The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Hi everyone,

0.7 is coming, and it is about time... but not just yet.

As there are many internal changes, we would first like to make sure that we didn't introduce any new bugs. So we give you 0.7.0-rc1 (the "rc" stands for release candidate). It can be downloaded here (http://uqm.stack.nl/files/release/0.7.0-rc1/).

Please post your experiences in this thread. Once we are confident that this release candidate has been adequately tested, we will release 0.7.0.
Bugs can be posted in our bug tracker (https://bugs.uqm.stack.nl/) as usual.

You can see what is new here (http://sc2.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/sc2/trunk/sc2/WhatsNew?revision=3575).
Most changes are internal and are mainly of benefit to creators of mods.
There are also lots of bug fixes that we know some people have been waiting for for a long time.

Because the files are not yet in their final location on SourceForge, the Windows installer needs all the content packages to be in the directory from which it is started, so Windows users will need to download them manually.

Mac users can use uqm-0.7.0-rc1-macosx.dmg. *nix users will have to install from the source files.

Due to internal changes the remix packs from older releases are no longer usable. Shiny new replacements can be downloaded from the same location.


Enjoy!

The Ur-Quan Masters core team.


P.S. To the Precursors: unless you're planning on releasing remix pack 4 really soon, it looks like we won. :P

The source tarball has UNIX -x attributes set for all files, shouldn't directories, build.sh, and uqm-wrapper be the only ones with -x set?

They should, and they are now. Thanks.

Had a melee with Ziper. Initial ship pick screen showing both fleets works, Shofixti no longer hives host player the kamikaze advantage, and we had no crashes. Good job!

But note we had no dupes to test out the pilot names desynch fix.

Good timing! I'm almost finished with my mod, known as UQM: FAF, which stands for:

The name spoils the ending!

But a nice, modest mod.

Hi- I was wondering...

Is there any possibility of having a sort of "checklist" within the setup menu where you can choose which music you would like to hear as you play?   I'm not talking about original music vs. 3DO vs. Precursers remixes, but rather being able to pick and choose between them.  (i.e. "I want the 3DO remix for the Yehat, but I also like the Thraddash and Planet Landing remixes the Precursors did, and I also love the original Spathi and Hyperspace music.")

Would this be a possibility?  Or would it just be too difficult and/or complicated to do?

(I also have no idea how much demand there would be for something like this.)

Yes, and we intend to have something like that in some future release. But the RC is about finding critical bugs before 0.7.0 is released.

Yeah, that's fine.  I didn't expect to have something like that by tommorow or anything.  I just wanted to mention it before I forgot. ;D

Hi,
I've compiled 0.7.0rc1 from sources on my slackware linux box.
So far I haven't had issues except for voices, that don't seem to work
(they worked in 0.6.2 compiled from sources on the same system).

Of course I tried to raise the speech volume, but it was no use.
Could someone check this?

Keep up the good work :)

I think you need to be more specific. Is this the Charlie Sheen type of winning, or the Lance Armstrong kind? ;)

On a more serious note, here's my heartfelt plea to the developers: Stop with the 0.x releases already! The game is done! It lacks no features that the average gamer will ever notice. The missing stuff is almost exclusively internal. I suggest you skip a 0.7 release and bump it up 1.0 immediately. Sure, this breaks certain version conventions, but at this point I feel it's necessary. You're needlessly restricting the audience with the current strategy. Most people will see the 0.6 or 0.7 version number and think "No way am I playing a game that is this unfinished/buggy". Please, don't dismiss this, but give it serious thought. UQM deserves better than the limited spotlight these version numbers award it. You're making it look like a pre-alpha product.

Oooh, nice, some of these changes look pretty good! Others, I'm not sure what they mean.

I'm guessing this means something like, searching for "alpha" cannot match, say, Arcturis? Bad example, though.

Wondering what this means... it doesn't help that I've barely played since beating the game.

Is there some hidden benefit to this? :P

Oh good! That's wonderful news! :D

About the salvage bug: The Druuge will always attack you if you have no way of defending yourself. Before, they'd blame you for this and treat it as if you had attacked them. This has been fixed.

By the way, totally agreed with TiLT on the 1.0 vs 0.7 bit. Programmer convention is one thing on programmer-oriented projects. Programmers know that version 0.1 can be totally usable. Everyone else is going to think 'incomplete'.

That's why on a game content mod I was writing I went to 1.0 as soon as I thought someone not on the development team would think it complete. There was more to add, sure. That's what versions 2 and 3 were for. Large numbers are not anathema.

FWIW, I figured it out.
I used to put voices uqm file in content/packages and it worked, but one internal change in the changelog (about 3do stuff now handled as addon pack) gave me the hint that I should have put that file in content/addons.
Working now.

Yeah, it's a very good point. Everything works brilliantly, nothing crashes, and so forth.

If I recall correctly, it was that "Alpha b" could be completed to "Alpha Betelgeuse".

No. Apart from the cloaking device ofcourse. ;)

As for the versioning, I am considering it and have posed the question to the other core team members.

I noticed you could reach 1000.0 : 999.9 and that makes the graphics obscure the text somewhat.

I disagree slightly. I don't think it should be 1.0 until the missing dialogue is added. The "average gamer" gets tripped up every time with the missing mycon dialogue. It's only those who played the PC versaion back in the day that can get by without it.

I won't suggest this game to anyone until they can actually beat it. And you can't beat it as it is.

Wait, you still haven't fixed that? I thought there was something for that, that wasn't a mod.

If I'm wrong, then I agree, it's not 1.0; and it should be a priority.

As far as I know the UQM Extended Edition is the only mod that offered solution for this Mycon dialogue problem, but I think it doesn't include the text lines where the Melnorme explain that the MetaChron is darkening. (I might be wrong)

I think that a possible nice solution would be a dialog that pops up after the conversation, telling you that the original PC version of the game would tell you the MetaChron thing or the coördinates of Epsilon Scorpii, and explaining why it's not available in UQM.

As far as other things that 1.0 should need:
-A starmap; in full-color and printable A4 format (for the Vux Beast, among other things)

The PNF (http://www.star-control.com/starmaps.php) has ten maps, including a scan of the original SC2 map. They'd all need to be scaled down quite a bit to fit on Letter or A4 paper though.

The players shouldn't be bothered with stuff like that in the middle of gameplay. Solutions like this should be avoided as long as it's possible to restore missing text lines. I think the dialogue modification from UQM Extended should be imported into the standard version of UQM. While some players get stuck because of missing Mycon dialogue, the text lines for MetaChron are less important, but are still useful since they explain that the Melnorme are leaving the quadrant in early 2159 because of  big danger drawing near. This gives a clue that there is a limited time to beat the game and I think it would be a nice thing to include into UQM.

Why not give an option to the player when downloading the voice addon to also download modified voice clips? That way, people who play without voices don't even ever have to worry about it.

What about optionally showing the extra dialog, without voices? The game does this already, for Slylandro Probe co-ordinates.

Honestly, the first time I saw that, I thought it seemed incredibly awkward and out-of-place. If it's done, it should only be a temporary solution.

Or just warn the user in-game when selecting to use voices that there are two non-spoilery but very important pieces of information they will not get from the voice version.

I don't see steering people away from the voices as a problem.

I'd have to agree with this one. Speech should be off by default, and if it's off, show the extra text. I actually played UQM for the first time without voices (not even knowing they existed), and it certainly didn't drive me away.

Oh, and the point about non-spoilery is that you could just toss in the old Syreen homeworld and the Mycon homeworld coordinates into the manual.

Same here

What's wrong with the voices, anyway? I think most of them are quite good.

Well, as JUST gone over in detail, they're incomplete. Also, some of them are pretty disappointing.

Modern games all have voice acting, and modern gamers will be reluctant in playing a game without voice acting.
In other words, make the voice acted version the default version.

I disagree. SC2 is not a modern game, and trying to paint it as such would be an utter waste of time. Anyone truly interested in the game (like myself) will not be put off by lack of voices or, for that matter, amazing 3D graphics.

This is the most sensible opinion presented so far in this particular part of the discussion. What most of you should realize is that you (nor I for that sake) don't represent the average consumer even in the slightest. You are outsiders, people who are willing to go so far as to write command-line arguments when starting up a game if it's necessary. Many of you probably even play the thing on Linux. You are not the average player.

I may not be the most unbiased person around, but it's my firm belief that nothing should be held back. Include voices and make them default. Include the music remixes and make them default (oh yes, I know this one is controversial, but for players who haven't seen the game before the classic music won't matter. For those of you who HAVE played the game before and know the classics by heart, you're probably good enough with computers to be able to swap to the classic music manually). If a graphical overhaul was ever completed and of decent quality, it should be included and should be default.

Honestly, if you can't see the sense in the paragraph above you really aren't looking at this from the right direction. The experience from the get-go should be as superior as possible for the casual player. Experienced players have the know-how to customize the game to their own needs through the options already available.

I say this as a full-time professional software developer. I worked on a commercial PC game for 3 years (it was canceled, so no need to google it) and I've been creating and maintaining user-oriented software packages for my entire career. If I were to pick just one lesson I've learned during that time that is of vital importance, it's this: Always approach the product from the customer's viewpoint.

But being stuck in a part of the game because the spoken dialog is incomplete is not the superior experience. If the spoken dialog's holes are filled in, then sure, you may be right, but as of now, this has not happened.

That's not a sufficient reason to discard the voices altogether, onpon4.
Worst case scenario, it's not difficult to add the subtitles without the corresponding spoken dialog. Sure it will seem strange, but it will be much quicker forgotten by the average player than the total lack of voices or the impossibility to complete the game.

Well, I sure haven't forgotten that incredibly awkward line which does exactly that, spoken by the Slylandro probes. Honestly, it makes UQM look like it was modded in a hurry. On the other hand, as is the case with many games I've played (many modern handheld games come to mind), I didn't care at all about the (perceived) lack of voices. All it meant was that I had to read.

What's so special about the voices, anyway? I don't mean to insult the creators, but the voice acting is not exactly a masterpiece. To this day, I think that listening to the Umgah is painful, and the signal jamming noise used with Hayes sounds more like something you'd hear in Looney Tunes. Not to mention, do you really think modern gamers will fail to notice that the speech doesn't sync with the mouth movements? I sure noticed.

I play a lot of recently-made games. A very significant fraction do not have voices. I've spoken with others who play these games; I have never heard a negative comment about a game making them read instead of listen. I have heard negative comments about the voices in games. It seems like one of those things that has to be done right.

Incidentally, while we ought to use the remixes, it might be wise to check that each is really suitable for use in-game. For example, compare Across the Galaxy (in the precursor remix pack) to Re-Enter - the former has a 31 second intro; the latter is just like the original, but sounds better. Across the Galaxy is a great album piece, but not so great for short trips.

While I agree with the sentiment, I don't agree with your conclusion. My suggested solution (I believe I've voiced it to the devs before) is to make the hyperspace music pause, not stop, between each trip. In other words, when you return to hyperspace after visiting a system, the music continues from where it stopped.

I don't know about that. Try opening one of the songs, picking a spot at random, and starting it. That's essentially what the feel would be. It seems to me that it would just be awkward.

A quick fade-in handles that nicely. I find it way more awkward to have the music start at the same spot over and over and over again during the game. It really grates, no matter which tune you're using.

This thread is very quiet, so apparently the new 0.7.0 version is bug free!  :P

Sorry for the plug, but besides the Extended Edition, there's also this little mod (http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=4724.0), made by myself, using reconstructed audio files previously posted here (http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=4166.0).

At least in my experience, the voice acting is the inferior version. I can't stand it.

That is of little concern to my argument. ANY voiceovers are better than none. Hell, imagine the outcry if someone decided to publish a version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night without voices. That game has some of the worst voice acting in the industry, yet people love it regardless.

Maybe, but there's a major difference:

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is a platformer. It is action-oriented, so no player would want to be forced to read. The story doesn't even matter much, anyway, so most players will just casually listen.

Star Control II, on the other hand, is very much centered on dialog. You actually need to pay close attention to what people (well, creatures) are saying. If you just casually listen, you will have little idea what is going on.

But I doubt there would be an "outcry" if Symphony of the Night was re-released without voices. The only voices present (to my knowledge) are in cutscenes. This is also the case for SC2; the only time voices are used is when the only focus is on the dialog (intro, extro, and dialog). The only time I would imaging people liking a game less because of lack of voices (besides the voices being excellent voices, of course) is in a game like Shadow the Hedgehog, where there is some dialog of importance which is heard while you are playing an action sequence. Ironically, even games which break this rule, like Super Mario Sunshine, usually don't result in angry gamers.

But Symphony of the Night is not even a proper comparison anyway, since there's also another major difference: we're talking about potential new players, not old players. If Symphony of the Night was re-released without voices, even if it caused an outcry from fans of the original, new players playing for the first time wouldn't notice a thing. In fact, if they played the version without voices first, they very well might consider it to be the better version (or, at the very least, wish they hadn't heard the voices in the original).

Another reason that the comparison is inappropriate is we're talking about a default for an option here, not whether or not voices are available.

Some of those voices are wonderful. Like Larry Zee's Ur-Quan rendition.  Or Bruce Leyland's Yehat. But yeah, some need replacing. I assume you could make new voice archives and use .rmps to set it to use those files?

That could be a forum project, eh?

I agree with TiLT, voices should be on by default. New users want the complete package, period. If you think the voice acting stinks, that's personal opinion and no reason to exclude them. If the voices don't match the text perfectly, no one really cares, people are used to those types of inconsistencies.

... except that it's not a matter of inconsistency, it's a matter of the voices not providing important clues!

People DO care about THAT!

Indeed. So using voices without text would be not a good thing to do. It should be voices plus text as default.

Definitely voice with text, its so much easier to read than only listen.

I see what you're saying now - I thought you meant consistency between two presentations, but you meant within one.

I'm not really sure how that would work out. Seems like it would be really weird in the cases they diverge.

I wonder how I got through that part of the game back when I played it on the 3DO.
Well, probably because all of the homeworlds and whatnot were in the manual...

I asked about a more vague version of the dialog problem on the GMC (which I frequented at one time). The topic is here:

http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=507368 (http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=507368)

The general consensus for such a situation was to have the voices, but show the missing dialog in subtitles. The GMC is made up mostly of moderators and pre-teens with a handful of adults, so it's probably pretty mainstream as a response, though a larger sample size would be needed to reach a really good measure (only about 5 people responded).

Switching to OpenAL sound in an effort to get positional audio results in the following error message upon trying to reload UQM:

The Ur-Quan Masters encountered a fatal error.
Part of the log follows:
 
The Ur-Quan Masters v.0.7-rc1 (compiled Feb 28 2011 15:09:09)
[Blah blah no warranty, etc.]

Netplay protocol version 0.4. Netplay opponent must have UQM 0.6.9 or later.
Couldn't initialize OpenAL: 40961
Sound driver initialization failed.
This may happen when a soundcard is not present or not available.
NOTICE: Try running UQM with '--sound=none' option

Right, a piece of OpenAL is missing (wrap_oal.dll) in the RC1 install. Will be fixed in RC2/final.

The link to the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition is dead in the INSTALL.msvc.

Yes, thank you. That's covered in Bug 1125 (https://bugs.uqm.stack.nl/show_bug.cgi?id=1125)