I'm glad they kept it vague to give some material for a sequel. With the Kzer-za and Kohr-ah defeated and the Sa-Matra turned into flaming wreckage, there needs to be more powerful, more mysterious enemy. Extra dimensional threat is not such a bad idea, although the blasphemous SC3 botched it horribly (along with almost everything else).

Fair point.  I was definitely left hoping for a sequel that would explain more about the Orz when I first finished SC2.  I also agree that they had just enough hooks to make great potential for a new and bigger threat than the Ur-Quan.  I was also greatly disappointed by how SC3 handled them.  I don't even remember what happened anymore, but I remember it sucked. =P

I've never played SC3, but from what I heard, it sounds they took way too much from the Spathi's mention of the "Ultimate Evil" and way too little from everything else. The "Eternal Ones" sound a whole lot like the "Ultimate Evil" that Fwiffo describes to me.

Yeah, that tracks with what little I remember of SC3.  It was like the programmers played SC2 for all of an hour or two and said "hey, these crazy aliens are hilarious!"  Then they went on to make a sequel that exemplified that aspect of the game without any of the subtler details SC2 had lurking below the surface.  In SC2 there were some wacky aliens for comic relief and some not-so-wacky aliens who did outlandish things for what would've been logical reasons to their alien minds.  In SC3 it was just one-liners and crazy shenanigans.

It's set to max (200 FPS) but my laptop won't allow it to go much above 15 FPS. Sadly, this is something I just have to deal with.

I don't know jack or squat about making videos like this, but if the limiting factor is your laptop's processing power, maybe you could get better results by *lowering* the FPS.  I hear tell that anything above 24 FPS is indistinguishable to the human eye.  Maybe one of the reasons it's chunking up so much is because it's trying to take 200 frames every second and it just can't process that much.  Drop it down to 30 FPS or so and see if that helps improve performance/recording.

2 songs left to do?  I know they were missing Syreen, what else did I forget?

Anyway yeah, I've done this already myself.  I went and found a Syreen remix from somewhere else (by TheMisterCat IIRC) and put that in with all the other race music that had accumulated at the bottom of the Precursors page.

I really would have liked to see them finish that project, and I agree it's a damn shame they stopped so close to completion.  Hopefully there was a good reason other than just "we got bored."

Combat with multiple ships would've been cool, although personally I would have preferred a turn-based system if that were case.  Turn-based gameplay is becoming a lost art these days, though, so maybe that's part of it for me.

As far as what else could have been added - working with the technology of the time I have to say it's hard to imagine what could have been added.  I mean, TFB coded all those planets and their contents BY HAND from what I hear.  No random generation program or what not.  It seems to me they already bent over backwards loading it up with everything they could.  Voices were something I remember wishing for back then, but then the 3DO made that part a reality.

If we're talking magic wishlist, though, I wouldn't have minded a bit more detail on the Orz and their background, either as a side-quest or a storyline.  I mentioned in your other thread how I really loved customizing the Vindicator, so I'd have REALLY loved being able to customize ALL my ships on a similar, if somewhat smaller, scale.  The ability to target specific parts of a ship in combat to take out its weapons or its engines would also have been cool, though it really wouldn't have worked without a turn-based combat engine, I don't think.

Lone 'PC Race here' 'PC Description here' in a hostile 'milieu here' against 'great evil here' is hardly an unexplored trope.  Saying 'you are incompetent to use fwifo's ship in combat against the sylandro probes - there are specific tactics  A B and C that work' is a legitimate criticism of my playstyle. Or that I just don't like a combat minigame that is a twitchgame.

In my opinion, SC2 was a highly original game when it first came out.  In fairness that may simply be because I was about 12 at the time and hadn't really seen too many computer games before it.  Computer games also weren't half as wide-spread as they are today.  Yes, the space opera setting is fairly generic.  You're a lone heroic captain, lots of weird aliens and a big bad enemy to confront.  Really though, you can make anything sound like a tired old trope if you generalize it enough.  No such thing as original thought, right?

If you look at the specific races, their (extensive) histories and the way the plot unfolds, I think there's plenty of original stuff in there, but you would have to hang on for the long haul in order to experience it.  Some of SC2's aliens are pretty generic, but others are much more imaginative than anything I've seen elsewhere.  To date SC2 is the only space opera (game, movie or whatever) I've seen with an alien race who evolved and live in a gas giant, for example.  I won't say any more for fear of spoilers (I may already have said too much.)

However, that . . . doesn't appear to be the answer I'm receiving - This seems to be the 'expected' behavior, with explanations ranging from 'don't use a rock versus paper' to 'you're a lone human Captain in a hostile universe'  - well, apologies but being an adventure game doesn't make A balance issue a 'feature', and if this *isn't* a failing in...

To be clear, you do have a legitimate issue against the game.  Combat is a twitch minigame in an otherwise decidedly non-twitch adventure.  I don't think anyone is denying that, most people are trying to offer suggestions for how to survive long enough to learn it.  The reason why combat is so different from the rest of the game is because the combat engine was lifted pretty much verbatim out of SC1, which was entirely a twitch combat game with only a small amount of time spent moving your forces around the starmap before the next battle.  It had relatively little in-game story (plenty of background in the manual though.)  With SC2 the programmers decided to expand the game in several new directions, and added rather a lot of content.  Compared to today's sequels that are usually just carbon copies of the gameplay, sometimes with better graphics, I have to say I find SC2 somewhat inspiring in this regard.

If you're really that put off by the combat, though, then maybe this game just isn't for you.  Like all truly original products, there are those who like it and those who don't.  Obviously, most of the people who frequent this message board will fall into the former category, so if you find yourself leaning toward the latter, please try not to take offense at our fervered attempts to bring fresh blood into the fold. =)

Maybe I should change "The dialogue system" to just "The dialogue"? I think it's unlikely that people would intentionally vote for what I intended "dialogue system" to mean anyways.

Change it to "Frungy Party!"

I doubt the one person who voted for it would consider that a waste of his vote. =P

I'm maxed out on thrusters (Both types) already - that's a large portion of what makes this so annoying. I don't see any way to effectively maneuver in the small space provided - almost as soon as I'm out of range in one direction, I'm in range in another.

If you've already maxed your thrusters, then you could focus on gunning it up until you have spread fire and rear-firing guns, which tends to make combat with your mothership much easier.  Personally I never bring the Vindicator to battle until I have full armaments (and point defense), and once I do I rarely use anything else.

As far as avoiding combat, I usually set the ship on autopilot to my destination and then keep an eye on the minimap to see approaching encounters.  It lets you spot them from further away and with full thrusters you shouldn't have too much trouble maneouvering around them from there.

If the probes are your main problem (and I agree they are annoying as !@(*$^#!@#&($^) you might also consider dealing with them once and for all.  I don't want to give you spoilers if you don't want them, but talk to the captain and maybe the Melnorme to see if you can't track down the source of the probes.

I voted for the ability to customize your flagship (and apparently I'm the only one? ;.; )
I think all of the things on the list are great and contribute to the game being awesome, but I spent HOURS with the PC version just rebuilding my ship for whatever I was going to do next.  The story was fantastic, the aliens were hilarious.  The exploration factor was incredible.  SC2 was the first game that was "too big" for me to explore everything on my own.  I did what I could but I remember having to look up some of the rainbow worlds because there was just too much space for me to go looking for them all.

At the end of the day, though, it just wouldn't have been the same game if I didn't have the ability to customize the Mark I.  That loss was one of the things that really hurt me when I played SC3.

Forgive me for being ignorant, but are you just retouching the old voices or actually recording new ones?

If the latter, please ensure the "missing" dialogue from the DOS build gets included in your new packs so the game can hopefully be complete again =)
Also, I agree with otehr posters regarding priority.  Hayes and the Melnorme NEED to sound good considering how often you talk to them.  Making sure the Ur-Quan (Kzer-Za) sound good would also be high priority to me as they are the big bad, at least for the first part of the game.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone made a mod of UQM that includes the missing dialogue and removes the voice packs instead?
I enjoy UQM as it is, but I could care less about hearing the dialogue spoken aloud, as long it's all there.

... our current IP is expected to be released on STEAM in December of 2012 ^.^

Hope not on the 21st

Took me a minute to get this one.  Well played, sir.  Well played. =)

There have been several clones of the Super Melee mini game that used better graphics for ships and such.  That requires comparably few new resources than upgrading the entire RPG game would.

By the way, is there any official explanation of the true nature of the Orz ? Is there any race in some sci-fi book which resembles the creepy nature of these creatures?

I remember it being strongly implied, if not outright stated, that the Orz are some kind of extra-dimensional creatures who were drawn to our dimension by the experiments the Androsynth were conducting.  Beyond that and their somewhat shady-seeming intentions, there isn't much in the way of official information.

As I recall, the official map was included with the PC version of SC2 as a form of copyright protection.  The game would ask you to name a star of a given colour at a given set of coordinates before launching, and you needed that map to look up which star it was asking for.  The spheres of influence aren't a huge spoiler IMHO, being several years out of date as of the start of the game.  Besides, knowing where the big bad Ur-Quan are, roughly, is a big help in not getting swamped by hyperspace encounters before you're ready to fight them.

Having said that, the 3do version wouldn't really need the copyright protection as a console game, so the map was probably included there as a courtesy more than anything else.  The VUX hint about a serpent constellation can be solved if you look at the hyperspace map in game and seek out a constellation that looks snake-like.  I mean, unless you really need someone else to connect  the dots for you, it isn't that hard. =P

The missing dialogue is a bigger issue, but I think most people would go online before looking at a jpg map outside the game anyway, in this day and age, so no, I wouldn't say the map is needed to play UQM, even if it is your first time.  Helpful, yes, needed, no.

From what I've read about this project so far (here, in this thread =P) it sounds very exciting!  I look forward to a playable demo, and I agree that upping the resolution is a lesser priority.  I think it's safe to say anyone who's interested in playing this game has already come to terms with the resolution used in the original SC2, so they'll probably be fine with a new game that has the same (admittedly dated) quality.