The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

(http://starcontroller.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/tfbrss.png) (http://starcontroller.com/tfb.php)
I created something that takes the news content from the TFB news site and converts it to RSS.  It saves time navigating to the site and will update immediately as news is added.

Everything seems to be working fine and I hope that it helps spread TFB news around faster for everyone using RSS readers.  I'd love to find out what everyone thinks of it and especially if it is compatible.

http://starcontroller.com/tfb.php

If anyone has any ideas or feedback, I'd love to hear it.

This would be a good idea if the TFB site was actually updated more than once twice a year.
Unfortunately, it is not.. so that RSS-scraper is not very useful ;).
Funny how they mention a star control sequel there so often, but they never actually make one.
Perhaps we'll discover the secret to the purple melnorme bridge, or the ingame cloaking device, before an SC sequel is made :D.

Agreeing with this.

I see what you mean.  :D  Whenever news updates start popping up more frequently, the RSS feed will be ready.  Now to play the waiting game...

Oh, I'm pretty sure I know the reason for the purple bridge already. :D

RSS is more useful for infrequently updating sites, so that you can just stop checking...

It's more useful if you want to be on the ground floor of every announcement. Most of us will hear about things a week late at worst without checking the TFB site at all.

It's funny how committed this community is to Star Control. I mean, the game is nearly 20 years old, TFB keeps talking about making a sequel without it happening, and yet this community is still active. Kind of like when I play against Shiver and am too stubborn to just accept defeat, even though my chances of winning are close to nonexistent.

As disappointing as it might be, I don't think there will ever be a "real" sequel to Star Control II. It's just been too long, and most of the fan community is gone anyways. It just wouldn't be a wise business decision to create a sequel.

By that reasoning, no new franchise would ever be created. The fact is that many people, even those not involved in the "fan community" still fondly remember SC2. If a new SC were announced, there would still be a large buzz. That's one step ahead of any new franchise.
Of course the game should be playable all by itself, and calling it Star Control 3 (or Star Control 4) would be a bad idea, but a "Star Control Tales — The Return of the Precursors" or whatever could still be a sequel storywise, while being commercially viable.

As long as Paul and Fred still want to create a new Star Control (which they do), and are in good health, we shouldn't count out a sequel.

Are you sure they all haven't forgotten entirely about Star Control or abandoned it? The fact is, unless the game we're talking about is a well-known classic game (which it's not), there is almost no chance of success for a sequel, because people will pass it off as a terrible game because they've never heard of the game before it. On the other hand, if people see a commercial for an entirely new game they've never heard of before, and it looks good, they will become interested in it. I was interested in the commercial for The Conduit, even though it didn't sound like any game I'd played before, but I might have been less interested if it was called The Conduit 2.

I find your lack of faith disturbing.

There may be only a slim chance for a sequel to ever see the light of day, but it doesn't hurt to hope.

Besides, as for the active community, there are always mods and new tips/trick coming out of this forum. Plus the player vs player melee keeps the game feeling fresh.

Yes. Look at how they describe themselves in these recent job opening ads (http://jobs.gamasutra.com/jobSeekerx/ViewAccountProfile.asp?accountno=101#Profile2127): [...]It would be nice to one day do another Star Control title but what's really most important is that we can keep working on fun games for fun people and not turn into a bunch of business jerks.[...]

As for the rest of your points: reread my previous post.

I was talking about SC fans, not TFB... What I was saying is I don't think Activision would think it wise to allow TFB to create a sequel to Star Control II, in favor of fresh new games with modern gameplay.

Just because the sequel is to an older game doesn't mean the gameplay of the sequel can't or won't be modern. SC2 was quite different in terms of gameplay than the first game, there's no reason a hypothetical third game couldn't follow suit.

You are asserting that a sequel would fail because most people haven't heard of its predecessors, while at the same time saying it can't succeed because it isn't "fresh" enough... despite most people not knowing about its predecessors. If so many people are unaware of the star control franchise then a sequel would be fresh to them, and to the fans it wouldn't matter anyway.  Whichever of your opposing assertions you're going with, good marketing and branding can bypass the problem anyway.

Maybe you are unaware that you are coming off as someone who is adamant that there will definitely never be a sequel and that you are just trying to bring everyone down to that level, but... I guess I find the idea that there might be a sequel someday to be a much more rational position to have than saying there definitely will or won't. Just an observation.

If TFB's like "SC series sucked ass and we don't want to make a sequel." then you can say that there's no chance for a sequel, but they still seem pretty interested in it so there is still a probable chance of a sequel coming out (providing that enough people sign the petition.)

Activision's current CEO (Bobby Kotick) only wants to publish games where obvious sequels can be made and push sales on as many platforms as possible.  The only real fresh new game Activision published is Prototype, and some people would say that it's just another trend in the "open world superpower" game.  Everything else was either canceled, moved to another publisher or is a sequel.