The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

As you might remember, I used to crosspost SCDB news posts here for a while until I got bored with it. I'm just curious about how many people there are on this forum who since then haven't checked that news, and thus don't know that there is an interview with Paul Reiche up on the PNF (among other things).

So help me out and satisfy my curiosity. I'm just curious as to how many people only ever visit UQMF and the reasoning behind it. Keep in mind, I'm not saying it's wrong in any way. No one has to visit more than one forum, and no one has to be interested in the fandom. It's perfectly all right to just like the game and just check in here every now and then to see what is going on with it. But I'm curious as to if there are five such persons, or fifty. Or five hundred?

I don't visit The Other Place that often because I've already settled here and aren't interested in discussing fandom stuff really. I use the forum to announce tournaments and similar stuff, and from what I gather there are more net players on this forum.

I don't visit it because most of the time, the news just doesn't interest me, and I've already read the interesting stuff in the site. I suppose I would take a look at it if I was a member of the SCDB, but I'm not, so I never really come across the news.

This is what I figure most people will answer. If you're already established here, your main interest is the game and not the surrounding stuff, why would you need more than one off topic and General Discussion section? I appreciate the answer, it confirms what I was sort of thinking. Stil interested in how many people liek this there are around. If nothing else, al lot of those people should be interested in NetMelee. I wouldn't discount the SCDB folks totally when it comes to NetMelee, some people like fluffy do seem to take part.


Not much to add except that the site is updated every so often, so it might be worth your while to check back every now and then. We did add the new ship sections a few weeks back and the music page and whatnot are updated every once in a while.

Anyway, I appreciate the answers. Any more takers?

Well, I like it how there's not that much activity in here (because, being obsessive, I'm forced to read each and every message :'().

Also, as you know, Luki, I like the fact that the default theme here is dark. :D (In fact, this is the reason I go directly to star-control.com when I see a PNF update on RSS - I seek the darkness. Mmm! Oh, BTW: no, the image does not show up on RSS. Not on PNF's front page either. Had to suffer the brightness for a bit to see it. Oh wow, I'm still within parentheses. Better close them now.)

I don't know what you're talking about, so I only visit this place.

I'm talking about the Pages of Now and Forever (http://www.star-control.com), the biggest fan site I know of. It contains some interesting stuff and links to a lot of other places. It's also home of the Star Control Discussion Board, a forum with a somewhat more active (but still smaller I think) userbase than UQMF has. Some of the really interesting SC stuff will eventually always turn up here, but some things such as the weekly webcomic That Ur-Quan Master only gets posted here once, so it's easy to miss unless you trawl the archives.

See, this is interesting. I'm curious as to how many people found the game, then this site, and then never realised there was anything else out there.


So what you're saying is that if UQMF grows more active (when the devs release a new version for example), you'll have to either leave or stay on the foum long enough to read every message? I feel for you. I do read pretty much every message both here and on the SCDB though, so there aren't that many. Or at least I skim.


Heh. A dark theme is coming, but it'll be a while still. It should have been here already, but we got sidetracked with trying to integrate the old forums posts into the new one. I'm guessing the image doesn't work because I've hosted it on the forum, otherwise it should at least show up on the frobnt page. I'l ltry fixing it after the weekend to see how that works.

I've been known to frequent the PNF on occasion :P.

Good stuff Luki... Had a long read and a long laugh.

No one told me that Tsing had some usable models posted to your site.

So far giving the Shofixti a thumbs up.... with you ask Tsing to contact me?

metallic_medium  (at) Yahoo (dot) c0m

Thanks!

I keep forgetting what PNF means so I had to go to Ultronomicon to find out. 
Well, I found this out through Fedora 10s repository of games.  (by the way, I'm using Windows Xp right now) I had some trouble (bug) so then I found the Ur-Quan Masters homepage, then I found Bugzilla.  After going to Fedora 11, though, it was fixed so I got to play the game more.  I needed some help so I found the Ultronomicon wiki through the uqm homepage.  I don't remember really how I found this...I think I was looking for a mod.

I never check the SCDB.  So...how will Paul Reiche III get interviewed by PNF?  I mean, how does he interview a fansite? I only visited there a couple times.

Really? I honestly had no idea. :)

Amiga Nut: I told you I was putting up loads of models when I was trying to get yours as well. Let's cut a deal, reply to your emails on the subject, hand over some models, data and pictures and I'll  give you a glowing reference. :)

Or you could just PM Tsing, that'd probably work too but make me sad. ;)

Valos Cor: Thanks for your description of how you found the game, I appreciate it. It's especially interesting that you found the Wiki from the main page, but not the PNF. Still, if one is only interested in the game and not the comics, fan music and what not then it's not that big a loss.

Regarding the interview, you seem to have gotten confused though. Paul isn't interviewing the PNF, a PNF representative (or me if we want to be less formal) interviewed him about their new game. The interview is on the front page.

Thanks.  I'm glad you got to interview him.

Well, I went to the Other Place, wrote half a reply, deleted it. I don't have anything to say! :<

I think you made a pretty good post and you apparently rejuvenated on of my favourite topics as well, so thanks for that.

To be clear though, the intention of this topic isn't to tell people to post on the SCDB. I'm just interested in the amount of people who play the game, but aren't interested in the comics/RP's/side projects/other stuff and thus don't visit the SCDB and the amount of people who do not know anything but UQMF exists. I just like numbers and approximations. It's the engineer in me.

What this also does of course is letting me know how many people there are on UQMF that are active posters, as opposed to passive ones who skim the forum for interesting topics and only look at those. That gives me an approximation of the size of the UQMF community versus the amount of UQMF posters. Which is also pretty interesting.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for their replies so far, any more takers?

I vist both UQMF and SCDB and read the news regularly. In fact I was going to comment on the interview a while back, but decided against it.

Take your interview, trim out the "fluff" and only keep the Q&A.. What do you have left? There was nothing wrong with your questions and  in no way could I have done it better, however, I was dissapointed in Paul's answers and found litte (if any) substance. Thus the entire episode seemed virtually pointless. His excuses for not meeting with you prior to the interview seemed a bit weak as well.

I didn't even know there were SC comics.  I'd probably be interested in side projects, comics and music.  About side projects...I made a little .gif file of a ship with its engines starting up.  Its pretty bad and small though, so not worth seeing.

I should have probably been a bit clearer on the fact that I'm mostly interested in the people I know aren't registered or active on the SCDB, and whether it's because they lack interest or because they don't know about it. I appreciate you and Dragon taking the time to answer, but I was pretty sure you both visited the SCDB before this thread as well :)


Thanks for the feedback. Firstly, let me note that you don't have to prepare your criticism with "in no way could I have done it better". I can't draw for the life of me, but I can still tell if something is terribly drawn :) I always appreciate feedback, how else could I ever improve?

Anyway, the fluff in the article was indeed there to flesh it out and attempt to make it a bit more amusing. I could have just posted the question and answers, but I wanted to experiment a bit. It probably wasn't my most succesful attempt at humour.

And I agree his excuse was thin. I suspect it has more to do with the fact that I'm on the national squash team and could have given him a pretty hard game.

Valos Cor: The comics can be found on the PNF comics page. You should also check out the "Mods, clones and fan stuff" section of the SCDB, it contains all sorts of projects, artwork and stuff like that. And if you like forum games, role playing or fan fiction, make sure to check out Heavy Space.

PoNaF changed forum system some time ago didn't it? Were the old account details transferred?

It's pretty uncommon that old games have active communities. I think the simplicity of the UQM forum is advantageous. Even larger communities can be killed by forum subsection-mania, probably because the attention is divided by the number of sections, and goes below a critical "Should I bother to revisit to see if something new has happened?" threshold.

How is the new-ish PoNaF site coming along btw? Is all/most of the content up?

Unfortunately no. A big reason for the switch in forum software was that the something was terrifyingly wrong with the old one. The forum would hide threads, forget to mark new posts and all sorts of shenanigans that made it pretty impossible for any newcomers to figure out what was going on. We tried to ask the SMF guys for help, but they weren't of much use. We're sort of playing around with a piece of software for eventually transferring old posts and accounts, but it's not exactly a priority. The old forum is locked down and still resides at www.star-control.com/forum whereas the new one is at www.star-control.com/community, so you can find any old discussions you might have reason to revisit.


Yeah, too many subforums are dangerous. that was one of the main things wrong with the SCDB of old I think, at one stage there were 8 sub-forums for a community of 7 people.Tthe system has been remade a bit, although I suspect we'll nest some less important forums under major ones still. There are five sub-forums there now. One for the news posts that show up on the front page, one for General SC discussion, one for fan projects/mods/art/whatever, one for all the silly forum SC games (from Mafia to CYOA) and finally the off topic. Currently, it seems that all of the forums get new posts quite often, so for the time being we're probably holding that position.


Not bad. We've got most of the major things in place. The race pages for SC1 and SC2 are still missing the races, although that is underway. the big thing left is an art gallery and a files section really. Of course we add small pages now and then and clean up old ones (The SC1 page needs some clean-up for example), but the site fills two of it's three purposes now; functioning as a brief reporting service for any SC news while Anthony handles the in depth stuff and introducing the games in a simple and accessible way while the Ultronomicon fills in more detailed information.

Of course, the site is what the community makes it as well, people like Vee-R and you have already helped us oodles. If you feel like making suggestions we'll certainly be listening. :)

Yes yes and double yes.

love the 3 section system of UQM forum

The SCDB is constructed along the same lines, I think. The 5 there are as good as 3 here.

I lurk here and read every post, but I don't usually reply because nothing is that interesting. I don't care about fan art, It really doesn't mean anything. I mean that it isn't constructive and its just some drawings. Now maybe if someone would do a comm screen for cedric...

But no, I dont usually check the scdb because it is so busy. I'd rather have a small community that I know well, (even if you dont know me) than a lot of activity.

I remember when there was just 2 sections and we weren't allowed to discuss off topic stuff. Three is a lot better :)


Meh, it's all in the eye of the beholder I think. some people like having projects and stuff separated, others prefer to have just one busy subforum.


There's a lot of people like that I think. I guess if you have nothing to add, then why not.


Fan art/music/whatever is there because someone enjoys the game and wants to share that with us. Philosophically speaking, UQM doesn't really "mean" anything either, it's just there to amuse you and have you enjoy it. Same as fan art, but on a somewhat different scale :)


This is so weird. For most of my 7 years here, UQMF has always been the busy and exciting place with loads of members and the SCDBhas been the quiet little intimate forum. I guess I still think of them like that.


Do you though? I've been on both forums for seven years and seen a lot of people come and go. Hands down I'd say I know the SCDB crew better. In large parts because the SCDB has a lot of threads on what people are studying, working with/on, what music they like, what books they read and so forth. UQMF tends to be mostly business, at least nowadays. I only "know" people on here because I send out PM's far too often to snoop about poor fellows like Resh Aleph or Novus. Not that I don't do that on the SCDB,but it's made easier by the fact that people share a lot more over there.

I am somewhat of a newbie, but I certainly visit The Pages of Now and Forever from time to time. I guess you could say I'm weird; I found out about this masterpiece of a game whilst browsing cnet.com for free games and software. I have been playing the heck out of it ever since. Out of curiosity, I searched "The Ur-Quan Masters" on Google to see if there were communities and/or personal websites devoted to the game. I then discovered PoNaF and the Ultronomicon.

I also agree that the simplicity of this forum is excellent.

clarification: it doesn't mean anything to me.

Y'know Zeratul, I found it in exactly the same way. Looked it up again the following year, and through a sequence of events I can't quite remember ended up on the SCDB. Not sure how I managed to miss this forum the first time around, but I registered here a few months later.

I was the same...

I mainly visit SCDB now, but I have been more active here more recentely.
Really, it doesn't matter which forum I go on, as they are all forums for people who like Star Control. I'm just happy that neither of them are dead.