Star Control - The Pages of Now and Forever

What's news?

Ahh, vague omens and mysterious portents. Tangled webs of fate intertwined with the branches of destiny, blown by the capricious winds of happenstance. News, news....uh, actually there is some news!

Forum Notifications to Hotmail e-Mail Accounts

January 29, 2012, 12:32 PM EST

I have noticed errors that Hotmail has blocked some part of our host's network from sending e-mails to their accounts. I'm not 100% how to solve this (if there even is an easy way?) but, I wanted to let any forums users that have Hotmail e-mail accounts associated with their forum accounts. You may not be receiving e-mail notifications from the forum and private messages.

-Chad

Quote:

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at gatkasa.pair.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

<*username*@hotmail.com>:
Connected to 65.55.92.184 but sender was rejected.
Remote host said: 550 OU-001 (SNT0-MC4-F24) Unfortunately, messages from 209.68.2.133 weren't sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list. You can also refer your provider to http://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx#errors.

Posted by Frumple — Sun Jan 29, 2012 5:32 pm — Replies 1 — Views 113

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The past year's activities, summarized and indexed!

January 7, 2012, 4:55 PM EST

Our ship sails ever onward, from year to year with hands new and old. The course we follow is hard to predict, but we've made good many a fortunate isle. Speaking of favourable winds and such godly phenomena, Paul and Fred appeared as a double act, in _ three _ parts and now we know what they've been up to. Not Star Control, the closest we got to that was SC1 and SC2 on GOG. But there's always next year . . . or so experiment tells us

We also heard from a giant of our fandom in Lukipela's meep-eep interview, followed by UQM 0.7, a version that should help modders. For one, Shiver speedily bugfixed the Balance Mod. And mods were all over, really. The Project 6014 crew released another demo, now with sexified graphics from Damon's HD mod, also steaming along. Plus updates to Elvish Pillager's crazy mod.

A Big Push was proposed but apparently no-one pushed hard enough. Still, we love Dragon teasing us about the Super Secret Project, listening to starmap discussions and watching the development of what looks like the makings of an operating system. Don't we? As well as the many incremental triumphs of runonthespot's Dark Quadrant and friken's very colourful StarDiver of course. In case not, perhaps you can still amuse yourself by playing Star Control like a real man and adding a little something to your phone. And make some music too, you know exactly how.

Another year, another of Lukipela's adventures, Otherwhen Odyssee. Two epic stories continued throughout the year, D9's Peeru Fanfic and Luki's Dead World. Works that struck a lighter note included Tales of the SpecOps, The Importance of FunRoms and Serious Bznss: stay off the moon, keep rocking to those FunRoms and a good suit will protect you from all manner of ills. Sterling advice for all good Star Controllers. More advice would be to not burn your hand while drawing as that stops you drawing hilarious comics. Although to be fair, Eth has to take his share of the blame for holding up That Ur-Quan Master, abandoning it for magic land and his dream job And yo dawg, we heard you like art so we put some doodles on yo board so you can surf our eyes while you surf dem waves. Saria and others spoiled us with more art.

In off-topic some were gaming it up on Minecraft, gambling, playing awesome free games or indulging in nationalist banter. Little wonder the ancients keep coming back.

We hope you join us in 2012, it's you fellas who make this possible.

- Zeracles

For the complete index, see this link.

Posted by Eth — Sat Jan 07, 2012 9:55 pm — Replies 11 — Views 412

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Project 6014 Ship Previews!

December 1, 2011, 8:31 PM EST

Do I have a treat for you! Check out these ship sprites from the Project 6014 team!

The Arilou one is really large and can be clicked on to examine in much greater detail.

More to come Bang on the walls

Posted by Frumple — Fri Dec 02, 2011 1:31 am — Replies 5 — Views 721

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Artday returns

July 23, 2011, 4:49 AM EDT

Hey guys, it's been a while. I wish i could blame it on those sassy artists, standing me up and not producing anything worthwhile, that slovenly and unpatriotic bunch. Unfortunately, I've actually had this art for +2 months now, so I can't blame anyone but myself for not putting it up. My humble apologieis to both this artis, and the other ones I never followed up on.

Without further ado, here's Alvarins piece of art:

I'd sure hate to wake up to that!

Because I'm a tool I also forgot to ask Alvarin if he wants his deviantart and stuff up here, I'll edit it in once I know.But this has been delayed by two months, so I didn't want to wait any further.

EDIT:Also, I managed to upload the wrong picture as well. Probably because I suck. Sorry Alvarin

Posted by Lukipela — Thu Jul 21, 2011 4:14 pm — Replies 7 — Views 833

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Live Star Control tournament in Texas

July 20, 2011, 5:26 AM EDT

Hey guys,

If you live close to Texas, this might be of interest to you. The original topic is over on UQMF and it seems the author has discussed this with TFB as well. If you've been playing NetMelee for years, this is probably your chance to stomp all over the competition. and if not, you might want to practice on-line first, with our delightful crew of motley warriors at #uqm-arena. How do you get there? Well, just follow these instructions!

UrquanMaster042 wrote:

Hello Star Control Fans!

I just wanted to drop in to let you know about a free Star Control II Super Melee tournament we are hosting on August 13th between 1PM and 6PM at Game Over Videogames @ The Park North Shopping Center in San Antonio, Tx!

Besides hosting the tournament just for fun and bringing the Star Control community together this tournament will also be video taped and sent to Toys for Bob! Not only will they be able to enjoy the tournament with us but also use the footage to convince "the powers that be" that Star Control 3 should be the next project that Toys for Bob should work on! Let's show them (Activision) how much fun this phenomenal game can be! If you have any questions post here and I will try to answer as quickly as possible. Also for more information or directions to the tournament site you can call 1-210-366-4263.

The rules are simple:

1. Each match will have teams of 150 points or less until the finals which will have teams of 200 points or less.
2. The Thraddash have been banned from the tournament.

The Prizes:
1. $75.00 gift certificate to Game Over Videogames
2. $25.00 gift certificate to Game Over Videogames
3. A possible congratulatory certificate of some sort from Toys for Bob! I've been talking to Alex Ness about this but, This is not confirmed yet!

Thanks for taking a look and hope to see you there!!!!

Posted by Lukipela — Wed Jul 20, 2011 9:26 am — Replies 23 — Views 1936

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UQM 0.7.0 released

July 5, 2011, 2:12 PM EDT

From our friends over on the Ur-Quan Master Forum

meep-eep wrote:

Hello everyone!

Guess what day it is today?
It is the fourth of July, the day when we remember aliens taking over Earth, beings from another solar system mining planets for resources, and the destruction of historic buildings (as well as tourism).
It is the day when we celebrate a brave few in a ship built with alien technology carrying a huge bomb into the alien mothership in a near suicide attack. It is the day when the shields went down.

Today is the day of the greatest science fiction of all time:
Star Control 2 - The Ur-Quan Masters!

The `The Ur-Quan Masters' development team is happy to announce:
The Ur-Quan Masters 0.7.0.

So what is new? Well, you can find the complete list at here, but here are a few of the highlights:
[*]some missing bits of content added, including two new lander reports directly from Toys for Bob
[*]support for Windows CE, and experimental support for Symbian S60
[*]many bug fixes, including some that have been long anticipated
[*]various small improvements and polishing
[*]lots of internal cleanups and restructuring, making the game more customisable and modable, and making the code a bit friendlier

So download the game from here and join us in the celebrations! And do not forget to *enjoy the sauce*!

The `The Ur-Quan Masters' development team.

Posted by Lukipela — Tue Jul 05, 2011 6:12 pm — Replies 2 — Views 949

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A different approach to playing NetMelee

May 30, 2011, 3:02 PM EDT

I can't help but repost this as news, because I'll be damned if it isn't the most curious thing I've seen in a while. Youtube wont work in the feed, so for those who don't come to the forum, just click here.

Gekko wrote:

What began as a quest for finding new ways to add handicaps for the Net Melee on #uqm-arena turned into this. It was one damn mess to set this up, but man, it was worth it. It took me around 8 hours to code the software for this, and then a day to set up the recording in Linux (damn that is difficult). In the end I had to use my digicamera for video and audio as I couldn't get my screen recording, digicamera filming and quality microphone audio synchronized with each other. The screen recorder kept skipping frames, my digicamera kept going ahead the microphone recording and I had issues with sound quality. So here's a filmed match of a MANLY way for playing Star Control - using a musical keyboard. Congratulations to Ziper for defeating me! I would have used more volume if it wasn't 04:00 in the morning. I doubt my neighbours would appreciate a sonata before sunrise.

Originally when this idea came to my mind I was mostly wondering what the sound of Net Melee would be like. Then I further began wondering if one could present a Star Control battle with music, and then figured out that all you have to do is wire up a MIDI keyboard and do some coding. For many weeks I was considering if I should go through the trouble of creating this, and finally on Sunday evening I began hacking.

If someone is interested, HERE (the zip) is the program I made. It works only in Linux as I have no idea how to do the process handling in Windows. If someone wants to port it, go ahead. It's simply the pygame midi library reading the input, then sending them to the actual application running in a second thread. I call it Instrument Controller.

object

Posted by Lukipela — Mon May 30, 2011 7:02 pm — Replies 1 — Views 713

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Ur-Quan Masters 0.7.0, release candidate 2

May 30, 2011, 2:58 PM EDT

It's out. check the official topic here or download it. Our friend fossil says:

Quote:

0.7.0-rc1 was so close, but not good enough. So here is release candidate 2. It mostly fixes the bugs found in rc1, but there are also a couple additions to the game as you can see below.

As with rc1, please post your experiences in this thread. Bugs should go to our bug tracker as usual. The Windows installer still needs all the content packages to be in the directory from which it is started.

If you have previously downloaded rc1, you will need to redownload the following two packages as they have changed: uqm-0.7.0-content.uqm and uqm-0.7.0-voice.uqm. The 3DO music and remix packages are unchanged.

Changes from 0.7.0-rc1:
- Added spoken Slylandro probe coordinates
- Added the missing bits to the no-voice versions of Mycon, Syreen and Utwig dialogue
- New lander reports for Supox ruins and Ultron. The reports text is new content from TFB.
- Various documentation files brought up to date
- Cannot talk to Ilwrath with a 'caster anymore after they die off
- Syreen dialog tree no longer resets after visiting the Syreen Vault for the very first time
- Fixed minor lander report inconsistency at the Syreen Vault
- Fixed Syreen Vault lander report infinite loop (this involved changing a lot of code; the more you can test picking up all the various devices from planets, the better)
- Fixed an SDL bug on Windows which caused the mouse pointer to stop moving while UQM was on fullscreen in background
- Windows installer has all the OpenAL pieces needed
- Windows installer does not create an extra addons/ directory in packages/
A list of changes since 0.6.2 is here.

Have fun!
-- The Ur-Quan Masters core team.

Posted by Lukipela — Mon May 30, 2011 6:58 pm — Replies 3 — Views 1221

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NetMelee Tournament, May 14th

April 27, 2011, 1:24 PM EDT

Hey guys, there's going to be another tournament. Join, fight and be victorious and amazing!

Gekko wrote:

[Date]

Saturday, May 14th, 2011

[Time]

Here is how I found the various local times in case anyone's wondering.

---- SATURDAY
* 15:00 Los Angeles
* 16:00 Denver
* 17:00 Chicago
* 18:00 New York
* 22:00 London
---- SUNDAY
* 00:00 Amsterdam/Paris
* 01:00 Helsinki/Jerusalem
* 02:00 PM Moscow
* 08:00 Sydney
* 10:00 Auckland

[Place]

#UQM-Arena on irc://chat.freenode.net. If you don't know how any of this stuff works, this thing may be of use to you.

[Tournament Rules]

1) The game is played using Shiver's Balance Mod (1.36 unless updated)
2) There is a maximum fleet size of 200 points for all players.
3) Do not use more than one of any of the 30-point ships (You can have a Chmmr, a Kohr-Ah and an Ur-Quan, but not two Chmmrs). Other duplicates are allowed.
4) The "stalemate breaker" rule is in effect. There has been confusion regarding this numerous times, so here is the rule in its verbose entirety:

Stalemates

Rule: In the spirit of competition, both players should employ whatever tactics they consider most effective. This may result in a stalemate at some point. If so, the faster of the two ships becomes a designated attacker. The attacker does not necessarily have to make a bee-line directly for the defender, but they are required to take the initiative.

Explanation: Stalemates are bound to happen. We found this rule to be a relatively painless solution. The decision to use speed as a stalemate-breaker did not significantly reduce the effectiveness of Star Control's fastest ships. As it turned out, the most mobile combatants were best suited to withstand such a penalty.

5) Shofixti host advantage prevention rule is in effect. This is a highly trivial case, but seems to occur rather often:

Shofixti Host Advantage Prevention

Rule: In case the guest player uses the Shofixti's Glory Device against the player who is hosting the game and manages to destroy the opponent in his suicide attack, then that battle is considered as the Shofixti's victory. In case this happens the host player must tell what ship he is going to deploy next on the IRC, giving the upper hand to the guest player.

Explanation: The game forces the guest player to select a ship first. This causes the host player to get an advantage in the game of rock-paper-scissors by giving him an opportunity to pick a counter against the guest player. This has been discussed on the arena and it has been decided that the battle in question should be considered as Shofixti's victory.

[Tournament Structure]

Players will be paired against each other at random. The tournament will consist of three rounds using Swiss tournament rules, meaning that you will play against other defeated players if you lose a match. There will be an additional final round between undefeated contestants if a clear winner has not emerged.

If the player turn-out is low, everyone will play against everyone else once.

Times may change!

Currently the times are a bit open. As the date is so far in future (two and half weeks) the times may change. The current proposal is based on the amount of players in each region. If there is a sudden quantity of interest in Europe, we may tune the times to match that. Currently the expected numbers are:

Americas: 4 (4-6)
Europe: 1
Australia & NZ: 1 (1-3)

Posted by Lukipela — Wed Apr 27, 2011 5:24 pm — Replies 20 — Views 2421

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Zarla's Artday

April 23, 2011, 3:15 AM EDT

So this was supposed to be up on the 20th but I forgot about it because I am a sad excuse for a timekeeper. However belatedly, this month's artist is Zarla, whom most of you probably know. She has her own livejournal, a deviantart account, a site and whatnot. She is an amazingly good and productive artist, though it is with great sadness we note that she has strayed away into other fandoms lately. Anyway, she drew this for us.

I think it's pretty impressive. How about you?