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News: Celebrating 30 years of Star Control 2 - The Ur-Quan Masters

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Matticus
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Re: Ideas for after 1.0
« Reply #15 on: February 17, 2006, 07:28:01 am »

I love using my beefed up Precursor vessel, it makes melee so easy. I never worry about losing my ship because I'm good enough at the game where it's not an issue. I'm also a save nazi.  Wink
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Re: Ideas for after 1.0
« Reply #16 on: February 17, 2006, 09:32:37 am »

Ships are replacable; precursor tug is not!  Sure, there are SAVE Games, but where's the fun in that? >_>
Amen, brother. UQM is stable enough to play "Iron Man" style, which in UQM is simply implemented by only saving when you quit the game (and deleting your save after loading!). As long as you have enough thrusters on your flagship (and don't go blundering into hostile homeworlds with 0 flagship crew like I do), UQM is actually quite easy to play this way.
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Re: Ideas for after 1.0
« Reply #17 on: February 17, 2006, 03:40:45 pm »

I want to see this feature because it could potentially fix the most major flaw in SC2: that basically 95% of all that you do is play a bland mining mini-game that isn't fun, and use the majority of the resources you gather to buy fuel in order to get more resources.

I typically go repeating this one...if this is the case, you haven't mastered the game and need to rethink how you are approaching the mining aspect of it. 

If you do the mining aspect right, you only really need to spend maybe 5-10% of your time with it.
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Re: Ideas for after 1.0
« Reply #18 on: February 17, 2006, 05:05:00 pm »

I want to see this feature because it could potentially fix the most major flaw in SC2: that basically 95% of all that you do is play a bland mining mini-game that isn't fun, and use the majority of the resources you gather to buy fuel in order to get more resources.
I typically go repeating this one...if this is the case, you haven't mastered the game and need to rethink how you are approaching the mining aspect of it. 

If you do the mining aspect right, you only really need to spend maybe 5-10% of your time with it.
First, strip-mining every single planet you see is a waste of time and fuel (landing may even cost you more than you gain!). Stick to mining interesting-looking planets instead of every single dustball you see (Hayes has some good advice on this). Planets near hot stars tend to be cool but not cool, if you see my point.

Second, there are other good ways to get RU. Mining is seldom necessary except at the start of the game.

Third, I may be missing something (I haven't played Starflight that much), but in my opinion, Starflight is the one with the "bland mining mini-game". Actually getting from A to B takes positively ages (on the Amiga, at least), and exploring through a whole planet takes forever minus 1 day (or so it seems). In UQM, you can at least get back to the plot quickly enough without leaving lots of minerals behind. On the plus side, the feeling of "there's a whole great big universe out there" is a lot more intense when you realise that you can literally spend a lifetime exploring!
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Re: Ideas for after 1.0
« Reply #19 on: February 17, 2006, 05:33:37 pm »

I love using my beefed up Precursor vessel, it makes melee so easy. I never worry about losing my ship because I'm good enough at the game where it's not an issue. I'm also a save nazi.  Wink

Of course, the precursor vessel can be beefed up to the point that if you can't win with it in all circumstances you'd have problems.  There's a reason I call the properly beefed-up precursor vessel "Death Star."  Grin
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Re: Ideas for after 1.0
« Reply #20 on: February 17, 2006, 06:32:08 pm »

"Third, I may be missing something (I haven't played Starflight that much), but in my opinion, Starflight is the one with the "bland mining mini-game"."

Hehe, I don't think so, not compared to SC2's.


"In UQM, you can at least get back to the plot quickly enough without leaving lots of minerals behind."

That might be because in the Amiga version (as in the PC version) that you played, minerals are completely unlimited. Land, mine everything on site, take off, then land again in the same spot, and more minerals are there.


"Actually getting from A to B takes positively ages (on the Amiga, at least), and exploring through a whole planet takes forever minus 1 day (or so it seems)."

That's sort of the thing with planets, they're just really big. You have to understand though, that in Starflight, you're tactics are a little different. You don't just search every single square inch of a certain world. You use the clues you've obtained through communications, records and messages, and in some cases, navigational artifacts, to show you where the important sites are.

It's not the same as simply flying overhead, running over a few glowing things and zapping the half dozen lifeforms on the world, planets are meant to be vast worlds that are natural, diverse places- helping you complete the main storyline is not their only reason for being. There's storms, diverse lifeforms, unlimited natural resources concentrated in different places (if you can't find many minerals, try looking in the mountains of worlds with high mineral densities,) and secret ruins. Of course, this was done in '85, not '92, so the technical capabilities were far less. But worlds and general (non-plot-driven) exploration was still a much bigger part of Starflight, than Starcontrol 2's 1 minute strip mining approach (basically as you said, mining and exploration was only for the early game, later on you'd only land to pick up a device someone told you was there.)

Of course, just because some of us really what to see planetary exploration made into all that it could be in space games, that doesn't necessarily mean it would fit SC2, whose focus is almost entirely on combat and story development. Loyalists would maybe find it to be too much of a distraction.
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Re: Ideas for after 1.0
« Reply #21 on: February 17, 2006, 07:55:24 pm »

"Third, I may be missing something (I haven't played Starflight that much), but in my opinion, Starflight is the one with the "bland mining mini-game"."

Hehe, I don't think so, not compared to SC2's.

"In UQM, you can at least get back to the plot quickly enough without leaving lots of minerals behind."

That might be because in the Amiga version (as in the PC version) that you played, minerals are completely unlimited. Land, mine everything on site, take off, then land again in the same spot, and more minerals are there.
OK, so the problem is that I'm expecting Starflight to be like UQM; my expectations from UQM may be preventing me from seeing Starflight as a different game where different rules apply (and thus, I end up trying to play Starflight like UQM).

I'll have to have another go at Starflight some time.
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Ideas for after 1.0
« Reply #22 on: February 17, 2006, 08:55:40 pm »

If I recall, the Sega version of Starflight is more similar to UQM. Though I think the Amiga version beats it to the sub-atomic level, star control fans might find the Sega to be preferable.
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Re: Ideas for after 1.0
« Reply #23 on: February 17, 2006, 09:47:23 pm »

I want to see this feature because it could potentially fix the most major flaw in SC2: that basically 95% of all that you do is play a bland mining mini-game that isn't fun, and use the majority of the resources you gather to buy fuel in order to get more resources.

I typically go repeating this one...if this is the case, you haven't mastered the game and need to rethink how you are approaching the mining aspect of it. 

If you do the mining aspect right, you only really need to spend maybe 5-10% of your time with it.

Now that I've played through the game, this is true. But I find it hard to beleive that someone on there first run would only spend 5-0% of their time resource gathering. Probably 50% at the least.
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Re: Ideas for after 1.0
« Reply #24 on: February 17, 2006, 09:49:56 pm »

If I recall, the Sega version of Starflight is more similar to UQM. Though I think the Amiga version beats it to the sub-atomic level, star control fans might find the Sega to be preferable.

Probably. SF for genesis had prettier graphics a completley different approach to mining (minerals were underground and needed to be scanned for), and SC style control of your ship (planets had gravity and you're ship had momentum).
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Re: Ideas for after 1.0
« Reply #25 on: February 17, 2006, 10:38:14 pm »

Now that I've played through the game, this is true. But I find it hard to beleive that someone on there first run would only spend 5-0% of their time resource gathering. Probably 50% at the least.

If you didn't want a challenge, then why play the games in the first place.  That's the worst kind of game to me, the one that I can sit down with for the first time and beat within two hours.

Besides, after a while, one should learn to go after profit and not hoard minerals.  After all, it does approach common sense.
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Re: Ideas for after 1.0
« Reply #26 on: February 17, 2006, 10:59:11 pm »

2. Planet terrain is basically a dozen recycled low rez bitmaps, which makes all the planets feel the same and basically ruins exploration.

See Terragen, software that renders landscapes.  Set the camera to look straight down, save the parameters for next time, use Gimp/PS to get it to loop reasonably.  I remember trying to do this way back when and it was there was a reasonable technique to doing this.  For high res you might have buy the software. 

Best o' luck!
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Re: Ideas for after 1.0
« Reply #27 on: February 18, 2006, 04:25:06 am »

Hm. Well, the big differences between the mining systems in UQM and Starflight can be easily resolvable: simply let the player choose which system they prefer. It's open-source, after all.

If the more advanced exploration functionality were to be included as an option, here's how I see it being implemented:

Land on a planet and fly around, as usual. When you go to pick up a deposit, it instead zooms you in to a really large, pseudorandomly-generated area where you go around and look for smaller, well-hidden deposits within that area. Alternately, the player could just forego that aspect altogether and just have the lander pick it up as normal.
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Re: Ideas for after 1.0
« Reply #28 on: February 18, 2006, 09:01:52 pm »

What if after 1.0 2 official versions were maintained? One being the version as close to the original as possible, and the other which focused on fixing the flaws in the game and improving gameplay. IMHO having a multitude of spin-offs will probably amount to nothing more than a few failed attempts at drastic gameplay change (due to the work involved) and a large number of projects which make very small gameplay changes (think duct tape mod for doom3) which no one will care about.

meep-eep stated that the other goal of UQM is to "make modifications (including translations) easier", but what is going to be done after that? Shold the project grow stagnant?

I think that it would be wise to make a secound *official* branch (like 'UQM 2X') after most of the work has been done leading up to 1.0. Sure, gameplay and balance would need to be changed, and the game may end up looking completely different, but it would provide replayability for vets, keep devs interested in coding, and very likely make a great game a true masterpeice by fixing the flaws that it admitably has in it.

I agree completely. 2 official versions would be best. One would be closest to the original as possible and the other would be newer versions with enhanced gameplay features. This is probably the best way to go.
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Re: Ideas for after 1.0
« Reply #29 on: February 18, 2006, 10:41:05 pm »

Now that I've played through the game, this is true. But I find it hard to beleive that someone on there first run would only spend 5-0% of their time resource gathering. Probably 50% at the least.

That only lasts until they realize what the true nature of the game is, I think... Also, if they get good at melee they don't need as many resources.
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