That's possible. I'll take a look whenever I can get the motivation to look at Remix's files.
It could simply be that he had the music slider lowered by default or it could be that he literally coded it in where I didn't see it.

HD Remix listed the feature as follows:
* Changed the volume options so the dialogue is more audible against the music

...which I realize doesn't help a lot in answering the 'how' question.

I don't remember seeing any specific volume code specifically for speeches in the Remix source but I'll look into it.

I don't think it's specific code, it's just a variable.  Music volume (in all versions of UQM) automatically is lowered when an alien is talking (ie, "if alien is talking, lower music channel volume by X%".  However, I THINK in UQM HD Remix, the volume is lowered a larger amount than in other versions (ie, X was set to a higher number).  I preferred the lower volume.

...what would be your next move?

If I were in this situation, I would have recognized that there was a major difference in understanding by one or both parties about what, legally, they were allowed and not allowed to do.

I would have cordially (perferably by phone, if that was possible) called up P&F directly, and I would have said this:
"Guys, I'm starting to think we both have different ideas, legally, about what we are and aren't allowed to do with our games - which parts of the IP we own and which ones we need each other's agreement to utilize.  I'd really like both of us to be able to make our games in peace.  Can we please work together and get in an impartial IP/contract lawyer in to give us both a 100% crystal clear idea of who owns what so that nobody oversteps their bounds?"

The constant assigning of blame is all irrelevant.  It doesn't matter "who started it".  Only the facts matter.  And you can't go anywhere until you know who owns what and who needs whose permission to publish what (including announcements about "true sequels" etc, as self-evident as that may seem to you).  That way you'll also know if you'll be able to just rebut any criticisms from F&P on calling Fleet Battles "Super Melee" or them complaining about the UI by saying "sorry guys, we both established you don't own this part of it".

The court cases that are currently in progress may well answer the above questions, but they do so in an agressive, oppositional way rather than in a cooperative, amicable one.

Quick request for future versions...

I believe that HD Remix (as opposed to original/HD) reduced the music volume more significantly when aliens were talking.  I think MegaMod still uses the same volume level as original/HD.

I actually much preferred the slightly lower volume of the Remix, as it made the voices clearer/easier to hear, which was especially appreciated during some of the quieter portions.

Is this something you can/might implement?  Maybe a toggle in the menu to select normal or quieter volume during speech?
Or is it already at the remix volume level and I'm just imagining things?

For someone who has been apart of the community ifor a month you seem pretty invested in this controversy, Rose.

I've seen this argument from you a few times.  Just because someone's account is new doesn't mean that person's opinions are automatically invalidated or wrong.  You can pick on the fact that he sounds like he's speaking objectively about the community when he's actually just expressing an opinion on what he THINKS the community feels, but his regdate doesn't come into it (and I'd think in the medium that this was written it should be quite clear to most readers that it's an opinion).

With that said: at present I personally also feel that the lawsuit you are pursuing and the details I can see of it in its legalese (yes, I read the court documents I've seen linked in this thread) are doing more harm to Stardocks reputation in my eyes than any of F&Ps announcement about Ghosts of the Precursors.  In case it helps make it more authoritative, I've been a forum member since 2005,  have been actively contributing significant time and effort to modding The Ur-Quan Masters and used to play Star Control 1 as a wee lad  with my older brother on a DOS computer.

I've said before that a mutually agreeable solution would be best.  I'd like to see a world where both games can coexist and succeed on their own respective merits.  The feelings of betrayal and/or anger on anyone's side - regardless if justified or not - aren't helping that one bit.  Please put yourself in each other's shoes, try to understand where both sides are coming from, and find something that works (F&P, this goes for you too if you're reading this).

Just look above at my earlier response. It covers exactly what you theorized.

Right, but you're not sitting over a table working out where your understandings differ and working those out together, instead you're both throwing laywers in a legal offensive.  Note I'm not going so far as to say who is at fault for that being the case, but it's definitely what's happening.

You say you'd take down Star Control 1 and 2 if F&P proved that they should come down.  But you didn't give them the benefit of the doubt and kept them up, showing you're more inclined to distrust them on this than trust them until that misunderstanding can be cleared up - they did present some evidence to back up their claim, so if it were me I'd have give them the benefit of the doubt.

You say that you don't care about the old IP stuff because you're not using it, but you're making an official and legal attempt to control those old IPs.  So either you're lying when you say you don't want to use them, or you're trying to get them purely to get revenge, which would be neither mature not constructive (and as a writer myself, would make me hate you with every fiber of my being if you tried it on me).

The last point I feel you're completely correct on, in the sense that the name 'Star Control' shouldn't be used prominently in the marketing of F&P's new game, and doing so is likely illegal on their part.  Then again, it's starting to sound ridiculous if you're trying to forbid F&P from ever mentioning they worked on Star Control games in the past, and what their role in it was.  I'd say their evidence that they contributed considerably to the design and style of Star Control 1 + 2 will be hard to deny.  And I don't see it as wrong for them to point out the fact that GotP would be set in the same universe as the old Star Control games which they helped to develop and shape... assuming, of course, they do indeed own the rights to the IP of the aliens etc that they think they do.

Which brings me back to the main point: there are facts here that are in dispute, and they are important to one group or the other.  Both groups are fighting each other over this disagreement, rather than both sides working together to find out the objective truth together (and then maybe finding that fighting is not needed after all)

I just feel everyone is doing this wrong.

Brad, F&P should all sit together at a table and agree that the most important thing to do right now is to figure out who actually owns what - not in an adversarial court case, but by getting lawyers in mutually to unravel this crapfest.  The answers will come faster and easier that way.

Once everyone knows what everyone is legally allowed to do and not do, then there can be constructive talks and actions by everyone involved.

Except everyone is now so bitter at everyone else that it's turned into a fight rather than a team effort.  And it'll cost more money and time because of it.

Brad: have you considered the possibility that F&P might be right in their claim that you legally cannot sell Star Control 1 + 2 without their permission?
That you cannot use any of their IP in SC:O?
That other than the name (and SC3) you don't own any parts of what they created?
And that they're particulary upset because they've had to defend this before in the past, only to have history repeat itself?

I'd pose a similar question to F&P if I saw them: have you guys considered that you might have got your understanding of the rights to the SC name wrong?
That it does allow the rights holder to distribute and profit from Star Control 1 + 2 as they see fit?
That there is no need for them to seek your permission over everything?
And that using the Star Control name to market your game - which some people might see as a competing product - could upset and worry Stardock, especially after they spent money specifically in order to have the rights to do so - unlike you, who didn't?

It's not only possible but almost certain that both sides have valid points and concerns.

Come to New Zealand and I'll mediate for you, and unlike your lawyers I'll do it for free!

Wow, two whole pages since I last posted in this thread...

Regarding the Keel Verezy, no other aliens mention them so I'll give myself the artistic license to pronounce it how I like.

But they mention them several times. I think it was consistently pronounced as five syllables?

Yes, it's internally consistent in the old Melnorme dialogue.
But while it's different in the new dialogue, the new dialogue completely replaces the old, and is also internally consistent.

I'd have had to do it differently if other aliens mentioned them too, but luckily they don't.

I'm really sad that the voice work for Star Control 2 made Zanthius so distressed that he had to derail this thread with a rant about how he wants the alien characters to have a barely intelligible scary robot voice in this humorous pulp sci-fi game.

What does everyone else think?  Are the voices in my mod so terrible that you'd rather recommend to others to play it with the original versions despite the questline holes and missing dialogue, or just voiceless?  Have I really wasted my time?

You can expect Stardock to be very aggressive going forward.

"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind"
It's just going to hurt everyone involved (and anyone caught in the blast radius).

That said, my morbid curiosity means I am now dying to know the actual legal status of the IP...

[This is boring]

I still expect the universal translator's output for me to be in a way that is intended for maximum comprehensibility by my Human ears.

If you were traveling in outer space, or really trying to communicate with Chinese people, sure. But, as I have said tons of times, this isn't a simulator, but a game. And in a game, such as this one, the objective is to give the players a maximum sense of "Chinese" when they encounter a Chinese person. A universal translator that maximizes comprehensibility reduces the sense of "Chinese" when talking to a Chinese person. This is boring.

I think this might be getting somewhat off-topic, but to add my two cents:

Firstly, the 'universal translator' thing is true, but at the same time is just a convenient artifice.  The aliens you meet have a variety of voices and effects, so obviously they don't all have to sound the same.

However, UQM is a heavily dialogue-driven game, and that dialogue ceases to be effective if it fails to convey emotion (or in some cases, lack thereof) and nuance, which is hard to do if you drown it all with post production sound effects.

While I agree the Mycon could sound different, I don't actually think there's anything wrong with how they sound either.  I do think it's wrong to actively make them sound 'evil'.  They aren't evil at all - no more than a malfunctioning machine can be evil.  They are just carrying out their programming, though it has suffered degradation over the centuries.

That said, it wouldn't be all that hard for you to take the existing audio and apply a bunch of filters to it if you wanted to make it sound more alien.  Or even to re-record the dialogue however you like - the Mycon don't have nearly as much dialogue as some of the other aliens.  I can give you some guidance on how to extract the files if you want to try that and Audacity is a free program you can use to edit the sounds.

By the way, the Chmmr sound a lot like robots/computers from early 50s-60s pulp sci-fi TV shows, which is very fitting and likely intentional since the entire game has a similar aesthetic (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuJtf5-aPuk)

Brad wouldn't allow any of that to happen. If Stardock got hold of the rights to UQM he would keep it GPL'd and open source as it is.
He has the power of veto here and he could have stopped the lawyers before any of this went down.

While I don't necessarily agree with Serosis on everything, I think he's right here.

If Stardock (or anyone else) wants the rights to these IPs for the purposes of commercializing them it would likely be to a significant degree to benefit from the nostalgia of old fans (otherwise why not just make a completely new IP?).  Demolishing the hard work of the UQM community would just piss off the market that they would be most likely to target, all for very little benefit (the ability to sell a more than 20 year old game)?

It doesn't seem a likely move even if you make them out to be an evil faceless corporation.

Huh, I'm a bit surprised. I haven't really liked any of the other revoicings I've heard, but this Melnorme one isn't bad. Though, I think you mispronounced "Keel-Verezy" - if I'm not mistaken, "Verezy" should be distinctly three syllables. (Pretty sure this was the case in the original dialogue.)

As for the Syreen, I don't think I like it as much. It's not bad, though. She did mispronounce "Yehat", which is supposed to be "YAY-hat", and one of the words in the second video also somehow sounded wrong ("perpetrating"), but I could be wrong on that one.

Listening to the first Syreen also made me wonder if that historical prediction would prove to be prophetic...

You didn't link a video for the Mycon, but I think I might've heard them on Serosis's site, in which case I didn't much like them either.

I'm kinda curious what the game logic changes were that you needed for the Syreen fix.

Honestly the primary reason for the revoicing is to re-insert the missing dialogue - providing a new voice is merely a side-effect of that goal.  You CAN choose to stick with the orginial voices, but if you do, you have to be aware that you will not be given information crucial to finishing the game.

Regarding the Keel Verezy, no other aliens mention them so I'll give myself the artistic license to pronounce it how I like.

Yehat/Yayhat, yeah, you might have a point there.  I'll see if I can get her to fix that.  'Perpetrating' is completely correct though.

What 'historical prediction' do you mean?

There is no Mycon video, but if you turn up the volume here: https://youtu.be/C2XkwD2qs5I?t=1540 you can hear it in-game.
The Mycon one is not a full redub, just an attempt to re-insert the missing lines.  I'm actually kind of tempted to do a full redub just because it would be more consistent, but that'll be a project for a different time.  Besides, seeing as how the Mycon 'switch personalities' at the drop of a hat, and that some of their previous dialogue editing does cause some sudden shifts in tone/pitch, I think I can get away with it not being perfectly identical.
You can hear all the modded lines on soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/soul-reaver-3/mycon-056-full-v1
https://soundcloud.com/soul-reaver-3/mycon-043-full-v4
https://soundcloud.com/soul-reaver-3/mycon-066-full-v1

As for the game logic fix:
In the 3DO version of the game, if you show the egg fragments to Talana, she gets angry and immediately commits herself and her people to getting revenge on the Mycon.  She then immediately asks you to go and find their Penetrator ships.

In the PC version, this went a little differently.  If you show her the egg fragments, she gets angry, but dials back and states that they will run tests and confirm what you're saying is actually true.  The conversation then ends, chucking you back into space.  After you go back to the starbase, she has an additional bit of dialogue, confirming that what you said is true, and that (most of) her people are onboard with getting revenge on the Mycon.  Then she asks you to go and find the Penetrator ships.

I feel from a character perspective this is significant: in the PC version, she doesn't just arbitrarily decide on the behalf of her (near extict) people to go to war just based on what you tell her.  She actually verifies the truth of what you say and gets majority consensus.

In terms of the game logic, the conversation had to be changed to end after the (HORRIBLE_TRUTH) dialgoue, so that it would play the (MUST_ACT) dialogue (not voiced and inaccessible in the 3DO version) when you next talk to her.  All the game flags needed were already present.  Serosis set it to use the PC logic when my mod is detected, otherwise it sticks with the 3DO logic.

When I played Star Control 2 years ago on my PC, I was blown away by how good it was.

When I ran across The Ur-Quan Masters some time later, I loved the project, and was particularly amazed to see that almost all of the dialogue had been voiced.

However, that joy was eventually marred by the discovery that some of the dialogue had been changed from the PC version - and not just in minor ways, but in ways that actually eliminated information not available anywhere else in the game - the the extent of breaking required quest chains, making it impossible to complete the game without reading a guide or random exploration.  Some of the worst offenders where:

The Melnorme didn't reveal the game's time limit
The Mycon didn't reveal the location of their homeworld
The Syreen didn't reveal the location of Syra

I decided to do something about it.  I planned to create three mods that would address this, and as of the day before yesterday, the last of those three mods is complete.

My Mycon voice mod restored the missing homeworld information - in fact, it's included by default in every HD release of The Ur-Quan Masters.
Next I released a full Melnorme re-dub, voiced by yours truly, that adds in a lot of missing dialogue, including the missing time limit info.
And as of the day before yesterday, with the help of Katie Otten and Serosis, I've completed a full Syreen re-dub as well.

These mods were created with the following priorities in mind (in order of importance):
1. Restore plot/game-critical information from the PC version (eg, the location of Syra)
2. Ensure dialogue is consistent with in-game lore
3. Keep as many jokes in as possible
4. Restore PC dialogue if it is different from 3DO dialogue

Serosis has kindly not only included these mods as options in the MegaMod installer, but even modified the game binary to allow for the restoration of some additional PC dialogue for the Syreen if the Syreen Voice Fix mod is detected.

Finally, you can play the game for the game fully voiced and complete all the required game quests by following the clues and directions given to you by the aliens you encounter.

I'm extremely proud of having completed these mods, and want to extend my sincere thanks to Katie Otten (www.katieotten.com) and Serosis (http://megamod.serosis.net/Releases) for all the assistance they have rendered to make this possible.

For a taster of the mods in action, see these youtube videos:
https://youtu.be/OWt2wj7pFU8
https://youtu.be/12CxK3KG0t0
https://youtu.be/D2oQDA31zsc
https://youtu.be/R2jBCErfG3s

For further information, see my site at www.warpstormstudios.com/uqmmod.

The idea was to discuss the game itself.

If the community wants to focus on activity that is outside the game itself, then that is fine too, that's just not a topic I'm interested in participating in as there are already multiple threads regarding that.

Given that the game begins in 2086, the aliens from Star Control 1/2 aren't really germane as according to Ur-Quan canon, the first time a canon race makes contact with Earth is 2112 (the Chenjesu).  Therefore, any story that takes place before then would necessarily involve different species.

Since this occurs in a different universe, what it says in the manual doesn't really matter though does it?

If you went by what was in the manual, it also says Earthlings at the time of the Chenjesu contact:
"...the inhabitants of Earth, a people who, amazingly,
had never before had contact with a species other than their own. "

Which clearly won't apply in this case.

EDIT: Forgot to say though, the idea of driving/hovering along on the surface of various types of alien worlds is something I find inherently cool.  I always wish Mass Effect 1 had done a better of job of it (rather than the wheeled Bouncy Castle that we ended up with)