The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Now.. this is a bit off-topic here, but here's my idea: Post your ideas for games related to, or inspired by Star Control.  Since there are quite a few people on this forum who have experience with creating games, and I've already seen some ideas here, maybe some of these will even come to fruition one day?

Let me start with mine.

"Enslave!" (or "Redshift"...? sorry Culture20. ;))

This would be a pure combat game, in the old-school arcade tradition.  The player is cast in the role of the Ur-Quan: You have at your disposal a small battle group of dreadnoughts (around 3-5 - essentially, this would be the number of lives in the game, and would be changeable according to difficulty level).  This battle group has been assigned to a sector of space which contains many homeworlds of a number of weak alien species.  Your goal is to destroy the defenses of these planets and slave-shield them.

The gameplay would be a cross between the SC1/SC2 melee we all know and love, and Zektor (a very old arcade game by Sega; sort of an extension of Asteroids, very addictive too. There are roms of this game for the MAME emulator, for those of you who are curious and love very old arcade games).  Essentially, this would mean:

- You progress through the planets in consecutive order.  Each World (=planet) has 3 or 4 rounds (battles).  In each round you encounter a new wave of the planet's defense forces.  When you destroy all of the defense waves, you slave-shield the planet and move on to the next one.

- Each defense wave contains combat drones (little spinning things that follow mindless 'ping-pong' paths across the playfield, and shoot at you), and enemy ships (bigger and smarter, they follow your dreadnought, try to ram you, and shoot at you).  Destroy all drones and ships to proceed to the next wave.  In each wave, there are more enemy craft than the previous one, and they're shielded better, too (takes more hits to vaporize them).

- After you have destroyed all of the defense waves of a planet, the final round for that planet would be a 'special' battle - perhaps something like the Sa-Matra: instead of a normal defense wave you encounter the big enemy starbase, which is encased in an energy shield (and.. shoots at you); you have to destroy the shield generators and then the starbase itself.  After this, there's a brief cinematic of the dreadnought erecting a slave-shield around the planet, and you move on to the next planet.

Differences from the SC2 melee:

- Since this game would, perhaps, be set in the distant past (??), your dreadnought is of a different model - it's faster and more maneuverable, but has no autonomous fighters, only fusion-blasts. Also, for gameplay's sake, since it's based on lives, a single enemy shot would destroy the dreadnought, and a single shot from the player would destroy an enemy craft (unless it's shielded, see above).

- Enemy ships are dumb, no advanced AI here.  They just follow your ship, try to ram you, and (you guessed it) shoot at you.  Enemy drones are even dumber, they just go in a straight line (while shooting at you) and bounce back off the edges of the playfield (which doesn't wrap, by the way).

- Obstacles: the planet is not a part of the playfield (like SC melee).  It just sits in the background (and maybe gets bigger each round, as you move closer to it after eliminating each defense wave). Instead, there are other obstacle types:

• Asteroid - same effect as in SC melee (repel your ship), only they're larger, and can't be destroyed by shooting at them.
  
• Whirlvortex - if you run into it, your dreadnought starts spinning and loses control for a second or two.
  
• Killercomet - run into it, dreadnought goes boom.  These are rare and will start appearing only in higher levels (planets)

All of these objects just disappear when they get to the edge of the screen, instead of bouncing back.

.... That's all, I think. Since I'm pretty sure my description is messy as hell, I would recommend playing Zektor.  Really, it's a fun little game, and if you got MAME, the rom is only a 43kb download. ;D

Now, I'm not a coder, but if a coder would be interested in this idea, then I can do all graphics, design, music etc.  Far-fetched idea, I know, but IMO the possibility of having the Ur-Quan as the protagonists is too cool to pass up.  8)

First, to start this reply out positive before I lay into you, I think this is a well thought out idea. It sounds like something of a project that's already in the works by the peps at timewarp. All this would really need is for you (yes, I mean you VileRancour) to program the ships in timewarp and make a custom menu.

Now, don't get too offended, but calling this an "official" thread as a way of soliciting your ideas seems a bit pompus. Until you, yourself, are an Officer of the Board, nothing you say or do on this board is "official" except as it's validated by the masses or an official Official. Perhaps this will become official, but don't assume it will be. (The same goes for anything I say or do, so don't take my long winded rant to be gospel truth on UQM.)

Just like you shouldn't assume that posting an idea will make your idea happen. I refer you to my previous comments as found in the ill fated thread found at http://uqm.stack.nl/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=Gendiscuss;action=display;num=1052277368

In that thread, feelings were hurt and I don't wish to repeat the incident. However, anyones solliciting for someone else to do the hard work, I believe, should be viewed realisticly. My suggestion to you is the same as before. Keep dreaming, but if you really want to see these dreams come to life, go learn to program. It's not as hard as you may think. Timewarp is already half way there for you and there are tutorials to teach you how to make your own ships. Do that and maybe you can recrute some help to finish the project.

Or not, and this idea will likely be born and die without ever being brought to life. *shrug*

Alright.  First of all, I didn't seek for this thread to be construed as 'official' in the sense of "sanctioned by the board moderators and the UQM team", but in the sense of "post all your ideas here", simply since it seems like there's quite a creative bunch of people around here.  I'm not trying to solicit anybody to do the hard work for me, nor was this thread even intended to revolve around my idea.  The very first paragraph, IMHO, should've been enough to make this clear, but for the sake of the somewhat more sensitive folks, fine - topic title changed.

For the meanwhile, this thread, and my own idea, are here just for the sake of wishful thinking, which may evolve into some sort of creative brainstorming.

As for the "go learn to program" bit, a comment such as that strikes me as a tad... unnecessary, hmmm? Personally, my talents lie within art, design, graphics, sound and music, and many, many games (including SC1 and SC2, if I'm not mistaken) have been the result of teamwork between a programmer (or programmers) and a designer (or designers). My inablity in the programming field I do recognize as a disadvantage, rather than an opportunity to solicit others to "do the hard work for me".  I'm not trying to be the dnyarri here, if you will.  Remember, this is just wishful thinking, for the meanwhile.  But if a genuine programmer would find this idea challenging or exciting (maybe someone who is good at coding but not at graphics or design?), this might just present an opportunity for teamwork.  No need to be overly sensitive about that.

Aside from that, thanks for your comments/pointers; about Timewarp, I used to be an active team member and have done work for TW in the past (again, in the fields which I am talented in; this was for the full game though, and the full game ideas have changed a whole lot since then, so who knows if it'll be used).  If, as you say, my idea can be implemented as a sub-game using the TW engine... then perhaps I should be looking there.

And the thread is now unofficial? :) Still,  always fun to see people bicker. I'll post an idea later on, if and when I think of something...

VileRancour, You had the same nickname at TW?

Yeah.  Either that, or Ringwraith (as I'm known on PNF), I don't remember.  Probably both ;)  I don't recall if we were ever team-mates at the same time though - I did most of my work there when CUG was 'in charge', and people like Captain Maim were active...
By the way, I would be happy to return to the fold, PM me if interested...

Baltar was mentioning something about him wanting to regroup old teammembers and push the project forward.
Maybe you should pop up on the engine board on channel 44 and offer your help...

I PMed you

This sounds kinda lame, but would probably be extremely addicting.

Call it MineMania or Mineralrunner

It would be based on the old SphereRunner game, for anyone that has played it. You are in a lander and you start on a giant grid, with mineral deposits all over the place. Then on all 4 sides of you, you have a Dreadnought in attack postion. I suppose they would have to be landed Dreadnoughts, or maybe they could shoot from space, whatever. But, anyways, you run around on this giant grid with your lander and collect the minerals by swooping over them. It will be based on the classic score system, but some minerals will be worth more than others. It would probably start with only one Dreadnought firing, then gradually work its way up to 4.Once you clear all the minerals on the grid, you start a new level. This time the Dreadnoughts are a bit faster at their firing rate and at their speed across the board, then you work up from there.

RingWraith !
I remember your TPNF logos
They were very well done :)

nice idea! ill see if i can make a game out of your idea (woudnt be too hard!) when i get home

im now working on it :)
i now have the Ur-quans movement and shooting system, only thing i need to make now is the enemy thing..

Hehehe... Actually, I've decided I will work on this idea myself!  It can be done in Flash, and I'm currently studying it.

But if you still want to make something out of it, do show me what you come up with... ;)

uuuuuh.. in Flash??? hmm.....

im going to upload a demo of my current work soon... :)

http://home.deds.nl/~megagun/enslave.zip

may need http://home.deds.nl/~megagun/cncs232.dll :)

Green thingies are Bombs
Gray thingies are lazer-gunners

Haha, not bad, not bad at all!
I especially like the 'particle' based explosions, those are cool.



Yup.  Flash can be quite powerful as far as simple (and even not-so-simple) scene-based shooter games are concerned... and I'm gonna use a Flash-2-fullscreen converter to make it playable like a real game should be.
So you have free reign with what you started, of course - feel free to change / deviate from my idea too, since we might end up with two 100% similar games ;)

My my, for all my rant about not just spamming an idea, I have been proven wrong. I must say I'm surprised. Thank you Megagun. The game you posted is a marvelous pre-alpha. I hope the flash version is equilly impressive.

Tell me, what graphic library and compiler did you use to do that?