I remember that I don't remember...

[Borgie]

So this has been bothering me for the last 15+ years.

I remember reading a file, document, or article from when I was younger. It had something to do with “Fred and Paul disappeared for some time and came back with a bunch of new planets etc”. I read some of this article long before I realized how integral P&F were to the game (that didn’t come about until disappointment with SC3).

I’ve been curious as to the content of this document, but given my limited (and possibly faulty) memory on the subject, I had no clue of how to search for it…

Coincidentally (more likely due to my obsessive interest in the recent legal issues) I came across some comments on the UQM forum (September 24, 2018):

metamorphosis :

I remember a patch update note from the original game (unfindable now, I searched - the sc2 patch is long gone), which stated that accolade tried to find F&P after the game was released for two months, but they'd just 'gone away'. Then, they came back and gave a patch which fixed all sorts of stuff and introduced somewhere between 5-10 new types of worlds, and a bunch of other stuff.

Boerta:

It was in a text file bundled with the game

Does anyone know where I can find this file? My own Star Control II disks are damaged/unreadable and I only keep them now for nostalgic reasons.

[krulle]

I must find time to search my three SC2 game packs (and refind my floppy drive).
It definitely was in the readme.txt packed on one of the floppies on my first copy. But that one was not an official distribution.... (And I cannot remember the group that added its pre-loader to it.... - although I wonder if anyone would ever bother to add such old files to the INet when later publications brought their own edited .exe file which circumvented the copy-theft check).
I don't have that version anymore, since I later bought different packs with SC2. (Once an old unsold copy in a sale of a games shop, one used copy, and once bundled with SC3 - luckily I only found that one when SC3 was in sales too.)

edit: while at work I did a quick online search for the txt file, and found among others a version of DOS-SC2 on myabandonware. But that one seemingly has been stripped from all files not necessary for the game, and plenty other amendments (new human and Slylandro ships, the Human cruiser is too fast, and the Slylandro ship does not fire at all). So no luck there.

But at home I have family and usually no time for my own stuff, so I hope someone else has it ready.

Really, I wonder why this file has not been added to the permanently linked stuff on the star-control.com repository, as so many people already referenced it.

[krulle]

Okay, in the tabs I opened, I found one chat-log (http://fastcat.org/starcontrol/CreatorsChatBasic.txt , highlight "fwiffo" in your browser), and it contains a short passage alluding to this event:
(Fwiffo is Paul and Fred)

<Mharr> We were just asking when you turned up - Are there any Star Control easter eggs?
[...]
<Fwiffo> No easter eggs. We were trying to get a conversation with me and Paul, but we didn't have time.
[...]
<Inging> Did you really go to Alaska to finish SC2?
[...]
<Fwiffo> No, we didn't go to Alaska. But it sounds nice.
[...]
<_Stilgar> Fwiffo- if Accolade sent you off for a few months unpaid to finish SC2, why didn't you ditch them and go to another company that could better appreciate your skills?

And an article also alludes to the crass underpayment for the development work (which could also be assigned to bad design choices by the programmers, which consequently blew their budget with design choices taking too much time/effort to be done within budget):

The publisher, Accolade, wanted to release the game as it was – with no music or dialogue implemented – but developers Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford refused, determined that their labour of love not be unleashed in a half-finished state. Practical and financial concerns, to a point, were made subordinate to passion and dedication. They drew on volunteer musicians populating the Mod community of the time to create a free soundtrack for and tapped their personal savings in order to continue working on the game.

Getting that bit in mind, this from the chat adds more:

<Fwiffo> Regarding the dialog: I defined the conversations structurally and wrote pieces of all of them, however, Greg Johnson was responsible for the majority of the Orz, Arilou, and Pkunk. Mat Genser wrote the Utwig and Ilwrath. Robert Leyland wrote the Supox, and Leonard Robel wrote some of the Thraddash. Iain McCaig did much of the VUX.
[...]
<Fwiffo> The dialog took about 5 months.

So, if I combine the two sources, they spent about five months finishing a game on their own budget.
That's dedication for you.
(But then, what kind of game would've been published without the dialogues?)

And with regard to the current court case, these excerpts may cause you a small smile too:

<Manta> Fwiffo: Has anyone ever brought up parallels between Babylon 5 and Star Control?
[...]
<Deep-Reep> i've brought up parallels between known space and sc
<Manta> (black race of destruction, green race of order, which are the two oldest races around... things like that)
[...]
<Fwiffo> Babylon 5 causes a certain amount of stomping around the office screaming.
[...]
<Manta> First ones || Sentient Milieu.
[...]
<ORZ> Ilwrath + Kohr = Shadows
<Fwiffo> Babylon 5 steals from us. We steal from known space.

[Borgie]

First off, thanks for the fast replies. I was expecting this to sit for a few days.

Secondly, thanks for the research. That was surprisingly enlightening. I’m a software developer myself, so I can relate to ”design choices taking too much time/effort” (It’s a perpetual battle for me).
When it comes to forums and chats I tend to be more of an observer, so these kinds of resources are things I’ve got no clue of how to find.

Honestly, I’ve never made a correlation myself between B5 and SC2. I’ve watched the whole B5 series, but the quality of dialog was… not as good.

Also*... I fully understand the time restraints of family, having my own. Recently decided to do another run through of SC2 (coincidentally focusing more on the lore & dialogue) and it’s resulted in insufficient sleep this week. So thanks again you’re your help.

(*Why do i feel like Hayes now?)

[krulle]

Oh, I added that only because on the Stardock starcontrol forums they were joking when Fred and Paul would sue Warner Brothers for the way HyperSpace is designed in B5. (After Fred and Paul published this blog post with a comparison of HyperSpace in SC2, SC3, and SC:Origins.)
I didn't know that B5 similarities to SC2 had been discussed fleetingly before....
So I added another quote while I was going through that log anyway...

[Borgie]

I thought maybe it was just a joke, but the production timelines do match. And I guess it actually was discussed way back then. The things you never knew!

[krulle]

I think in the chat they didjoke about it mostly though.
Because HyperSpace did not get mentioned.
Meybe dropped because very obvious....

[Borgie]

Well that's (sorta) disappointing. I was hoping to try to use some file recovery tools on my original Star Control II 3.5" disks.
After several weeks of (slowly) cleaning and searching, I've come to the realization that I must have disposed of my disk drives the last time I moved because "why would I need them"?
It's only sort of disappointing given that there's an extremely high chance that the data is just gone. I have no intention of spending $20+ to verify that.

But it was fun to go through all of my old gaming disks & documents from the early 90's (what I've got left, anyway).

[2-23-6]

I know exactly what you are talking about. It was a text file bundled with the game and it talked about how they hired Pinkerton's to find Fred and Paul, if you see them - call us, etc. I'm not sure who wrote it, because the writing style was closer to Fred and Paul than a corporate drone. I might be able to find it someday, I think it was release 1.01 or something of the game, not the 1.00.

[Borgie]

the writing style was closer to Fred and Paul than a corporate drone.

I had the exact same thought about it. If so, they seem to have been writing about themselves in third person (entirely possible, of course).
The author is of interest to me, but I don't recall if it was signed.