another forum over at http://www.star-control.com/community/

Hey! Poking Cedric and his team is MY JOB I even have a special "Rod of Power" I use, just ask Cedric, he will tell you how many times he has had to throw me out of his house for harassing him about the development progress (and finding where he lived was not easy I will tell you, the Melnorme prices have gone through the roof sense the economy hit the floor.)

Long as they give s info from time to time to let us know they are still alive and have not fallen victim to IDF, all will be well (I miss any Star Control references i could have made in that paragraph?)

I can't speak for any of these guys, but for me, "summer", or any season for that matter, is not a reason that I would stop working on a project.


There's no forums dedicated to this mod. But if you're just looking for other forums related to Star Control, you probably want to join the SCDB at star-control.com, which is a lot more active than these ones (or so I've heard).

I have a suggestion:

Add "Thrawn" to the list of names of ISD pilots  ;D

The list is repeated twice, perhaps to fit a quota, and Tarkin and Jerjerrod appear three times. There's definitely room for more. Throw in Pellaeon too. A look through wookiepedia could supply the 7 more names one would need to round out the list with uniques.

I know this means next to nothing from someone with one post, but I am a student of the arts and fan of the ur-quan masters that would be interested in lightening the load of the main artist, proofreading / editing dialouge or at the very least playtesting.

Let me know if you need my help or need a sample of my work.

We are always looking for people! PM me and send me a link to some work you've done.

Hey all, not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I'm having technical issues getting the demo to even run :( I followed the instructions from the Project 6014 website and the readme file, but the program still won't even open :( It keeps saying that the application P6014 quite unexpectedly. I have a mac and downloaded the mac version... can anyone help me to get the demo to open?

Hello, I am the guy responsible for OSX porting of Project 6014. Having been on a kind of un-vacation I only came across your message now! I'm sorry to hear you didn't get the Mac version working :(. Are you still having problems with it or did you find a way to get the demo running?

I've tested the demo on OSX's 10.5 and 10.6, with Macbooks ranging from 2008 white 2,1 GHz model to 2010 aluminum bodied models with newer specs. What is your system, the OSX version and the processor?

If you have some time, a complete list of pointers and tips on OS X compiling of even vanilla UQM would be useful. See http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=5085.0 (http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=5085.0)

That is a big 'if', I'm afraid :(
Though I'm sure I could squeeze some time from anywhere, but the bigger problem is that it's been so long since I set up the compilation facilities... I'm not sure anymore what were all the tricks I used to pull to get the compilation working. I don't have a spare Mac on my hands which I could use for creating things from scratch and typing a manual based on that, shame :(

I got pretty far with the OSX compilation instructions that came with the UQM package and some help I asked here:
http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=4633.0
http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=4631.0

I think I got Nic's Xcode project from him, but in the end kept using the command line way I've been using from the beginning.

However, even though the SDL_image, SDL, Ogg and Vorbis libraries I compiled myself got the thing running for me weren't usable on anyone else's Macs. So I bruteforced and copied the SDL_image, Ogg and Vorbis from the latest UQM executable to my "/Library/Frameworks". That made it runnable for others too (except Mohorovicic now at least). However, I kept the SDL I compiled myself, since the SDL library that came with the latest UQM was so freaking big.

Gekko, I think we might've been through this before, but do you yourself have a Mac available for trying compiling?

Ha, I got the balance mod compiling and working, at least on my OSX!

I'll post the .app to Shiver for testing.

hey all, i have just begun to decide to replay ur quan masters (last time i was 4 playing/watching my dad play the original, so not sure that counts anyway) and found the p6014 mod/sequel, and downloaded it. (i got the content and music files in the resources folder, maybe music should go in add on folder?) Anyways, i'm running a new mba with Lion, and UQM 0.7 seems to work fine but P6014 crashes on launch. found this thread via google, just wondering what the status was with lion support and if anyone else is having issues or if there is a fix. I can copy the error report but its very long and i have no idea which part of it is important.

Hi!

Sadly, Lion wasn't yet out when we finished 0.1.1.  - The P6014 demo 0.1.1 is compiled on 10.6 (and has been tested on 10.5 also).

We are getting a new OSX programmer on board with Lion OSX installed though, so the next demo should be 10.7. compatible! The exact date is still to be set, but P6014 demo 0.2. is going to come before the end of this year...

Right, well we may as well announce then that we plan to release demo 0.2 on 11 November 2011 at, you guessed it, 11:11:11. Times zone TBA!

The next release won't have a heap new content, but it will have some very nice features so it will be well worth looking forward to.

UTC?

I bumped into the Lurg video on YouTube, and after tracking down the demo, came right over to find out more about the development.

Setting: I really like the bones of the story so far; the Chmmr have always come across as cold and calculating, and for the Yehat to think somebody is being ruthless, is really saying something.  I was rather expecting a stray Marauder to show up and sass your tiny ship from time to time; them being leaderless means they are even more out of control than before.  It also explains why races that desperately need to expand (Syreen, Shofixti) cannot do so heedless of danger, because there are still hostiles out and about.  All in all, I am interested in seeing the storyline move along.

Tweaks: The Syreen interface is fantastic.  The humans are good, too, but the work done on the Syreen was top rate.  After encountering them, I was a tad disappointed that there wasn't much of interest to say to the Syreen, but obviously the plot is in its early stages.

Early game lack of mining:
It was rather disappointing to not be able to mine.  To make myself feel productive while skimming for biologicals, I wrote down on an envelope worlds that were worth strip mining later, if ever I got a cargo bay.  Is there some reason that the player CANNOT have one?  I guess I don't buy the whole "Oh, your ship is full of.. um.. sensors.. and therefore can't hold even a single diamond" excuse made by Hayes.  If we truly aren't meant to mine, then why limit resources at all early on?  I had to get biologicals just to keep flying, as I had run out of RUs just due to outfitting my fleet.  Give the player RUs for showing up at starbases; that'd encourage diplomatic envoys to various homeworlds.
       I am not sure how viable this is for the engine, but another possibility is to deploy a mining beacon on rich worlds.  Make them cost something so that the player doesn't just spam every world with "STRIP MINE HERE," but if one is launched, then the next time you visit a starbase, the world could be mined out and you'd get a share of the resources just for being a good surveyor.  That way, exploring would be meaningful even if you yourself weren't the one doing the digging.
       The Melnorme obviously are not finished yet; when they gave me a plug to say, "Come help support the game," I figured that was telling.  So it didn't hurt my feelings to sell biologicals to them, as they clearly had no other use than fuel... but considering how valuable Melnorme credits were in SC2, it still hurts my head to sell precious data for mundane fuel.  I'd much rather sell minerals or salvage RUs from wrecks.

In space, nobody can hear you.  Period.
Space seems very empty.  Besides humans shuttling back and forth to Procyon and the occassional "Maurauder" encounter, nothing was happening.  Where are the Druuge, scouring wrecked hulls of ships for materials?  No stray Umgah, out looking for raw genetic material to bioengineer?  The Shofixti were all supposed to be scouting; I passed a lot of interesting looking potential homeworlds out on my travels but didn't see any rodents.  Are all the Probes accounted for?  If a massive warfleet is on the move, there would presumably be scout ships from their forces poking around.   

I seem to have missed out on the Plot Cookie.  Here's the path I took:
1) Talked to Chmmr and Hayes
2) Ran down to "Crash Site" and started plodding around, found nothing but some biologicals
3) Talked to Melnorme, got pointed at Naos, Angstrom and Messier
4) Explored those, found nothing.
5) Decided to pop in to see the Syreen, Orz, Spathi and Yehat
6) Yehat pointed me towards a dud world
7) ???

If there was more I was supposed to have done, I fear I didn't encounter it or think about doing it.

All in all, an excellent start -- must we really wait until November? :)

Biflspud: Thanks for your comment. I'm one of the artists for Project 6014.  For me, reading stuff like this makes all the hours I put in worth it.

Syreen: I'm glad you like the Syreen.   I made the intro, the Syreen, and the Lurg. So when somebody enjoys my stuff it makes my day. Thank you.

No minors allowed?: I too want to be able to mine. I'm fighting for this in the next demo. :)

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.:  The full game will have more in space, but right now it is a little empty.

Step 8 is profit!: If you went down to the right planet you should have seen something on the energy scan. It does take some exploring.

I originally gave the rest of the team a November deadline as a mock challenge. Well, they called my bluff! Now I'm frantically working on artwork done by then. Oops.  :o I really hope you'll enjoy the new demo as well.

I think you mean miners. A minor is someone under the age of legal responsibility, not someone who goes out and strips planets of their natural resources.

Heh. It was a joke (done on purpose) since they sound the same. I know the difference. ;)

I will not miss the opportunity to correct someone else's grammar. It's my sacred duty as a Grammar Nazi, I'm afraid.

I fear this situation requires a funny Youtube link! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1kYFNGuJAo#t=0m55s)

That's the exact scene I was thinking of! :D Glad somebody else got it. The "In space no one can hear you scream" line just got me thinking about other sci-fi movies.

Of course getting corrected for "mispelling"  that is just a "miner" problem. ;)

The key link you missed is a chat with the Shofixti. They'll be able to narrow down your search area even more. You can find them still holding onto what little they have left near the burnt out remains of their homeworld.

I think I have been good for long enough.

*gets out giant water balloon of massive wetness (special edition) and tosses it at Cedric and the devs*

Okay so we are getting the new demo in November as of last check in but I wanted to see if any of you guys have any new info, any new way we can help, are we still looking at the November date and anything else you can/want to tell us. :)

(Cedric and the Devs.....Sounds like the name of a cover band.)

I guess since nobody is answering, I'll do it. But I must go "the way of the politician" and say a lot without really saying anything at all.

I playfully taunted the devs that the art team could get everything done by November if they could muster up the time. Well, they called my bluff! So now we're all frantically working on it. The devs are really working overtime. I am really excited  about this new demo.  I can't go into specifics, but there are new features,and new art. The reason for the new demo is really to help us squash any of the bugs that I'm sure will pop up. Right now things are a mess but changes are happening rapidly.  To give you an idea how quickly, there's been over 170 updates just in the past week alone. Yes, we're still looking at 11-11-11 for the new demo. I'm bringing in help anywhere we can get it. So if there are artists, programmers, etc. that would like to help us just send a PM to me or Cedric. Sorry for the late response, we've been busy :D

Hm, I think I'd be interested in helping with the coding. Not right now; I just got an incredibly annoying cold and can't even focus on simple tasks right now, but when I get over this cold I'll probably want to get involved with this project.

My C knowledge is a basic level at best (I've actually only used C++, and at that, only for simple command-line programs), but I'd bet I can help somewhere. Plus, this would be a perfect opportunity for me to gain a little experience in C. :P

No apologies needed. I just like to make sure that the wheels are still turning (and bothering you guys every so often has it's own entertainment value :) )

A little competition to speed up the development is a good thing I say. Just don't burn yourselves out. You got a game to keep building and that HD mod slated for the end of the year and if you die of exhaustion, my pathetic stick figure art levels won't make up for it :)

I'm still waiting for an assignment!

Hello there,
I just played your mod, and I have to say; I am impressed! Very well done, but it has some bugs.
I understand this is just a beta demo, but i'd like to give my opinion on what I think would be good additions;

Mining, it's basically the THING in SC2.
Chenjesu and Mrrnmhrrm leftovers that didn't merge in "The Process"
Rouge heirachy enemies; such as a random VUX or Mycon floating around.

Thank you for your time and best of luck, I await the final build.

-Dexter

Hi Dexter!

I'm glad you liked it! I believe mining should make an appearance in the next version of the demo.  Look for it 11-11-11.
"The Process" will be a plot point in the full game.
You should see other aliens in the full game.

Hi Dexter, if you remember any of the bugs, could you send me a brief description?  Or post them here (with the spoilers tags).  The most useful bit of information is where each one occurred (i.e. how we can reproduce it).

It would be good to fix a few of them before the next demo!

Edmund.

11/11/11?  You guys like competing with Skyrim? :P

I've played the demo when it first came out.  It's interesting, looks promising.  Miss my space tug though!

The 6014 team doesn't even know this... but  11/11/11 is my birthday  ;D 

There was really no reason why.  It just happened to be 2 months from the day  we decided we could get everything done in.... a couple months.

So, on 11/11/11,  I plan on having a birthday/launch party. 

Planning to release this thing after the release of Skyrim would probably mean that it´ll never get released..  :)

Hello,

The bug I mentioned earlier was dialog related;
When I was talking to a Syreen Penetrator one time she said stuff that I KNOW she shouldn't have, and when I was given dialog options they were what Talana says to you in SC2!
I have not, as of yet, been able to replicate this, but I'm trying.
I'll see what addons I had in case one of them broke something.

-Dexter

Looking at the dialog text, I don't see anything in the file similar. Talana's dialog file was taken out completely. This is the whole Penetrator Captain dialog tree. Was it any of this?:


If you can replicate the problem again, let us know! :)

Yup, pretty likely it's an addon that doesn't belong here. It looks like you were loading a gamestring file that wasn't intended for P6014.

I sent you PM, check it out!

I had a dream about Project 6014 last night. I have great expectations.

Did your dream involve a large group of Syreen women like mine do?

As we grow closer to the 11/11 launch of the next demo i am curious to see
1) Are we going to make it?
2) How much more has now been added

I had a dream about it shortly after I first played the demo, I found the new Pkunk home system and I went down to their planets but got caught in some kind of sulfur pit and died  :-\

Clearly, you reincarnated.

It come closer and closer..you can feel it in the air.......Does out date still look good (And am i going to get flowers and candy on that date?) :)

We're still shooting for 11-11-11.  Some planned features may have to be dropped in order to make the date. We'll introduce them in a future update.

Hello to all Great Renewers!

I'm a great fan of SC1-SC2-UQM game line and it was very intrigue for me to find that very nice project.
I've installed existing version of p6014, it's very interesting for me to continue that project.
Although english is not my native language, i can help to advance this project in directions:
- story line and psychologic manners of races;
- data bases, data processing, include data mining;
- deep algorithming, complicate methods and logic;
- programming (slightly depends on programming language);
- graphics (a little).

Sorry for non-pure language in my post, it's just a translation.

This mod hopefully ignores all the events of SC3 , right? :-)
because SC3 pretty much lamed all the stories involved the orz's origin,urquan,precursors, rainbow worlds, etc etc you know the rest

Yup. Nothing to do with that puppet-filled, unoriginal piece of garbage.

THERE WAS NO STAR CONTROL 3!  :P

It was all a dream you had. Now, let us never speak of this again! ;) 

We are disregarding SC3 because it handled the storyline so poorly. Many fans don't regard it as canon.

Our game isn't exactly canon either. TFB can change it at any time with a new game.  I suggested to hand wave the problem away and say since the explosion of the SaMatra it created a rift in space-time where parallel worlds and alternate realities have been exposed.  But the other guys on 6014 didn't like that at all. So I guess we just ignore the problem of canon and ignore SC3.

Gahh only a couple days left until the next release!!!....The wait is killing me!

Looking forward to see what round 2 with the mod has too offer ;D

Hey man, you still around ? Cause we desperately need you again, even if it's not something as accomplished as what you did so far.

Hi folks!

It's with a bit of sadness I must inform everybody that Project 6014: Demo 2 will be delayed a week.  Our new scheduled release date is 11-30-11. The quality level just wasn't where we wanted it.  Nobody wanted to release something unfinished just to meet the deadline. It's going to frustrate you and take away any fun that might be had.

Quinarbre made the decision, and I think it's the right one.  I hate it when games do this. I'm sure many of you feel the same way.

I assure you we've had many  late nights just to make the deadline, but sometimes these things happen.   Still, I apologize for the delay.

Well, quality is really all you have, so I think that's a good call.

Thanks for the report, release when ready!  ;D

I PM-ed Quinarbre asking what he wanted, if not my second dialog assignment. With the extra week, I could possibly do something else too, if it's simple. The second dialog is much bigger than the first.

NOOOOO!!!!!!! (Activates his glory device)

No sweat, you should never release something that is not ready.

Looking forward to the release, because it will be better thanks to the extra time. Now, if only more of the "pros" had the leeway to do this.

Indeed, the problem with licensed games in general is that early deadlines cause poor quality games to be released.

Oh, I see how it is.  You build up all this excitement for 11/11, and create a spike in Star Con fanboi heart rates.. and then leave us jittery for the rest of the month?   

Now, is 15 days enough to play Skyrim.. hmmmm..

lol as long as they do the job well, I will wait for hell to freeze over

And forget Skyrim Biflspud, I am picking up Saints Row the Third tomorrow. I will get Skyrim after I finish that one :)

Did not see much excitement building up here (well, except for JudgeYohance but he's perpetually excited about p6014) so we thought we'd delay it a bit just for the kick of frustrating you.

*Frumple!*  It is *dancing!*

You probably have as many irons in the fire as you need right now, but at some future point, if there's pieces of the project that you can crowdsource, by all means share.  Heck, writing dialogue trees wouldn't necessarily require too much expertise and training, and you all could cut and paste the best dialogue options from what the community generates.  Maybe even start with, "So, the Arilou have some information on the Lurg, but they're being coy.  Map out a few dialogue trees" and see where it goes?

Or something.  Just blue skying; I don't want you all to feel you're not supported in your efforts, and spinning off easy work can let you focus on the nuts and bolts of a great game experience.

I have to say, crowdsourcing dialog is a terrible idea. You want each species to have a unique voice that's internally consistent, and the best way to do that is to have one person write the dialog for that species. On the other hand, once the dialog is written and finalized, crowdsourcing voice acting might be a little bit more viable.

Well, sorry you think so, Draxas - frankly, you can generate a lot of creativity by seeing what people come up with given half a chance to be creative.  Worse thing that happens is that all of it is terrible, you politely thank people for their time, and vow never to do that again. :)

The reason I make the suggestion is that in my own writing, I've found it very liberating to simply plot out the story in little bites.  "What would happen if they did this?" and just enjoy the rest of it as a free-writing exercise.  You end up inventing a lot of "voice" just by exploring what the characters would do in that situation, and the more you free write in character, the sharper it gets.

Yes, but if I understand what you're saying here correctly, it's still only one person (ie: you) doing all the writing.  Perhaps I've misunderstood, though.

Well there is a reason for that! I have very little programming skills (Some very basic C++ from a college course) and my art skills are...well non-existent so my ability to contribute to the project is minimal. (Except maybe voice work when they get to that point)

Star Control 2 was one of the first games I ever played at around age 3 and I have waited 20 years for a new game to be made that captured the feel of that game and I have never found it. You ever want a true betrayal of expectations, I remember buying Space Rangers 2 without checking on it first because the box had in the inside cover "Best Sci-Fi Epic since Star Control 2" and was so stunned that used that for comparison that I bought it...and hated it.

So if I am energetic about the project it is because most of the series I grew up playing have died over the years and with the rise of FPS games of late, I have little hope these days of the main gaming companies making a game of it's kind again. I really liked the demo, I can't wait for the full game, and I think it is proof that a group of dedicated fans can remain truer to the the source material and do a better job with it then a name company out for simply making the quick buck (See Star Control 3 for reference :) )

Let's go off-topic for a second:

You should try the Mass Effect series...

I would venture to say that if anybody should be allowed to do a Star Control sequel or reboot that it should be Bioware.

Spoiler

nice touch there ! :-)

I agree that the Mass Effect games are good in their own way, but they belong to completely different genres, so it's difficult to even compare them. While Mass Effect seems to have a lot of common with Star Control, this has more to do with the fact that it borrowed from the entire space opera genre. Besides, it has none of the grand scale and freedom of choice that SC2 had. Also, one of the weaknesses in all of Bioware's RPGs are the dialogue choices. ME's infamous dialogue wheel took it to the extreme (though the quality of the dialogue itself - not the player's choice - has improved noticeably), but really the problem was present in older Bioware's games as well (the main dialogue choices seem to be: 1. "Let's go and smite evil! YEAAAAH!" 2. "Pay me or I'm not going to help you!" 3. "Screw you! I'm not helping lowly rabble like you!")

As we approach the end of the month, I ask the forbidden question...will it be ready in time?

Baring any unexpected last minute problems, yes.  Art team has taken the extra time and added a bunch of stuff. Programming team has fixed every major problem. It's just polishing everything right now.

Since today's the 30th I was wondering if we have an estimated time of release?

Well, sometime in the next 20 hours.  ???  We're going by Pacific time, so we got a few hours left in the day.  The programmers are compiling everything and testing it out.  I can't give a more definitive answer than that :)

In that case, you have 15 hours and 48 minutes from this post or we let loose the Kraken! :)

.deb packages for Ubuntu 11.10 will probably be released about 24 hours after the release for Windows. I don't do any of the content or coding for Project 6014, and thus I have no idea when exactly I can start building, packaging and releasing.

Luckily, compiling your own version of the game is reather easy (provided that you have the required libraries installed, which if I recall correctly are packaged for Ubuntu/Debian as libogg-dev, libvorbis-dev, libsdl-image1.2-dev, libsdl1.2-dev, libz-dev, libmikmod2-dev):

Just an update: Looks like the programming guys are caught up in some real work at the moment.  Apparently they expect to also have a life and a job outside the game. After that it's implementing some last minute Yehat and Pkunk stuff. We're still on track....

I'm anticipating the game as much as you, so I'd be upset if it didn't come out soon too. I was hoping to see something in time for lunch.  I'm viewing statistics via Google Analytics real time beta test. I can tell the guys on the art team keeps hitting the refresh button on the site to see if there's any updates.  So we're all excited...

The 'releasing the Kraken' thing reminds me I had planned on making a picture of the Kraken. The 1980s Clash of the Titans version. I even thought about making a crossover pic with Kratos from God of War. It will be nice to actually draw something not related to Star Control. It's been a while since I've done that.

As far as story, there's not too much new, but there's a bunch of new content. The main reason is we just wanted to test that stuff out and sort out any bugs before the full game. So what will later be optional parts may be part of the download of the demo.  This will make the download large. And by "large" I mean,  the game will probably fit on a CD. But the size of the download goes from about 40 MB to about 600 MB.  Not quite as bad as 10 Gig installs of modern games, but if you need to clean out your hard drive, now is the time to do it.

If I had to take a stab at recommended system requirements for the demo, I'd say:
1 GB of free space.
512 MB RAM.
1 GHz processor.

That's a perfect size for a torrent.

I'll take that as a challenge...  ;D

Expectations are a wonderful thing but they should know by now that they have been enslaved by the Crimson Corporation and as such must work until they are dead :)


I'd like to see that. Kraken vs. Zex's beauty....wonder who would win that one

Release the Kraken on us.  :o It appears we're going to miss that deadline. D'oh.  :'(   Problems with a programmer's home internet connection.  They  were up until 5am working on it. I told them no need to kill themselves, destroy their job, or rip apart their  family to get this out.  It's just a game, and we're not Electronic Arts here  ;)

.....I then proceeded to beat them up just to teach them a lesson.   :P

Have some wallpaper of our lovely bird to tide yeh over. Click the pic, it should have links to download a 1900x1200 size version.

(http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/334/e/3/6014_explorer____schematic_view_wallpaer_by_dczanik-d4htoyt.jpg) (http://dczanik.deviantart.com/#/d4htoyt)

I

That'll keep the wolves at bay. Shoo shoo!

 ;D ;D ;D

OS X people: I have a treat for you.
http://code.google.com/p/project6014/wiki/Downloads

*Hungry wolf from Windows appears*

32-bit Ubuntu/Linux Mint packages should arrive shortly.
Having some trouble with the hires content packages currently.
64-bit will hopefully not be far off, either.

EDIT: they're all available now, have fun! :)

People, check out the setup options.  My HD side project has found its way into Project 6014!   :o You can play Project6014 at 1280x960 and a 640x480 now.


There was some issues with the Windows release. Unfortunately, our Windows programmer has a girlfriend who has a birthday today. The bastard. Official release should be tomorrow.

So Windows users. Give me 2-3 hours and I'll come up with some unofficial, unoptimized, possibly buggy version for you guys.

He still has a girlfriend after all this?

I've never shared a file this big before...   ???

http://ge.tt/82nDqdA

File download speeds will be slow at first. It's not finished uploading.   Blame my Slow crappy wireless connection.
Something more official should be put up on the site tomorrow.
I may post some alternative download links later.

Some things I've found:
1. My voices sound level keeps getting set to zero. Not sure why. You may need to go into setup and raise it up.
2. You may need to run one of the included  .BAT files.  There's 3. One  for each resolution. If you can run it, run 1280.bat
3. If there's bugs, slow speeds, etc. Remember, this is just an unofficial release for Windows users.  I just wanted to give you guys something.

Birdie Num nums.

I've got 404 for Linux files.

Whoops, sorry. Accidentally renamed a folder.
Fixed now.

It was a close call.

Megagun, could you put the source package(s) up for those debs? Assuming I can actually upload the whole thing, I can provide packages for Debian Squeeze.

Hey, just wanted to say great job! The hd textures look nice :D One little glitchy thing that I noticed, I don't know if it is because I tried to make it fullscreen (but it stayed windowed), if it is because I'm using the windows version, if it is because I'm using the 640 pixels window, or whether it is just a glitch. Here are a couple of screenies:

Hi! I tried to install the Linux version, but I'm a noob and I didn't understand how to do it. Someone can help me?

Never mind, I'm not as noob as I thought ;D

These two -

p6014_0.2_i386.deb   32-bit binaries   0.7 MB   Mirror
p6014_0.2_amd64.deb   64-bit binaries   0.7 MB   Mirror

Still give me the 404

It's on, bitches !

... err, I mean, ladies and gentlemen, I'm pleased to announce the windows installer is up for you to download.

This file should install properly The Ur-Quan Masters Project6014 demo version 0.2.0.
The installer automatically downloads the content packages you want... well theoretically it should, but the hires4x package is too big so you'll have to download it manually and extract the .rar files in a directory, and tell the installer where this directory is.

Sorry for the inconvenience, look out for the next, fully automated version !

Alvarin: all of Megagun's mirror seems unreachable at the moment. Otherwise I'd have a location for the automated download of the hires4x package.

..oh. Haha. I'm an idiot.

The mirrors for the Linux section was using 'p6014' as a folder, whereas the non-Linux section was using 'project6014' as a folder. I renamed the 'project6014' folder to 'p6014' (on the server), which obviously broke the non-Linux section.

All downloads should work now. As far as I know, they're hosted on the same server as these forums, so if you're having troubles here it might mean that my mirrors won't work.

Quinarbre: use my mirrors for the hires4x package now. That's actually mostly why I put them up, because I realized that your installer probably couldn't work with splitted files. :)

Alvarin: Odd, they should work. Control-F5 maybe? I just checked myself, and they definitively work here. Either way, I've added them to Google Code now, so you can grab them from there instead.
As far as installing these goes: dpkg -i <filename>. You only need either the 32-bit or 64-bit binaries, plus the base content. Any other .deb packages are optional.

Oldlaptop: let me see if I can get it running/compiling on Debian 6 myself. The source package is mostly an altered version of the official Debian 6 UQM pkgsrc, so I think it should work, but I've made some stupid alterations that don't exactly make it a proper pkgsrc (I'm not exactly an expert with this kind of thing, that's why :P) and it needs some manual fiddling before it'll poop out a proper .deb package
EDIT: The packages available right now work with Debian 6, too. Just tested 'em in a VM. :)
If there is any reason for me to recompile and republish this thing on Debian 6, let me know. Otherwise, I'll keep things as they are.

Maybe I found a bug.
Once fought against the Lurg, found the Precursor spaceship, I leave the planet and the program closes. This happens also with the people in Alpha Vulpecula. It happened to someone else? I use Ubuntu 10.10

Hmm, can you give me a game save just moments prior to the action that causes this crash? The game save should be in ~/.uqmmod/save and named after the save slot (starcon2.00 is the save for slot #0). If you don't have any means to hand the game save to me, let me know and I'll give you an e-mail address to send it to.

Can't run the Windows version at all. It displays the title screen and then crashes. I did not download the hi-res packages.

Hmm, apparently running the .bat file (which runs the game with the -o parameter) fixed the problem.

Yup, the game is defaulted to high resolution, which can't run with the -o parameter. We want to show what we've done :)

Just what I suspected, Megagun. I'm building and uploading an installer that points towards your mirror, and then I have to learn how to configure nsis to use multiple mirrors.

Hmm, I've managed to fix my problem by deleting the 0.1.0 version and then installing 0.2.0. Now everything seems to work properly. :)

Yup, my game crashed after trying to visit the black hole looking thing in Orz space. I guess the ariloo was right, I'm not ready to pass into it.

I've received the save files, reproduced the issue and reported it as issue #30 (http://code.google.com/p/project6014/issues/detail?id=30)
As I'm not familiar with the code, someone else will have to take a closer look at this issue.

Thanks again for reporting it.

So, bug report time!

All of these bugs apply to the low-res version. I have no idea how things are in the high-res version.

- The slave shields' pulsing seems to be rather irregular and way too fast.
- The appearance of the alien fleets in hyperspace, instead of looking like small circles of TrueSpace like they always did, now cycles rapidly through the images of various stars and even QuasiSpace portals.
- During conversations, when you open the text screen showing you the alien's last response, the oscilloscope freezes. It starts again when you return to the normal conversation screen.

Also, a suggestion. Can we have hi-res versions of the old Star Control fonts instead of those Star Trek fonts in the hi-res version?

Thanks, I may have overlooked the low-res version a bit when upgrading hyperspace.
We haven't touched pulsating shields nor the oscilloscope so I don't understand where that behavior comes from, but we'll look into it.


What do you mean exactly ? We've struggled to find fonts that suited the aliens best, or that looked like the original ones ; when none existed we picked something we liked. If you happen to know what fonts were originally chosen, please indicate them and we'll be glad to use them in a bigger size.

The problem is there is no high res version of those fonts. So we've had to look for alternatives.  If you'd like to go pixel by pixel and create high res version of those fonts, I'd love to have them.  At around 10 minutes per letter, multiplied by the entire alphabet (including European characters, Cyrllic characters, and other extended characters), and multiply that by 30 alien races... You're looking at around 1,200 hours worth of work.   ::)     So, no.   Not going to happen PRH. Sorry. 

So we had to choose between existing fonts that is freely available, that has the correct license, is monospaced, and has the extended character set we need.

Some of these have changed (like Arilou and Dynarri), but for the most part, these are the fonts:
(http://star-control.com/community/download/file.php?id=201)
(http://star-control.com/community/download/file.php?id=202)

Hello Project team.

I just downloaded and installed the demo 2 on windows 7 ( No problems at all).
I have put all settings on highest possible and  just started playing My monitor is a iiyama prolite B2409HDS and my  Computer is also connect with a hdmi Cable to a panasonic 42 Inch Plasma television.

I LOVE THE HD  that is now showing full screen on both ( monitor and TV)  

although i have played the game over 20 times , This is a complete new experience!

I just  am at the very beginning of the game. I can play for a couple of hours before i have to go to sleep.
When i started the first time i saw no HD grapics  when i contacted the starbase chmrrrr. I remembered  the art of  Dczanik in several topics so i thought hmm i must have done something wrong. I went back to the settings and then noticed i had it on 800x600 so i have put it on 1280x960 and ran the game again! WOW! the intro looks Fantastic Both on Monitor and espacially on the Panasonic 42 Inch!!

FANTASTIC Job team!

I still consider SC2 as one of the best SF games ever! and i remember how exited i was when i  bought and played the original  when it came out!   (i still have the original box)

But This demo version 2 in HD is as i said a complete new experience playing Sc2!

I was addicted to the mass effect series the last couple of months playing a redhaired female adept :) named Nicole. But Nicole has to wait  for replays because I first have to discover everything in the  sc2 Demo.

1 problem i ran into... I use Gadwin Printscreen for screenshots. If i want to make a screenshot the game crashes . Also my mouse is not responding then and i have to do alt cntr dell to close the game with the taskmanager.

I sure can advise every player to look at the intro and  the game in HD settings  on a Big Television!  :)

Thanks for creating this demo!   Fantastic stuff!  

Ill start playing now and will write down any bugs i will be confronted with ( hopefully none)

What i saw sofar  in a few minutes of playing and liked  very much : The HD version: The dispatch of the lander, The rotating planets, The HD  biological  "Monsters".  

I would like to buy all members of the team a pizza and a beer  ;)

Thanks A lot!

Many regards from the Netherlands. ( excuse me for my terrible english).



 

  

IceAge: This is the kind of comment that makes the hundred of hours we put into it feel completely justified and worth it. Thank you :)  We've tried to give a new experience, but still make it feel like the original game.  The programmers really worked hard to make it feel like the original game, tweaking everything they could constantly.   Mass Effect 1 and 2 are games that I have, just never had the time to play them. Now that we're done with the demo, I may take a break and finally go play them :)

People are commenting on the rotating planets. This was one of my ideas, but it's easy to have ideas. Implementing them is another matter.  That's where real genius and skill come in. I wanted this, but figured implementing it would be too tough. We are talking about dynamically creating several unique planets in a second. So I was going to try to make pre-rendered planets for every type.  But Benjamin said let him try. Well, the guy completely re-wrote the solar system code!  Now, not only do they rotate, but you can visit the planets 6 months later, and see their orbit position has changed too.  Little things like that, transports taking off, just makes the everything feel more alive.

Haven't posted on these forums for at least several years (EDIT: actually 8 years):
Last time I was active, current version of UQM was 0.4 or maybe 0.5 .

When v0.7 UQM arrived, it peaked my interest to try Star Control 2 once more. Then after I finished it, I just wanted mooore!!!

Then I founded Lurg dialogue on youtube, which got me curious about 6014 project. After trying 0.1, it was like I played some long lost expansion pack for original SC2. It just fits well to SC2 story, and same engine made it really feel like expansion to original game.

As soon as it was released, I tried 0.2 in high resolution, and it is magnificent! Now I'm bummed that p6014 will still be work in progress for a long time, and that at the same time original SC2 is not yet ported to high resolution. Well, at least super melee is complete in HD, if played from p6014. ;D

Only thing I don't like is that some of new p6014 comm screens have lost some of their animations in HD version , compared to VGA versions. But I guess it's due to it being work in progress.

Also, I really like some of the new content in 0.2, like Shofixti colony, or Yehat starbase.


Anyway, keep up good work. Let us hope that next year we'll get extended campaign. :D

Glad we got you excited about Star Control once again!

Well, Im working on the HD mod for Urquan Masters. It will just take some additional time. Right now the biggest issues is really the code. I just need to merge some of the 6014 and 0.7 code in.  But I fear the coders are a little frazzled by everything right now. Not all the artwork is complete either. If it doesnt exist in 6014 then it's probably not done yet. My main focus was 6014.

Animation is something  I hate. The tools are just not there yet and it takes so long. Yes, some of the animation is missing from the HD version. Blame that on an overzealous deadline (my fault). It will get added in later.

Hey, can I make a suggestions for P6014? There should be a planet completely covered in purple resources, but if you try to land on it you die automatically  ;D

The lander, or the flagship? Either way, I'm not certain what that would add to the game... to put it mildly.

I believe it is an attempt at turning this into a Sierra game. Next up, you'll lose the game because you forgot to pick something up at the beginning at the game.

Few days ago i was showing my gf (she also likes videogames) the best game of alltime.
Then i saw the Lurg video and i found P6014.

I must say i'm amazed and so happy to see this jewel of a game restored, up and running. You've given me something to look foward to.

Keep up the great job guys!

Whoa, I last posted in this thread on page 6, which is three years ago, and now it's all the way to page 27! Is it my imagination, or have I heard rumours of the Chmmr turning evil?

Would it not be possible to use something to turn the pixel fonts into a vector image and then use that for a new font? I'm not really sure if that could work, but it feels like it might have a chance.

Rumors are rumors. I try to keep out of the writing part, so I'm not sure exactly what's going to happen. I want to be as surprised as everybody else.  Even what's in the demo may change drastically to what's in the full game. 

We have a guy on the art team, Kwayne who has taken it upon himself to reproduce some of the fonts as close as possible.  And with the HD project... some fonts, like the Pkunk I think look better than the original, and fit the alien perfectly.  If you ever looked at the quality of 'vectorizing' stuff like fonts. It's really hit-or-miss.  When it works, it's great. When it doesn't...it looks horrible.  Some of the stuff for the HD project, like the Ilwrath, I've never been able to find anything even remotely close enough...so I created my own. Extended characters, European characters, and even Cyrillic characters are issues we deal and struggle with.  Too much stuff to do, not enough people working on it.  So if you want to help... I'd love it.

If you haven't been read this forum in 3 years... check out the demo (http://code.google.com/p/project6014/wiki/Downloads?tm=2). You'll see lots of changes :) 

Or at least check out the youtube video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQBQYi88AAI&feature=youtu.be

Thanks Delphot! We always appreciate the comments. 

Yeah, I downloaded the demo just before posting that... haven't tried it yet though.

Why are you forcing the tiny resolution upon people who haven't installed the hi-def packages? What happened to the scaling options? It's especially jarring because the option to choose the scaling method is still there even though it's clearly completely ignored.

Seems like I have a similar story to many.  I used to play SC2 with a couple friends back when the game was new, we'd kill en entire weekend on Super Melee.  I downloaded UQM a few years ago, and every six months or so I'd give it a go.  I just played through the P6014 demo, and my god you guys have done an amazing job.  The new ship is very, very neat, and I missed the good' ole Avatar.

I'm really looking forward to trying your next version, there can't a SC fan who won't be thrilled by this version!

I have to say, the graphics are a bit hard on the eyes, despite (or perhaps because of) the higher resolution... I'm mostly thinking of poor contrast between certain things, particularly some of the planets. Also, the new quake graphics make them almost invisible.

They scaling methods work all right:

Select 320x240 as your resolution, then select one of the "Stretch gfx?" options. For instance, selecting 320->800 will stretch the original 320x240 graphics to 800x600 graphics. Then you can select the softening scaler (biadapt, hq, etc...) as you please.

The stretched lo-res graphics are in a separate menu item since 0.2.1 since many people found it confusing to have them in the same menu item as the hi-res graphics.

And now I've found it confusing to have it in a different menu item. :P

Well, having played through the demo twice (once going straight to the goal, and once taking time to visit the various allies first), I have lots of things to say. Doubtless there's more that I've forgotten, though I opened up the game to remind me of a couple of them.

Things I like

• The Lurg. I'm not even really sure why, but they just seem right somehow.
• Umgah selling the Slylandro modified Marauder vessels (though I was slightly disappointed to discover that, if attacked, they immediately warp away and lack their own victory ditty, mainly because I liked the idea of them having their own victory ditty)
• Moving planets and starbases
• The various new comm screens; Syreen homeworld, Syreen ship, Earthling ship, Shofixti colony, Yehat starbase... I think that's all of them? Commander Hayes doesn't count as "new" since it's just a minor modification of the existing one.
• The fate of the Kohr-Ah's talking pets seems logical, though it makes me wonder how they translate now that they don't have them.
• The use of "spheres of influence" to convey other information.
• (click to show/hide)

  below.ogg and its implications. (Although it's a little short... not that that truly matters.)
• Multiple starbases! Though there's nothing to actually differentiate them (other than appearance/location)... whether that's good or bad, I'm not sure.

Things I dislike

• (click to show/hide)

  The Chmmr... in particular their use of slave shields, at least in part because both cases of their use imply harmful effects on the respective species (the Mycon as mentioned by the Chmmr needing planet to reproduce or something, and the VUX explained by their starbase as needing sunlight), but also what the Yehat (and Hayes) have said about them.
• Use of what appears to be the planet images from orbit mode in solar system mode; it makes the planets hard to see.
• The supposed fate of the Ilwrath and Thraddash... I'm of the school who believes that their fleets would have been totally destroyed but some survivors would've remained planetbound on their respective homeworlds.
• Syreen starbase comm screen. I hope this is just temporary, because it's the worst art in the demo. It doesn't even look human, really.
• The Utwig's withdrawal seems too forced to me, though I suppose it does sort of fit them.
• Not being allowed to land/converse on allied homeworlds. On the whole, I would prefer being forced into conversation rather than the computer refusing to dispatch a lander.
• Vela in general... it's a significant human colony, so why is the only thing you can do there land and return home to find a note from Talana? Speaking of which, why is Talana not with you?

Things I'm not really sure about; ie, I don't really dislike them, but neither are they particularly nice.

• The nebula backgrounds in solar systems
• (not entirely P6014-related) Some of the high-definition graphics are really nice, but I don't much like Commander Hayes or the planet quakes. On the whole I think I prefer the original graphics, but my mileage varies quite a bit.
• The way that ally spheres of influence usually focus on their home star and contain only that star... until you talk to one of their ships, at which point the actual sphere becomes evident.
• The Explorer.
• The Melnorme somehow seem a whole lot less adept at information gathering than they were in UQM.
• The Lurg's reasoning for the Ur-Quan missing them... I should think it's not the actual reason though, so I guess it's not that bad.

Random rambling, feel free to ignore :P

(Spoilered just in case)

Those are all very good points, and I agree with most of them! I just wanted to weigh in on two of them:

Random stuff/Dialogue options/Slylandro: I think the entire dialogue system at the moment is still very much at an alpha/preview stage. In fact, with any race there is no sort of "memory" of what you've already said, and you always have the entire dialogue tree available as though you've just met the guys. I imagine this will all get reworked before long. And I hope that the Slylandro will get a bit more of a role in that :-)

Chmmr dislike: I must say I agree whole-heartedly that the direction which the story seems to take worries me a bit. For one, there's the obvious frustration that the fight you were fighting in the original game wasn't because you were the "good guys", but rather because you were just as bad, but you just didn't want to be on the losing side. Second, it's too cliché and trite a device to have your trusted mentors from Part I become the villains in Part II. We should be able to come up with something more original than that. And third it feels very much out of character. Granted that the Chmmr are a new species and don't really have a past characterization, but it paints a bleak and depressing picture of the new Alliance. I just really cannot get behind the idea of the Alliance slave-shielding anyone. After at least three core members of the old core alliance were slave-shielded for so long, you would have to be very cynical to think that that's an appropriate way to deal with opposition, and it somehow makes you not want to fight for those guys anymore.

Anyway, as I've been saying, on a technical level the game is looking better and better as time goes by, so I'm very excited to see the final product one day!

I know of at least 1 race I built to remember things and I've tested it, 1 race which I designed to remember things but I have not tested it, 1 race where I think I remember it knowing what I've said, and 1 race for which I've seen the source code and they really ought to remember something.

The overall point that all of the races should have multiple long-term states is correct.

I will say this:  Provided the Alliance does not believe it to be a permanent solution, but rather a stopgap until they decide what to REALLY do with them?  It makes sense.  They would do it reluctantly while they rebuild and debate what steps to take.  Like with the Mycon. 

I think that argument works for the Mycon. I don't think it works for the VUX.

The VUX are inherently aggressive and xenophobic.  Of all the Hierarchy races, they're one of the ones most likely to continue the war.  Especially against Earth.  I could easily see the VUX going pirate in Earthling space.

The VUX being reliant on sunlight may go in later versions. The repetition of the theme seems excessive. One is fine, but both? Really?

Well, they are green, plus they have a pretty big eye. Actually, I seem to remember reading that they were perfectly adapted to low-light conditions and could see a much wider spectrum of light than humans. The question is, was that in actual source material or was it only in Zarla's fanfluff..?

Perhaps, but I don't really see that as justification for slave-shielding them; they weren't a significant issue before the war, after all, so even if they did try to continue fighting I don't see why they'd be an issue afterwards. Especially since they've lost Admiral ZEX.

Repetition? Some other race is reliant on sunlight?

They weren't a significant issue before the war because few of the races knew of them.  Pretty much, it'd only have been the Yehat and their ships are well suited for turning Intruders into scrap.

Just the VUX -seeing- humans was enough to make them want to destroy Earthling craft.  Without the Ur-quan to hold them in check, would they be able to resist taking out Earth freighters?

As for ZEX?  I find it hard to believe an entire race that spread across numerous worlds would be unable to field another tactician.

I'm pretty sure that sun-reliance interefered-with-by-slave-shielding is claimed of the Mycon too. In their case, they had a sun device, which suggests solar energy is important to them, even if they're subterranean.

Is there any actual need to invent excuses to victimize the VUX or the Mycon anyway?

I don't think there's any dispute about the hostility of either Vux or Mycon. The only problem I have is with the excessiveness of vindictiveness of the Alliance response.

I always though that the experience of living under a slave shield for what would at the time have been perceived as the rest of eternity was one of the most haunting and frightening things imaginable. And having lived thus for nigh two decades, any of the slave races should have found it to be a terrible thing to impose on anyone. There's a basic element of compassion that we would like people who we are supposed to relate to to have. Anyone who has experienced the reality of living under the shield should not want to wish this even on their enemies.

There's no reason why hostile aliens can't just be contained by conventional means. A decisive military victory would simply leave their fleets decimated and their starship production facilities bombed to a crisp. But is there really a need for sadistic revenge?

After the Second Doctrinal Conflict, the most powerful race around is the Chmmr. Powerful enough to impose any policy they want on anyone while the Alliance they're not reluctant anymore to lead formally is in the phase of rebuilding, rather powerless. Not just that, but many other Alliance races are not exactly human (, VUX-, Mycon-) rights activists either. Both races who merged into being the Chmmr were slave-shielded, and they were able to cross the impenetrable shield, so they were not so touched by the whole thing. Even better, the shield served the purpose of protection for their great plan. In their new, Chmmr perspective, the shield is a highly effective solution that nullifies the slightest possibility of future conflicts caused by both races who are undisputedly hostile.


Imprisonment is a pretty conventional punishment I think.

Not on that scale.

By what standards?

By the definition of 'conventional'? The only previous actors to imprison entire races on their home planets were the Kzer-Za, and we all agree they're not exactly moral paragons.

Yes, but "we all" are humans. We might all agree, but the Chmmr obviously did not care, and they made the decision to create the shields, a newly conventionalized punishment absolutely OK by their standards which they're powerful enough to impose on weakling humans.

But why is there a need for "punishment" at all? War is not a crime, and most wars in our own history don't end with punishment. Sure, there is looting and demands for reparations and all, but not punishment, as in you go and kill 1% for the losing party's population or so. That's exactly why there's a martial law that's different from civilian law. An enemy soldier that attacks you is not a criminal for doing so, and isn't normally punished for it.

As it stands, slave-shielding the Vux comes off as needlessly vengeful. As I said, just defeating them militarily would seem to be entirely sufficient to protect everyone else from their hostility.

And as I said you are not a Chmmr.

Most wars in our history were waged for conquest, started by nobles, and public opinion -- where the vegeful spirit comes from -- had no influence. It gained influence with time while populations became parts of identity groups. Modern wars -- where nationality became an important identity factor -- ended in punishment if there was a clear opportunity (resources and geography) and justification (casualties or ideological differences) to punish the other party.

But yes, maybe "punishment" is not the right word. The Chmmr are not the punishing type (ideally), so their justification might be the protection of Alliance races. The thing is that the VUX were messing with the Alliance, while the Kohr-Ah were still there. What is the solution?

- Let them pirate our fleets, so we're weaker against the Kohr-Ah?
- Cripple their military so they cannot defend themselves against the Kohr-Ah?
- Or put an impenetrable shield around them to protect Alliance citizens, and at least they have some protection against the Kohr-Ah too, with a StarBase in orbit where the Yehat can rally, and an army under the shield in case it becomes cracked?

The whole point of slave shielding VUX and Mycon, storywise, is to show that Chmmr are not as benevolent as Chenjesu.


P.S.
Also, I'm pretty sure there will be story arc regarding Chmmr behavior.

That's true.

P6014 is supposed to be an adventure game like SCII was, and as such, I don't see why is it important to always think in realistic proportions and details, and by human standards as if they would always apply to the actions of every form of sentience. But that's because SC being a sci-fi universe, and people often get too serious because of the "sci" part, while pay less attention to the "fi" part, where a writer can afford inaccuracy, abstractions, relativism depending on the style of the setting. The style of Star Control is so permissive you can almost forget seriousness and treat the whole thing as Monkey Island in space.

My point is about creating an engaging story, though: If I don't like any of the characters, because I can't relate to their inhumane and cruel actions, then I might not find it enjoyable to play through the story. And because it's a sequel, I might potentially feel different about the original as well after playing the sequel. That's my main concern, in a nutshell. Also, having a good guy from Part 1 turn out to actually be the evil guy in Part 2 is a very hackneyed cliché, and I would just hope for something a little more original.

That's why I hope that raising these concerns early on in the process may help improve the final result -- but it's all just a personal opinion, and it's only because I'm so excited by the project in its current state that I feel strongly enough to want it to be the best it can be.

It seems I lack the writing talent to answer your reply without dissecting it:

If you have a low tolerance, nobody will force you to play the game.
I mentioned that the Chmmr have more than enough power to become tyrants who don't even need to ask humans about their opinions. I don't understand why is it such a tragedy that aliens make "inhumane" decisions. As much as I know, no previously known SC race will behave out of character without a reason.

Partly agree, that's why I don't like some bitchy rantings in the demo conversations.
But our subject was the Chmmr and their supposed "vengeful" behaviour. Problem with that is: why do you think that the Chmmr = Chenjesu? How much we know about the Chmmr? Chenjesu and Mmrnmhrm artificially merged into one species. They were introduced only superficially, as endgame musclepower. Their carefully planned transformation was interrupted by the Captain. 4 years have passed since that interruption. Other factors about difference in behaviour unknown (and possibly spoiler).

Also, throwing in the cliché card is a very hackneyed cliché, and I would just hope for something a little more original. Especially when it comes to changes in the story.
It's good that our writers aren't afraid of using cliché if they're useful tools. As many arcs in the P6014 story -- similarly to SC2 -- the Chmmr arc is designed to be part of outlining the progression of the game, which is more important than it's level of originality (subjective depending on personal experience). However, original elements in stories are often embedded into cliché frameworks. Outlawing a category as wide as "having a good guy from Part 1 turn out to actually be the evil guy in Part 2" doesn't help us.

I know it's all just a personal opinion, that's why it's doubtful that it will help "improve the final result" or make it "the best it can be" rather than making it simply accord to your personal preference.

I'd sign that.

It is impossible to make any work of art 100% original. The idea is to use different cliches in such a way that it builds upon what came before it. Would you prefer the game to be a place full of sunshine and rainbows where the good guys save orphans and the bad guys eat babies? We're not children. We do not need a system of black-and-white morality. I for one do not want the Chmmr to be the standard issue, goody two-shoes, generic leader figures. That would be a far worse cliche, and it would waste a perfectly good plot. A good character does not always have to be likable, just how a villainous character does not always have to be completely despicable.

No, of course not -- but perhaps the story could just be about something new that's interesting its own right without the need to put all the established races and people through all this. You see, the fact that the humans and the syreens and the yehat and whatnot were all standing by and thus to some extent condoning the alliance's course of action casts a big shadow over everyone. Mind you, there's already great potential for the story with the Lurg and the new Precursor sites and the Shofixtis' cause and all that, so there's certainly plenty of room for new directions.

I appreciate that nothing is ever 100% original, but in a galaxy so vast and full of the unknown, I'd think that you wouldn't be running short of interesting things to do. Or from another perspective: Imagine one day you wake up, and you're government isn't planning a coup to take over the world - and yet your life can be plenty exciting.

Anyway, it seems like I'm stepping on more toes here than I had intended to, so please do feel free to discount my ramblings; the last thing I'd want is to needlessly get in the way of this great and very promising project. Keep up the good work!

Should the writer team employ mind reading techniques on you so they would finally get a clue about what is interesting to you? You certainly put much effort into saying nothing -- like a politician -- while complaining against something you have no insight about.

The problem is not that you get in the way of any of us -- you don't -- but the awkward minutes of facepalm you make us (well, me at least) perform by poor arguments based on arbitrary presumptions, while you don't show the slightest intent to say anything useful. Saying that you want something new, something original is not helpful, but friggin' annoying!

While I certainly sympathize with your frustration, you might want to take a deep breath there Kwayne. You're making a sequel to something a lot of people hold very dear, so like it or not you'll get a lot of feedback on how you're not quite doing it right. You might not want to let the frustration spill over into insults against people who might come across a bit clumisly, but ultimately mean well. Though that's your call of course.

Anyway, regarding the story I think it's important for those outside the story process to recall that tropes in themselves are not bad. There is a reason they are tropes, and that's because quite often they work well. I have no affiliation with P6014, but based on the stuff in the demo and some of the teaser screens I've seen, I'm fairly confident that they've got some very competent writers that will make this work just fine. There are lots of ways this trope can work, from the Chenjesu not beign as benevolent as you thought to the M:bots strange heritage making itself known to a failure in the Process to a connection to something altoghether different. And the exiting part will be finding out what is going on.

I do agree with hackdx that going along with the Chmmmr shielding other races casts a shadow over other races, but I think that is a good thing. It was mentioned earleir that Star Control is at times almost Monkey Island in space. I think the beauty of it is that it weaves such powerful comedic elements with an actual serious story.  Sure, a lot of the races are pretty wacky, but the Yehat also surrendered in dishonour, the Quan are tortured souls and the even though the Thraddash are silly brutes, you kill them all off in a cold genocide. It's a really werid blend, but it works well. I assume P6014 writers are aiming for something similar.

Anyway, I mostly stay out of these threads because I am looking forward to being surprised but D_999's three word comment jumped out at me in my RSS feed so I got curious. Sorry for the interruption.

I can hold my venom, but people get insulted anyways if they want to. It's a popular sport in the western world. I can't count in anyone's good intentions when evaluating the worth of their critique. I don't say fans shouldn't give feedback, but hackdx asks for too much and gives too little. Wasting a useful plot by deleting the complete Chmmr arc along with others connected to it is not something someone should be able to sweep away with a cheap cliché card and strong convictions. I won't cry my pillow full if he won't play P6014 just because he doesn't like the characters.

About the Chmmr shielding habits casting shadows on others, I'm not sure if that's true, as it depends on the situation. It's quite possible that all the Alliance races are merely in a state of rebuilding, nobody could blame them for having higher priorities. But even if they could have the energy to resist, why would they do? Was either Alliance -- old or new -- a do-good moral crusader boy scout corps? Don't think so. That sort of stuff is in Star Trek.

From the behaviour of the Chmmr in Star Control 2 they remind me a lot about Data from Star Trek - Next generation. Such a race should make all decisions solely based upon logic and reason ( not based upon any emotions ). I also think that the Arilou and the Orz are much better suited for being villains than the Chmmr. I actually doubt that the Orz germinated into androsynth space just to help the commander in his fight against the Ur-Quan. Seems almost implicit that they have some other agenda ( like germinating into the captain and the other species ). I would assume that a battle between the  agenda of the Arilou VS the agenda of the Orz would be the natural contextual background of a Star Control 2 sequel ( kinda like the Vorlons VS the Shadows in Babylon 5 ). As for the Chmmr, it might be interesting to see them infected with a virus which makes them evil ( possibly given to them by the Mycon ). Kinda like Data's evil twin brother Lore in Star Trek - The next generation. Evil behaviour can be completely logical and reasonable. An example would be murdering people with genetic disorders and low IQ in order to improve the genes of mankind.

I think everyone is jumping the gun quite a bit. The purpose of the demo is to give us a taste of what is to come, they are hardly going to give us exact details on the Chmmr plans to turn Earth into a ice cream stand or the Orz plans to conquer the Pkunk via the use of a limerick contest (Oh damnit now I spoiled the ending!)

The demo gave us all a taste and now we are all fighting with each other as we try to guess on what comes next. That's great! But I am noticing several comments towards what the creators should do or are doing wrong in our various opinions.  Let's be careful not to spit any venom at the creators when we do not know anything close to the full story yet.

That's basically exactly right :)

Although, it is only natural (and fun) to speculate. And we do sort of leave ourselves opon to unreasonable amounts of scrutiny when releasing little teasers and demos

Meh, like I said it is up to you what you do. I'd venture to guess that people don't get as insulted if you don't tell them they are like worthless politicans who make you facepalm over their stupidity though.


You're right of course. I guess the expression was kind of clumsy. What I meant was more along the lines that this kind of thing casts a shadow over the perceived goody-two-shoeness of the Alliance, which makes them more nuanced and alive. Like you say, the assumption that the Alliance is all good all the time is a bit naive. The original races banded together to fight a threat and allowed at least one member race to commit suicide on a daily basis in combat. The new one was complicit in two  possible genocides even before the Quans were defeated and forced at least one race to join against their will. Just like the Ur-quan aren't enslaving people just because they are evil but rather have a compelling backstory, I look forward to the backstory on why the Alliance does what it does and acts as it acts. Shades of gray are more fun then black and white, IMO.

I do think that any race going along with slaveshielding the VUX is slightly tarnished by association, just as one might argue that any nation going along with the invasion of Iraq was tarnished by that association at some level. Or at least in the eyes of those who didn't join. But that doesn't make the whole race evil or out of character. Also, the way different people refer to it in the demo (Hayes being pretty happy, the Pkunk Queen being much less so) makes for a nuanced view of an Alliance where prioritiesand opinions differ quite a bit. Which is something I enjoy.


I think we're mostly discussing our reactions to the demo and guessing at what is to come. It's only natural that some are unhappy with the story while others are happy. We've all had very different ideas of what the next SC should contain. On a discussion forum like this, we should be discussing our opinions on both what should be done and what shouldn't be done, what we enjoy and what we don't. Otherwise, what's the point of discussing at all? As long as we keep in mind that random voices on the internet in no way get to call the shots or change the story produced by the actual team of course. Hey Cedric, isn't the story pretty much done by now anyway? I was udner the impression that only some dialogue was missing. If so, maybe the should be edited in somewhere so that anyone trying to not just give feedback but also suggest changes is aware of the fact that they are pretty late to the party.

The the story is basically sorted, but the dialogue is a long way from being written. So yes. Suggestions about plot are all a bit pointless at thus stage.

I'm afraid its mostly boring stuff like bugs that we want feedback on right now, and will do for the foreseeable future. I supposed ships too actually. They will take a LOT of tweaking to get right. I can see us releasing lots of 1.x's with various ship/melee improvements.

Can one of those improvements be naming a ship after me :p

Paperclips, I'm afraid. So close.

I disagree! :P

Am I looking for something that isn't there?

There are two new aliens besides the Lurg, but I suspect they're not in the game yet; you can fight them (or as them) in super melee though.

ok, thanks. I saw them there, in melee, but I didn't know if they were actually programmed into the story yet or not.

You'd have to ask the programmers about that, I think. Unless you want to spend hours exploring the entire map, only to (probably) not find them. :P

Nope, the Baul and Foon-Foon are not in the single player game.  They were going to be, but it was decided to save them for the full game.  We did put their ships in melee to work out the multi-player kinks.

Does that mean we don't get to "Have a baul" in the SP mode :)

I still think the Imperial Empire Star destroyers should make an appearance.......maybe they are what was supposed to be at groombridge in the SC2 (Would explain the lack of other planets in that system :p)

I would much prefer if they came up with another new alien race and did away with the ISD.

I happen to like the ISD.

I'm quite indifferent about the ISD. It looks like a good experiment and display of skill, though I generally don't like crossovers. (Says the one who snuck SC races into Space Empires V)

Have any of you considered the fact that toys for bob may in fact be The Emperor and Darth Vader? See they must belong in the same universe then :p

The ISD is awesome. Search your feelings; you know it to be true.

I registered just to post this!  Though I was sure I had an account from ages ago...nope!  Every Star Control site except this one.

I've been a huge fan of the Star Control series since the mid-90's, and I've been waiting for a sequel for the longest time.  I don't care if this one isn't canon, it looks promising enough to be canon!  I really love and admire all the hard work that has been put into this project.
I spend a good few hours playing the mod and exploring, and I thought I'd share my thoughts.

The Excellent:
-The HD graphics are incredible.  Everything fits in perfectly (with one exception) and looks like Star Control 2, but significantly more visually appealing.
-The beginning of the plot.  It's really got me hooked and hoping for more.  It seems to fit in-universe perfectly so far.
-The implications behind -The voices.  The Orz voice is awesome, and I'm really glad that they weren't tossed out as an option.
-The Vux's speech about what it's like under the slave shield.  Very powerful, and fits right in with the plights of other races in SC2

The Great:
-The orbiting and rotating planets.  There do appear to be some minor issues with those (I believe I've been brought into the planet's "screen" after leaving it, but I can't reproduce it) but it's a really nice detail, and I know it'll be improved.
-The new starmap!  It looks like a lot of work and detail was put into it.  It feels a bit small in the demo, but that's sure to change.  It definitely feels a lot of key areas are close to "home", and with the Explorer, everything feels too easily accessible.  Of course, this is a demo.  I can't wait to see how all the space gets used and what other mysteries lie in these new stars!

Things I'm Not Sure About:
-The Explorer.  Starting off with it might be a little bit too powerful.  It feels more like a "devtool" of sorts since it's very easy to scour the whole star map, refuel with the Melnorme, and evade all the enemys.  For savvy players, I'm sure they'll immediately begin the game by picking up everything they possibly can at this point in the game and completely ignore the missing Shofixti scout fleet.
It's very different from SC2.  In SC2, I was always afraid of running into probes.  In this demo, I was hardly afraid of the Kohr-Ah because they couldn't catch my ship unless they spawned right next to a star I was heading into.
That being said, the design of the ship itself is great, and it's incredible fun to use in Melee!  I'm especially pleased that it's in Super Melee.  It also makes a lot of sense plot-wise, and Commander Hayes' description of it really pumped me up to put it into action.  It just feels a little overpowered in terms of exploration if it can be used without bounds from the beginning of the game.
 ;)
-Commander Hayes hating the Vux so much.  Maybe I'd have to go back to SC2 and hear what he has to say about them, but he seems to endorse the slave shielding a little bit too much.  Though he is a war veteran, so he has an excuse.  :)
-The lander starting off fully upgraded.  This fits in with the ship.  (Makes accumulating resources too easy...but it's probably just for the demo so we don't spend too much time mining :))
--The previously mentioned exception of the new Syreen Starbase commander.  A good joke, but it doesn't fit in (pun intended) visually with the SC2 style artwork imo

Don't take my criticisms too harshly, please!  I'm trying to be constructive, and if I've offended anybody who worked on the project, I apologise.  Especially as this is still in the early development stage, I feel that you guys would appreciate all the input from fans that's out there...if we didn't think that this could be the next SC game (in spirit) we wouldn't care so much about it!
I'm really looking forward to the finished version (and hearing about progress on the way there), however many years it takes!  Keep up the excellent work; everyone involved with this project deserves a round of applause.   ;D

So, uh, you mention there's an exception, but don't go on to say what this exception is? I'm curious now! (Or did I just miss it?)

Sorry!  I added it in.  I had a feeling that I would forget to add it in the later section...

It's the Syreen commander at the Starbase, which I'm guessing is a joke and probably a placeholder.  The rest of the Syreen artwork is incredible!

Nice post!


I just wanted to comment on that one point: I actually really like the fact that this time you get a suitable tool for your task at hand. This is a continuation of the story, not a beat-by-beat repeat of the game, so it's nice to do something new. We had escape from oppression and struggle-of-the-underdog the last time, and this isn't the only type of story there is. So this time you're in an established, resourceful society that faces a new challenge, and that's always a good thing. This time refuelling and resource gathering aren't your main concern - and that's great.

Space is big, and a lot can happen, so it's always nice to see when something new happens and a sequel isn't just a repeat of the same motions of the first part.

That's not true!....That's IMPOSSIBLE!!!! ;D

I know I am asking a longshot question but I am curious, do you guys currently plan on releasing another expanded demo or is the next goal aimed at a completed game and in either case, what kind of time table are you looking at for release right now?

It's a reasonable question.

I personally don't think there's much point in another expanded demo release. We sort of broke with SC2 tradition by having a fixed point in the plot with the Lurg encounter. To have another meaningful demo release we'd have to have another fixed point in the plot - and that takes us away from SC's open-endedness, or at least the ability to do almost anything in any order.

More likely the next release will be a beta for testing, I.e the full thing in buggy form. As for timeline, well that is utterly impossibly to predict and relies on all sorts of factors, not the least of which will be crew fatigue and motivation, or real life getting in the way. So much work to do though. So much work.

However, we're a diverse team, and others will have other opinions on releases. And I know some are way more optimistic/ambitious about final release dates than I am.

Ah yes, that... blobby thing. I completely agree on this point.

I'll agree that it makes sense plotwise, and initially I was thrilled to start off with a ship like that.  From a gameplay sense, I feel that it might be a little bit too overpowered to have at the start of the game.  In the demo, it makes sense to have a ship that can easily explore everything, talk to all the races, see all the new star systems...but if the ship is identical in the full release, it might be too easy to beat the game.

I understand that mining probably won't be a big part of the game (which again, makes sense plotwise, but I really liked that aspect of SC2), but exploration will certainly be a big part of the game.  If it'll be this easy to fly from one race's area to tthe next, I'm worried that it'll be too easy to zip through the game.
If we're to fear the Kohr-Ah, it's reasonable to expect that they should have some chance to catch us at some point in the game.

Possible ideas...
-The Chmmr don't want to allocate too many resources on one ship, they want to focus on building their own fleet.
-Less fuel storage and speed early on, making it more important to stop at starbases on long journeys (and preventing galaxywide travels at the start of the game)
-Chmmr scouts appear  (spawning in front of the player) if you go too far away from the mission area and force you to go back.


And on the Lurg point, I tried Super Melee against their ships...I took out about 8 of them with a single Chmmr avatar.  :(
Possible ideas for making them more menacing...
-Causing the bubbles to do 1 damage each in addition to their current effect.  I initially treated them this way and still destroyed them with a Cruiser and a Terminator.  It shouldn't be too overpowered, but if it is, maybe they could be more easily destroyed by weapons?  (If it's possible to allow nukes for eg, to plow through them...)
-Making their crew regenerate faster.  It was noticable, but it didn't feel like a threat.  At its current speed, it was more annoying than threatening.
-Making their AI more aggressive.  I know it's in its early stages, but I do think it'd fit [what little I know about] their personality better.
-Having the bubbles seek their own ship (and not damage it).  This might aid in making the ship more offensive than defensive.

I hope you guys like these kinds of ideas.  I'm obviously not going to 'boycott' this if you guys make this mod and it doesn't match up with what I have in mind- You're doing excellently!  ;D

If it matters, I like these ideas.

You're right OakTea, it's positive to innovate storywise but the priority is on designing gameplay. It's just not right to have half the world hand-in-hand with you while you have the most kickass equipment and your resources are unlimited. That is how a game ends. Showing such wealth at the prologue of the game might serve as a message: "you'll lose all this" and "you'll have to regain this". But the prologue is not the real game, and in case of P6014 it's not even necessary, since we have an intro sequence where all can be summarized until reaching Beta Naos incident.

Resource gathering was an important part of SC2 and I wouldn't like it becoming sidenoted, instead I'd add some new uses of the mined resources. Besides, there are a few new phenomenae and bio lifeforms on planet surfaces for which I'd make using the Landers more necessary.

The ideas about the Lurg are pretty good. I also would like to see them regenerate faster, and on top of that I'd like to add to the concept that only one specimen of Lurg resides on one Prawn, and the rest of the "crew" is merely the representation of the Prawn's own health. That would mean that the Prawn is literally regenerating instead of replenishing it's own crew like the Mycon Podship does, however that also infers that the Prawn is resistant to the Syreen song.

I would also make the Lurg a tougher nut in combat, though the minefield idea would make the Prawn into an Androsynth Blazer variant. Right now I'd say keep the Prawn using a fortress tactic, but change the primary weapon to something insidious when combined with the bubbles.

I like these ideas!  Having the Prawn resistant to the Syreen's song seems feasible..I found it difficult to approach them with the Penetrator (again, this was when I thought they were damaging), and if those bubbles destroy crew, then it'd mean it won't be an easy kill with another early game ship.

I always imagined what the Blazer would be like if it had a more offensive projectile in place of the Blazer form, so maybe I'm biased.  ;D
Another one of the Project 6014 races had an interesting pair of weapons where it could essentially plant mines, and then detonate them if its projectile hit one.  (Which could cause a chain reaction).  I know it's on another ship, but that's another way it could be made more dangerous...hmm.

What made the Dreadnaught and the Marauder (and even the Avatar...I was surprised to see these were good guys after facing them in Super Melee!) menacing was the fact that they could destroy you from far away, but could still rip you apart from up close most of the time.
Perhaps if the ship were faster, or its primary weapon had subtle homing capabilities...

Ahaha, though maybe these guys aren't the big bad of the game, and are closer to say, the Mycon.  Obviously evil, hostile, and incredibly dangerous/powerful as a species, but not the ship you're running away from in combat.

For those who are responsible for this I say thank you from the bottom of my Precursor Artifacts!  ;D

I have a few questions and reading through this novel of a thread just can't be done at the moment.

1) Is this mod ever going to be compatible with the 3DO in any way?
2) When I try to run the game it's either in an extremely tiny window, or it's in a GIANT window that's so big I can't see the bottom of the screen. I have tried different resolutions but can't seem to correct it. What am I doing wrong???

Okay, this is really clever.

This is true...the intro, when combined with the outro leaves virtually no gaps in the story that could be left until after the incident.  Perhaps the player character won't be Zelnick/the same person, even!

We discussed the idea in the group, but a passionate resistance came up against it.
However if you think about it, as long as the game has interaction with Precursor technology in it, Zelnick's person might be necessary as he seem to have a natural (maybe unique) talent for it.

Yes, that's certainly a good reason to keep him alive.  The only argument that I could see for having another PC would be to allow for a female/gender-neutral character (not that it'll prevent girls from enjoying the game).

I can't wait to find out how Zelnick gets out alive!  Arilou jumping in and saving them?  Orz pulling them *below* (caring for the humans more than the Shofixti)?  Or maybe...
  ;D

(PS.  In the final game, the Lurg Prawn is probably going to be more powerful...I think the AI just needs work, as it doesn't use its primary weapon very often.  It's powerful when it actually attacks!  :))

I'll bet he asks them about the glowing bits and in their state of confusion, runs for it :p

I might be able to help with some sound and music and effects depending on what's needed. I could make new planets or try making weapons explosions or run some voices through FL studio to make them more interesting, help with plot writing, etc.

By the way, how will the update effect it? Will I have to start all over again when the project's finished?

Also, you should be able to mod your main ship a little bit. Only having one cargo space is a real downer, especially when I have to use like 100 fuel to go look for those patrol.

If my wish comes true, the events in the demo won't happen in the full game, so you'll have to start over again -- but then the starting point is different so it won't matter.

There are more than one possible schemes about what the flagship is supposed to be in the full game. Right now I'm for keeping the Explorer, and if that'll be the case then yes the customization of it should be less limited. The other possibility -- as the end of the demo implies -- is to use a Precursor ship like the one in SC2, with the same upgrade mechanics.

I also wanted to make planet surface textures but sadly most of them are generated by code.

If the Explorer isn't used as a flagship, then what would it be used for?

Chmmr battleships.

Personally I would stick to the one-ship-per-race routine, so in the theoretical occasion of the Explorer getting cut out of the game I would ditch it mercilessly and use its weapons for the ship of another race.

Replacing the Avatar, then?

I was imagining it as a supplement to the Avatar.  Or yes, perhaps it could be recycled in another (new) race's ship.

I agree, I think the ship should be given to me and found over a secret rainbow world where I instill my wisdom of gaming to those who can find me

You guys are awesome!  Wow, a Youtube video?  Awesome.  It deserves more likes than it has though.  I haven't read all of the new posts, but it looks like you have made huge progress!  The video screens of all the races, the Humans, the Shofixti, and of course the Syreen are wonderful.  That was the first time I've seen a video of the combat gameplay.  Dczanik, were those clips of just fighting with the Awesome Cyborg or human vs. human?  It really makes me wish I could actually battle a human for once.

Downloading and playing this now.  I'm so glad that the mod is alive and well, thanks for making this and keep up the good work!

Head on over to #uqm-arena on Freenode! The people there aren't terribly active, but they're always glad to help a newbie learn. :)

i found a new home for shofixti its at gamma scorpion its in mycon space
its a shatered world but i guess it can be fixed up for them


idea for orz set up a (yes)  (no) question
it asks if you ask the orz what what happen to androsynth
click (yes) there not your friends click (no) and they are your friends
click yes and orz are enemy of alliance (you get where I'm going
same thing for spathi you get rid of there pest on there planet
and they will not help you fight the ur-quan masters
so any in this new game they fly the galaxy


the ilwrath do not kill the thraddash the chmmr stops ilwrath with shofixti and yehat might 8)

i mean gamma scorpion

... It didn't say 'dinged-up world, needs some work. Real handyman special.'

It said 'Shattered world'. As in, partially inside out, tectonics class 7 or 8. Even Bob the Builder would admit they can't fix it.

Only one race is capable of inhabiting a world once its entire surface is shattered. Hint: It's not the Shofixti.

its only lava
you think the planet would cool down by now
tvs the only planet in the system with a world that has a moon
long a go i think the mycon where used for what fixing
so any how lava should go away cool down quakes stop

its

Ooh, ooh, I know this one!

It's....

Ok, apologies, but I can't find the lost Shofixti Patrol and there is no overlapping for me, 3 different circles to search,
I entered eevry system, visited all green line planets, but.. no luck..

Could anyone spoiler me the location by PM or so?

thx

Beeblebrox

The three circles are the Shofixti patrol areas. They wouldn't overlap, and you can ignore the two that didn't go missing. The overlap is with the pair of circles that the Chmmr give you if you ask them about it enough.

ah, thx a million :)

I've got to say, the amount of work that have already been done exceeds all expectations. The HD version of the Project is just amazing.
I'd be more than happy to help with the development, but since I lack any kind of game developing skills... Probably the only thing I can be of any help with is voice acting. Need any space creatures to talk with slight Russian accent? Baul maybe? Though my pronunciation is far from perfect, I'm willing to try. :D

I have played this P6014 on Super Melee mode. I have using one Imperial Star Destroyer from Star Wars and it can take down 3 Ur-Quan Dreadnoughts and Kohr-Ah Marauders easily.  :)

Makes sense. If they were to scale, a Star Destroyer would be three times as large as the Vindicator.

Far be it from me to call anyone down on this forum, but there are a few people on here who do nothing but criticize the story-line.

One of the things that made Star Control and other hit-fictions so awesome was the deep-creepiness of some of the characters. Would you remove Benny from Total Recall simply because he's a mutant who betrays mutants?

The talk of the Exotics on Google makes them sound like rather benevolent and badly misunderstood folk. Like we walk down a sidewalk, killing thousands if not millions of ants and other crawly critters and we know them to be life-forms but we choose to focus on the things that have a more significant impact on our lives... So the Exotics actually make a lot of sense on an evolutionary scale!

I think this team is doing a marvelous job and it is my hope to help them accomplish their goal.

Personally, I want to see the Mark II in this game. My grand children demand to know how I found it.

To the developers: Thank you very much. What I see so far is (AWESOME)^MAX.

Things I like so far:

The Lurg. They are so incredibly creepy!
The Starbases. I like having many places to refuel, upgrade, build ships. It was always such a pain to go allll the way back to Sol. I don't care much for the price of crew but I suppose it's reasonable.

The Syreen: Good. Job. Although, I'm running this game in Windows 7 at 640x480 and there's no Syreen commander in the starbase. Just black. I thought I was cheating on Talana for  moment, then I noticed that the text for the dialogue was missing too. It shows up when I recap with spacebar though...

Ideas:

One thing I always thought would be cool is if on planet-fall, the away party might find a sentient, non-star-faring race (or several of them) which would allow Captain to recrew at several points throughout space. They'd be easy to design, no ships needed for melee... just some images of them talking and some voice-overs.

A fuel-making tech. Got Radioactives? Out of fuel? Melnorme sold you this fuel-o-matic thing that turns radioactives into starship fuel. Yippie Kayay! :)

As long as we're going to throw the ISD into melee just-for-fun, why not The Starship Enterprise-D? Be fun to see how the Enterprise would fare against the mighty Kohr-Ah Marauder  ;D

After all, those Earthling Cruiser Captains wear uniforms that are highly reminiscent of late-23rd century Starfleet, maybe Excelsior would be more appropriate for inclusion in Super Melee? Given the popularity of George Takei, we might just get the attention of the Star Alliance by doing that. Make sure you put Sulu's face on the display for the captain :)

Why, I bet Mr. Takei might blast out the development on his most powerful meme-attracting facebook page. Then we'd have over a million people knowing about this thing.

I'm sure I'll come up with many more interesting ideas. For now - keep up the good work guys! I hope that I can make a contribution to the project and failing that, I'll at very least help you catch bugs and test all your alpha and beta releases until you've decided on your full version and advertise the *sauce* out of this project!

Interesting Ideas but  I have a response to all of them :p


I do think it would be interesting to encounter races in early development  less advanced then us but recruitment might be a bit much. I am thinking more along the lines of just a random encounter item like artifacts on planets. *Cough* Slaves for the Druge? *Cough*


No, only because why would they sell you a device that would cost them their biggest income source from you?


That would depend on how long it would take Picard to actually return fire  rather then sitting their for 5 minutes trying to open a comm channel :p

[quoteAfter all, those Earthling Cruiser Captains wear uniforms that are highly reminiscent of late-23rd century Starfleet, maybe Excelsior would be more appropriate for inclusion in Super Melee? Given the popularity of George Takei, we might just get the attention of the Star Alliance by doing that. Make sure you put Sulu's face on the display for the captain Smiley][/quote]

Oh My!!!! :p The ISD is just a joke item for the melee, I am sure if you check the net for mods you will find something like this already

Not bad thoughts though. I would leave them to the mod community after the game is complete instead of the main game though.

Communicating with other races might have some technological requirements, that's why I'd be hesitant introducing conversations with less developed species.

Great idea with rad-to-fuel conversion, and great counter point. Not that I'm sure to stand for including the tech, but my thought would be that Melnorme behaviour is not fundamentally about profitable business, but about the idea of equal exchange, through which they promote their agenda. So it might be not against their interests to supply a technology that would prevent the Captain "buying" fuel from them.

Ok - maybe the Melnorme know how to do it but they wouldn't sell it because then Captain would stop getting him those precious little life forms ... (♫ where are you? ♫)

But there seems to be to be some discussion about the Faz and how the Melnorme don't want Captain dealing with them. Perhaps THEY will provide the rad-to-fuel tech in exchange for their liberation (I understand, they're initially to be slave-shielded?)

Orz Space sounds delightful.
More thoughts on the Melnorme:
Some of the rainbow worlds are hard to see. They are so close to the star that they seem to "phase shift" in and out of reality. When the display zooms in, you see the world temporarily and then it disappears. Seems to be a glitch... but it does appear somewhat topsy-turvy. 

Well, if you have universal translators that can translate from completely unknown languages, it's really not a huge leap to have them translate to completely unknown languages, once a sample's obtained.

Yeah. And even if you lack such tecnology, the langauage still ain't a big deal. Similar examples have already took place. For instance, when Americas were discovered. It took a few months or so for Europeans to have some of their men learn a language of certain native American tribe. The problems can emerge when an alien you try to contact uses a different media for communication than one you use. And that media could be anything from mechanical and electromagnetic waves at specific frequency range to something utterly different.

This is a bad example though because while they spoke different languages, they had the ability to make the same sounds. It is unlikely, that another race unless evolved very closely the same vocal chord and sound abilities to ours, would in fact be able to speak our language or us there's. This is one of those mistakes that Sci-Fi tends to overlook on purpose.

As such, a universal translator of some sort would be necessary (Which the Star Control Universe already uses) and is our reason we can understand everyone (Minus the Ur-Quan which used the Dynari as their translators). That said, the understanding i got was that the UT does not translate the language directly, it uses the syntax and language codes to do it which unless you have the technology to send it, you would have to program the UT manually with all the races syntax and language codes in order to get a translation.  (This is also why the Orz language cannot be easily translated as the Syntax and language codes were so alien that the UT likely had no basis to work from)

To use syntax and language codes, they would need to be standardized, which is just not plausible. Otherwise it's still full language to decipher.

It's possible to build primers that should be decipherable by anyone, given enough time. The case in Contact was definitely not the aliens making it as easy as possible.

...as we have done before. Remember this fun thread (http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=1812.msg23739#msg23739)?

So I wondered if anything had ever happened with Star Control clones, did some searching, and came across all this.  I have been trying this.  Here is my feedback, for whatever it is worth.

1) The writing is somewhat uneven.  In some places it does feel like Star Control, in others there's too much current-day phrases and pop culture type references.  I'm not saying this should be totally excluded, but a little goes a long way. 

2) The art is very good.  I like having variant portraits for the race captains, except that I like some of the portraits better than others and it bugs me when I get an ugly one.

3) The flagship is lame, can I have a better one.  Its combat abilities are bad and generic enough that there is basically no point in ever using it in combat.  Why implement a special ship if it's not interesting in combat?  It could have had no combat abilities at all and I would fly it the same way - fight with escorts, or if I don't want to fight, pick the flagship and immediately Esc.

4) We get dumped into the story too suddenly with no background.  A better way to start would be bopping around Vela or thereabouts with minor errands, getting a message about the distress call, then flying to Procyon yourself.  That might require having a different flagship, or a different reason to have it.  But I don't like that flagship and there is no problem with replacing it with something different.

5) The first time I tried playing this, I followed instructions.  I just went flying out into space looking for little lost Shofixit.  Very quickly started feeling the needle-in-a-haystack feeling.  It was only after I said "f*k this" and went bopping around trying to see what sort of trouble I could get into back in known space that had nothing to do with the storyline that I found the additional clue that let me narrow the search area down.  Some more pointers toward the immediate home neighborhood before sending the player off into deep space would be good.

6) Random Kohr-ah encounters are a potentially interesing situation.  The thing about the Chmmr ships is that even though they can beat lots of things in a one-on-one fight, they 1) are not that subtle or interesting to fly, 2) tend to take damage, especially against heavy hitters, making them not good for more than one victory in a row.  That also turns them into a constant crew (and thus resource) drain.  In a long-run story type game, they're more of a liability than anything else.  But none of the other starter ships are all that great against Kohr-Ah - Yehat and Supox are the two best, Supox requires lots of practice and really good aim, Yehat tends to take casualties like the Chmmr (although perhaps less so).  Orz might be possible, I guess, although I tend to avoid trying to send marines through the FRIED.  One of the keys to SC1 and SC2 was the individual ship-to-ship matchups that had huge advantages in some pairings that were totally negated in others - Spathi vs Kohr-ah being the most obvious immediate case.  If you want the player to be regularly fighting Kohr-Ah throughout exploration, the regular combat has to be interesting too, not frustrating.  Right now there isn't much in the way of such matchups with Kohr-Ah, and even less with the next item.

7) The Lurg ship is hugely overpowered.  They are using basically the same weapon as the Androsynth in terms of functionality.  The Androsynth was very carefully balanced so that you COULDN'T maintain a constant bubble screen.  In SC1, getting a dynamo or two on an Androsynth made them superpowered, because of the very careful original balance.  This ship is basically Androsynth-with-dynamo right off the bat, and it is too fast and maneuverable also.  There is no finesse available in shooting this thing down.  It can out-accelerate a Chmmr tractor beam, which should only be possible for the fastest of ships - even a Thraddash has to be careful with how it uses the afterburner to not make fatal mistakes.  This thing needs to be totally taken back to the drawing board and rethought from the ground up, as it stands it has no business being in a Star Control game.

8) The Lurg talk too big.  That can work in the case of a deliberate Thraddash-style setup where the player then gets to smack them repeatedly.  Instead what we have is a one-up game - "you thought the UQ were bad, WE'RE EVEN WORSE".  This is the sort of thing that shows up in badly written fan fiction and bad episodic TV.  The villain of the week does not always need to be bigger and badder than last week's villain of the week.  Trying to do that is evidence of just a bad writer, and more importantly, it's annoying and not much fun for the audience.  They have no distinguishing character traits except being Bigger And Badder.  As currently written, they are annoying pretentious jerks and I don't want to play a game involving them.

9) Why aren't any of the Timewarp ships implemented?  Many of those were much better balanced and interesting than what I've seen added here.

At this point I find myself wanting to go back to my Sword of the Stars game where I am playing as humans, fielding fleets of fission cruisers armed with 3 point defense lasers and a crapload of missiles, and my empire is named "The Free Stars", rather than continuing with this.  It has potential, but needs a lot of polish and some thought into what the actual fun part of the gameplay is.  Cruising on inertia from SC2 won't work.

Much like the Burvixese. ;)

Keep in mind that you had an awful flagship (at least for combat) in the beginning of SC2 as well. All that's in the demo is the very early game, probably comparable in actual plot advancement to exploring Sol thoroughly and discovering the Starbase. Who's to say we won't end up with something awesome by the end?


If we were talking about human pilots (or even a good AI) behind those Kohr-Ah, this would be a serious problem. As things stand, Kohr-Ah is one of the SC2 AI's absolute worst ships, serving as a perfect example of how not to fly Kohr-Ah. As such, with a little practice it's possible to beat it with ships that aren't particularly good against it (Spathi was actually a particularly egregious example of this), with practice. A few Yehat are more than adequate to handle any random encounter, with some reasonable level of crew loss, and Zoq-Fot-Pik(!) can actually be quite effective, flown right.


Neither of those issues are really quite that bad. Firstly, the bubbles are not like Androsynth (although they look similar). They cause no damage, they just disable turning for a short time after impact, and take down some weak projectiles. They're nowhere near as effective of a defense as Androsynth bubbles, which is why there's more of them.

Secondly, the reason Lurg can mostly counteract the tractor beam is that, otherwise, a Chmmr could eat dozens of them in a row without breaking a sweat (even as it is, Chmmr is fiendishly effective against it). It's engines are actually roughly on par with Ilwrath (excellent acceleration, awful top speed).

As it is, Lurg is a fairly effective ship, roughly on par with Melnorme, Mmrnmhrm, Androsynth, or Pkunk. It's not meant to be a weak opponent, but it's still not nearly as strong as Kohr-Ah/Chmmr. There certainly are some valid design quibbles with it (it's much more defensive than any canonical SC ship, for instance), but bubbles and engines are not among them.

I'd have to agree with this, from seeing the dialogue video of the Lurg on YouTube. The Lurg essentially claim that the Ur-Quan knew better than to tangle with them, but the whole point of the Doctrines was that the Ur-Quan saw every other race as a potential threat to be neutralised - they're not going to back down because they meet something that actually is a threat, at most they'll stage a tactical withdrawal, build up until they're more powerful (or fetch the Sa-Matra, like they did with the Alliance) and then return to eliminate the threat.

A more likely explanation (and one that fits with having other alien races in the area) is that the Ur-Quan just didn't get to Lurg space. The Kzer-Za came down from the top of the SC2 map, the Kohr-Ah from the right, while the Project map is to the left and down - the Lurg and other species in the area may have been shielded by the Alliance of Free Stars until the resumption of the Ur-Quan doctrinal wars. The Lurg claim that the Ur-Quan knew better than to tangle with them could then be a literal case of talking big - the Ur-Quan simply never got around to them, but they claim that the Ur-Quan "wisely did to ignore us" in an attempt to intimidate the Captain.

That was one thing I was thinking of. I thought of a good way to make it more consistent and alien at the same time, but it's a little late now.

Wait, they cause no damage? I've been avoiding them for nothing?

Ah yes, it doesn't make sense to take what the Lurg say about the Ur-Quan as truth.

They do provide a modicum of inconvenience (they shut down your ability to turn for a few moments) but other than that they just block your line of fire.

To be honest, with their current design the Lurg ship feels more annoying to fight than menacing, at least with the AI. A competantly piloted Cruiser can destroy any number of them against the Awesome cyborg, given enough time - it's just that since it's pretty much pot luck getting enough missile hits past the cloud of bubbles in a short enough time to kill it before it regenerates, it can be a long, frustrating slog. What might help is giving it fewer but more dangerous bubbles and a faster "crew" regeneration rate - that'll stop it from being able to cover a quarter of the starmap with a near-impenetrable bubble field, but put the onus on the enemy ship to deal damage to it fast enough to actually kill it.

Regarding use of the Explorer: You've already essentially started on this path already, so why not do what Blizzard did with the Starcraft and Warcraft 3 demos and make the prologue into a demo that serves as a demo and, well, prologue to the campaign without being directly connected to it? Give the player the surplus of resources that would be expected for someone doing important work for the Alliance and no ability to collect resources, mineral or biological, at all (maybe have the Melnorme put any fuel you need from them on the Alliance's tab) - that way, you dn't have minerals being collected in the prologue or the like. The start of the real game can be when Zelnicki escaping from the destroyed Explorer lands on the surface and manages to get the Precursor ship working sometime when the Lurg are less vigilant, and there you have the Mark 2. On returning to Alliance space, it becomes evident that things have deteriorated such that the Alliance can't give you as much support as they did. (Alternatively, it could be rationalised that anything that the player DID mine had time to replenish - as I recall "mining" in SC2 is simply accessing surface deposits anyway, so unless a player did a LOT of mining in the prologue it can simply be rationalised as tectonics, weather, or meteorite impacts exposing new deposits.)

I am not sure I agree with the thoughts on the lurg here. The Impression I have gotten from them is

1) That they are playing the role of the "Puppet Master" and work by manipulation rather then straight combat
2) They have their own precursor device of some sort which may lend to the idea that they could have been threat enough that the Ur-Quan chose to ignore them while they focused on other races.
3) They are full of hot air in their speeches, but they are in fact stronger and more dangerous then the Ur-Quan ever were.

A couple of guesses based on what I have seen-

They either were the creators of or are at least aware of the Mycon's true origins and purpose.
They are indirectly controlling the Kor-Ah
They know a great deal about the Alliance member races and are banking on using that info to cause the alliance to break down.


No matter what you do, it will always be a full language to decipher. On earth, we use the fact that we can trace the root languages (Which in most of the western world is either Latin or Germanic)  and as such, know the basic  language codes that govern them even if they do not know a word of the language.


The only way to build a primer is to have already translated the language into something.

As far as fake languages go, think about this for an example.

Klingon in Star Trek has all the items necessary to be considered a legitimate language including it's own Syntax and language codes. They made it seem more alien because the creator of it intentional invented difficult grammar rules to govern it.
Al-Bed in Final Fantasy X however is NOT a language and is in fact, according to language rules, a dialect of English. (I am curious how they handled this in the Japanese version)

The problem is that the Ur-Quan at their strength didn't really have a sense of "they're too powerful, leave them alone". They've been going around squashing races that present no current threat to them, including arguably the Alliance of Free Stars until the Ur-Quan attacked them. A race that's actually powerful enough to be a threat even before the Sa-Matra was destroyed is not something they're going to simply ignore.  At best, the Ur-Quan would likely have been planning to return after the second Doctrinal Conflict along with the Sa-Matra and the Kohr-Ah and/or the entire Hierarchy to do the job. This probably goes double for any puppet-master race, since that would be getting far too close to the Dnyarri.

More likely, though, the Ur-Quan simply didn't know the Lurg were there, either missing them in their haste to get to the site of the Doctrinal Conflict (like the Kohr-Ah did with the Druuge, Utwig and Supox) or because the Lurg hid (possibly in QuasiSpace or *below*) and the Lurg are either talking themselves up or genuinely persuade themselves it was because the Ur-Quan is scared of them. Either way, it can still fit the dialogue (especially as the Lurg are deliberately trying to be intimidating, and to be intimidating to the Hero of Sa-Matra they really need to have the claim that they're stronger than enemies Zelnicki has already defeated), but I'm expecting there to be more to it than what the Lurg claim.

As a side-track, one thing I was thinking of saying in my last post but forgot - Is it possible for one race to have two spheres of influence? If so, it might be worth considering giving Earthlings a small sphere around Vela.

Apart from it not actually being the Mark 2, since I thought they wanted to reserve anything involving that for an official sequel...?

Well, they didn't actually miss the Utwig... <_<

I did kinda imagine the Lurg using orzspace for travel...

I actually like this idea.

Apart from it not actually being the Mark 2, since I thought they wanted to reserve anything involving that for an official sequel...?[/quote]1.5, then.  :P Either way, if they want to swap from using the Explorer to another Precursor ship, the opportunity is there.

Well, they didn't actually miss the Utwig... <_<[/quote] I don't recall either way whether the Kohr-Ah were aware of the Utwig and Supox before the Utwig and Supox went after them. If they did, though, and certainly AFTER the Utwig and Supox got involved, the Kohr-Ah regarded the Doctrinal Conflict as more important then going and dealing with them, while the Kzer-Za could easily have felt the same regarding the Lurg. (And, for that matter, the Orz and Pkunk.)

EDIT: On further investigation, the Utwig mention encounters with the Kohr-Ah, which implies the latter knew they were there but were concentrating on the Kzer-Za.

Or possibly being Orzspace beings of some kind themselves, albeit of a very different kind than Orz. That have that "not from around here" feel.

IIRC, the Kohr-Ah attempted to cleanse the Utwig after destroying the Burvixese. They stopped once they realized the Kzer-Za were here, and began the Doctrinal Conflict.

I was just looking up the Utwig description of their contact with the Kohr-Ah on sa-matra.net. There was (hostile) contact, but it's not clear whether the Kohr-Ah were attempting to 'cleanse' the Utwig and were diverted by the appearance of the Kzer-Za, or whether they were already heading for the Kzer-Za and some Utwig ships happened to get in the way.

Obviously false. Counterexample: Picture dictionary. It's a primer, and doesn't require translating into something.

More generally, a 'primer string' is a message which is designed to be decoded if the listeners guess that it's designed to be decoded and it encodes a language description.

We've had a conversation on this forum in a language we made up as we went along (well, most of it was made up by me before we started), and taught each other only by speaking in that language. The language was not optimized for comprehensibility, but the primer string for that language was.

It seems pretty clear the Kohr-Ah were intending to cleanse the Utwig homeworld - that's not the direction they'd go to reach Crateris from Arcturus.

I know I'm new to this forum, but I'm a fan of the Star Control games, as well as, Project 6014.  it's just a little thing and really not a big deal but when I am at the starmap comming from anywhere back to Sol system, the auto pilot confirmation line keeps wanting to jump over to Sirus star closest to Sol. I was also hoping for any news of further developments on "The Project" . I also want to thank Cedric and everyone who has put their effort into this mod.  It has really been good to know that someone out there cares about us lost Star Control fans and truly cares about the content.

Another newbie, and I just wanna say thansk to the guys making this mod. It looks epic!!! I can't wait for the full game!

Stardrake messed up the tags when quoting me. :P

Okay, so I finally played demo 0.2.1.

The last time I played the demo, it was still 0.1x. Imagine my shock when I installed the new HD package!

The menus alone were like the jump from Sega Master System to Sega Genesis [or at least, that's what first came to mind.] Makes me think of some of the better console ports, and games like "Streets of Rage" or "Phantasy Star."

I've already commented on the world-beating graphics, but the new high-res ships are outstanding, as are the planets. I love the planetary rotation. It really feels like Star Control 2.5, made in 2012.

I almost fell out of my chair when the new intro sequence started. Are TFB working on this and you're not telling us?

It's probably worthwhile to update the interface too, although I like the familiarity. It feels like a new game with fresh graphics - except that I know the controls.

If only I could see that giant Chmrr starbase rotating!

Some comments

-New hi-res Menus are verrrrrrrrrrrrry slick

-Game is more user-friendly than I remembered. I appreciated that the maps highlight the capital worlds, and the starmap indicated how to search for systems.

-The blue planet in the system directly below the Vux homeworld [Gamma Luyten I] has exotic mineral deposits, but they are all 1 RU each. Is this intentional?

-The resource placement is very helpful. There is a treasure world on the way to the end cutscene system
that I stumbled upon, which was great for filling up with valuable resources.

The approach of having fewer, but better mining sessions is the right approach.

-The 3 Shofixti search locations are not too helpful. The search for the missing ship would have felt dull and fruitless, except that the path to was intuitive - the was more helpful in finding that world than the 3 search locations.

It might be best to scatter some more clues in those systems. Shofixti logs, maybe? Landing marks?

-bad guys were more fun to fight this time. I feared the brown blobs until I realized their function. Earthling cruiser was fun but eventually tedious and I had to withdraw. [I had assumed that the brown blobs dealt 1 damage.] Orz was a fast way of dealing with them. Syreen probably involved the most gameplay and skill. Didn't try the other ships.

Certainly, the Lurg would be more formidable if the brown blobs dealt 1 damage. But they'd have to be worth more, too.

Basically, you need to find a balance between the Lurg's brown blobs, its regeneration, and having an offensive AI. The regeneration really scared me when I was in a long drawn-out fight using a Cruiser - I wouldn't want to increase the speed of regeneration if such fights were expected.

As others have noted, the Lurg is much more terrifying [and in character] when it attacks with the green globs. I like the basic idea of immobilizing and frying that you have established here. You just need to decide whether the Lurg adopt a defensive or offensive strategy.

To be honest, I enjoyed the Lurg ships as they are, and will enjoy kicking their ass all over the galaxy. They can be tweaked or rebalanced, I suppose.

-The Umgah prank must have been very expensive.

-I can't wait to find those 'renegade' Vux ships. Who knows what the starbase commander was hiding?

-The Vux dialog, BTW, was top notch.

-I kept visiting the Syreen over and over again...

--

Now, on other people's thoughts:

The Shofix search areas seem a bit barren. I have to second the idea of 'primitive' civilizations that you can recruit crew from - or at least visit.

I agree with suggestions that Vela should have its own human sphere of influence, if possible.

I keep running into Sirius on the way to Sol.

It's probably not necessary for every star system to have a nebula in the background - perhaps other stellar phonomena would be appropriate at times?

The Chmrr seem to have taken a really hard line on the former hierarchy races. Plus, the Alliance doesn't seem as cheery as it could be. It seems that a lot of this may be connected to plot developments concerning the Chmrr, however.

I don't mind the speed of the Explorer. At least it can do something right! Seriously, though, I find it gives me more initiative if I can manually outrun Kohr-Ah, rather than just sitting there waiting for the autopilot, so you did the right thing there.

The less grinding in hyperspace, the better. Hyperspace is...Hyper-Space, after all. This part of the game is more 'metropolitan' anyway, visiting homeworlds and catching up with old friends - we can always go out on a limb and slowly plod around dangerous places later in the game.

It might be good to limit the range - not the speed - of the Explorer.

There is not enough cargo space in the Explorer to pay for fuel costs.

[It would be cool to run into one rogue Mrrnmhrrm, if that's not connected to the overall "Process" plot.]

Overall, this is going to be a pleasure to recommend to people.

I must admit, while the Umgah prank was amusing it does raise a lot of questions about how they pulled it off. There's a lot of reasons why my gut feeling is that it couldn't happen:

First, how did the Umgah get a Marauder in the first place? Umgah aren't exactly the strongest race in the quadrant, after all, and even if they were, the Ur-Quan are known for their precautions to prevent their technology from falling into the hands of other races. And, if anything, Kohr-Ah are likely to be even more paranoid than Kzer-Za in that respect.

Second, it was a plot point in SC2 that reverse-engineering a ship wouldn't work - you need native captains too. (Although this could be handwaved by saying it takes longer - you can do it, but not on the timescale available in the first game).

Third, neither the Precursors, the Milieu-era Ur-Quan, or the Melnorme were able to get the Slylandro starfaring. Arguably the Umgah probably are specialists at making specialised life-support systems (look at their own), but space travel for a prank seems like it gets past the tragedy of the Slylandro too easily.

One possible resolution is to come up with a new ship that looks like a Marauder, but has different combat systems - possibly the sort of thing you'd expect from someone who'd heard a description of how a Marauder looks and fights like, but doesn't know the details or have the technology to reproduce it if they did. Alliance races might then assume that it's just a variant (possibly an obsolete one), but for a player who is inclined to shoot first, it might provide a hint. There's also an element that sooner or later Zelnicki might invite a Slylandro ship into his fleet and they have no real reason to refuse, while being able to get fully capable Marauders that way would be a bit cheap...

When it comes to treatment of Hierarchy races... while it does seem in part to be a sign that the Chmmr aren't as benevolent as the Chenjesu, it doesn't seem entirely black and white - the Umgah appear to have been allowed their continued freedom, after all. The VUX and Mycon seem to be cases of being regarded as too dangerous to remain free - the Mycon do destroy planets, after all, and the impression I got is that the VUX continued fighting until the bitter end and that's why the decision was made that they had to be slave-shielded or they just wouldn't give up the war. That said, we do see that the Alliance races don't entirely agree on this - apart from the Chmmr, the races most in support seem to be those that have reasons to have grudges against the VUX and/or the Mycon (the Yehat/Pkunk, for instance, do show their reservations). Races that weren't directly involved in the First War and thus lack such grudges are probably more likely to be against the slave-shielding - but since the Project map starts in the region of the First War and extends rimwards, we don't get much opportunity to hear their viewpoints. (It wouldn't surprise me, though, if part of the reason the Utwig went pacifist is because they decided that an Alliance that resorts to slave-shielding is not one they want to fight for.)

Right now there are a few other holes though that make me feel inclined to wait on an answer to this. First is to what is driving the Kor-Ah now? Without that knowledge, it could be possible this is happening as per their plans to keep the other races off guard

To the second point...I never agreed with the statement in the previous game. Any tech can be reverse engineered at least on a general whole as long as you have the equipment to build it. The general problem I would see is the physical differences between how the races are built would require the controls to be modified as to be usable for another race.

To the third point, i agree.I would trust the Umgah of all races would have the ability to reconfigure the vessels to be able to take the Slyandro off their world. As per it be just for a joke...we are talking about a race that starts wars between species that result in wide spread genocide for laughs. I imagine they would find the situation Hilarious.........why did we let that race live again?

I thought the Umgah joke was hilarious.  I first encountered it by the time I had exhausted all the dialogue options for the Kohr-Ah, so there was really no point in conversing...I do it out of habit, in case destroying a dozen of their ships gets them to speak differently to me.  Most players would jump straight into combat, I'd assume.

I do like the idea of changing the combat styles of those Marauders however, but I think it should be subtle...I think a decent solution would be to have those encounters be piloted by Weak Cyborgs...if that isn't done already.  :)

I do like the idea of a returning Mmrnmhrm (I hope I remember how to spell that)...remember that they were created by the Mother Ark, which was never officially destroyed if I recall.  The Mmrnmhrm could definitely be reborn in canon.

I really like the discussion going on in here, and I hope the great team that brought us this mod likes it too!

Actually :
- Slylandro Marauders look a bit different in the last version (maybe only in HD graphics).
- If you fight one, their captain appears as a Slylandro (in the status bar on the right).
- They flee combat immediately.

Ah!  I never knew that.  Those are great touches to add.
It would be interesting if the captain screen was blank in combat, and the player could question the Kohr-Ah about some of their ships fleeing combat....perhaps continued questioning could lead to the demise of the Slylandro.  ;)

There's always more secrets hidden in this mod.  :)

I can think of a few possibilities, actually. One is that there is a certain child-like naivety in their humour - they really seem to genuinely think that a laugh is more important than life (look at their ships, for instance - it's been observed before that they could be made so much more effective by making the zip forwards, but combat efficiency just isn't as important as a laugh for the Umgah). They play some really, really cruel jokes, but there doesn't seem to be any malice or hatred in it as there are for races like the Ilwrath and VUX, they aren't as dangerous as the Mycon, and they didn't seem to have a lot of loyalty towards the Hierarchy. The other races probably felt that as long as they kept an eye on the Umgah, they couldn't get up to mischief - but clearly didn't think of the possibility of the Umgah giving Marauder hulls to a race without spaceflight so they'd get attacked on sight by the Alliance.

Another possibility is that the Umgah are the second best known race for biological knowledge (with the possible exception of the Melnorme) and despite their warped humour are still easier to deal with than the Mycon. It might be a case of being tolerated because they're useful ("but we're watching you").

When it comes to reengineering ships - it struck me as silly too, but it's a call they made for the story. It could be that it's one thing to make a direct copy of a ship given the requisite technical data, but reeingineering the control systems takes time that wasn't available in SC2's timeframe. It might also be something that can be regarded as a gameplay simplification of the fact that different species might have different forms of life support required - while SC2 only talks about captains, for some ships realistically you're probably looking at the entire crew being of that species (Orz marines probably have to be Orz, for instance, and there aren't likely to be many non-Mycon that can even survive on a Mycon ship, let alone be regenerated by it) while others have featured that require the unique capabilities of at least one member of the originating species, possibly the entire crew, to function (psychic races such as the Pkunk and Syreen come to mind - and I think I remember reading somewhere that the Yehat shield is an extension of Yehat psychokinetics and thus that the whole race is psychic with the Yehat and Pkunk developing in different ways, but I can't find the reference now).

The SC1 manual has some technobabble about the Yehat operating out of a nebula, and their shield being derived from their 'electro-nebular origins'. TFB have previously disowned some manual stuff (the Androsynth being the 'fashion designers of space', for instance), so this probably shouldn't be taken as 100% reliable, canon information.

Hrrrmn. Maybe I need to chase up my combined SC1/SC2 CD again. I did find an online reference ("Their odd quirk of polarizing magnetic fields to their defense found its start early in Yehat culture; those who were best able to hone their strange powers were best able to survive nest-hood.", here (http://www.star-control.com/hosted/scsaga/scraces.htm)) which is, of course, less reliable being a secondary source.

Mind you, it does make sense - the Pkunk are one of the most psychic races in the quadrant, so it makes sense that the race they split off from would also be psychic... but more concerned about powers that are of obvious use in combat rather than seeking to become one with the universe.

I just feel a need to nit pick on this issue. Pkunk are Psychic, Syreen are not and neither are the Yehat based on what is being said.

The Pkunk are Psychic. Capable off seeing glimpses of the future, dreams that allow them to see past and future events though possibly out of original context, and so forth. There statements about knowing what you are going to say before you say it is a result of them seeing the conversation before it happens.

The Syreen are Telepathic. They can read minds and even manipulate them with enough effort.

The Yehat are Psychokinetic if we trust the original manual explanation.  They ability to manipulate objects (In there case, magnetic fields)  with their mind. While I agree it is likely part of their being an offshoot of the Pkunk, the powers these three have are quite different from each other.

Personally, I'd love to see him not get out of it... at least not right away. Instead, the Lurg could capture him and force him to use his expertise to help them get that Precursor ship operational. After years of imprisonment and forced capitulation the badly damaged ship is finally operational and ready to be launched against the Alliance, but the good captain had been secretly planning for this day and manages to commandeer and escape on the ship. He returns to the people who thought him dead (including a certain love interest) and just in time because the war is already fully under way and it has not been going well.

Anyway, that's just my own fantasy scenario. It would allow for the recreation of the fish out of water aspect of Star Control II as the captain catches up with everything that has happened during his imprisonment and it would allow you, as the player to skip the early stages of the war and instead jump right into the action.

That's actually a great idea!  I could see it happening.
The great part about SC2 as a sequel was that it showed you the aftermath of the first game while being far enough into the future to show a number of unobvious changes.

I disagree because I could never believe in story wise.

Think about it, the single greatest hero, the literal savior of EVERY race in this sector of the galaxy goes missing while on a mission of search and rescue. They know approximately where he was because they know the general area of the search. I would give in about 30 seconds after he disappears before every race in the alliance sends their entire fleet to go searching for him.  If they found he was captured by the Lurg,I would expect them not only to get him back almost immediately, but to crush the Lurg into the dust so far that their race is exterminated for the insult.

Okay I am dramatizing a bit. However, the man saved Billions of lives, brought the Shofitix back from extinction, freed the alliance from slavery and single handedly brought down both the Ur-Quan and Kor-ah fleets before they could extinguish all life in the galaxy. Do you really think there is any chance the alliance would not marshal ever last ship to get him back? Also the Lurg really do not strike me as the "War" Types. They strike me as subverters, using others to do the work for them. I see them as attacking the alliance from the inside, not a direct war like the Ur-Quan did.

They also don't necessarily have their SoI right there... and they also look like they know how to hide.

I think it depends on how much of a threat Lurg and co. end up being. The Alliance isn't in the best shape after fighting two wars in recent memory and if their borders are immediately pounded by superior numbers, they could not only have much bigger problems to deal with, but they could find that this area you're in is now the heart of new Lurg space. So sending ships to search for you may be incredibly problematic and, while you're a super great guy and all, diverting a massive fleet to break through their numbers and go to a planet that is probably heavily defended in and of itself is not a very good strategic move as it's a high risk, low reward scenario that leaves their defenses weakened. Thus, while the Alliance is diverting ships to this attack, the Lurg could be making serious inroads into Alliance territory.

But regardless, you could always add a plot point that makes it seem more likely that you died - The Lurg could collect some of the space debris from your ship and dump it somewhere else as a decoy, they could tow the Precursor ship out of there and force you to work on it elsewhere so when the Alliance sends ships to look for you all they find is the debris of your ship, etc.

If you're going to be that picky, the Pkunk are clairvoyant, prescient, and whatever it is that allows them to reincarnate. 'Psychic' is a useful catch-all term, and is used as such in the in-game dialogues - the Chmmr describe what the Dnyarri do as 'psychic manipulation' for instance, when what the Dnyarri do is in the same region as the Syreen amplified to the Nth degree.

As Stardrake noted, all three of those count as psychic.

Yes, I think there's a very good chance they wouldn't. For starters, they may not even know he's missing, or they may have evidence that he's dead. Furthermore, as much of a hero as he is, he's still only one person. If they're facing a war with the Lurg, they probably won't have the resources to search for him.

And it would take a lot more than 30 seconds for them to realize he's missing, unless he happens to be in the middle of a hyperwave conversation with them when he disappears. (Hint: He wasn't.)

We have done rescue missions for people, loosing more in the process. To locate those that have gone missing in combat today even if they are nothing more then a single citizen of the nation. Guarantee, his going missing would launch a massive response and if they did believe he may be dead, I would not want to be the guy on the other end of the alliance guns.

Cedric you and the devs have been very quiet for the last few weeks. Is there any news on the progress towards the full game right now?

I still think you're overestimating the alliance's response to him dying or going missing.

We don't really have much precedence for this kind of an event taking place in the SC universe.  Fwiffo is the closest thing we have (if I recall) and while the Spathi hate him, they are still angry with the player if Fwiffo dies.
Fwiffo was a coward among cowards, and disliked by his race.
Zelnick brought the Pkunk and Yehat together and brought peace between the two species, was responsible for the survival of the Shofixti species which was on the brink of destruction, saved the galaxy from the threat of the Kohr-Ah (and the Slylandro Probes), started a new alliance and (probably) made the Chmmr its leaders, saved the humans from Ur-Quan subjugation...
I don't believe there has been one individual of any species who has done so much for so many races.  Should that individual go missing, I'm sure there'd be a more frantic search than the search for the Shofixti scouting parties.

We've been talking and working amongst ourselves. The artists have been working hard, we're talking story, I'm closing in on finishing a revamped dialog system, improved from the one described here:
http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=3233.msg41124;topicseen#msg41124

A demo editor/player for this format can be found here (http://mooses.nl/uqm/wip/js-dialogue/) (which is what I've been working on lately). Supports most things, with the exception of advanced expressions. If you just want to see pretty graphics and an example dialog, hit that shiny 'load example dialog' button. I don't guarantee that it follows the specs 100% completely, but it should be fairly close... :)

I was just coming back to add that to the list! Sorry for not crediting you - and hey, now I know that you (in that capacity) are Megagun, which I didn't know.
I hesitated to get down to too-specific things because it would lead to leaving people out, but I did want to mention that nifty tool.

By the way, it appears to follow the specs quite well.

I would point out three things in the example dialog:

you named an option 'checkcomputer' when there is no other option with that name, so it isn't necessary. I would suggest making it give a warning for that (to catch misspelled variants of the same name).

The condition on the last text item could be left implicit (though here a warning would not be advisable because it's perfectly okay for a text call to come up with nothing)

You didn't remove a bug from the original - it's '>try_shoot', not '<try_shoot'

If they have nothing else to do, sure. But if they're suddenly facing a new threat, I think that might take priority,

Depends on the magnitude of the threat, really. They wouldn't like the idea of leaving him to his fate, and will probably send a task force if they can afford to - but if their back has been put to the wall and they need every ship they've got, then the good of the Alliance as a whole is more important than one person, however revered.

Unless Zelnick is equivalent to a superweapon of sorts.  The Alliance wouldn't be the size it is if it weren't for his actions as a diplomatic leader (for the most part).  He is also a Precursor expert, with a natural talent for using their vessels.  I believe it was implied that these traits are rare (especially the natural precursor vessel talent), and would classify him as slightly higher than a revered individual.

Of course, with at least one major threat (ignoring the rogue Kohr-Ah) looming over the Alliance, it'd be understandable if they could not spare the resources for a major search party.

No tally of good deeds can save one from the cruel reality that governments don't operate on empathy, but on resources. Unless for popular interest -- which kind of requires the Captain to be a pop-star -- the government that is both in a reconstruction period and war wouldn't waste resources to search for someone whose practical value is seemingly expired in the last conflict.

Hm, this is true.  The Chmmr and even Hayes were accepting of the fact that Zelnick might not escape at the end of SC2.

Well, compared to defeating the Kohr-Ah and preventing the extinction of all sapient life in the quadrant, any single person is expendable.

As the person who did achieve that, though, Zelnicki probably does have pop-star or higher status. However, it does come down to resources - the Alliance leadership isn't going to prioritise finding Zelnicki over preventing the Alliance from falling to an enemy and undoing all of Zelnicki's good work. I could see a task force being assigned if it can be spared, but not of it's literally a case of needing everything to go into the war effort, or if they know that Zelnicki's last location was just too far behind enemy lines.

Another consideration on resources is whether regular Alliance ships actually have the legs to get out there. The Chmmr built the Explorer to ship Zelnicki's search fleet out to where the Shofixti went missing, after all, when they could have just given him an Avatar for his flagship - this might be because most Alliance ships need something like the Vindicator or the Explorer to serve as a tanker/mothership to get out that far in the first place. (While Scouts obviously could, they are, well, scouts, and thus may have longer 'legs' than more dedicated combat ships like Terminators - in fact, thinking on it, it's possible that Scouts carry much larger fuel stores proportionally speaking than most other ships by default, and part of the power of the Glory Device is that the initial blast is augmented by the Scout's large fuel tanks going off.)

Any news on this project and how it's comming along would be very welcome. I love what you've done so far and can't wait to see where you guys take it. I would love to be one of the first to play it out when it's completed.

What I'm sure about is that there are some new graphical material. A few new alien comm screens were added lately, but progress is slow: life interrupts, summer is hot, writing is difficult, computer is noisy as hell.

Dialog system is somewhere around 98% done but I had to take a break to move, which wiped my working memory of one particularly obtuse section of the code that I need to interface with.

In the mean time, though, I've begun writing up another one of the races (FleeingRace, as it's called) - which I thought might as well be the Shlthuk, which I've described elsewhere around here. Biologically speaking and by name, that is.

Wow you guys are great.  It helps ease some of my frustrations about waiting.  Seems lately I'm always waitng on the next chapter of one of my favorites.  For example: BioShock Infinate, StarCraft 2 - Heart of the swarm, Shadowrun returns, Dragon Age 3, just to name a few.  Your mod is what I would consider closer to cannon than anything else out there, especially SC NOT 3. lol  As a   big fan of this game, I want to thank the entire dev team for all their hard work and dedication to this project. It will never be forgoten, at least, not in MY lifetime.

To throw my two cents in...

So I finished the demo yesterday, and I loved it!  It was much more than I could have hoped for (well, given it's a demo, of course).  I mean, it's quite an incredible undertaking, as I'm sure everyone is aware.  I was expecting more of the same, but the new graphics for the planets, having them rotate and spin, etc. etc. is amazing.  I'm still stunned thinking about it.

Also, I'm not sure if I should talk about two bugs I ran into.  I know there's the place on the Project 6014 site for bugs, but I don't know if these are known.  When I landed on Mars it was just a big sheet of blank brown with minerals, and when I talked to the Syreen base the screen was totally blank.  When I talked it seemed like the Syreen person should be talking back, and when I hit shift I could see his/her text.

Lastly, about the Lurg... man, they have just the right feel.  More bad-donkey than either Ur-Quan subspecies, creepily have been watching humans for a long time, biological ships, extremely ugly, nasty voice (totally no offense to the voice actor, you did a great job).  But, as has been mentioned, they seem really weak for how bad-donkey they're supposed to be.  I have no idea if this would be any good, but I would suggest any or all of the following:

1) Increase regen rate (I didn't even notice it, only read about it);
2) Have their bubbles either stun for a fraction of a second more, or do .5 or .34 damage per bubble, or maybe both (if it's possible to code that);
3) Beef up their frontal attack.

Lastly lastly, I'd like to contribute to this somehow, but I don't know what I could do.  I have no programming experience, no art experience, minimal voice acting experience.  I do a lot of writing fiction and teach math at a university, but I doubt either of those are helpful.  Still, if there's something I could do, please let me know.

I hope we get to see the completed project sometime soon.  I just finished the demo and really enjoyed what it offered.  I'm dying to know what's going on with that hole in Alpha Vulpeculae although with the Orz and disappearance of the Androsynth, this makes sense.  This needs lots of love as it deserves.

Well from what I've seen these guys, (the dev team of project 6014) will give it nothing less than an amazing experience. They too are die-hard fans of UQM and wouldn't do anything less. the problem is the total hugeness of what they are taking on. I understand it's hard to be patient, but I also know that these great guys (and girls?) are doing this all on their oun time, and it's not like they're getting payed to do it. It's a labor of love, and a strong desire to make right what was called SC not 3. What a bad way to treat a game we all loved. These folks at project 6014 are truly a great bunch, and I too eagerly await the completed game. To the dev team, hope all is well, and all the best.

Indeed, and a good point. I was thinking about the sheer magnitude of it, the full game. And I don't even know all that will be in it, though I did read a good few spoilers on the wiki. I mean, making the graphics for all the devices, putting the devices on the right planets, striving for the game to be nonlinear yet giving players enough leads to not have to consult a guide (incredible balance between the two I think), making several new races and everything that goes into that (graphics, voices, ship balance), voices of the preexisting races, new flagship, technology for the new flagship (speaking of which, I hope it's a double wide)... The list goes on and on. Oh and beyond the joy of programming those, you have to handle bugs that pop up.  Mind blowing.

Oh right, and then they had to make (though this was probably the first thing done) an engaging plot. That alone is impressive. And in case you haven't read the spoilers on the wiki, don't! You'll regret it. But rest assured the plot is awesome.

I am curious as to when a beta version will come out though.

It's been well over a year since I was here. Firstly, I feel I should apologize. I volunteered to help but life kept me so busy, I really didn't have any time for side projects. Things are a bit more stable for me now, so once again if you need artwork/design/voice acting, I'll do my best to help out any way I can.

So because it has been awhile, it's time to poke our loving devs with a stick to hear how things are going.

*Gets giant tree and rams it into Cedric's door*

So the important questions of the moment are,

So how are things going?
Any trouble spots we can help with?
Will there be a Black Spathi Squadron with me in command of it?

If a programmer can help me decipher the data format of the STRING_TABLE data structure as it's used in conversations, and track down how it's disposed of, that would help.

I have some notes already, but it's slow going.

Tried downloading this on Windows 7. Running the desktop link opens a tiny SC2-window and then immediately it says the program has stopped working and it's closed. Pity, I was very curious to try it out :)

Try right clicking on the game icon, then open the propertys in the drop down menu. Click on compatibility and run it as if from an older OS. Windows XP has this capability, and I'm sure Windows 7 does too. Give it a shot. It has worked for me with older games that I still like to play.

Hi, guys! Moved to a new laptop and encountered a bug I thought was fixed - I was flying Chenjesu against AI Yehat. When targeting straight the shields went up as expected, but when the AI needed to raise shields against shards, it froze up on several occasions. It was latest build. I'm running it on Win7.

Whats the programing language? I am surprised it is not a simple "If yes/ If no" string structure.

C. It's a struct containing an int for flags, an int for the number of entries, and a char** for the data.

Congrat for this amazing project ! If you wanna help with C++ for project 6014 just PM me ! I can help !