Holy crap, you're right!  The resemblance is uncanny.  Well there's only one thing to do:  LAWSUIT!!!  Hey, it might just be the ticket to buying back the Star Control trademark.  

[how]

Um, doesn't this only answer how it turns purple, not why?  (Yeah yeah, call me a party-pooper if you must.)

I think the correct answer to the why question is "because TFB decided it should".  

Yes, but at least one of the 0.12 .EXEs was updated with a newer build that removed the unpause bug.    I'm not sure which one though.

[real]

 Oh Geez paulsid ... don't give them horrible ideas!

Nah, that's how marketroids think!  Actually I suspect they'd come up with something much worse.  That's the real scary part...  

F1 pauses anywhere inside the game.

This is one of those corporate paradoxes:  As soon as anybody in the general public inquires, the trademark implicitly increases in value, so they'll hold on to it and try to use it.

If we're not careful, before we can blink they'll develop some cheap-ass melee knockoff, call it something like "Star Control Battles" even though the ships are totally different, and try to sell it as bargainware.  Eventually it'll end up in cereal boxes like all of the other crap they can't sell.  This would be the worst fate possible for such a venerable name.

I'm worried about us even talking about it here.  Word might get back to marketing that somebody's interested!  

Nope, the destruct obilterates it beyond salvage.

I chose to fight a few but after a while they just become too annoying, so then I started to issue the code.

[not]

The correct combination is Numpad + and space bar.  I do it in that order but I'm not sure the order matters.  I do know, though, that Esc is not required!

Rather than NumLock you might need to turn on your "Keypad Lock", to enable a numeric keypad within the main keyboard.  I think most laptops have this feature.  However it doesn't always work for things like this, and if that's the case you'll probably just have to wait for configurable keys.

While on the subject, I don't remember the PC version having the planet moving into view like it does now.  I seem to remember they just showed up in the centre of the display right away.  It's a neat effect, but the problem is that the movement seems unneccesarily slow.  I don't know if the slowish movement is a trait of the 3DO version or just a function of the code being new, but it's quite annoying.

It takes over a second for the planet to move to the centre on my system.  At that speed, if you visit 300 planets during a game (probably not an unreasonable number if you're a new player who has to do a lot of exploring) you will waste 5 whole minutes of your life just waiting for the planets to move!  

Okay folks, you can get the executable here:
http://attila.stevens-tech.edu/~lnanek/uqm.zip

Much thanks to serendipity for the compile.  I did a quick test by just replacing the old exe and nothing else.  Old saved games worked and game was winnable (so I assume Spathi/collision are fine too).  Oh, and the pause  button crashed the game the first time I used it and my computer the second time.  So no pause button in this hack version. ^^

Thankyou!!!  Got it, installed it, got CVS content snapshot, moved saved games, ran it, finished it.  Now I can
study for exams in peace.  :)

This is open source.  If you're so inclined, check out the source tree, build the goddamn windows executable, and host it yourself.  Don't ask other people to stop their real work and build the exe for you just because you're impatient.

Would you be willing to "loan" us all copies of VC++ to build it ourselves with?  Because I doubt anybody would want to buy an expensive compiler to compile a game they could get for $10 second-hand.  Doubly so for me because I've invested in a whole suite of Borland tools already.  While I've got a Linux box  it's not good enough to play UQM on.

On that subject, after my exams are over next week I might take a crack at building UQM with Borland C++.  Since they have a free compiler available it would expand the possibilities for Windows users if somebody could get it to work.

[not on the UQM team at all, just an experienced programmer.]

Ditto for me.  I just hope you're not that nearsighted when you're programming.

Agreed, though it can hard to get enough credits to get what you need right away, especially if you're focusing on techs.  But it's worth it.

Also don't forget to periodically visit allies you haven't talked to in a while.  They might tell you something new.

By the way, don't be cheap by reloading after buying the info!

Even cheaper is to just load their dialog file into a text editor.  

The Mycon at the coordinates mentioned are just guards who watch over the "place of Juffo-Wup".  You need to go to where the Mycon "decision makers" are if you want them to take your suggestion seriously...

The missiles never misfire when the ship is facing in certain directions.  Even with the bug I've been able to use the Eluder to defeat many a Slylandro probe and a few other things too.

I'm not sure if this is just specific to my system, though.

The directions are one notch clockwise from either straight left or straight right.  (There are others, but those are the two I use.)

If you can't recompile, hopefully this will tide you over until the 0.2 release.

I love the Melnorme!  They're mysterious, funny, and generally fascinating.  (And also they have the coolest music IMO, but I don't want to start one of those debates.)

As mentioned, they are shrewd.  I mean, even giving free fuel is good business sense.  After all, they know you're going to end up doing a lot of business with them.  If you die, they don't get that business, do they?