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Topic: Famous Ur-Quan Battles Volume IV (Read 18176 times)
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Pik
Zebranky food
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I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
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Wow, you guys are not listening.
With the 'hyper-scenario' mode you could make anything you wanted. Yehat vs Yehat or Druuge vs Androsynth. Just as in the 'hyper-melee' mode you can put in any ship vs ship battle or combination you want.
In a Star Control 1 addition, it would be locked. You should have no issue with this since you can make your own side vs. side scenarios in the hyper-scenario mode (just as why protest a locked melee side in a SC 1 mode? We already have hyper-melee mode where we can do whatever).
What I am suspecting is that many SC 2 fans do not understand SC 1. To them, SC 1 is just a poor excuse of a game, whose only saving grace is the tactical campaign and ship descriptions. Forget that Star Control 1 was about the immensity of the Heirarchy War. Forget that all the ships were balanced, not ship to ship (as we see in SC 2), but rather tactics to tactis, that the ships were supposed to operate on the tactics board. Forget the different game dynamics such as the the stronger planet and forcing the player to operate by side vs. side rather than ship vs. ship. Forget that Star Control 1 evolved and brought into modern age the very first video game made, Space Wars. Let us forget all of this and just say Star Control 1 is an 'awful game' and possessed nothing other than a tactics mode (and ship descriptions). And let us forget that Star Control 1 did make Computer Games best 'video games made' list seperately from Star Control 2.
So much could be brought to life by bringing Star Control 1 to modern game consoles. But I suppose it will never happen because you all see the game only through the lens of SC 2. You look at the game and think, "OMG, IMBALANCE OF SHIPS." Well, duh, because the gameplay isn't ship to ship but side to side. The Umgah and Shofixti sucked, as they were supposed to being 'scouts', and the Ur-Quan Ship was 'too strong', because it was supposed to be, being the flagship invading race.You look at the game and go, "OMG, LOCKED SIDES!" because SC 1 was not about ship vs. ship battles focused as SC 2 was. SC 1 was about side vs. side, as it did feature a full fledged tactical mode. You look at SC 1 and go, "OMG, NO STORY MODE!" Use your imagination with the tactical campaigns. You had scenarios and could imagine the war around you as you made more. I got more gameplay out of SC 1 than SC 2. In SC 2, it was an adventure game and it had an ending. You either replayed the same game or played with the melee. Well, with SC 1, the game always stayed fresh as all the possibilities with the tactical campaign. "OMG, SPINNING STARS!" Most sci-games used spinning maps, such as Overlord. In fact, Star Control felt like a combination of asteroids and overlord. Most old-school gamers prefer the older stars. I was glad that they were brought back in Star Control 3 at least.
Facts be told, the saving grace of Star Control 2 was the super melee part. It was the only multiplayer component. The game, mostly, was single player based. Star Control 1, however, was multiplayer based. But Fred Ford put in a very nice AI so one could practice on it well (good job with the AI in both SC 1 and 2, Fred!). I spent most of my time in SC 1 fighting or conquering star systems. I spent most of my time in SC 2 watching passively as my ship move through hyperspace or collecting resources again and again.
The point is that SC 2 is not an evolution of SC 1, it is a different beast entirely. The adventure mode of SC 2 was well done and recieved well (mostly) to SC 1 fans. But if you look at the sells, SC 1 and SC 2 sold around the same number of copies. "But where are the SC 1 fansites?" Most were absorbed into SC 2. But SC 1 doesn't have content that fits fansites in the same way Archon doesn't. But Archon still has a cult of gamers running around out there as well as SC 1. I should hope that if Paul and Fred make a sequel to their Star Controls, they combine the space arcade combat with the gameplay of Xcom or even Master of Orion 1. What! Such a sequel scares you? Think of how us SC 1 fans felt when we got an adventure game with no tactical mode! But SC 2 is good just as SC 1 is good for their unique ways. Rather than have a SC 3 'evolve' on SC 2, I'd prefer more playability and less single player linearity.
Bring SC 1 back to modern systems, not from the perspective of SC 2, but from the perspective of SC 1. Star Control 1 is NOT a less evolved form of SC 2, it is its own unique game. But I fear that will never happen, since you all have concluded that SC 2 is what Star control *really is*, and Star Control 1 is just some deformed game (with a tactical mode and nice ship descriptions!). In that case, even an 'evolutionary sequel' using SC 2's design will disapoint your high ideals. The unique Star Control genre is starving, and with this refusal to even look at the prequel from any other prism than from SC 2, then I say the series ought to die.
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Art
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Oh, for God's *sake*, dude.
The only thing you're basically protesting is that the new scenario system would not be "locked" the way SC1 was locked so that players wouldn't be forced to play with SC1's original game balance, and therefore we wouldn't have a "pure" SC1 port. Cry me a friggin' river.
I would ordinarily try to be more polite but you keep harping on this. There's no *reason* to lock the game into SC1 configurations when you can easily make it customizable. The game is *for fun*. Players want to play it the way they want. You can create a set of *default* scenarios that represent SC1's original balance, and put a note in the manual saying, "These default scenarios represent the original Star Control experience" very easily. You don't need to annoy the player by keeping him from trying out new combinations he wants to play with.
Just like in SC2 you *can* exclusively play with Old Hierarchy vs. Old Alliance as a matter of honor, and I'm sure there are diehard SC1 fans who do this, without Toys for Bob annoying everyone by putting in a special "Star Control 1 Mode" where it's impossible to choose different sides.
There's a difference between making a good game and excessively throwing a sop to nostalgia. When you can actually play the original SC1 on an emulator, and when you can *replicate* SC1 through a new, powerful game engine, you *don't need* to recreate a game with all the same limitations and lock-ins of the original game. People who want the particular game balance TFB came up with in SC1 can play it; people who want a different one can customize it.
Sure, there will be dorks who will have fun making fleets of Dreadnoughts and Avatars smash each other, but that gets old quickly for serious gamers, and for non-serious gamers -- hey, let 'em knock themselves out. It's not like the original SC1 scenario editor *didn't* let you create ridiculous 15 Dreadnought vs. 1 Scout missions. (And, yeah, I get that SC1 holds a lot of good memories for you, but the game's balance was in no way perfect -- in fact, TFB's strength has always been the ineffable cool-factor and replayability-factor of their games while they've more or less played delicate issues like game balance by ear. I've always felt that, objectively speaking, SC1 is pretty weighted toward the Alliance side.)
In any case... MY GOD, dude. What the hell is the point of trying to start an SC1 vs. SC2 jihad? I liked both games just fine. If I thought SC2 was the be-all and end-all I wouldn't support the idea of a strategic SC game at all -- I'd insist that any sequel be a story-driven adventure. But that doesn't mean worshiping at SC1's feet so much that I demand a "real" port that has zero new or modern features so that it can be exactly like the original. I fail to comprehend the mindset that says the game is less fun if it takes *away* the ability to customize it because the original game wasn't customizable.
I still don't really comprehend what you're bitching about. THE STRATEGIC ADD-ON *IS* BRINGING SC1 TO MODERN SYSTEMS. It's bringing a more flexible, more interesting version of SC1 to modern systems, but the original SC1 is still *in* there, and if you want to play it -- and if you want to encourage others to play it -- by all means, do so. But it's madness to say that you have to create a special locked version that refuses to allow the player to do anything that the original game couldn't do. That's just being obsessive and silly. (Are you going to demand that we put back in the Professor Zorg copy-protection, too?)
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Art
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And another note: You really seem to be missing the wave of the future. Moddability is the in thing. Very story-driven, idiosyncratic games can maintain customizability without losing their identity. Games like Half-Life leave themselves wide open to people designing their own levels and mods for the game, while the core levels of the game *itself* are still very carefully balanced and story-driven.
You lose nothing by having a UQM Scenario mode that contains an (editable) Default Story Mode that has the scenarios laid out by TFB for the Alliance and Hierarchy sides in a certain order (which, by the way, they themselves tweaked a lot -- just look at the differences between the Genesis and PC versions) -- *but* that also has a bunch of new, interesting scenarios, also story-driven and balanced (the Pkunk fighting off the Ilwrath, the New Alliance mopping up the Ur-Quan), *and* the possibility to create new scenarios. People with the inclination to will play the story mode and critique its balance, I assure you. But they'll also have fun tweaking the balance and fiddling around -- some will make wild and insane new scenarios, some will try to improve the balance of existing ones, some will make whole new campaigns that fit into the story and may be better than the original designers'.
Every serious RTS out there works like this, and they *benefit* from it, rather than suffering. Starcraft's main campaign didn't suffer because of the huge capacity for mod levels -- everyone learned to play through the main campaigns and discussed them to death, then *kept on* playing through tons of new and interesting scenarios and gave the game years and years and years of life. Games that lack that moddability eventually have players move on to other things -- after all, you can only play the same ten scenarios so long before you know them by heart.
It seems to me you're the one pointlessly creating conflict here by failing to see the big picture -- this isn't an SC2 thing vs. SC1 thing, this is the way gaming now works -- thanks to widespread computer literacy and plentiful hardware resources -- vs. the way it used to work when a game had to fit on a tiny disk and most people still saw computers as toys. *Any* good game should be moddable, and paternalistically *locking* a game *against* customization when it would be easy to make it customizable, because you're such an insecure game designer you don't want the player touching your precious game balance (or you so blindly worship the original game you don't want to let the player sully it with her own ideas) is assholish in the extreme.
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GeomanNL
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I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
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I agree with both of Art and Pik.
Unfortunately for Pik, the "war" is over in sc2, and there are no clear sides anymore, that's why I agree with Art.
I don't agree with Art that allowing *anything* is a good thing. It's the (artificial) constraints that make a game unique and gives the player a *special feeling*.
And Star Craft is a particularly bad example to pick, since that's a prime example of fixed armies. Uhmm... well, except in those weird defense matrix games of course, which are lots of fun but well... you don't take those seriously.
Actually, all strategy games I know of use fixed armies.
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« Last Edit: May 27, 2005, 07:25:54 pm by GeomanNL »
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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Allow the scenario designer to do anything, including restrict the player. That is what he meant. We've been over this.
Even in starcraft a wily scenario maker could script up custom teams, where siege tanks were switched with reavers.
Incidentally, I think SC1 is a great game on its own, without SC2. This is why we are here, talking about it. But I think the flexibility that is now possible, due to subsequent work (i.e. SC2), should be included in any remake.
That is all.
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« Last Edit: May 27, 2005, 09:15:30 pm by Death_999 »
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UAF
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harth1026, I have a feeling you won't agree to this idea, but I'll suggest it anyway.
Maybe instead of working with UQM you should work in TWL's code. This means that the game will have better network support, more ships instead of just the SC1&2 ships, and better graphics.
This will allow more scenario games and more teams to be created.
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harth1026
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Cool... I haven't really thought of looking at anything else other than the UQM code. Thanks for the idea. Actually, because of some of the difficulties I have encountered, I decided to try this from scratch. Basically, I'm taking chunks of UQM code and content, with chucks of some Asteroid code, and some free source code I got off of NeHe and forming Voltron with it. Speaking of Voltron, I should post that as my favorite Scifi robot. Really, what I'm doing is remaking the entire SC1 game from the ground up. It'll probably take a little longer this way, but at least I'll know where everything is so I can easily expand it. This is all mainly for the learning experience, but hopefully I'll end up with something that fun too. Maybe the TWL code will give me ideas that I haven't thought of yet. Thanks again.
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UAF
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TWL already have working melee, so you won't have to program that part at all.
You just make the program that run the tactical game, and then call up the melee battles when you need them.
If you need help with the code I'm sure Yurand or youBastard (our programmers) will be happy to give you some pointers (although they're busy programming other things so they won't actually work on this game).
Take a look at the site or check the forums.
The main reason I'd like to see it happening in TWL is because of all the new ships you'll be able to add to the game, instead of just playing the SC1&2 ships.
Especially when we'll have the adventure game ready and people will be able to play with races from the new game.
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Art
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Clarification: It would be silly if, at any time during the game, the person *playing the game* could click on a menu to make a Dreadnought vanish and replace it with a Scout. It's totally okay to take that out of the game. I don't think anyone was proposing otherwise.
However, the game should, out of the box, include a scenario editor, and if the player chooses to take the trouble to open it up and browse scenario files with it the game should let the player change whatever variables she wants changed.
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Pages: 1 ... 3 4 [5]
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All I'm doing now is just a learning experience. Adding on a new game mode to UQM or TWL would be the biggest game project I would have ever done so far. If I jump straight into it, I wouldn't know what to do and I'd never finish. First I just want to improve my Jedi programming skills. After I get a better understanding of how game programming goes, I'd be better off taking on the UQM code.