The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I've been thinking recently, what exactly can we expect from a real sequel to sc2? The gameplay of SC2, while excellent of course, was in many ways a product of the limitations of your average home computer at the time. The 486 DX was released the same year SC2 was released, and it was the first desktop CPU to have an integrated FPU, meaning everything before that needed a math coprocessor to handle 3D stuff. So that restricted what could be done with it to 2D, and basic representations of a planets surface.

So what about gameplay in a sequel? I really don't know, except that the mineral hunting aspect would probably not appear again. With Earth and the other alliance races freed, it wouldn't be needed. Fortunately, modern systems give a lot more flexibility for the imagination to be represented. Personally I would look forward to seeing beutifully rendered alien worlds. But I really dont know how gameplay (or combat) can be modernized. Any thoughts?

As for the story, I think most of the races will be around plus some new ones. The Ilwrath and Thraddash were pretty thorouly devestated by their war, whether or not they show up is questionable. The Kohr-Ah may show up from time to time, but they would likely be under the control of the Kzer-Za. I can also see the Kzer-Za being allied with the new alliance or whatever organization supercedes it. Their ships are powerful and they have highly advanced technology. In facing whatever new threat comes about this would be very useful. As for what's left of the old heirarchy, I do think the overtly hostile ones (VUX and Mycon) will have severly restricted fleet sizes and may be quartentined all together. The Spathi will probably be neutral. I'd love to see the plot delve more deeply into what exatly happened to the Androsynth, as well as Orz's story (what it is and what it wants). I also think we can expect the Taalo to show up. Orz said they were still alive, somewhere *below*. I would also expect some of the mystery of the Precursors, but perhaps not all of it to save some material for future use. Either way I'd still love to see plenty of new, unsolved mysteries to be introduced.


Sorry for the rant, just something I've been thinking about for a bit now.

Actually, I think mining will become a less integral part of the game but still be included in it. Just look at the console games out there, all kinds of useless stuff to do to gain trophies/achievements :).

True, and it does add something of an adventure. Personally I also think we should have the chance to explore the coreward quadrant, since that is where the Precursors supposedly went. That being said it should not be cutoff from the home quadrant, though transiting between the two should require a fair amount of resource.


One of SC3's cardinal sins was to make the plotline advance only with the passage of time while giving the player nothing to do during much of that time. From what I remember most of the time you were sitting around waiting for stuff to happen. No real planetary exploration. adventure or anything (and most of the quests were copied directly from SC2). SC is really about adventure, hopefully a sequel will reflect that. I can't wait to be able to see a moonrise on an alien world.

To me, there needs to be a reason to visit planets and mining fills that need well. I couldn't imagine SC or a sequel without it. I'd also think there should be more to do on a planet's surface. What exactly, I don't know.

A sequel will also need to appeal to a new generation of players if they expect to turn a profit. So I'd expect an immersive 3D enviornment on planets and during combat. A great story isn't optional if they expect the SC fans to buy the game so I'd expect an attempt to appeal to both the SC fans and the new generation alike.

I would like to see some type of first-person-view of planetary exploration of ruins or other artifact sites. Same goes to lander - could go 3D "sim".
Though animatronics got significantly better over the years, I still think full CGI for aliens is in order.
But first and most important it should have at least descent story. It was the best part of SC2 and should be present throughout the sequels.

Just clone mass effect :D

After the awful way SC3 handled it? I don't think so. Besides, animatronics is largely dying out, everything is CGI now thanks to major advances in computing speed over the last 10 years.

Mass Effect was supposedly influenced by SC2.  But I think SC2's planet exploration was just more fun than any of the mass effects.

Never played Mass effect...
Should I give it a go? How similar the gameplay (and, more importantly, the story) is to SC2?

The story is not similar, but you could see it as an SC game geared for a more mature audience. It has many races but also each race is represented by multiple characters (as opposed to SC2 where you only had 1 character per race).
Anyway, Mass effect 1 has some planet exploration where you drive a rover around on a planet and get to shoot various stuff and dig up certain things. Mass effect 2 does the mining etc with probes.

Browsed Youtube for a while. Too much FPS, don't like it. Not what I would like the SC sequel to be.

It's only a thin line between space combat and FPS ;)

I'd actually prefer to see animatronic aliens, just done well rather than whatever the hell SC3 thought it was doing. It was a good feel even if the execution sucked horribly. Except, maybe the Syreen and Earthlings would have real actors? Not sure if that would clash particularly. Animatronic done badly still looks like there's something solid sitting on your screen, CGI done badly looks like there's a computerized piece of plastic sitting on your screen. I'm just sick of CGI, yaknow?

I dunno.. is this bad CGI? http://www.youtube.com/user/biowaremasseffect?blend=1&ob=4#p/u/23/JzO4WUhTVJQ

The main problem with this, of course, is that animatronics are significantly more expensive. Maybe that wasn't so back in 1996 when CGI was still relatively new, but nowadays it's very cheap to produce CGI, so much so that traditional animation seems to be falling by the wayside more and more. Even if a sequel is greenlit, I don't think it will have anywhere near the budget necessary to get animatronics or any other fanciness like that. Which really is no great loss, since CG rendering has come a long way, and if TFB is in charge they're not likely to cheap out and go for bad effects.

Huh? Animatronics is more expensive than CGI?! I believe you, but it sounds very bizarre...

How so? Constructing and animating physical props is not really something anyone can do and expect to look good, especially not on the cheap. That's (partially) why ILM stays in business.

This part is easilly understandable. I was mainly concerned with another aspect - if something even very small needs to be changed, the CGI personnel would have to re-do a significant portion of the work, while Animatronics will just have to re-film the new sequence.

not really ;). CGI has advanced considerably the past few years, and ofcourse a lot is done with motion capturing these days.
Sometimes these 2 techniques are even combined. The Jim Henson company has done a nice job at this with "Sid the Science Kid" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlJ83ztv6Jo . This is live action motion capturing :D.

Let's also not forget that animatronics doesn't grant nearly the same flexibility as CGI. Take for example that scene in the 2012 movie where they are trying to escape the destruction of a california city in that small plane. Now, to do that same scene with models would not have been anywhere near as detailed and rich as it was in the movie. You can do things, create details much easier with CGI, the computer lets you literally do anything since it is a simulation in a virtual environment. That without a doubt is the biggest reason why animatronics is dying, IMO.

Huh? One of the greatest advantages of CGI is that you can, for example, change the appearance of a character and simply re-render the affected parts of the film, while re-filming a scene with animatronics involves a lot of people doing extra work. If generating a new scene after a change involves redoing a lot of work, you're using computers wrong.

From all those comments I think I've missed a big chink of filming progress...

Yeah, you could say that. ;)

But is a 'do-over' culture really a good thing to cultivate? I know I'd prefer to be confident that it would be got right the first time, before filming started.

in games there are often last minute changes ;). even in animatronics and CGI movies.

And that's terrible. Actions should have consequences. Also, eliminating last minute changes would make Executive Meddling seem a lot more unreasonable and might cut down on that sort of thing.

We've come to a point in the development of games where it's not necessary to release a complete product as long as you get something out the door on time. Since "everyone" has high-speed internet and infinite patience, they'll be more than happy to download patch after patch after patch just to get the latest release to a playable, slightly less glitchy state. It greatly cuts down on the costs associated with quality control and testing that characterized the dark ages when people had slow connections, or worse, no internet access or ROM based games.

But ROM and single-release games from the 80's and 90's were buggy as hell, and they NEVER got fixed.

Why? I can understand encouraging quality and correctness from the start of, say, a software development process, but surely making art involves a certain amount of experimentation? I think it's important to distinguish between flexibility and compensating for sloppiness.

True, but trying to pull that sort of stunt nowadays (when executives expect to be able to change things) would merely make you seem unreasonable instead of the executive and get your project cancelled.

It's also worth mentioning that software today is many times more complicated than before, which makes it much harder to completely debug.




Have you been living in a box the last 10 years?  ;D  Smartass remarks aside, I'll give another example: Avatar. Regardless of what you may think of the story, the visuals without a doubt are the most incredible of any movie produced yet. That being said, the script was actually written 15 years ago, but was shelved until recently because there was no way to create the world he wanted to until recently. Animatronics wouldn't cut it, and the CGI at the time was still much too immature to pull it off.

Pretty much so. 8 years rather than 10, though.

Here's an example why especially in art, actions shouldn't always have consequences.
http://www.davidcsimon.com/crimsondark/index.php?view=comic&strip_id=41 (read the author's comments below)

Sometimes an idea, upon execution, just doesn't "work" out okay :)