So, Shiver's balance mod won't work with 0.8?

Is it incompatible? Or would be a trivial matter for him to upgrade his mod for the latest version?

So, the new Arilou is pretty amazing! I am hitting most of my shots. This makes me very happy, and playing the arilou is a lot more fun as a result.

One funny thing I've noticed about the Arilou laser behaviour is that it does not seem to fire at the center of the target ship. Instead, it (often?) fires at the front-left corner or the rear-right corner of the target ship.

I wonder if this is why I still miss sometimes with my arilou shots. It looks like it may be the case. When I miss, it seems like the laser is aiming towards a corner of the ship/sprite that it can't quite hit, instead of the ship center which is closer.

Wow, cool to see you are still working on this! I have been playing a lot of UQM melee during quarantine, but have been using 2.09 the whole time. Some radical changes in here, like the Supox. I had gotten quite accustomed to 2.09, will take some new adjusting I guess. I didn't mind the Ur-Quan's "gimmicky" bolt, because I thought it improved my accuracy greatly. But after playing a quick round with the new Ur-Quan, I have had pretty good accuracy so far, so maybe the new sprite size is sufficient to help accuracy.

I came here actually to make a request, in case you were working on the mod still:
Can you please, pretty please, make Arilou's laser 64-directional instead of 16? I miss sooo often with this laser. It kills me a little bit inside.

I play with Arilou a lot, but it's really frustrating to be at point blank range to your enemy and still miss with the auto-aiming laser. Sometimes I get near ships (especially the Vux) but I miss half (sometimes more!) of my shots. Being closer helps improve accuracy, but you can still totally miss even extremely close. It's just due to the limitations of only having 16 aiming points. Against smaller ships this problem is worse obviously, but you can still miss a Kohr-Ah quite often, even when close.

I understand that Arilou had its range nerfed in this mod. I think that's appropriate and fair. But perhaps as a compensation for this, you can make the aiming 64-directional, so that when you do finally succeed in getting close enough to your enemy, you actually get the payoff of a hit.  
After all, maneuvering quite close to your enemy is very dangerous. So I think it's only fair that if you brave that risk to get close, that you be rewarded by being able to deliver damage to your opponent. Basically I think if you succeed in getting into range of your opponent, you should get a guaranteed hit (as long as you have the battery for it).
It's rough when you miss a lot of your shots, as it wastes time/opportunities for a hit (forcing you to take more risks again later) and also battery spent on missed shots.

Cheers, and it's nice to see this mod is still alive and well.

I think popularizing UQM is a good idea.

But before doing such a thing, I would wait until netmelee has all the kinks ironed out. Specifically, there needs to be a central server that lets you join/create matches easily. An excellent addition would be understood rulesets for filtering: 200 pts, nodupes, no capships, 1 retreat.

Automatic tournament creation & management would be even sweeter.

A formula to rank people by skill would be neat, too. When playing "ranked" games, your rank is adjusted based on who wins, and what your rank difference is.

Trivia:
The tune for the melnorme (originally called potatojuice.mod, I believe) was by a guy who invented his own genre of music called 'Poot', of which the melnorme tune was an example.

Is there a thread to make suggestions for the balance mod?

What were their fleets? Inquiring minds want to know.

I am happy to see the balance mod coming along so nicely. It doesn't feel so much like a work in progress now, but rather a product that has found its groove.

It's nice to see the Ur-Quan has become worthy of being a capital ship, while keeping its flavor and not being radically altered. The rest of the ships seem like they are close to where they should be, and that the game is now basically balanced.

Since checking out the latest updates, I have started playing melee again. I actually have been enjoying it. It helps to know how to build a fleet to match up ships. It helps a lot more knowing that the game is solidly balanced. I think that if the game is made accessible to new players (having a net-melee server that facilitates online play), people will start to get involved. UQM is a pretty popular open-source download, I think.

Thanks so much for doing this! You have facilitated Star Control's legacy living on. It seems like you had the expertise to know what you were doing and made a fitting product. Yay for us!

Now that I'm around again, I will play in the next tournament.

... and school your butts.

This is a simple topic. If you could receive one genetic modification from the Umgah, and they wouldn't give you anything you didn't ask for, what would it be?

Clinical immortality, duh.


I also wouldn't mind running on a carbon-based battery instead of needing food. I would have solar panel cells for skin, as well as an ability to recharge myself from a power outlet.

I would like to be generally in a survivable body. Hence, I would like to have extra water storage inside of me, assuming my body still uses water. Walking through a desert for 2 weeks would no longer be a problem. To survive on a mountain, it would be nice to be able to quickly grow a huge fur coat or maybe a foam insulation so as to retain heat and conserve energy. An extra oxygen tank might also be nice, so that I could survive in a vacuum, another atmosphere, or under water for some time.

I'll bet the Umgah are hedonists who genetically engineered themselves to have endless orgasms. Have you ever noticed that the umgah basically spend their time fondling penises and breasts on the view screen? If you look at their control room, that's pretty much what their controls look like:
http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080828091039/aliens/images/e/e2/Umgah.gif

Pain in the butt, re: Alleg42.dll

It would have been nice if you had included alleg42.dll in the package. When I ran the program, it asked for this file and wouldn't load. It took me quite a while to find the right version, but here it is:
http://static.allegro.cc/file/library/allegro-4.2.3/allegro-mingw-4.2.3.zip

Also, it is a pain that I cannot change the controls. I had to load an older version of Timewarp, set a config, and then copy/paste the contents of scp.ini into GOB's.

Latest version is now up on sourceforge:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/gob-tw/

This uses Allegro 4.2.3, and is crashing on exit for me. I may switch to Allegro 4.4 or 5.0 sometime in an attempt to fix that.

Wow, I didn't know this was still updated. Thanks!

I miss some of the old ships... too bad they are not compatible with the newer version.

Does anyone play netmelee with Timewarp?

Alary Battlecruiser

I wonder if every possible Star Control myth was included in this fabrication? Oh wait, it didn't include the hidden dialogue where you get to make love to Admiral Zex in order to convince him to give you his collection of Syreen Maidens.


Some of them are based on reality, e.g. they did intend for a cloaking device originally and there is some art made where you get to meet the creators.

download link doesn't work anymore.