The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

When I was young, way back in the day I always used to play SC2 on my old 486. Very recently I decided to give UQM a few run throughs for old times sake. Something I noticed is there definately seems to be quite a bit of missing dialogue, things that were said in the original DOS version that seem to be completely absent from UQM. In particular I noticed it more prominently with the Arilou, the Zoq-Fot-Pik, and the Druuge. The ZFP in particular had many things missing, like for example, on your second trip they will say one of their deep range scouts found a vault on chaemaleoparlis (where the Syreen Penetrators were kept) without ever mentioning they sent out scout ships in the first place. They also never seemed to have any information about the doctrinal war except for the Supox and Utwig intervention. That essentially makes them considerably less useful in the game and also less interesting to visit. So how did this happen?

When TFB/Crystal Dynamics created the 3DO version they apparently missed some parts.
As we don't have the speech tracks, these are missing from UQM too.
You can see the differences here (http://uqm.stack.nl/diff/).

Just out of curiosity, has anyone made a mod of UQM that includes the missing dialogue and removes the voice packs instead?
I enjoy UQM as it is, but I could care less about hearing the dialogue spoken aloud, as long it's all there.

Personally, I hate the voices. It just ruins the mood when the Orz start talking in a human voice.

Personally I don't bother with speech, being something of a purist myself. :) Still, that missing dialogue really did hurt the game and made it a lot less immersive than the original. Is there going to be some way to include it in some sort of classic pc version of UQM or something?




When I played UQM last the Arilou were even less talkative than that dialogue tree in the link suggests. After you get the portal spawner, you can go back to their homeworld as many times as you want, but there's little to no option for having a conversation. Maybe it's just my memory not being what it used to be, but for compaison's sake can someone in the team download an abandonware copy of the pc version and run it though (with dosbox obviously)? Aside from the missing dialog, sometimes it just feels different to have conversations in the game for some reason, like they repeat themselves much more than before while not saying some pieces of dialogue that were included in UQM. Sorry if it's a little vague, it is still just a feeling.

I guess that would explain  the problems I was having (http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=4767.0). It seems weird that you are punished for getting the Portal Spawner too early though.

Maybe modifying the setup menu slightly would allow for some choice in the matter.
Under "PC / 3DO compatibility options", there could be a "Dialogue" option which could be toggled between the PC and 3DO text.  And perhaps with the PC text, speech would be disabled completely.

I don't think this change fits into "slight" category - the dialogue tree is one of the basic game structures and changing it I think is more or less rebuilding half of the game or so.

Only the Melnorme text required recompilation.
The Mycon text is simply a resource change, there's no alteration in the dialogue tree.

Besides, there's no reason why the game can't be reprogrammed so that dialgoue trees are changeable at runtime. Depending on the extent of the changes, it might take a while to program, but it's not like it can't be done.

Unfortunately it does seem very clear in more than a few cases in game that the dialogue tree isn't working correctly.


On another note, there is a bug with the VUX intruder. When it first comes into battle it is always supposed to jump in next to the enemy, and in the melee it does this. In the campaign it does not, instead jumping to random locations like any other ship. This makes it much more of a pushover than it should have been.

Maybe it was built like this on purpose?

But why? The was THE feature that made going against anything to be concerned about. It's weapon only has a medium range, it's turn rate sucks, and it's acceleration & top speed is even worse than an Earthling Cruiser (yes, that's right, even a cruiser can outrun it). So without this ability it becomes worse than useless. With it it will at least stand some chance against slow ships, otherwise it will just get nuked into oblivion by a cruiser with ease.

Yeah, but since VUX don't play a major role, and you never control a VUX, the warp-in-close ability would just be a major annoyance.

I figure that they haven't had a chance to calibrate their intrusion devices to deal with the Vindicator's exceptional size yet.

I just remembered something. UQM Extended Edition supposedly has the dialogue for the Mycon fixed.

I always assumed that the ineffectual Intruders in story mode were simply the result of ZEX being exiled and less competent commanders now dictating tactics for the VUX navy. Without ZEX, the VUX fail to be a significant threat to anyone (which is pretty much what Hayes says on the matter, as I recall).

Well... I realised that if you wear headphones while you speak to the Orz, you can hear some pretty disturbing "demonic" undervoices. One in a very low, and monsterous voice, the other in a very high and bestial voice.

But I do see what you mean. It does take away some "mysteriousness".

The biggest thing about voiced that I don't like is inconsistency:

• The Orz sound feminine in communication, but have a deep voice when they say "GO!" in battle.
  
• The Pkunk sound much younger when they throw insults in battle
• The secondary weapon sound for Slylandro Probes ("ENERGIZE!") sounds fittingly robotic, but in communication the probes sound more like an average text-to-speech program.

There's also some other reasons I don't like some voices, though:

• Some of the voices (namely Orz, Melnorme, Slylandro, Umgah, Supox, and Syreen) don't seem to fit quite so well
• Some voices (namely Chmmr, Chenjesu, Utwig, Orz, Umgah, Pkunk, and certain parts of Yehat) are not pleasant to the ear.
• Some voices (namely Chmmr, Chenjesu, Mycon, and Melnorme) talk too slowly. I realize it's for effect, but it seems to drag out their words WAY too much.
• Some voices (namely Melnorme and Umgah) are EXTREMELY difficult to understand; Melnorme speek WAY too softly, while the Umgah speak way too unclearly. This is especially annoying when purchasing information from the Melnorme.

However, there are many voices that are good:

• Ur-Quan, Kohr-Ah, Ilwrath, Druuge, Thraddash, VUX, Spathi, Dnyarri, Hayes, and Tanaka all seem to have perfect or near-perfect voices
• Yehat voice, while at some times is not pleasant to the ear, is otherwise a well-done voice (the biggest slipup here is the way they say "don't be talking about them at all" (referring to the Pkunk), which is completely incomprehensible without the subtitles.

Just my opinion.

EDIT: How come nobody noticed that the example of missing dialogue given by the original poster of this topic is in fact not a piece of missing dialogue? I remember distinctly being told about the vault, and I've never played any version besides UQM. They tell you about it after you've been allied with them for some time, after you rescue them, I think.

Hmm, to me the Kzer-Za voice seemed too... forced. Attempting to sound evil, yet ending up somewhat silly instead.
On the other hand, the Kohr-Ah one was the one which, of all the UQM voices, sounds truly perfect.