The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I started writing mods for UQM many years ago, meant to share them with everyone then, and had a series of catastrophes and distractions. Finally I decided to pull out what I had remaining of those 0.5.0 changes and update them for 0.7.0 and actually release them in stages. I learned just enough on the usage of git to start making separate changes so that people can pull any of my mods that look useful or interesting. Currently I only have 4 of my original mods ported and up at :
https://github.com/CheatingZelnick/Ur-Quan-Mods (https://github.com/CheatingZelnick/Ur-Quan-Mods)
I don't yet have any executables up; I'm only building Windows debug versions myself at present, but I did switch from Visual Studio to MinGW this time.

My current mods are:
Display ship ID in hyperspace (each valid ship type has a single letter identifier above the little black dot on radar)
Display a count of ships remaining to fight in the battle window (currently in the upper left of battle space, though I probably should move that to a different context)
Left and right arrows act to minimize or maximize fuel and crew counts
Lander mineral nodes get two for one mods:
minerals above the lander's max capacity get left on the planet so you never have to worry about wasting a nice node when you're almost full
minerals that are better than what you have in your full cargo bay get picked up to the max capacity of the lander, while those on the main ship get automatically discarded!

I have a number of others that were in various stages of completion years ago. One of my favorites, and probably next on my list is the "hyperspace jammer", originally intended to be a cloak but designed to let you keep from getting swept into wave after wave of attacks or conversations with the Pkunk...

Many of these mods were intended to allow an expansion to the Melnorme purchase "tree", with possibly some random modules found on worlds. I never created the structure for that, so for now my mods have no drawbacks intended, like extra fuel costs for the jammer while it's in use. Other plans would require very incompatible save files, not just for new modules but for my planned database of visited star systems, so you can see where you've been AND what's still on the system, including the danger levels.

I make no guarantees that I'll not get distracted again, but I have tested the code reasonably on my Windows 7 machine. I'm open to ideas as well, but development is likely to be haphazard, especially on the larger projects.
Some of the things I'd previously done or considered, besides allowing myself to easily change all sorts of stats to landers and ship modules, were things like
"hospital bays" (with a % chance of saving a patient) because I always hated how many people "died" just to pick up some elements (done).
Make time pass while at a planet so you can't zoom past and take all the resources and avoid a fight despite time passing (planned)
Lander shots that don't destroy minerals (since when do tranq darts take out nodes? At least our Melnorme enhanced ones!) (done)
Planetary "shield" offering some or complete protection from collisions (%#$@ planet) (done)
Planet edge visible at ALL times regardless of distance on combat screen (planned)
Push button travel to any planet or moon in the system (planned)
Various stages of long range scanners for planet stats, complete with on-screen display, so you can enter a system and see if it's worth your time without hitting every planet manually (planned)
keep hyperspace momentum between encounters? (considered)
reselect ship after each combat (considered)
statistics for number of ships killed, ships lost, crew lost, saved (in my hospitals), planets visited or scanned, minerals taken, minerals lost (without lander enhancements), bio taken, etc. (done but only displayed in debug window)
Display which rainbow worlds you'd visited (on the starmap or system display) (planned considering how easy it was to forget which save I was on)

So there are some areas, besides general ship enhancements, that I might consider working on (after my jammer to get around talking to the Pkunk 20 times and fighting Ilwrath 20 times all with one Fwiffo). Any other suggestions or requests are welcome, Just keep your expectations very low. for follow through. :)

I tossed up a Windows executable with the first 4 mods combined for those that don't want to compile themselves. It should work okay in your regular directory, and won't overwrite your regular executable.

Judging by the crickets it may not matter, but I didn't add any sort of readme yet. The lander mod changes the mineral display to show 3 numbers, the first being the original number of minerals picked up, the second being the number of minerals that are replacing minerals aboard your main ship, and the third being the number of minerals that are excess and being left on the planet. I haven't decided whether to combine any of those numbers, but for now they are useful in displaying exactly what's going on.

Don't worry about that too much, UQMF is not very active these days and it can be a day or two before everyone's seen something :)

Thanks for the encouragement. :)

New mod pushed up, I had some troubles adding an extra key and getting it fully detected where I wanted, so I overloaded the Escape key (in hyperspace) for now. I also don't have a nice display location picked out, so I put a short-lived "J" in the upper left of the space window if the jammer has been activated. While active, your ship won't be pulled into hyperspace encounters. Hitting Escape again in hyperspace will deactivate it.

All your mod ideas sound great...waiting for thier release.

I tried it out. Looks good.
Is there a guide to show which letter in hyperspace stands for which race?

I haven't made a proper readme. I was fiddling with displaying the planet in combat even when it's "offscreen", to some hilariously bad results when I was sidetracked by inevitable distractions for most of the week.

Here's what I have in my old source code for radar display, though of course some of it would count as spoilery: (In fact, my original long-term goal was to have the letters be learned once the module was added to the main ship, so there would have been something else like '?'. Actually, I should add that to my list of proposed modifications.)
   'A',//0 Arilou
   '-',//1 Chmmr
   '-',//2 Human
   'O', //3 Orz
   'P',//4 Pkunk
   '-',//5 SHOFIXTI
   'S',//6 Spathi
   'x',//7 Supox
   'T',//8 Thraddash
   'G',//9 Utwig
   'V',//10 Vux
   'Y',//11 Yehat
   'N',//12 Melnorme
   'D',//13 Druuge
   'I',//14 Ilwrath
   'M',//15 Mycon
   'L',//16 Slylandro
   'h',//17 Umgah
   'U',//18 Ur-Quan
   'Z',//19 Zoq
   '-',//20 Syreen
   'K',//21 Kohr-Ah
   'R'//22 Yehat Rebels

Maybe make the letters a little smaller?

I think that was the smallest existing font size I had access to. I just checked and there's the StarConFont and the TinyFont and the MicroFont. Tiny is the smallest and what I'm using. I haven't actually looked but I assume these are fixed-point fonts, as would have made sense back then.

Just a "I'm still here" post. I found a potential place in process.c and can test for the planet, but I don't really understand the viewport code well enough, and I really need to before trying either a cheesy text indicator of off-screen planet location, or something like adding a line prim element pointing towards the planet. I've been too busy with other things to focus enough to get a firm handle on the use of the elements and different coordinate sets. I also owe oldlaptop an examination of his escape code. It looks like it'll be at least a week before i have much time for either of those tasks.

Oh man, I can't believe I haven't read this sooner.  Very exciting.

Can you explain the "Push button travel to any planet or moon in the system (planned)"?  So like, you enter a system, open up a menu and just go straight to any planet or moon you want?

Note that allow-retreat is undergoing some major changes in the Balance Mod repo right now, so that pull request is quite out-of-date. I'll try to update it once things settle down a little.

That was the idea. Without any special AI to avoid enemies (or friends) that you don't want to talk to, so if you wanted to do like I always did, dart in and steal resources around enemy ships, you have to do it manually. But I was thinking of using the underutilized sides of the planetary system display to display scan results and provide quick access (though since mouse support doesn't exist, not as easy as click and go, and I would probably wind up reusing the menu area). You'd get a list of every planet and moon by name, and at least if it was a gas giant, in my original planning, and choose which to go to. The list would also track the last time you went, if ever, as well as what minerals or life you left on it, if you'd been there before.


That lets me procrastinate, thanks for the update. :)

Just an update that there probably won't be any updates until January. I'm not even looking at the code currently with so many other December distractions. Barring a series of visitations from Spathi, Pkunk, and Thraddash ghosts, new mods are going to have to wait. :)

I like most of your ideas, but there are some exceptions.

I don't really like the idea of automatically discarding anything, even low-value goods. I'd want at least a confirmation, perhaps even the ability to go in and choose exactly what to discard myself (eg, bring up the cargo bay stats with the cargo filled over capacity and require the user to discard things until the capacity is reached).

Not too keen on this idea. The implication is that you'll be attacked while down on the planet.

Hyperspace momentum? What hyperspace momentum? There is no momentum in hyperspace.

Ideas related to some of yours...

Showing the ID on radar isn't a bad idea, but what about using the actual ship icon in the main hyperspace viewport? Possibly instead of the radar, possibly in addition to it.

You already know your cargo hold is basically full. If you continue to run over nodes, or go back to the planet for more nodes, you are essentially saying "take care of this for me". I understand the desire to control the discards, but since the entire value of the elements is turning them directly to resources for building stuff at the starbase, if you wanted to control what you discard, you can do it manually on the flagship. If an updated UQM sequel made different elements and minerals important beyond point value, it might matter. If I can keep focused enough on my mods, eventually you could just turn this feature on and off in settings.



It's a long-term idea I wanted to play with to add a small dose of unneeded realism. It's low priority and would probably automatically recall the lander. I threw it in the pot because I would frequently fly around slower enemy ships, mostly ur-quan ships, to collect minerals. Which was fun, but a little ridiculous.


When you're travelling long-distance in hyperspace, and you get pulled into an encounter, you lose all your forward momentum. Mostly it was an annoyance thing from frequent stops. It's also only a low priority idea to experiment with. All of these are optional modifications, after all. That's part of why my code separates out the different mods, to make it easier (at least for the programmers) to pick and choose. All of my mods should be easily turned on or off by anyone, but at this point I have enough trouble making time to make the base mods.


That's an excellent idea that I didn't even consider before now. I had originally only thought that your radar would identify something in the signature, therefore minimal information, but using the battle / system ship sprites would be a good option.


Ahh, I was only thinking in context of the main story, and stamping a number on the space window was nice and easy, but that would be a good idea to find room for on the sidebar.



That's not a bad idea and something I was considering, but from my limited understanding of the programming, I might have to add in my own entry to the list of all the screen elements to do that. Which is a hassle. My biggest problem is the combo of understanding the game logic and remembering that understanding in between the sessions I've been able to make time for. I probably need to do a marathon documentation of the data and logic flows. Or crib off someone else who already beat me to that.


Some of that isn't necessarily that hard to do, but would be pretty manual, testing flags that see if you have the Shofixti, for example, is easy, but then you have to watch for that when you get to the part about the Shofixti. And then do you not give the history just because you already have them breeding away? On the other hand, I wouldn't mind doing a major overhaul of the Melnorme options where you could have far more control over what you got upgraded (Lander upgrades, weapon upgrades, energy generation upgrades, ho!) in what order, rather than going through the queue in their order. The various historical options might be more vaguely described to preserve the sense of mystery, but otherwise would be the same pick and choose. That would lead to a fairly deep menu tree, I think, but probably not annoyingly so.

But resetting momentum makes sense. And you accelerate in HS so fast anyway, it sounds like what you really want is no spinup time. In the system view, you get a period of invincibility, so there's barely a mechanical effect.

Resetting momentum does make sense. I hadn't decided whether to try to implement this one. And it's really unnecessary if I have a proper encounter blocker available. There have been plenty of times where I wanted to kill Pkunk from a thousand encounters in a row where I was wasting my time saying bye to them. It's more understandable, but sometimes annoying, when I would go into the Ur-Quan territory and have to fight a very long succession of each side's ships, because I couldn't get any speed to escape. I'm not a huge fan of the combat, especially not mandatory over and over like that. In a similar vein, I've considered disabling the red alert sound delay every encounter with a potential enemy.

  Mostly I threw it on the list as a consideration only. It would be about dead last on my list of desired mods, but might have been tried because it would be easier than my loftier ideas. Chances are that I will skip it, especially with arguments against it.

Might be sorta interesting to make it toggleable in-game, from the devices menu...

I still thought hyperspace didn't have momentum... that's why you come to a stop when releasing the thrust, instead of continuing on in the same direction...

Another mod already did it actually, so it might be as simple as copying code over.

My only objection to this is that it would drastically change the way you play. Also I think there really are a few cases where some things should not be allowed to be obtained before others; for example, forcing the weapons to be obtained in order of increasing power.


Oh, yes, something to avoid the infinite tunnel of battle after battle after battle that is all too easy to fall into in Ur-Quan space in particular, even with maximum thrusters, and even in other spheres of influence if you don't have maximum thrusters. I think some form of encounter blocker would be better than this confusing thing about momentum that I don't really get... in a sense, a delay between contacting a Hyperspace bubble and being sucked into it... thus allowing escape in situations where it's currently impossible.

Ooh, which? I'm all in favor of being lazy and merging someone else's code. Which I still need to do with the escape mod, but...

My only objection to this is that it would drastically change the way you play. Also I think there really are a few cases where some things should not be allowed to be obtained before others; for example, forcing the weapons to be obtained in order of increasing power.[/quote]

Naturally, the Melnorme are going to maximize their sales by selling you weapons in slowly increasing order. :P And yes, it would affect play some by making it a lot faster to upgrade your favorite parts, but my goal with these mods is to affect the play considerably. ;P


My encounter blocker, while an ugly hack, mostly does allow avoiding a flood of encounters, but only takes affect when you can get a proper escape button press off. More searching for the best implementation of that would obviate the need for worrying over hyperspace momentum. Of course, I need to get a nice block of time to study the code. Hopefully that'll be soon.

Extended Edition (http://submedia.net/uqm/). I think it's based off an older version of the code, but I imagine things would still be similar enough to at least copy the general logic of it...

I see. By the way, you forgot an opening quote tag on that quote.

Perhaps what you could do, then, is work on this ugly hack and evolve it into something that's less hacky but still has a similar effect. :P

...wait, that's what you just said, isn't it... well whatever.

I saw that I missed the quote, but perfection isn't my goal. I also misspelled "effect", at least in its primary usage. :)
Code downloaded, actual examination time: unknown

Well, you can always edit old posts, but whatever... <_<