What was Star Control 1 like?

	Welcome, Guest. Please login or register. Did you miss your activation email? October 03, 2024, 11:50:42 am

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

The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

The Ur-Quan Masters Re-Release

General UQM Discussion (Moderator: Death 999)

What was Star Control 1 like?

« previous next »

Pages: [1] 2 3

Print

Author

Topic: What was Star Control 1 like? (Read 8134 times)

Zarnium
Frungy champion

Offline

Offline

Gender: Male

Male

Posts: 75

Mr. Owl ate my metal worm.

What was Star Control 1 like?
« on: July 09, 2007, 02:28:42 pm »

It seems like we talk about how bad SC3 was more than we talk about it's much better prequel, Star Control 1.

I have never played it, and I was wondering what it's gameplay and graphics were like. If I'm not mistaken, it was for several different computers and the Sega Genesis, so in some screenshots the graphics look like they'd be on an Atari 2600 and others look as good as UQM.

I know the game is set in the first Ur-Quan war that the Alliance is supposed to have lost, but I'm guessing in this game you can actually win. As far as I know there was no deep storyline or alien communication like there was in SC2. But I think you still gathered resources and went to other planets to mine them?

I'm sure many other people besides me would like to know more about SC1.


	Logged

Elvish Pillager
Enlightened

Offline

Offline

Posts: 625

Re: What was Star Control 1 like?
« Reply #1 on: July 09, 2007, 02:38:41 pm »

I've played SC1 - you can get it off abandonia.com and run it through dosbox.


	Logged

My team of four Androsynth and three Chmmr is the most unfair team ever!
My mod

Zarnium
Frungy champion

Offline

Offline

Gender: Male

Male

Posts: 75

Mr. Owl ate my metal worm.

Re: What was Star Control 1 like?
« Reply #2 on: July 09, 2007, 02:40:12 pm »

I'd never be able to get that to work. I tried with SC3 before.


	Logged

Koowluh
*Smell* controller

Offline

Offline

Gender: Male

Male

Posts: 382

Re: What was Star Control 1 like?
« Reply #3 on: July 09, 2007, 02:46:48 pm »

The game was basically melee like in SC2 + a strategic mode. The strategic mode had a couple of different default scenarios, which you could modify yourself (which was basically changing the text of the story and which ships one of the sides could build).


	Logged

I hate drugs. Air is the worst one. Breathe it once and you're hooked for life.

Novus
Enlightened

Offline

Offline

Gender: Male

Male

Posts: 1938

Fot or not?

Re: What was Star Control 1 like?
« Reply #4 on: July 09, 2007, 03:23:40 pm »

Quote from: Zarnium on July 09, 2007, 02:28:42 pm

If I'm not mistaken, it was for several different computers and the Sega Genesis, so in some screenshots the graphics look like they'd be on an Atari 2600 and others look as good as UQM.

TFB did Star Control for the Amiga and PC (and later Genesis); these versions are quite similar to each other and to Star Control II (a lot of code in UQM seems to derive from PC SC1, via PC SC2 and then 3DO SC2). The 8-bit conversions (C64, Spectrum and Amstrad CPC) were done by other people and only vaguely resemble the original (partly due to technical limitations).

SC2's SuperMelee is essentially SC1's Melee with more ships and the added ability to choose your own fleets instead of having one of each Hierarchy ship versus one of each Alliance ship.

The SC1 full game was based on scenarios describing part of the original Alliance-Hierarchy war. Each scenario was played out on a (rather annoying 3D rotating) starmap with a few dozen stars or so; each star had a planet that could be useless, life-bearing or mineral-rich (and in addition possibly contained Precursor artefacts that upgraded the ship that discovered the artefact). Each player took turns moving their ships around (from a star to a nearby one), building new ships (if they had a starbase), building colonies to resupply crew (on life worlds), building mines on mineral worlds to produce resources to build new ships out of and fortifications to slow enemy movement down and prevent enemy craft from destroying the aforementioned colonies and mines. If two opposing fleets met in a system, ship-to-ship combat ensued.

MobyGames has a lot of screenshots of SC1.


	Logged

RTFM = Read the fine manual.
RTTFAQ = Read the Ur-Quan Masters Technical FAQ.

meep-eep
Forum Admin
Enlightened

Offline

Offline

Posts: 2847

Re: What was Star Control 1 like?
« Reply #5 on: July 09, 2007, 03:50:42 pm »

Running SC1 through DOSBox is very easy. You're unlikely to have the problems you had with SC3.


	Logged

“When Juffo-Wup is complete
when at last there is no Void, no Non
when the Creators return
then we can finally rest.”

Lukipela
Enlightened

Offline

Offline

Gender: Male

Male

Posts: 3620

The Ancient One

Re: What was Star Control 1 like?
« Reply #6 on: July 09, 2007, 05:44:27 pm »

For some screenshots from older SC1 versions, you might want to look here, at the resident SC1 historians homepage.


	Logged

What's up doc?

Novus
Enlightened

Offline

Offline

Gender: Male

Male

Posts: 1938

Fot or not?

Re: What was Star Control 1 like?
« Reply #7 on: July 09, 2007, 06:04:25 pm »

Quote from: meep-eep on July 09, 2007, 03:50:42 pm

Running SC1 through DOSBox is very easy. You're unlikely to have the problems you had with SC3.

Looking back at your comments on SC3, it looks like you were either trying to run the Windows autorun or setup program for SC3 under DOSBox; hard to tell from your description. If this is the case, you're unlikely to have that sort of problems with SC1, as nobody really expected games to use Windows back then, so it didn't.


	Logged

RTFM = Read the fine manual.
RTTFAQ = Read the Ur-Quan Masters Technical FAQ.

Zarnium
Frungy champion

Offline

Offline

Gender: Male

Male

Posts: 75

Mr. Owl ate my metal worm.

Re: What was Star Control 1 like?
« Reply #8 on: July 09, 2007, 06:37:19 pm »

Ok, maybe I'll try with SC1 sometime.


	Logged

kwamp
Zebranky food

Offline

Offline

Gender: Male

Male

Posts: 39

Re: What was Star Control 1 like?
« Reply #9 on: July 10, 2007, 07:30:24 pm »

Novus hit the nail on the head with his description. Personally, I thought the scenarios were fun (prior to SC2 coming out), and I liked the concept of having precursor artifacts upgrade your ships. Nothing like having a mycon/ earthling get a speed upgrade, or the 'synth get extra crew/battery. I ended up buying the genesis version recently, and boy was I disappointed. I don't know if the conversion to the genesis ruined it, but it was terribly slow (much slower than I remember). I can't recall if the PC version was like that though.

-Kwamp


	Logged

Kwamp, of the Thraddash

AngusThermopyle
*Smell* controller

Offline

Offline

Gender: Male

Male

Posts: 304

A paranoid android.

Re: What was Star Control 1 like?
« Reply #10 on: July 10, 2007, 08:35:19 pm »

Quote from: kwamp on July 10, 2007, 07:30:24 pm

I ended up buying the genesis version recently, and boy was I disappointed. I don't know if the conversion to the genesis ruined it, but it was terribly slow (much slower than I remember).

Yes, it was much slower. (I played this version myself.) Fred addressed this in the recent chat:

Quote

The same goes for the Genesis version of SC1 where we did a quick port with the intention of optimizing it for speed, but they thought having a 12megabit cartridge was a much better selling point.


	Logged

Zeep-Eeep
Enlightened

Offline

Offline

Gender: Male

Male

Posts: 917

Good Grief

WWW

Re: What was Star Control 1 like?
« Reply #11 on: July 11, 2007, 01:13:53 am »

SC1 was okay, but getting used to the spinning 3-D map was
a pain an running in a DOSbox was very slow.

Other than that, all I can really say was that it was a little
like playing checkers and Super Melee. The games were
usually over quickly.


	Logged

What sound does a penguin make?

Anthony
*Smell* controller

Offline

Offline

Gender: Male

Male

Posts: 358

Star Control Lives!

WWW

Re: What was Star Control 1 like?
« Reply #12 on: July 11, 2007, 01:25:29 am »

Oh, those old-school memories of Star Control 1. It was so long ago...

The frame rate is a lower frame rate (e.g. because it's DOS Cheesy

Cheesy

), so the ships are slower too, and there isn't as much color depth as SC2. The full game involves colonizing, and moving your ships individually across asteroids, with the main objective consisting of destroying your opponents starbase; honestly, I've never mastered the full game; I always did the melee.

The Cyborg is a nice feature too; you can make both sides computer-controlled opponents, and choose the ships yourself, and they duke it by themselves.

It's a fun game, and it's still entertaining to press the space bar when selecting a ship in practice mode, to see the ship specs and bitmap pictures of each ship in detail. It's worth checking out.

EDIT: Cyborg, not Psytron. Psytron chooses for you; cyborg fights for you; computer controls completely. Indeed, it has been confirmed...


« Last Edit: July 15, 2007, 09:29:47 pm by batman4050 »	Logged

Star Controller (blog)
Duke Nukem <3 Star Control[/url

Novus
Enlightened

Offline

Offline

Gender: Male

Male

Posts: 1938

Fot or not?

Re: What was Star Control 1 like?
« Reply #13 on: July 11, 2007, 09:53:06 am »

Quote from: batman4050 on July 11, 2007, 01:25:29 am

The Psytron is a nice feature too; you can make both sides computer-controlled opponents, and choose the ships yourself, and they duke it by themselves.

I thought Psytron was the reverse: the computer plays the strategy parts for you and the fights are human-controlled (unlike Cyborg control, which is what you describe).


	Logged

RTFM = Read the fine manual.
RTTFAQ = Read the Ur-Quan Masters Technical FAQ.

Amiga_Nut
*Many bubbles*

Offline

Offline

Gender: Male

Male

Posts: 208

Re: What was Star Control 1 like?
« Reply #14 on: July 13, 2007, 05:08:00 am »

Ok, here it is kiddies!
http://4filehosting.com/file/39956/Amiga-Nut-zip.html
66MB.zip.
Windows only, sorry Linux dudes. This is basically WinUAE coupled with all the games I ever installed on my home Amiga, and every .adf I created from the top games.
Just unpack and drop the Amiga Emulator folder on the root of your c: drive. At first boot, the program will test your video card. You may get an error regarding missing kick.rom file. Just click ok, and then uncheck the “start in quick start mode.” (This will prevent error message in the future) In the configurations menu, just double click the setup you want. F12 gets you back to the menu anytime. All house-Amiga configurations will boot from a virtual HD. (my Amiga on a CD_ROM)

Games:
--(.adf commercial)--
Armour Geddon
Another World
Shadow Of The Beast 1
Shadow Of The Beast 3
Dungeon Master 2
Lords Of Chaos
Lords Of Chaos EK1
Lemmings
Lemmings2
Mega Motion
--(HD commercial)--
Eye Of The Beholder
It Came From The Desert
Monkey Island 1
Monkey Island 2
Star Control 1
There are at least 100 more, cool, freeware games on the HD in this collection.
Also: sometimes the system may want a different disc or maybe you’re getting bold and learning to use this emulator with .adf’s you’ve downloaded. Don’t worry! Just press F12 and go to the floppy drive menu. There you can select Amiga disk files and place them in the virtual floppy drives. (All adf files are in the disk images folder.)
Last thing: Games like Monkey Island and Star Control require a code wheel to play. Check out Paul’s Goodies folder for help on MI. I did not include info about the SC1 code wheel. You can find help online, or catch me in arena and give me your phrase and I will give you the answer. Then just keep your computer on! Sorry for that, but I can’t give it out. (Professor Zorg's Instant Etiquette Analyzer)-google it
Have fun.


« Last Edit: July 13, 2007, 09:22:48 am by Amiga_Nut »	Logged

I keep my old Amiga on a flash-drive. Tongue

Tongue

Pages: [1] 2 3

Print

« previous next »

Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines