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The Ur-Quan Masters Re-Release / Starbase Café / Re: Startropy - A SC2-like Sci-Fi Adventure Game
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on: October 05, 2019, 09:44:23 pm
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Started by Startropy | Last post by Startropy
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Hey friends, hope you've all been well. It's been a while since my last update, so let me show you what I've been working on.
So the past few months I've been working on redrawing the environment art you'll see during the resource gathering part of Startropy. This wound up being a long experimentation process until I settled on a perspective for the game world I was pretty happy with.
I then went on to create a bunch of environmental assets like rocks, weather effects, skies, mountain ranges, etc. With the intent being to try and strike a balance between making them look interesting enough in themselves but also easily reusable enough so that I can mix and layer them onto of each other in different ways to make the 80ish planets in the game.
When you see these screens, keep in mind that for resource collecting you will be seeing the world in a first-person RPG perspective.
So the first example here is a Mars-like planet:
 
With this being how it looks when your away-team moves across the planet:
Shown next is the same planet type but undergoing an intense duststorm:
Next is a frozen world, with a light snow effect and without:
 
After completing those two sample planets, I decided to try something more challenging in drawing alien flora being blown by a powerful lightning storm (a favourite environmental hazard in SC2). I wanted the scene to appear quite unusual and well, alien. So opted to use upwards lightning and have the flora use purple reflecting retinal instead of chlorophyll, a reference to the Purple Earth theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Earth_hypothesis
 
I would have liked to have add some primitive towering fungi to this scene, but was aware that it's been a while since my last update and wanted to make a post once I had a decent amount of things to show.
There's still a few more environmental assets I will be working on after posting this update, one notably being creating the assets for a “hell world” which I predict will be a fair challenge.
Anyway thanks for reading peeps, enjoy the rest of your weekend!
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The Ur-Quan Masters Re-Release / General UQM Discussion / Ideas for a map tool
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on: September 26, 2019, 07:00:48 am
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Started by Ellis Dee | Last post by Ellis Dee
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Hi there. Every few years I play through the game using the walkthrough I designed and posted here now 12 years ago. (Wow!) After starting up my semi-yearly playthrough last week I started thinking about adjusting it to be more coherent with the story. Then I started thinking about how helpful a mapping utility would be to creating a "perfect" walkthrough, so I started writing one this week. To that end, I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for features they'd like to see. Once finished I'll release it as freeware, along with complete source code.
It's only been 2 or 3 days, but so far the map draws the stars. It works like an image viewer, where you zoom in and out with the mouse wheel and drag scroll the whole map. So far I have about a third of the constellation line connections. Here's a screenshot:
Starmap Proof of Concept
Anyone have any ideas for features to add?
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The Ur-Quan Masters Re-Release / General UQM Discussion / Re: Balance Mod updated
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on: September 22, 2019, 10:44:15 pm
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Started by Shiver | Last post by Shiver
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Played some more games, did some more tinkering. Most notably, we're bringing back odd point values. Shofixti, Ilwrath, and Mycon in particular are much better off with them. This is a long change log, and I don't know if anyone follows my adjustments closely, but here it is.
~~2.11~~
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[Arilou]
* Forward teleport's destination has reduced lateral variance.
Forward teleport is randomized to prevent skilled players from to warping with total precision. For some reason, I wrote lateral variance to be double compared to forward/backward variation. I don't know why anymore, but this has been rectified.
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* Melee camera repositions to Arilou's destination one frame sooner during a teleport cycle.
This looks smoother.
[Druuge]
* Ship cost decreased. (18 -> 17)
[Ilwrath]
* Ship cost decreased. (12 -> 11)
* When attacking with a full battery, the side spouts will fire 2 shots each rather than 3.
Too much burst damage from this weapon was causing problems for Androsynth and Mmrnmhrm while duking it out at close range.
[Melnorme]
* Holo-targeting cooldown increased. (12 -> 13)
Aim-assist animation appears less frenetic this way.
[Mmrnmhrm]
* Crew count increased. (20 -> 22)
I gave this jack-of-all-trades a little more crew to justify its 20 pt cost. It's been getting knocked around a lot lately.
[Mycon]
* Ship cost decreased. (16 -> 15)
[Orz]
* Crew count increased. (16 -> 18)
Despite other changes, Orz still wasn't quite holding up. It would lose so much crew taking out Ur-Quan that a dingy Earthling or Thraddash could snipe it afterward.
[Pkunk]
* Ship cost decreased. (20 -> 19)
[Shofixti]
* Ship cost decreased. (6 -> 5)
Shofixti in particular really benefits from odd point values returning. I believe this ship has been over-nerfed for as long as Balance Mod has been around.
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* Acceleration increment decreased. (5 -> 4)
Speaking of nerfs, here's another one! This helps prevent "kamikaze-less" wins, which are not desirable against well-played, fully-crewed ships. I may do away with this change later if it proves to be too much.
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* Dart velocity increased. (80 -> 84)
Returning some of the reduced range from last update.
* Glory Device damage formula re-jiggered; it deals a bit more damage when that damage won't be lethal to the enemy ship.
The weird rules I attach to this weapon help Shofixti be useful yet leave Arilou with a better chance to survive against it - balancing those two ships against each other has been unpleasant to say the least.
[Slylandro]
* Lighting range cap extended. (160 -> 168)
[Spathi]
* Torpedo duration increased. (24 -> 25)
[Umgah]
* Ship cost decreased. (8 -> 7)
* Turn penalty while weapon is active increased. (2 -> 3)
[Ur-Quan]
* Fighter formation code revised. Fighters fan out from each other more and their movements are smoother. Fan out distance is much lower during a victory sequence.
* Jumbo fusion bolts narrowed in width slightly.
These were clearing out Orz marines (Ur-Quan's intended hard counter) too well sometimes.
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* Point-defense shot may turn twice on the same frame while chasing a target.
A fringe accuracy buff to UQ's point defense.
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* Point-defense shot duration decreased. (10 -> 8 frames)
These never stay around that long unless they somehow miss a target. This change prevents the shots from awkwardly careening around as much before they expire.
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* Point-defense no longer targets Chenjesu shrapnel.
Accuracy against spinning fragments is abysmal. PD doesn't know how to pick out which bits will hit the Dreadnought, nor how to run into something that travels in a sharp curve, and I'm not going to teach it. Stopping the countermeasure in this instance prevents wasted energy.
[Utwig]
* Ship cost decreased. (24 -> 23)
* Crew count increased. (20 -> 22)
A small boost to help Utwig tussle with Kohr-Ah. This should be fine, as more crew gives no real advantage versus Utwig's counters (limpets, confusion).
[VUX]
* Ship cost decreased. (14 -> 13)
VUX's price drop coincides with Utwig's. VUX should be a little more usable outside of its primary niche this way.
[Yehat]
* Shield cooldown increased. (8 -> 10) Battery recharge freeze also increased to match.
Nerfed shield spam. It's easier to score hits against a defensive Yehat.
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