The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Any chance for it?  Playing with just the keyboard is a drag...just a thought.

Thanks!

What, do you want SC2 to play like SC3?  Star Control II could never support a mouse, and there are many reasons why.  Just clicking on an object takes the fun out of things such as approaching an enemy's home planet and trying to outmanoeuver (sp?) their ships.  Just clicking on a planet and the game sending you to it?  Makes no sense, and doesn't show a practical use in the game.  The mouse is useless in battle, too.  I could only see it being used in menus or alien conversation.

Other than that, mouse support is useless and IMO impossible in Star Control II, unless you changed the game altogether.  If you have a strong and inseperable hatred with your keyboard, then play the game with a joystick instead.

Well, I can think of a few places where mouse support could be useful: setting co-ordinates for autopilot, making choices in PC-style menus and dialogue, and a few other cases. However, the UQM user interface is designed for keyboard/gamepad use, so you'd have to add a lot of stuff for meaningful mouse support.

Another possible way to use the mouse would be simply to map mouse movement to arrow key presses and the mouse buttons to the fire buttons et.c., but this is probably not what you want (it would be reasonably easy to implement, though).

I can't count the number of times I wished the mouse worked while I was attempting to pick a destination on the starmap.  Keyboard control is really clunky for that.

Daniel

If nothing else, weith mouse you could use the turret on the Orz a lot easier. And you could target the Arilou laser yourself
! :) You could even remote control your DOGI! Or your human missile... the possibilities are endless.

That was my initial reasoning for mouse support, for the Star Map...I'm sure it's too hard to program but it was just something to chew on.

Providing mouse support on the starmap and nowhere else should be reasonably easy to add. Redesigning the game's interface to allow mouse control in every single situation would be quite nasty, as the screen layouts and such are designed for a keyboard/gamepad interface; you'd have to add stuff to click on to get a sane mouse interface.

Adding a mouse would be a good idea, especially for the starmap and perhaps picking conversation responses (it just fits better with today's computer GUI).

No doubt about it, as good as this game is EVEN 12 years after it's been released (and that's seldom by any measure!), to succeed today it has to undergo some basic changes, including network ability, music, graphics and GUI.

Don't fix it if it ain't broken!
Never change a winning team!
Leave the original SCII alone, please!

No 3D Space Combat,
No mouse support,
no different story line,
Just DON'T do it!!!

And yes! I AM serious about that, too!

Mouse support for melee ship selection menus please.

Don't change anything sounds good for you GM, seeing as you are translating the whole thing :) Of course, that's not changing as such.

while were at it, can we have a3D starmap as well, I can't handle that flat thing  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

Okay, you can have your 3D map - but it will include the rotational shift of the galaxy around the galactic core, only accelerated a million times, so every time you exit a system the map will look different  :D

Oh, and as for the changes - I don't consider dubbing/translating a real change since one can always go back to the original. The translation is only for all the poor Germans who don't speak English or favor the Sprache of the Vaterland.

As long as I can clikc on my 3D map with my mouse, that's alright. And it'll be like getting a new starmap every time you exit a system! brilliant!

Hey, we need to have the planets in-system slowly rotate the star, and the moons too. It's not like we don't have the necessary information, and it would be cool to see the systems going about their business.

And having day and night on the planetary surfaces - having the hotspots depend on time of day - having visibility decrease at night... having speed of lander depend on slope of terrain...

And lets not forget, we should scale the sizes to more realistical as well! Sounds like you have a lot of work ahead of you Death...

Death_999 - that is a great idea! What else didn't we think of?

How 'bout the "El Nino" and all it's bro's in other star systems? There is so much more out there, in our Milky Way!

And Lukipela - just for you we'd introduce the 3D mouse support for rotating starmaps, I'm sure  ;)

I forgot to mention: If you, Death, ever manage to make the star systems rotate, I know exactly the Ur-Quan will win the war, since I'll be only sitting in one or two starsystems watching the planets move  :D

That's a cool idea (rotating the stars). I always wondered back in the original SC2 days why aren't they moving like in SC1..

It's not that hard to calculate it either ;) (-proceeds to show off limited Physics knowledge-)

considering we aren't making a complete and accurate star system, all we need is for each planet to rotate by the force of the sun, and each moon by only it's parent planet's force. So:

F=ma=m*(v^2)/R
F=GmM/R^2
=> m*(v^2)/R = GmM/R^2 => (v^2) = GM/R
and the radius around the sun / main parent is:

R = GM/v^2

M = main planet mass, G = 6.67E-11 (N*m^2/kg^2), v = planet speed
::)

Great! Now all we'd have to do is log into the Star Control Science Mission Main Frame Computer Network and download all the different sizes - unless anybody volunteer to visit each and every planet  :D

No worries, me and my trusty ruler are up for the job! I take a third, Censored takes a third, and GM takes a third, and we will be done in no time. Not to worry, we shall soon have spinning planets, as long as we have our trusty rulers with us whilst exploring!

NOT TO BE A PARTY POOPER, but the amount of modifactaions you guys are talking about would prety much require a new engine for planet landing. and you would have to redo the graphics of the planets.

one easy modifacation i would like is a built in star finder. type in the name and it puts the cursor on it. or have it know that you have been told about certain stars and have them highlighted. or even highlight the specific planet that you were told about. i just remember having to write everything down.

Well, actually we're kinda kidding. I don't even own a ruler.

As for the star search, here you go :

http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~starcontrol/sc2srch/

Not everything you wanted, but good enough.

I knew that program existed but what i was saying is they should build it into the game.

No they don't; the whole fun of the game is exploring the systems

yeah, but the whole fun is NOT "Oh, geez, I was told about Beta Brahe... now where the heck is the Brahe constellation?

On a tangential note, how the heck are we supposed to find the Ilwrath homeworld? It's not even in their sphere of influence.
(I did find it, but only because I happened to be mining out the constellation and suddenly ran into 50 Ilwrath unexpectedly)

Incorrectness! We Come From The Eye Of Dogar.
Such A Quasar Exists Nowhere Near This Location!
Look In The Heavens At Location 022.9, 366.6
And Gaze Into The Depths Of Its All-Seeing Eye If You Dare!
Only By The Sparing Caress Of Kazon's Anointed Cilia Will You Survive Such An Act.
Else, You Will Bless The Altar Of Consumption With Your Ceremonial Blood!

But to be fair, I've never heard them say this, i just picked it up from the PONAF site. I found it much the same way as you, by mistake. Although iif one thinks of it, it is obvious. According to the Starmap that came with the game, the Ilwrath sphere was in a completely different place. And seeing as they haven't changed their homeworld, it's logical that it'd still be around there somewhere. Of course, it's very easy to be smart after the fact...

Just my two cents, but I personally would LOVE to see:

1) Point-and-click starmap
2) Search for systems with matching names (type in 'hades' and have alpha, beta and so on show up flashing white-normal-white)

Rotating stars would also be neat, but not very low priority.

-- Stelard Actek

hmm... is it just me, or is that last post simply a restatement of what we've been discussing (at least partially), for the entire thread? Oh well, as been stated, at least the starmap might be useful, although I personally think that ther game should be played as it is, the retro feeling is a part of it

Isn't putting the game on the Windows platform mainly done for creating that nostalgic feel?

And Lukipela, better check what it states under your name... Posting Dia...uh Dia-thing-a-mabob.

I'd like to keep that nostalgic feeling when trying to find a system I'm looking for.

Remember when Bill Gates promised each new Windows would be better? Wrong! Don't change the game too much or you'll end up with a UQM-95

Yup, nostalgia rules. Which is why i think the game should be reproduced as it was with all its little quirks. Mouse support, planet finders, all that stuff, it's just fancy addons. Like sticking a gps display and ABS brakes on my Wolkswagen, model 56. Sure, it might improve it, but that's not the point. It wouldn't be the same car. The feeling would be different.

Oh, and GM I'm well aware of what my title is nowadays, and although i dont like it I'll console myself with having an extra star. And I'll (hopefully) be going up up and away to the next border where I might get a more tasteful title.

Well, I was mainly joking about the weather on planets, but it WOULD be neat to have the planets in the solar system orbit... and that would be easy to implement, much easier than pulling out a ruler or guessing a weight for each star.

Each planet knows how long its year is, from its coarse scan (right???).
Even if we don't, it won't take too long to assign a simple map from color/hyperspace map size for a star to its mass, then write an algorithm calculating year length based on the planet's orbital radius (as is done above). Once you have that, divide the time since the beginning of the game by that year length, multiply by 2<pi>, and move the planet that far along the track. (In other words, we don't need to make arbitrary choices or go in and do individual analysis on each one...)

For moons, it could be a little tricky, since their year length is the planet's year length. I wonder whether their day length data would make coherent results or not... Well, it wouldn't be too hard to rip the planet's mass from the coarse scan as suggested above.

Only remaining problem will be space stations and other objects for which there is no coarse scan, but there are few enough of those we can do them by hand (i.e. in the vicinity of 5, not 1,000) (remember, places like the Druuge Tradeworld will have a coarse scan... in case you come there after the Kohr-Ah have cleaned the place out).

but you still need to visit every planet to find out its orbit, or radius, no? or are they stored away in afile somewhere?

Well, the data is stored somewhere - you can calculate it at run time, or go through and calculate it in an automated sweep. Either way, no person is going to do the work (though they will have to write the code that does the work)

So it's just a matter of finding the data. fair enuff, lets find someone to do it!

I did a little sniffing around the code; please correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like most systems are randomly generated, but they always use the same seed, making sure that the planets are always the same.  Sol seems to have its own generation file, as do a few other systems.

I was hoping to write a little routine to extract the data, but it looks like it might just be easier to add a couple file-access lines to UQM:  right after it generates info for a planet, append that info to a file (in some format).  If the planets don't get generated until you visit them, kludge the switches so that they all think you're visiting them...

Maybe those with their own file is the "strategically placed" ones that help the player kickstart their fortune hunting?  I would imagine Alpha Centauri is one?

Or instead of speculating we could just ask a developer for the right answer ;)

That sounds like you are volunteering  ;D

Or, the fact that I put question marks at the end of my sentences could be an indicator for anyone that knows (probably would be a developer) to speak up  :P

Hey - if I had time to be serious about this I would've do as much as even start working on it, but I have physics and math to study :P

Ouch! Physics AND Math? Waddaya wanne be? A scientist? Wanna build StarShips for our alliance, right!

I'm a little crazy German scientist myself, you know? Biology AND English (or - how to be a creepy German scientist and not speak with a funny German accent in English)  :D

Umm... Sorry to break your dreams GM, but I don't think you're allowed to be a german scientist unless you have a really funny english accent. It kinda comes with the job you know? When you progress to higher levels of your education, you'll find out that there is an actual course in "Mad German Scientist Accents" that you have to take and pass before you can graduate. Seems to be a load of people studying sciences on these boards. just out of curiosity, have we got any historians or marketing people, lawyers or suchlike here?

Ever heard of Einstein?  There wouldn't be any Earthling Cruiser Nukes without the guy.  I'm pretty sure his accent was german.   ;)

Wow, it's strange that all these topics where I post second seem to take off like a bat out of hell.  Was it something I said? lol.

You should post 2nd in all the good threads!

As for LP and my new nickname: GM stands for German Mad scientist  :o

Oh, and the guy you should really thank for the nukes is Otto Hahn who discovered nuclear fission.

Einstein is the guy who lets you use HyperSpace although according to his theory, you cannot travel faster than light.

And yes, it is mandatory to speak with a funny accent as a German scientist. They all did! (Especially in the Indiana Jones movies and games!)

Well, doesn't that prove my point Omni? Einstein was German, Scientist and spoke with a funny accent! I never said german scientists were bad, just that they have to use a certain accent whilst speaking english. GM, so that's where I got it from! Oh, and you don't travel faster than light in hyperspace, it's just smaller.

Am I glad that travelling in hyperspace goes conform with Einstein's laws.

And yes, if I want to be taken serious as a scientist, I should get rid of my American Southern/German English accent and zen I vill speek onlee like zis!

Hehe, here I am just watching Indiana Jones... those Germans are sooo eveel in zee movieee!

Hey, do you think the nukes in the Earthling Cruiser are A-Bomb nukes or H-bomb nukes?  Obviously, the A-Bomb nukes are the more primitive form of nuclear fission, the H-bomb a product of nuclear fusion.  Anyone familiar with the two understands that fusion requires great amounts of energy to spark the reaction to fuse two atoms together...  I wonder whether human technology had advanced to use such a device on an everyday level, or whether they use the more primitive A-bomb fission nukes.

Hmmm, let's ask all zee scienteests in zee room.

Mmh - lett mee ssink heere!

A-bombs came first, with only the radioactive material reaching critical mass and then the chain reaction taking place.

H-bombs are a combo since they use the energy produced by an A-bomb to fuse heavy Hydrogen (Deuterium & Tritium) to Helium and the energy set free is about three times as much as if you only took the same amount of Uranium (thermonuclear fusion bomb).

Neutron bombs are out of the question, since radioactive emission isn't really worth anything in space...

Since devastation and a lot of energy is the main goal of a weapon against starships, I'd go with an advanced H-Bomb of some sort?

Aneebodee elze have an opeenjun?

I donno, but I was just thinking about Hyperspace and Einstein's famous experiment where he proves light is being bent because space is not, well, a plate. It's bent!
so Hyperspace might not be "travelling faster than light" rather travelling by "benting" space. It is btw what they do in Star Trek and also that effect you see in the 3DO opening :P

The problem with bending space with matter is that you always bend it straight down, as it were - you always make it further to get where you're going, rather than less.
(for the "straight down" image, I am referring to the 'rubber sheet' analogy, which is actually quite strong within the elastic limit of the rubber. You will never make a path on this rubber sheet shorter just by pushing the points further down...)

As for A vs. H-bombs, well, we have the H-bomb technology pretty well figured out. It is much more complicated, yes, but so are computers, and they use THEM...

Neutron bombs might be useful for irradiating the hull, which could weaken it.
This is such a nifty idea, having a weapon that increases the damage of all later weapon hits, that I included it on one of my ship designs -- but it is not how the Earthling Cruiser works.

Now, the real problem is, A-Bombs and H-Bombs are really be so powerful that a point-blank range blast from either one would vaporize hundred of tons of metal - a single hit from either one would destroy any reasonably-sized Earthling Cruiser. Yet Earthling Cruisers (assuming they don't use PD) can take four such hits and still operate.

This is probably just going to have to be chalked up as a game fallacy, and left at that.

Well, maybe the Earthling Cruisers don't use the big ICBM-type nukes that could vaporize a whole city but the smaller tactical battlefield equivalent with a much smaller blast radius...
After all, ICBMs are pretty big and the Cruiser isn't really a Super-StarDestroyer. Those smaller nukes are pretty much like photon torps (although the size in melee speaks of a larger scale).

Most of the size of an ICBM is the fuel for the long flight. Including around 3 seconds of fuel instead of about 10 minutes (200 times as much) would really cut down on the size.

True, but I think the size of the warhead pretty much stays the same. After all, we're not talking about "dirty bombs" just spreading radioactives but of nuclear weapons needing a "critical mass".
On the other hand, during melee, the nuke travels fairly quickly in the pretty big space around a star - again speaking for a large amount of fuel (even though it's spent in a couple of seconds - the real missiles use fuel only for ascending into the atmosphere, the rest is "falling down").

Well, warheads aren't all THAT big. I mean, yeah, the test run, "Trinity" was bigger than your average office park - but a short range thermonuke can be mounted on a truck.

That's right. And if you use a diesel truck it will use even less fuel than a gasoline truck  :D

So we could skip the whole missile thing and just attach them to shofixti scouts instead? Or maybe even the Quan support fighters... Ouch!

The rockets have a better chance of reaching their destination than Ur-Quan fighters...

I think we rather stick with unmanned cruise missiles - if you put a nuke into a scout vessel guided by an overkeen Shofixti (and he knows about the firepower he then bares) the chances of it ever reaching the target are slim to say the least.

Plus, it's not in the Shofixti's blood to just fly around the edge of the battlefield and peg enemies with missiles.  It's all about the kamikaze, baby!

Hehe, reminds me of a Monty Python's Flying Circus episode I was watching yesterday...  it was where they were training the first-ever Kamikaze Scottish Clansmen.  It was so funny.  There was this scene of Soviet Russians speaking about their evil plans to attack Great Britain, when all of a sudden a bagpipe is heard in the background.  Then a Scottish clansman jumps through the skylight and lands on the table and begins ticking... hehe, it was so funny.  Well, there was no explosion, but a scene followed where they tried to dispose of the Kamikaze Clansman.  Hehe, classic Monty Python!

Actually I WAS thinking of a Kamikaze-Shofixti who also has a nuke strapped to the hull of his ship (pretty much like the guys in ID4).

By the way, while talking about classics, here's a nice picture for you:
A Shofixti sitting on a nuke falling from the sky à la Dr. Strangelove - he's gotta be the happiest bastard in the whole universe. KEEEE-AAAAAYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEHHH!

I don't get it - what do you think the Glory device IS unless it's a thermonuclear bomb? It's not a Flour-bag of DOOM that goes pop and white dots fly all over the place killing people.

Essentially, the suggestion has already been taken. Anyway, the Glory Device does a lot more than the 4 damage of an Earthling Cruiser missile.

I always thought that when the Shofixti blows up he just shuts off the magnetic containment field of his warp engines and the following explosion is not a nuclear but a matter/antimatter-reaction?

a) He needs something like a warp-drive
b) How do you generate enough energy if not through m/am?
c) It would explain the bigger explosion than from an Earthling nuke
d) I like that kind of devastation better than "just" a nuke

It wouldn't need to be antimatter to generate more energy than an Earthling Nuke -- after all, there is no upper limit on the size of a hydrogen bomb (there is an upper limit on the size of a fission bomb).. Anyway, there's nothing saying that hyperspace travel has anything to do with antimatter. Considering that the Chenjesu are natural 'casters, and being matter they lack antimatter... well, it seems unlikely. This isn't Star Trek.