Ohh, hey! Maybe you are correct.  It's been a while since I've run into the Ur-Quan, so I foget if they were  the only predators, or if they were hunted.. Good point.

I don't have a copy of the text or I'd check.  I'll have to look into it further.  If anyone has any information on it one way or the other, please feel free to post it.

Thanks.

Arcain.

Lets delv a bit deep inside the Ur-Quan brain shall we?

We have here:

1) An ancient race of beings that have come from a rather hostile environment.

2) Beings that, before enslavement, had serious trust issues to begin with seeing as they actually HAD predators on their homeworld that thought Ur-Quan flesh was tasty.

3) Subsequent enslavement by "You know who" didn't help things any.

4) Tentacle envy (this is purely speculative on my part.)

Okay.. So here we have these giant caterpillars with a serious groove on staying alive.  They developed community, space travel and technological skills as a means to stay alive.  I won't even get in to how if they had achieved this level of technology that they were not able to either contain or eliminate the predatory influence that dominated their very existance: Not to mention their penchiant for killing one-another.

So here we have this basically tribal society that has been geneticaly split in to subset classes and after several centuries of enslavement set lose on the galaxy.  This does not bode well.

We see here a mindset that is both highly fore-brained and yet at the same time lacks development in the low-brain areas.  My theory is this:  Take a hyperactive child with a bad temper and give it the intelligence of a genius.  Then, piss it off for a really long time... Now, it wants revenge.

What's your take on this? AND! How long do you think it would take for the Ur-Quan as a whole or in part to realise that the benefit of an alliance and the establishment of trust would do so much more good than harm?

Arcain.

Have you tried the manual?

     -q           (or --audioquality)

Can be "high", "medium", or "low".  Specifies how nice the audio
sounds.  Slower machines should lower the audio quality.

Arcain

Are you speaking of the videos?  If so, here's why.

It's kind of low on the totem pole as far as getting the game all together.  There are still a great many bugs to iron out before we get to worry about the "frills" such as FMV.

Also, the video is in an odd format (.duk) for which the source code and materials have been lost.  Our stout-hearted programmers, therefore, have to manually decode the bitstream and header info in order to be able to play them at all.  To re-record them into another format (eg: via recording and reprocessing) risks further decay of the already shabby video quality.  The .duk format is apparently horribly lossey and therefore degrades the visual quality of the film.

(for those who don't know, high quality video winds up being incredibly huge if not compressed.  When compressing video, you will almost always lose quality.   To record every frame and then compress it with a lossless compression would still be FAR too large to be of any real use other than for movie or television work.  Therefore, a "lossey" format is used with acceptable tolerances to make it small but still visiually appealing.)

Anyway, I hope this answers your question as to where the intro and conclusion went.  It WILL be in the final version I'm sure.  We'll all just have to sit back and wait.

Arcain

Oh crud.....

Well that's not good.. Uhm... I suppose I could make some new ones if no-one minds.  I can try to get them as accurate as possible.  There are a number of pre-existing models at SC3D in Max format.  I have max, but I'm not well versed in it.  Much prefer Truespace myself just for the interface.

I'm sure we have enough people here with 3D experience that we can make some new animations.  I don't know if we would have to change the script or not (would they really be that anal?) but the music, speach and animation can all be redone reasonably fast and with far superior quality this time.

Lemme know what you think.

Arcain.

Found compiled Xvid Codecs here: http://nic.dnsalias.com/ among other places.  Haven't tried it yet, but will see what I can do with it today.

Nemt: Already covered.  I've had a 3DO for some years now, and it still sits by my desk with SCII loaded and ready.

So, there it is.

Arcain.

Here's one.. XVID.

http://www.xvid.org/

Apparently this is a GPL DIVX.  I'm going to take a look around there and see if I can find a codec or something.  Although, it appears they have little more than source code, and I'f affraid my programming skills aer limited to Basic and some Assembly on the Atari 800XL, which I seriously doubt would be of any use in this particular case.  Or any case for that matter.  

Arcain

ooooooooooookay... I mean, I knew SOMEONE must have looked into it already, but I didn't know we actually found anyone who had the source...

I do have a video capture card (several really) and can easily turn these into another format...   Doesn't look like Vorbis has their video compression software up yet.  Is there another free/GPL format we can use?  I'll look around and see what's out there.

Arcain.

Well, Given that the gestation rate is highly accelerated.  One might also assume that the mortality rate is also greatly accelerated as well.  This is disproven by both Tanaka and the female Shofixti that Admiral Zex has in his custody.

Also, with the advent of the Yehat, their feudal society has been advanced at an abnormal rate, relieving them of a majority of internal conflict between warlords and houses.  The question then is, what kept the population down in the first place.  We hear no mention of a population problem on their homeworld during the first war, nor do we hear problems with there being an overt amount of Shofixti in any other region of space.  This could be largely due to the fact that they were incapable of starflight before the Yehat arrived.

So what was it? Natural predators?  Mass suicide? -And, if so, why mass suicide before the war started?  They could, through the process of evolution have been restricted to methods of population control simply for this reason.

It is reasonable to think that as honorable as they are, they would find a way to take care of the problem, or would accept aid from other races in how to better handle the situation without taking over the whole or even a quarter of the known galaxy.  Perhapse some genetic manipulation?

Arcain.

Okay, so I managed to make an image of the 3DO SCII disk and rip all the files to my HD.  Now.. Does anyone know how to work with the .DUK file format? it's obviously the FMV format that was used, but I can't seem to find any sort of reference as to how to either play nor manipulate/convert them.  Any ideas?


Arcain.

I haven't run into this myself yet.  I fairly certain you just got hold of a bad set of mods is all..   I *think* UQM has all the old mods files strewn about in various directories.  just do a search on the UQM folder for *.mod and all of them should turn up.

Arcain

Odd, I thought I had clarified earlier that TFB would do the writing (or pick someone) and then we could go from there.  If someone gives me a rough design for a ship I can usually have it whipped out in a matter of a few hours.  I'm just saying I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be willing to work on the project just to have their name in the credits.  That way TFB can pick up some cash and be able to crank out more really cool games.

..and that's my 2 cents.  ...again.
Arcain.

Yeah, I still have SunDog, and a couple Atari STs
512 STfm & 1040 ST

Alas, I also own an Atari Falcon but my friend has it and I can't find him, LOL.

Dungeon master was the BOMB too!

The one I miss the most, though, was Starglider II.  Man, for the day, the 3D graphics were just unreal.  Sounded better on the Amiga, but that holds true with most of those old games.

While we're at it, and I don't know if I missed this in any kind of documentation, but what is the .ogg format? Is that just a sound sample, or is it some form of wierd MOD format?  If it is a sample format, what are the specs for it?

Arcain.

Nah, I was talking something written by TFB and we help with the grunt work.. That kinda thing.  I know I would sign an NDA if need be.  

I agree with the Timewarp thing too.  I havent seen much in the way of progress on that.  

In any case, I'll flesh out my idea further.  Everyone knows making a game requires a huge amount of time.  Not so much for graphical or audio content.. More for troubleshooting and reworking tidbits of gameplay.  A huge amount of time is probably something that TFB doesn't have to work on a project that may or may not sell  enough to be worth it to them at this point.  

What I'm saying is we have anough people to easily contribute both content and coding routines, and then when the game is finished, TFB can do the bulk of it's sales via internet download - and then run a limited series of boxed sets for those that just HAVE to have a manual and a neato-nifty-keen map to hang on their wall.  If sales go well... Make another run of the game.  Maybe if it wells well enough, everyone who worked on the game could make a nifty profit.  But it shouldn't be expected.  I figure SC already has a large fanbase.  If the game is anywhere near as good as the last, and has silly things like internet multi-player/co-op/melee/etc.. It might attract new people into the frey and it could be pretty popular!

I realise this may be one big pipe dream... But, in the same right, it's not like it isn't do-able with the amount of talent we have just in these forums that's just sitting there doing nothing.  I ahve a ton of 3D models sitting on my HD.. Might as well put them to some use!