Thanks for the offer Serosis and changing the day length isn't a bad idea.  However, where there is a contradiction/omission, I tend to consider most PC content to be more 'canon' than the 3DO ones, so I think the day being 0.86 the length of an earth day is the right one and the one I should stick with... all the more so since BOTH versions have that number listed for the planet.

The voice actress has very kindly agreed to do the extra lines, so maybe I'll use the extra lines instead so I get to include the joke without changing a fact that both versions agree on.

I don't think I'm going to start down the path of 'Syreen have a different concept of what an hour is' since I assume everything we hear the aliens say is translated via the ships universal translator.  And that translator would be smart enough to do the conversion into 'human hours'.

So I'm working on a mod to re-implement missing Syreen dialogue from the PC version of the game into the UQM version, fully voiced.
However, I've run into a snag.

There's a bit of dialogue where the Syreen talk about their diurnal cycles.

The original PC version originally uses this:
"Syra's gravity was a bit lighter than Earth's, and its day slightly shorter.
Our diurnal cycle is, therefore, quite compatible with yours."

The 3DO version uses this:
"Syra's gravity was a bit lighter than Earth's, and its day was fifty percent longer.
Our diurnal cycle is therefore different from yours.
We spend twenty hours awake, followed by ten hours... horizontal."

This was one of the few changes I actually wanted to keep from the 3DO version, because of the added innuendo.

However, there's a snag: if you travel to Syra, it shows:
Day length: 0.86 Earth days

Syra's undergone some pretty cataclysmic changes since the Syreen lived on it, but of those only the initial 'meteor' impact could really have affected the length of the day, and even then it didn't sound like it was strong enough to cause such a drastic shift.

So I also thought of a last option: I could possibly ask my voice actress if she would be willing to record the following as a compromise between the two, though I feel bad asking for more than I already have:
"Syra's gravity was a bit lighter than Earth's, and its day slightly shorter.
Our diurnal cycle is, therefore, quite compatible with yours.
We spend fourteen hours awake, followed by seven hours... horizontal."

Which of the three versions do you think I should use in the mod?

[has]

True, he could have renamed it 'The Ur-Quan Conflict', 'The Path of Now and Forever', or 'The Eternal Doctrine'. But Star Control II had 'The Ur-Quan Masters' as a subtitle first.
Which is how UQM got its name.

If they had kept the numbering would it have made a difference?

Star Control / Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters

My new speculation is that Paul or Fred don't like the idea that they have to have the IP handed back to them. Like some sort of pride issue.
They can't make a new game without having their IP handed over and it's leaving a big bad taste in their mouths.
But instead of swallowing their pride they're doubling down on using the cult of opinion to make it look like Stardock has hand it over,
unwillingly, to save face.

That way they can win the support of their fans and make it look like they were right all along.

Or it could simply be a ploy to cover up their reluctance to make a new game. Me thinks they haven't really thought it through either way.

Interesting take on the situation.

Of course it could be that nobody's out to 'get' anybody: Stardock just want to sell the games they have rights to, F&P (incorrectly) believe they have rights they don't.  F&P ask Stardock for something (eg money) that they're not really owed, Stardock (naturally) refuses, F&P get upset since they're not being given something they believe they're owed.

The only way it will properly get resolved is if it ends up going through proper legal proceedings, but I doubt anyone is allowed to talk about any legal proceedings while they're still going on.  Or if both parties come to a mutual agreement and  publicly announce the outcome.

I'd still hope for the last outcome, personally.

The games were renamed in an effort to split the canon between 1/2, 3, and Origins. Presumably Ghosts as well, since that will be set in the Ur-Quan Masters universe.
Now Star Control isn't burdened with Star Control 3 being a sequel to the the Ur-Quan story but is set in a completely different Universe altogether.

Star Control II's subtitle was always "The Ur-Quan Masters", Brad decided to drop the numbering.

You'll also notice that Star Control 3 has been renamed to Star Control: The Kessari Quadrant.
You can keep calling it Star Control 3 if you like but it is officially not in the same universe as The Ur-Quan Masters.

Duly noted about the subtitle, I didn't remember that this as the original subtitle for SC2.

That said, I still find it misleading - Star Control 1's subtitle isn't "The Ur-Quan Masters" and there's heaps of other subtitles they could have used instead to differentiate that 'universe' that would be less confusing.  After all, they made up a new one for Star Control 3, there's nothing to stop them making up a new one for the Star Control 1+2 bundle too.  One that doesn't share a name with this open-source remake.

Common sense also dictates that Paul & Fred don't hold the rights to sell the games anymore otherwise they would not be on GOG or Steam right now as per their blog post.

I'm not so sure.  Distributors like GOG and Steam likely won't do anything if two sides (legally) disagree, which is why the games haven't been pulled.  Most likely the wrangling is ongoing, and F&P's last update detailed that they'd previously argued with Atari about this in the past and won.  I suspect if they lawyer up they might win again - that process just hasn't finished yet.

What it boils down to is: the relationship between Stardock and F&P is not at all rosy.  If it was, F&P would be giving Stardock their blessing, not fighting them tooth and nail in the legal arena.

> either F&P or Stardock are not being honest here

I suspect that the rights Stardock bought were themselves already disputed – that is, F&P would hold that Stardock was sold something the seller did not own, while Stardock might reasonably be under a different impression.

The dispute was apparently already looked into and settled by Atari earlier:
"We then contacted Atari to let them know that we were the original authors and owners of the copyright to the games and that we had not given permission for them to republish our work.   Atari checked with its lawyers and wrote back confirming our claims"

Though you're right, Stardock may not have been aware of this earlier settlement when they bought the rights from Atari.

However, there wouldn't even have to be a legal wrangle, since F&P's understanding has always been that the game cannot be sold "without their permission".  Which means that simply getting their permission should have been enough to let Stardock sell it without argument from F&P.  The fact that they haven't been given that permission means either they didn't ask, or they did, were told no, and decided to go ahead and sell it anyway (without knowing for sure if they had the rights to do so).

In the meantime, F&P made it quite clear that they did not want their games distributed anywhere but GOG and what their position is.  Yet even now the games sit on the Stardock store and on Steam.  If Stardock respected F&P's wishes they would have pulled it from the stores until the legal wrangle can be solved (despite the fact that it might cost them money).

As an aside: in looking at their store, I've just now also noticed that Stardock have named their (paid-for) Star Control 1 + 2 bundle:
Star Control: The Ur-Quan Masters.

Surely if they are such fans of Star Control then they are aware that the (free) open source remake on this site is also called "The Ur-Quan Masters"?  Wouldn't that cause undue confusion in people who get recommended to look for and play "The Ur-Quan Masters"?

The more I look into this, the more I'm starting to agree with Zelnick's take on Stardock's practices.

[One thing I would add though]

I can understand the overall gist of what Orz? is saying above, though there isn't much that can be done about it.

The fact is that video game development in the modern world is a costly exercise at the best of times.  It used to be something done by tinkering nerds in their basement (read about how Richard Garriott made Akalabeth, for example) and could be done by a small number of people working together.

But the demand for better sound, better graphics, and more polish comes with increasing demands on staff.  You can't have some amateur doing a bunch of wonky pixel art, as most people want it to look smooth and good.  You can't have the neighbourhood radio station providing voice acting, it needs to be Patrick Stewart now.  All these things cost money, and lots of it.  Making a videogame becomes a huge gamble, because it's no longer about doing it just for fun - if it doesn't sell, you're now bankrupt.

The offshoot of this is that high quality games need to appeal to the largest audience possible, and as such, they are far more likely to attempt to play it safe - that includes creating sequels to existing, nostalgia-inducing licenses to try and secure a 'guaranteed' audience, while also making it 'approachable for a new generation'!

In many cases the two don't mix well.  Having anyone but the original authors making a sequel to an old game almost never ends up recapturing the same feel of the original.  "They changed it, so it sucks!" will be the warcry of all the grognards who loved the original, for they loved it for its warts and all.  Keeping it too close to the original however will not capture much of a new audience, and the grognards tend to be the (vocal) minority, so don't expect a lot of things to be pitched only to them.

There are exceptions: some indie developers, typically with much lower budgets, do experiment and try new things (things like Undertale, Super Meat Boy/Binding of Isaac spring to mind) but for every success there are a ton of failures - not always because the games were bad, but because they just never reached the critical mass word of mouth needed to make them popular.

Stardock is probably in a similar situation.  I doubt they want to put out a game that doesn't live up to our nostalgia googles version of Star Control 1 and 2, but (and maybe I'm a cynic) I doubt they'll be able to recapture the same feel of the originals.  This is almost inevitable - everyone has their own writing stylem, and that style evolves over time.  If you replace the writers for a certain established series with someone else, or even the same writers, if enough time has lapsed - no matter how passionate they might be - you'll end up with something that feels more like fan-ficiton.  Either it will feel like they're trying too hard to ape past glories or the new things they add will feel out of place.  It's a no-win scenario either way.

For my part, I haven't been following Star Control: Origins very much, but a lot of what Zelnick says does resonate with me in the sense that it may have been "missing the point".  One of endearing things about Star Control was that humans were both technologically and socially rather primitive compared to most of the other races and really just got caught up in a greater conflict by accident, so having a plot based on other species fearing mankind's rapid development sounds like a case of someone not really getting that aspect of it.

One thing I would add though: Zelnik's venom seems to come heavily from how he (she?) percieves as 'scummy' business practices by Stardock.  Zelnik is poor at making his point because of how angry he is, and is so abrasive that I wouldn't be surprised if he got banned from their forums for that reason alone.  However, the posts on on F&P's blog (https://dogarandkazon.squarespace.com/) make it pretty clear that either F&P or Stardock are not being honest here.  Either Stardock respects F&P as the creators and rightsholders of Star Control and F&P are just posting stuff to make Stardock look bad (for some reason), or Stardock is legally overreaching and are activley acting against F&P's wishes for the game/unverse they themselves own the rights to.

Of the two parties, I feel like I trust F&P more, since I don't understand what would be in it for them to lie.  I find it hard to reconcile the supposed love and care that Frogboy states Stardock has for the Star Control universe with the apparent lack of respect shown to F&P's wishes (legal rights notwithstanding).  This in turn makes me wary of anything else Frogboy has said, even if he's said it much more politely than Zelnick.  Actions speak louder than words.

I can't download it off his Soul's anymore.
[EDIT]
I guessed the link and was able to download it, but the links on the page need to be updated. And Soul, you were right before to have separate versions for the 0.7.0 based UQM/UQM-HD and the 0.8.0 based MegaMod.  That is definitely the best way.

The page WAS updated though...  Can you recheck, maybe hitting CTRL+F5 to refresh it without using your cached files?

It seems to have resulted from a change in the way the MegaMod calls string variables during dialogue.  Because my mod was using the original/old formatting, the MegaMod read the .txt file incorrectly after the section where it refers to the string, resulting in it linking the ogg files incorrectly.

Fortunately Serosis noticed the issue and sent me a fixed .txt file with the new formatting for that section.

I bet, and Serosis can probably confirm this, the change strings were a result of 0.8.0 changers. If so future versions of uqm will be this way.  Also, mega mod does not need additional command lines to run the package. Its programed to autoload your package.  Although he will have to account for your name change.  Also why not relabel your zip file to .uqm  since that is the standard naming scheme for all other uqm addons.

Happy to make any changes, but I haven't received any guidance on how to structure my mod to be compatible (until now).  I've shot an email off to Serosis to confirm.

EDIT: Revamped the site again.  New (.uqm) version created and uploaded.  Should be good to go now, let me know if you've given it a test and if it works.

[edit]  I'm sorry to say I found a bug,  I'm currently using Soul Reaver's Melnorme Voice pack.  Unfortunately the number of cost and credtis you get dosn't match.   Say you just sold something for 44 credits, the Melnorme says something like 35 credits.    It's a very odd bug..

It seems to have resulted from a change in the way the MegaMod calls string variables during dialogue.  Because my mod was using the original/old formatting, the MegaMod read the .txt file incorrectly after the section where it refers to the string, resulting in it linking the ogg files incorrectly.

Fortunately Serosis noticed the issue and sent me a fixed .txt file with the new formatting for that section.

In the meantime I've repackaged everything and uploaded MegaMod compatible versions to my site.  I've also emailed Serosis so he can update his installer so it will download a MegaMod compatible package.

It's too bad there isn't a piece of software out there that could take recorded speech and synthesize words at a semi-believable level.

Unfortunately I've yet to find a text-to-speech program that doesn't make it pretty clear that it's using a text-to-speech program.  This is especially problematic if it gets used with a character like Talana, who is a pretty major character with a variety of different emotional reactions to the player (including flirting, sadness, anger etc).

As a matter of principle, I don't want to spend money to create a free mod for a free game.

There are various voice acting forums with unpaid auditions, I'm just hoping to get some recommendations for good ones where I might have some luck.  Or alternatively if someone on these very forums might be or know someone appropriate, that would be great too....

So far, I've made voice mods for the Melnorme and the Mycon, both intended to fix missing bits of information that are not available elsewhere in the game (these have kindly been incorporated into the Megamod too).

There's one gap remaining: Syreen starbase commander Talana.  Unlike in the original PC version, the voice version doesn't mention the location of the original Syreen homeworld.  Nobody else mentions it either.  I'd like to remedy that, but unfortunately my voice isn't going to cut it for voicing a blue-skinned space amazon.

I've advertised in a few voice acting forums but got no bites, so I'll ask here: does anyone know where I could possibly find a good adult female voice to be the new Talana?

At the risk of possibly being the only weirdo who cares about this: I hope you leave the 'partial resource pickup' feature optional.

The reason I say this is because for me it helped keep resource gathering just a little more interesting - having to keep an eye on the remaining cargo space, guessing how many resources were likely to be in the next 'blip' (based on type, size and planet type) and formulating the best way to pick up all the resources with no wastage vs minimum number of trips.  That goes out the window with partial resource pickups, so I prefer the 'all or nothing' of the original.

I will attempt not to get hyped up because it will only make me sad if it doesn't turn out great.

But deep down inside I'm hoping for something great.

You might be interested in my latest visual fix for UQM HD as well - head over to this thread for details.