The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Hi,

My attempt for multiplayer Melee remake of Star Control II.

All standard ships are implemented as close to original as i could plus some few more.

Also several optional features like fog of war, zoom, game modes (domination, capture the flag, milestones or checkpoints for more complex scenarios). Planets and gravity are also present but not in this particular video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQyYrer4NiA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQyYrer4NiA)

Some older videos for other ships and features

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlK_uEp1vN4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlK_uEp1vN4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5QAEOq8Fno (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5QAEOq8Fno)

Let me know what do you think about it and why not. Thanks.

Tom

Without even watching the videos (I might check them out later)... I'm not sure why, but fog of war seems weird for this sort of game. It feels weird for outer space in general, really. Fog of war usually is used to represent a limited sight range, which makes sense on the surface which is full of obstacles, even the atmosphere getting in the way, the curve of the horizon, lots of things limiting your vision... but in outer space, you have no such limitations. Assuming no planets (or other obstacles large enough to hide behind), there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to see your opponent, regardless of how far away they are.

Since I didn't watch the videos yet though, maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by fog of war... I'm thinking of games like Battle for Wesnoth...

It's exactly what you were thinking of, and it's an awfully short sight range. It's done in Command-and-Conquer-with-comm-station style, where what you've seen you get to keep seeing, including seeing updates to that area.

Anyway, in order for it to really be tactical, I'd want to see what the rules are.

thanks for comments,

Fog of war is one of major elements that build tactics in the game. If you cannot see opponent you cannot fight them. Tactics would be limited if you could see whole map at the beginning.

It forces people to cooperate as each ship, at least those originally from SC, has unique abilities and can be very effective usually when combined with others.

You must score points to win battle. You can score it by killing ships or taken enemy flag or conquer special domination area or throw bomb into enemy base or collect enemy special star object. This means that specific ships are good in a specific role. Let me add more specialized ships for this purpose.

i will increase range of sight but i do not understand C&C part. Could you be a bit more detailed ?

Regards
Tom

So then in Wesnoth terms it's actually "shroud without fog"... that's even weirder, honestly.

When the setting is outer space in the vicinity of a planet, it doesn't make sense to be unable to see everything (except for the far side of the planet) - there's nothing to block your view in space. Admittedly, this is an argument from realism, so feel free to ignore.

Also, by the way... hidden information is by far not the only way to build tactics. It's entirely possible to have a tactical game even without hidden information. (In fact, games like chess easily prove this.) Turning of shroud and fog of war in Battle for Wesnoth does not, in my opinion, significantly reduce the tactics available to you. Of course, this depends on your other mechanics. If the individual ships don't present much tactical variety, then I could see you wanting to add hidden information to increase the tactical options. But it's not the only way to do so.

This is real time game, there is no time to think about next move like in turn based game (Wesnoth or Chess), that is why limitation of view matters a lot. Actually there a lot of weapons that modify visibility in some way or another, making this critical part of the tactics. You cannot fight something you dont know exist there in the first place. With limited energy you cannot use (with most ships) barrage fire to cover hidden areas. Also with zooming you cannot see all battlefield at once, it would have no sense to show it all if you can just zoom out. And zooming is important factor as some ships are commanding ships and have purely supporting role.

Realism is not the critical factor in this game. Why ? All space games have sounds and in space there is no sound due to complete vacuum not to mention Star Control is 95% not realistic yet still very cool game :)

Next video with some new ships (check description of video !)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIQO-b-8FjY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIQO-b-8FjY)