The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

The Ur-Quan Masters Re-Release => General UQM Discussion => Topic started by: Szczepaniak on July 05, 2018, 03:34:33 pm



Title: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: Szczepaniak on July 05, 2018, 03:34:33 pm
I'd like to introduce an Ur-Quan Masters fan-game, which I programmed:

Hunt of the Kohr-Ah

http://www.filedropper.com/huntofthekohr-ahv25

It took about 120 hours to write, and uses about 3000 lines of code (it's only a 10mb) download. Think of it as a cross between the computer classics Oregon Trail and Masters of Orion, but using the characters from The Ur-Quan Masters, and with a theme similar to the Battlestar Galactica reboot for TV.

Imagine if the Kohr-Ah had won the doctrinal conflict, had wiped out life across the galaxy, and were now hunting the human race.

The Arilou appear suddenly, give the last remnants of Earth's survivors a pre-programmed jump gate engine, and your task as fleet captain is to guide everyone to the final destination and some answers.

You need to manage food, water, fuel, plus minerals & chemicals, balancing it along with hull integrity, biological health, morale, skills, science, and law & order.

To do this you need to assign your dwindling crew to various fleet positions: recycling, hydroponics, fleet repair, cruiser construction, medical facilities, training, military police, entertainment, navigation, science research, and finally - a network of spies which monitor Kohr-Ah sympathizers. Amidst the fleet is a secretive cult which venerates the Kohr-Ah and will try to sabotage your efforts.

During gameplay you can manage the crew roster, harvest the current star system for resources, hunt down nearby Kohr-Ah ships, tax the fleet, scrap cruisers for resources, jump to a new system, or simply wait...

Combat can either be automatic, or manual where you issue typed commands to the squadron.

Consider v2.5 as a sort of beta release. I've quashed as many bugs as I could, so really it needs playtesting by others. Please let me know if there are any bugs, or if anything doesn't seem right. Every stat and every crew roster affects just about everything else, so the numbers can seem a little weird at times.

Content wise it's broadly finished. I only intend to tweak the internal algorithms, or maybe add an Easter Egg or two.

It started off very difficult, so I kept making it easier, and now I think it's too easy, but I also know how everything works, so... I dunno? There are instructions in the ZIP which also contains gameplay tips. Let me know if you'd like some more tips.

The game can be finished in less than 90 minutes if you're playing casually, or about 5 minutes if you exploit certain things.

I hope everyone enjoys this. I'm a long time fan of UQM (the GameFAQs guide (http://"https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/564589-star-control-ii/faqs") with the star system list was uploaded by me), and I really wanted to create something inspired by UQM. Also I was disappointed there were no decent games based on the premise put forth in Battlestar Galactica.



Title: Re: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: Krulle on July 05, 2018, 04:27:09 pm
Sounds interesting, won't have to time to play in the near future, alas.

Thank you!


Title: Re: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: CelticMinstrel on July 06, 2018, 05:59:55 am
Might be interested in trying this sometime, if I can get past the fact that filedropper seems to want cookies in exchange for the download.


Title: Re: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: Szczepaniak on July 06, 2018, 09:30:58 am
Is it possible to switch Firefox or whichever browser you use to anonymous mode, which deletes all cookies afterwards? It only allows them temporarily in that situation.

Alternatively I'm open to suggestions on where to host it. Filedripper was the first one I saw which did not require that I start an account. If there's another place which allows me to just click "upload file" and then paste the link, I will upload version 2.6 (since I made a very tiny modification to it). I'll also include the source code for it.

Also, if anyone plays it, I'd like to add:
You can only harvest one resource at a time from planets. You select your number of cruisers, move the icon to the required resource and hit enter. My brother was playing yesterday and complained it didn't always work, because he though you could stack cruisers up on each of the resources. It's only one at a time, by design.


Title: Re: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: Malin on September 10, 2018, 07:42:27 pm
I'd like to introduce an Ur-Quan Masters fan-game, which I programmed:

Hunt of the Kohr-Ah

http://www.filedropper.com/huntofthekohr-ahv25

Link is not working. Could you put it to Google.Drive or something simular, for reliability?


Title: Re: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: Szczepaniak on September 14, 2018, 09:03:57 am
Nope.

You literally signed up a couple of days ago to this forum just to ask me to reupload my fan-game?

My Melnorme spidey senses are tingling, and telling me that you're from Stardock, setting a honey trap so that your lawyers can sue me for making a fan-game. Stardock would litigate their own grandmothers if they could!

Also, I had one of the mods check your IP address and prior inbound URL which basically confirmed this. You're a Stardock employee.

As such, my official response is:
THERE IS NO FAN GAME CALLED HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH.

I did not spend 120+ hours writing 3000 lines of code.

This topic does not exist.

THERE IS NOTHING TO LITIGATE HERE!

But mainly, only one person responded to this thread in the many weeks it has been up. So clearly no one has any interest. So your post is very suspicious, Stardock employee.

I have since finished the game, it is now v3.0. But it will never see the light of day until I have both the blessing of Fred and Paul, and also the Stardock litigation against them has cleared up. Someone in another thread, wanting to make their own fan game, was told that maybe even both parties would need to sue them to show the courts they maintain the rights to the work.

NO ONE IS LITIGATING ME!

So, as I said, the game does not exist. It will never exist. Not until I have a cast iron guarantee of NO LITIGATING.


Title: Re: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: Death 999 on September 14, 2018, 02:39:16 pm
Duuude. They'd lead with a C&D which is just telling you to stop. Specifically asking for it in advance would be counterproductive in this regard.

Plus, as far as I know, they never even tried to make a trademark claim on Kohr-Ah.


Title: Re: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: Malin on September 14, 2018, 03:07:53 pm
You literally signed up a couple of days ago to this forum just to ask me to reupload my fan-game?
Yep.

Szczepaniak, I did have some problems to read your answer to the end, because I was under my table  :D
That mayhem about Stardock vs Fred&Paul is unendurable pain for every StarControl fan.

However, I hasten to convince you that I am not from Stardock. I am from Russian StarControl fan forum (http://mosc-portal.bursa.ru). I took some part in translation of Ur-Quan Masters to the Russian language.

One of our forum user made a post about your game (http://mosc-portal.bursa.ru/showthread.php?p=6999#post6999) and that is why I am here.


Title: Re: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: Szczepaniak on September 14, 2018, 07:39:32 pm
Cool! Well, I was half joking anyway.

I went and Google Translated that forum, and someone said my username was familiar?  ???

Anyway, I used your public email here, pegasys, to send you the file via WeTransfer. It's 10mb and a ZIP file. It's the "final" version, v3.0.

Inside is also the source code, a BAS file, in case you or anyone else wants to play around.

Given how little interest it received I'm too lazy to find a free/anonymous hosting platform. Feel free to share it around if you like.

You should get an email with a download link. If you do not, let me know. :)


Title: Re: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: Malin on September 17, 2018, 09:33:56 am
You should get an email with a download link. If you do not, let me know. :)
Got it! Thank you so much! For the game and specially for source code, may be we translate your game to russian.
I went and Google Translated that forum, and someone said my username was familiar?  ???
No, there was about me. When I wrote the first message here, my friends spotted my nikname here :)


Title: Re: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: Malin on September 18, 2018, 12:09:06 pm
Inside is also the source code, a BAS file, in case you or anyone else wants to play around.
By the way, what compiler did you use?


Title: Re: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: Krulle on September 18, 2018, 01:07:31 pm
Just ran it test-wise.

Interesting concept.


I might need more time to understand the interactions of my actions and the results, as well as reading the information screen....
Well, maybe next week.

Thanks for putting in the effort, very much appreciated!


Title: Re: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: Szczepaniak on September 19, 2018, 06:08:18 pm
The compiler is QB64, or QBasic 64. The June 2018 build. Different builds are not always compatible. Older builds actually had better JPG functionality, but the latest build requires no DLL files, so I went with the latest at the time (sacrificing easy JPG usage).

You can translate it into Russian, but QB64 does not support the Cyrillic font. It's basically basically a modern variant of the old DOS based QBasic, which used the standard or regular ASCII.

The most important thing for translating is probably the instructions in the Word document, since there's not much text in the game itself. Also expand on or add stuff to the Word document, since I got bored writing it. A friend who played the game, for example, did not realise that after your first jump to the first system, you should send out all available cruisers to search for water, since you get a massive bonus, enough to last about 25% through the game. Since it has a really high yield. But he was worried about losing ships so only ever sent our two at a time. Which is fine, but only if you're down to like four or three, and running out.

Meh. It's not particularly well balanced. Or explained.  ???

Feel free to do what you want with it - translate the game, or the Word document, or edit the game parameters to improve it. I dunno. I had fun making it but I've lost any interest in doing anything more with it since it's freeware.

However, if anyone wants to change the theme and characters to a non-copyrighted setting, and make a cool iOS or Android game, I'm happy to sign a contract for royalties.  8)




Title: Re: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: Szczepaniak on April 06, 2020, 04:32:40 pm
I am sure I want to reply to this topic despite how old it is. Because...

The game now has an Itch.io page!

https://szcz.itch.io/hunt-of-the-kohr-ah


Title: Re: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: Kwayne on April 09, 2020, 08:31:21 am
Seems I was waaay too preoccupied with Origins assets to take notice of this. Will definitely try in the long weekend.


Title: Re: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: Krulle on April 16, 2020, 05:21:17 pm
Yeah, back then I played, but maybe it's me, but somehow I never got the mining part (ressource gathering) right, and seemingl lost more than I won...


Title: Re: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: Szczepaniak on April 24, 2020, 10:59:02 am
Yeah, the resource gathering needed some tweaking.

TIP: When you start you need to jump right away. Jump to the very nearest system which has high resources. Then send out all your ships to collect water. They'll bring back enough to supply you for 70% of the rest of the game.

I thought about varying the danger depending on how many ships you send out. So sending out 2 will never result in a lost ship. But sending out 10 might mean one or two get destroyed (debris, system failures, weather conditions, etc.). Plus the more you send out, the more fuel it costs.

But honestly, there's never really a need to send out only a few ships. You should really always send out the maximum, while keeping the staff to build new ships high enough so that every turn you get 50% of a new cruiser built. Or 100% if you have enough crew and metal resources.

You never need to search for food since hydroponics should cover that.

Metals for repairs and cruiser building can be collected on literally every world except dead ones. Or harvested from destroyed Ur-Quan ships if you go hunting them. The hunting is actually kinda broken, since it's easy to go hunting every turn early on, and through sheer numbers you will win.

But basically collect as much water as you can after your first jump, using maximum ships, then collect fuel as you need it, and minerals. Increasing navigation will allow you to scan distant systems for better resources (note the bar on the left which decreases as nav crew go up).

The source code is included so feel free to peek under its skirt.  :-*


Title: Re: Fan-game: HUNT OF THE KOHR-AH
Post by: Krulle on April 24, 2020, 11:21:16 am
I know it's an attrition game. you need to keep your stuff long enough to hit the time limit.
Losses areplanned.

But still.

But then, also, I never took/had the time to really play it with sufficient time.
I ran it a few times in the background in office, taking a turn every now and then when I felt I could "loosen my brain up a bit".
Not a perfect setting to learn to navigate a new game.

Curenty I hope to get back into the German translation, and make a .uqm file again.
Had one for .3 or .4 version, but the versionw hich got saved is extremely buggy, and a lot of text translations got lost.
And it's not a .uqm (module) anymore, but a complete install someone gobbled up together of the .7 UQM releasee.

But having three kids, a full time job, a lrge garden (currently a blessing), and a larger house means you loose more time than youc ould ever have for yourself.