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Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.
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KickStarter Free Stars: Children of Infinity - upcoming Star Control 2 sequel from Fred Ford's Pistol Shrimp Games - Kickstarter Live
- Thread starter MRY
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Crowdfunding on Patreon(!): https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2022/06/pistol-shrimp-wants-more-than-your-brains/
Pistol Shrimp Wants More than Your Brains
After nearly a year, the team at Pistol Shrimp is advancing to the next stage of development and needs your help to do it. From the very start, our mission has been to see if there are better ways of making games, and that includes how we fund our efforts. If you like what we’re doing and want to support us, our Patreon page has launched.
We have a vision for how creating games should look, which starts with some questions we want to answer. Those questions are:
- How can our development process create a community that feels valued?
- How can we make better tools for ourselves, and share those tools with the community?
- How can we produce games we all love, without compromising the quality of the game and the well-being of our team members?
Our Community
We announced a subreddit last year where we could discuss questions and ideas about the game with fans. Dan streams development twice a week, live on Twitch, and Fred often joins. We share our raw experiments, have fun teaching Simple, and work with our viewers’ participation and excellent jokes. We also recently created a Discord server to talk more directly with our community.
Prioritizing our community and sharing our work openly is not something we would normally be able to do as part of our development cycle, much less while our game is so raw. In any other environment, Dan would never be permitted to discuss details of an unfinished game, much less share his screen, showing work and visuals the player may never see in the final product. Those are normally trade secrets, ready to be packaged behind a shiny trailer.
But we think having you here and sharing will only make things better for all of us.
Our Tools
Fred has created Simple, a tool that lets people who aren’t programmers design and create gameplay – the interactive part of games. Simple is available in binary form under a Creative Commons license. We have also released sample content (including some of our actual game content) under an MIT license. Anyone can freely use our tools to play and mod our game in progress, or even learn to make their own game experiments with the help of our documentation. Eventually, Simple will be available as a modding tool that comes with our finished game, so players can continue to create and experiment even after release.
No studio Fred has worked at would permit us to give away its proprietary development tools. It means a lot to us that we can give everyone fun, accessible tools to play with.
By sharing our own tools, we think we can make them better for ourselves and for anyone else using them.
Our Game
We are currently working on The Ur-Quan Masters 2 (working title, referred to as “UQM2”). The game is a sequel to our previous work, released in 2002 under a GPL license as The Ur-Quan Masters. It remains freely available and supported by the open source community. UQM2 is something we want fans of the first game to have and enjoy, but it is also something we’ve been wanting to work on ourselves for nearly thirty years.
We want to fill UQM2 with quality and love—things that will take us time and effort. We don’t want to compromise our game or our well-being in the process, which are both risks we all know too well.
We will celebrate when the game is released, but imagine how much better it will be – for us and the game – to be able to celebrate the entire process.
Why does Pistol Shrimp need you?
All four of us left our paid work in 2021 to make Pistol Shrimp our full-time jobs. We believe in the unique vision of what we’re doing—from our process, to our tools, to the game we’re making. By supporting us, you are helping realize that vision.
Game development can be so much better than what many of us – creators and players – have experienced. We can all take a journey together that makes everyone feel valued and inspired. We want the development process to be just as rewarding as the game itself. It’s a big goal, but we are committed to trying.
UQM2 will eventually be for sale and help us sustain ourselves and other talented people we work with, but that’s still a ways off. In the meantime, we need your support for the journey. We want to continue to invest in software, streams, and content everyone gets to enjoy, free of charge. The Ur-Quan Masters was given to the community many years ago. Please help us develop Simple and UQM2 to prove there’s a better way to make games.
Do you believe in our vision too? Come support Pistol Shrimp on Patreon.
I hope that $400/month is enough to support four full time devs and their families. What a weird thing.
I like that video though, the guy seems creative and unpretentious. If a game actually happens it might even be good.
I like that video though, the guy seems creative and unpretentious. If a game actually happens it might even be good.
MRY
Wormwood Studios
My understanding is that FF and PR are millionaires (probably multi-millionaires), so they don't need the money at all. Dunno if Ken Ford also got paid out when TFB was sold to Activision. Gerstein appears to be a free-spirited dude, and I bet he's being paid by the rich guys. The $400/month is just to get money (why not?), and the Patreon overall is probably to build a community.
Yeah. I knew the primaries had money already. Just trying to figure out, for people who don't know that, what is the narrative even supposed to be? Who exactly is supposed to think that that $5/month is going to make any difference whatsoever in developing the project?
I guess they don't want to have a "free to play" discord full of trolls and spammers, only people who care enough to put something on the table makes sense. I could see buying in myself, for like $5 lifetime or a one time kickstarter payment to get the game and be on the forum. But who will pay a recurring $60 or $120/year to talk to the developers of one upcoming video game?
I guess they don't want to have a "free to play" discord full of trolls and spammers, only people who care enough to put something on the table makes sense. I could see buying in myself, for like $5 lifetime or a one time kickstarter payment to get the game and be on the forum. But who will pay a recurring $60 or $120/year to talk to the developers of one upcoming video game?
Because it just reads really skeezy and is terrible optics?
I mean, sure, free money and all that, but the fact is these guys are fully capable of self-financing, and coming on the heels of them trying to crowdfund their legal defense against Stardock it just leaves a really bad taste in the mouth. “Entitled” is the most charitable word I can think of to describe their behavior thus far, and I’m not particularly inclined to charity towards millionaires.
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Black_Willow
Arcane
So, it's almost 5 years since the announcement, the game will soon be released, right?
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I skimmed through that, seems like a nice read.
Made a thought pop into my head, which could be fun for a laugh: Force all interaction with one alien species to be through a text parser. Part of the adventure and gameplay would be to discover what words to say to them (and in what context).
Made a thought pop into my head, which could be fun for a laugh: Force all interaction with one alien species to be through a text parser. Part of the adventure and gameplay would be to discover what words to say to them (and in what context).
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For once, I read a Reddit-thread. Found this:
Sounds pretty cool. Anyone tested it?
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oasis789
Arcane
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wow, my Long Journey Home review comment on SC2 btfo
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Lots of Star Control 2 30th anniversary posts: https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2022/11/the-box-of-now-and-forever-three-decades-of-memories/
https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2022/11/reflections-on-uqm-from-alex-mosolov-creator-of-starsector/
https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2022/11/community-art-showcase-30-years-of-the-ur-quan-masters/
https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2022/11/pistol-shrimp-podcast-episode-3-erol-otus-30-year-special/
https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2022/11/pistol-shrimp-podcast-episode-4-george-barr-30-year-special/
The Box of Now and Forever: three decades of memories
Howdy folks—my name is Lee, and I’m helping the Pistol Shrimp crew out with some of the writing on UQM2. I don’t post much—or, uh, ever, at least until now—but as we head into the holiday season and begin to take stock of the things we’re thankful for, the thing that sticks out for me is how thankful I am for The Ur-Quan Masters, and for all the other video games that manage to be so damn good that they carve out a permanent spot in our heads. Truly, is there anything quite like a wonderful interactive story, told well, with a fabulous cast of characters to befriend?
We’re barreling toward the 30th anniversary of UQM’s original release, which will roll around on November 30 of this year, and Fred and Paul and Dan and Ken have a bunch of cool stuff in work to show you guys. For my contribution, I wanted to tell the story of how I came to the Star Control universe, and then I wanted to show you guys a bunch of pictures of my original retail box, and all the stuff that came inside of it.
“Remember how it used to be…”
1992 feels simultaneously close and also terrifyingly far away. I was fourteen, a freshman in high school, and miserable even though it was the early 90s and I really didn’t have anything to be miserable about. The Cure released Wish and suddenly we were all in love on Fridays; in theaters, we begged our parents to drop us off so we could watch Encino Man, My Cousin Vinnie, and Army of Darkness while throwing popcorn at each other. And it was a banner year in PC gaming—Wolfenstein 3D, Dune II, Aces of the Pacific, and The Legend of Kyrandia all hit the shelves.
I vividly remember walking into the friendly neighborhood Babbage’s—the same Babbage’s I’d get a job at two years later—and being floored at the box I spied on the shelf. It was unexpected. It was shocking. It was awesome.
Of course I knew what Star Control was—being a DOS gamer of a certain age, I’d run across the game on the local BBS scene and, ahem, acquired a copy in a somewhat extra-legal fashion. Starcon‘s melee was a huge hit at my house, and being the older brother, I was the reigning champ and nigh undefeatable with my ultimate weapon, the Arilou Skiff. Much of my memories of the summer of 1991—the memories that aren’t pool-related—are filled with Ur-Quan explosions and the PC speaker beeping victory songs, set against a backdrop of long lazy afternoons that all eventually ended with my brother and me abandoning the computer for the pool. (Where we usually tried to drown each other, which my mom saw as an improvement over yelling at each other over the computer.)
But I knew nothing about a sequel. A sequel to Star Control? Would there be new ships to melee with? New aliens to blow up?
After successfully badgering my dad into buying the game—I was fourteen, it was 1992, and I had maybe five bucks to my name—I discovered that the sequel was far more than just more melee. Borrowing some of the most successful bits of Starflight and Starflight II (including Starflight designer Greg Johnson!), UQM was instead that most rare of things: a true space exploration RPG. There are a few more such games today, including and especially Starflight/UQM spiritual successor Mass Effect, but the genre remains disappointingly sparse. The few games that do fit into that niche tend to be cherished—and with good reason.
The Ur-Quan Masters is a rare thing. If you’re here, I don’t need to tell you how good a game it was (is!), but it is worth emphasizing, at least briefly, just how magical it was to have a story this well written and a universe this well-realized tumble out of four floppy disks. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a perfect game, but it is a supernal one. And it’s been locked in my forebrain since.
Boxing day
For whatever reason—probably because I don’t like to throw computer games away—that game box is still in my closet, having followed me through a half-dozen moves. And for folks who perhaps weren’t lucky enough to be around when the game came out, or who didn’t have a chance to buy a boxed copy, I wanted to take some pix of the box’s contents. There’s some great stuff in there.
One important caveat: I didn’t take any pictures of the original or deluxe maps of hyperspace. The original map definitely deserves a place in these images because it came in the original box, but it and the deluxe map (which came with the clue book) have been up on my office wall for several years and are folded up right now in a different spot in the closet. I can totally pull them out and take some additional pictures if needed, but rather than move a ton of boxes out of the way, I figured I’d just let ’em stay where they are.
(All images in this piece are clickable—if you want to read the tiny text, just click a for full-res version.)
So, here’s the box! It’s a big sturdy full-size software box, rather than the little flimsy half-height boxes that started showing up a few years later.
And here’s a big hero shot of everything that came inside of it—everything except the galaxy map, as noted:
Four floppy diskettes to rule them all!
The manual:
A “what’s in the box” inventory card, a warranty registration card, and a disk exchange form if you happened to need a 5.25″ floppy version of the game instead of the 3.5″ diskettes that came with the retail packaging. (It’s entirely possible that someone in 1992 might not have a computer with a 3.5″ drive—my family didn’t until the end of 1991!)
Two order forms: one in case you decided you needed a copy of the original Star Control, and the other in case you needed either the official cluebook or an actual-for-real Ur-Quan puzzle! (I have grilled Fred & Paul about this puzzle, since I’ve never seen one, but they both insist they have no memories of promotional items from decades ago. Alas.)
This one’s fun: a “manual addendum,” full of last-minute info that didn’t quite make it into the manual. (Most games also had a README.TXT file on the distribution disks for truly last-last minute stuff, too.)
Prodigy! Remember Prodigy? You don’t? God, I’m old.
It’s not a retail game release without a catalog and a “what’s new” guide!
And, finally, although it wasn’t included in the retail packaging, here’s a few pix of the game’s official clue book, chock full of secrets and inside jokes from Fred & Paul:
And that’s it! Hope you’ve enjoyed the walk down the lane of forgotten retail box delights. Here’s to those games that keep us all coming back for decades—games like UQM. Happy 30th anniversary to the end of the Doctrinal Conflict, and cheers for three decades of wonderful memories. May they soon be joined by many more!
https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2022/11/reflections-on-uqm-from-alex-mosolov-creator-of-starsector/
Reflections on UQM from Alex Mosolov, Creator of Starsector
Throughout the month, we have been thrilled to hear from people who were inspired by The Ur-Quan Masters. We had the good fortune of getting in touch with a fellow developer — Alex Mosolov, creator of space adventure game Starsector — who joins us to generously share his reflections on UQM after these 30 years.
Originally written on November 20th, 2022. Cover image from https://fractalsoftworks.com/2013/02/05/painting-the-hound-and-the-hangar/.
When Dan reached out a couple of weeks ago to see if I might want to say a few words about The Ur-Quan Masters and what it meant to me, it felt a little surreal. If I had to name a game that’s had the most influence on me creatively, and on shaping what I want out of games, then UQM would be it. Being asked to talk about it now feels like coming full circle.
My first real introduction to video games was at my mom’s work, in the very late 80s and early 90s. I was around 10 years old at the time, and this was the only place I had access to a PC (an Intel 286, I believe? the memory is a bit hazy; but: definitely 5 inch floppy disks as the medium of choice), and I’d be lucky to get a couple of hours, a couple of times a year. The original Star Control was one of the games I played a lot, then (the original Warlords was another favorite). A lot of the time between those all-too-infrequent visits was spent thinking about games, playing them in my head, and drawing in my notebooks.
Fortunately (and, perhaps, embarrassingly), my grandparents saved those notebooks, and now I get to share a couple of these drawings with you!
Here, it looks like I’m conceptualizing different ship ideas. Yes, the one in the top left is clearly a hand-cranked meat grinder. No, I don’t remember what I was thinking.
That one aside, we have some kind of charged bolo behind what I can only assume is an Ur-Quan prototype, a ship that’s clearly spawning two limpet mines (because one just isn’t annoying enough), and some kind of Mycon-Androsynth hybrid blowing what I seem to recall was supposed to be a bubble of plasma. And a few others, also with inspiration clearly taken from the original SC ships.
Looking at that picture, I think the frame of mind I was in was “coming up with other ship ideas that would work within the game”. Modding it in my imagination, if you will! And then playing it, in the same place, since: no regular access to a PC!
This one (on the left side, obviously) is from a bit later – months? A year? What strikes me about this one is how close this is to Starsector as it is now – a top down view, a ship with turreted weapons, missiles visibly mounted on the hull. What looks suspiciously like a Reaper-class torpedo, coming in hot. As I very vaguely remember, this was an evolution from the Star Control designs, a “wouldn’t it be neat if…” sort of thing. What’s funny is, by the time I’d started work on Starsector, I had forgotten all about these, but it was all apparently lurking in the back of my mind. The one on the right is a Lasher-class frigate, from Starsector. It’s almost the same ship!
Later, when we had a PC at home, I got my hands on The Ur-Quan Masters – I have vague memories of convincing my mom to buy it at a store, some kind of Best Buy equivalent. I wish I remembered more about playing it in those days, but mostly what I’m left with is feelings. How it felt to realize that every single star on the map was somewhere I could go. How it felt to be able to actually land on a planet and fly the lander around. How it felt to gather resources, to plan an expedition, to try to make it come out with enough profit in the end to keep going. How it felt – during what I thought was a routine resource-gathering landing – to find an energy signature and something incredibly important to the story, just, randomly! How it felt to realize that the world isn’t static, when the Kohr-Ah showed up. How it felt to discover quasi-space, and that it was only accessible from hyperspace during a certain time, and that it had been there all along!
A lot of the story stuck with me, too. I think there’s a quality to it where it doesn’t explain too much – just sets up these evocative situations, and lets your imagination fill in the gaps. The Androsynth and the Orz, cosmic horrors from “outside”, that are also very helpful, non-threatening, and can become your allies. Finding out that the Ur-Quan – the bad guys! – are sympathetic (or at least understandable), at least from a certain angle. The absolute hellhole that is Druuge space. What little is hinted at about the Ilwrath; imagining what life on their planets might be like. The horror of a Mycon Deep Child destroying the Syreen home world. It’s so good, I think, in large part because it lets your imagination tell much of the story.
In the end, the way the game has made me feel – both through its story and its mechanics – is what’s had the most influence on me creatively. Trying to recreate a game from your childhood is a fool’s errand; the same things won’t make you feel the way they did 10, 20, 30 years ago. But you can try to aim to make a different game that gives you those kinds of feelings, and that’s been my goal with Starsector. In many – most! – cases it’s vague and you wouldn’t really see a connection with UQM unless you knew it was there, and it’s more of an overall influence rather than something that maps more closely, in any case.
In other cases, it’s more overt – for example (spoiler alert!), there’s a hidden pocket of space in Starsector called “Alpha Site”; it’s accessible from hyperspace from the start of the game and has some interesting (and dangerous) things in it, and the player is only pointed to it some ways along the main story line. That feeling of “oh, I could’ve gone there any time I wanted to, had I known it was there” is very much a direct attempt to recreate the feeling of finding out about quasi-space in UQM.
And, of course, if you ever see the planetary shield in Starsector, you’ll know what it’s about. That one is not an attempt to recreate any sort of particular feeling, it’s just an out-and-out homage.
There have been many other inspirations and influences along the way, of course – and hopefully an original idea or two somewhere in there! But looking back now, it’s clear that 30 years ago, The Ur-Quan Masters is the game that set me on the path to making Starsector.
Do you want to play a space game full of exploration and adventure from a glorious top-down view (with an extremely active modding community)? Go check out Starsector, available for purchase and still under development from Fractal Softworks. (And Dan strongly recommends SsethTzeentach’s glowing review for the uninitiated.)
https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2022/11/community-art-showcase-30-years-of-the-ur-quan-masters/
Community Art Showcase – 30 Years of The Ur-Quan Masters
As part of our 30 Year Anniversary for The Ur-Quan Masters, we asked the community to share any fan art they had created with us. We received so many submissions through email, Reddit, Twitter, and Discord. With three decades under your belt, you had so many things to share with us, and some of our community members even created new things just to celebrate with us! We wanted to take some time to share as much as we could back with the world in a virtual museum gallery to highlight you, our amazing audience who have helped keep the game alive for all of this time.
We certainly didn’t capture everything out there, but we want to say again: “we wouldn’t be here without you!”. Thank you for sharing your love with everyone.
Digital and Physical Art
Professor Hazard writes “I maded this for you. Thank you for making my life better for 30 years.”
Zarla writes: “Hey there! I’ve been a fan of Starcon2 for ages, it’s one of my favorite games and was a big influence on me when I was a kid. The Starcontrolfans twitter account contacted me asking if I had anything to share for the anniversary, so I decided to do a big group shot of all the races together! With an ominous Kohr-Ah in the background of course, haha. I improvised some lower torsos for some of the races we didn’t get to see in the game itself, so there’s a bit of creative license, but I hope you like it!”
Chris Sandusky writes: “attached a photo of an acrylic painting I did back in June of the Zoq-Fot-Pik, which can also be found on my DeviantArt account at https://www.deviantart.com/theclockworkcoyote/art/Frungy-882556592“
Simon Marcoux writes: “A long time ago, me and Tommi Salminen worked on a webcomic based on star control 2 story. While it didn’t last long, he ended up doing a full novel out of the story which is amazing. The website navigation for the two chapters is kinda broken, so you need to manually up the image number to cycle through the pages.” More panels starting with http://www.star-control.com/hosted/gl-comic/images/001.jpg
From Zach_the_Elder
Zach_The_Elder writes: “my employee had this made for me” (hopefully voted employee of the decade)
Tweets Galore
The Kohr-Ah will blanket the universe.
Not exactly fan art, but a legitimate piece of history!
Stop! Why do you bake this thing?!
The Friendly Doctrinal Get-Together
The Crimson Corporation doesn’t seem so bad.
But.. they’re so cute.
Videos and Music
So festive! Just in time for the holidays.
A modernization of the classic we all hear every time we jump into our ship. Martin Lettvin writes: “I wanted to forward this to you before the stream today. It’s an update of Riku’s Hyperspace theme that I made about eight years ago”
No, really. How long does Hayes think he can keep up this rave?
Hyperspace and Chill?
Proof you don’t want to face a Shofixti in tentacle-to-paw/hand combat.
Projects, Games, Mods
UQM Megamod
No lookback on The Ur-Quan Masters can be complete without mentioning Megamod. JHGuitarFreak (aka Kohr-Ah Death) maintains the mod for UQM which includes… well… everything imaginable! From balance changes, to optional content, to quality of life improvements and whole new features, it is the most awesome (in the awe-inspiring sense) kind of fanmail one can imagine.
Infinite Ur-Quan Masters
Burger Circus shares: Want to play Ur-Quan Masters with a randomly-generated map? Love the old game, but want to play something with INFINITE replayability? http://www.infiniteurquanmasters.com/ has you covered.
Starflight MZX
No_roo writes: Here’s a thing I made back when I was a teenager, ~ 1997 – 2008 that was heavily inspired by UQM & Starflight. It was built in an old text mode game engine called Megazeux, which was basically a more powerful ZZT.
It can be downloaded or played in browser here: https://www.digitalmzx.com/show.php?id=2374
Alternatively a video of someone poking around in it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFZW9Gc2RmA
That project had a lot of design problems and didn’t end up going anywhere, but it taught me a lot, and was largely responsible for me deciding to become a software engineer, and to work on indie games on the side. It’s pretty crusty, but I’ll always remember it fondly.
UQM Melee Rebuild
Zach_the_Elder, our resident tinkerer with the UQM2 tools, shared some recordings of his recreation and re-imaginings of Super Melee made in Unity.
Alien Apparel
Talen Lee wrote to let us know they’ve been making t-shirt designs based on UQM for the past few years. Represent your favorite (or least favorite – we won’t judge) species in style.
Got More?
If you are seeing this and want to submit more of your own creations (or are *frumple* Dan missed one of yours), please let us know!
https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2022/11/pistol-shrimp-podcast-episode-3-erol-otus-30-year-special/
Pistol Shrimp Podcast – Episode 3 – Erol Otus 30 Year Special
For our 30th Anniversary Celebration, we have a special episode of the Pistol Shrimp podcast with none other than Erol Otus, now available on Patreon. Erol was responsible for several creative parts of The Ur-Quan Masters – art, sound, writing, and voice – but was primarily responsible for creating physical and digital paintings of the various aliens’ communications screens. Beyond UQM, Erol has contributed art, design, and boundless creativity to products and games ranging from Dungeons and Dragons to Skylanders.
Originally recorded for the 25th anniversary, Paul sits down with Erol to discuss what it was like to work on art in the time of UQM, D&D, their experiences with games in Berkeley, California, and even limericks. A transcript is also available below.
Erol has generously provided some of his artwork from outside of UQM to share, as well.
Keak
Cover for Goodman Game’s Dying Earth role playing game. Part of the core rule books, this one is sort of their monster manual. It depicts a Keak, mesmerizing and ingesting.
Taloonan
The cover for a module Erol created based on a D&D campaign he was running. It wasn’t full on published, a limited release was created by the North Texas RPG convention. It shows the Demigod Taloonan swimming along below the Shanga, a vessel crewed by the adventurers.
Dwellers of the Forbidden City
An AD&D module cover, “Dwellers of the Forbidden City”
Transcript
https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2022/11/pistol-shrimp-podcast-episode-4-george-barr-30-year-special/
Pistol Shrimp Podcast – Episode 4 – George Barr 30 Year Special
For our 30th Anniversary Celebration, we have an additional, special episode of the Pistol Shrimp podcast with UQM illustrator George Barr available to listen to on Patreon. George was responsible for many of the iconic, physical illustrations which would then become digitized for use in UQM. Beyond UQM, George contributed artwork to science fiction and fantasy works from books, to magazines, to Dungeons and Dragons rule books.
This interview was originally conducted when Paul and Fred visited George’s residence to acquire some of his original works. George talks about his beginnings in art, what it was like to be in Los Angeles on the set of Star Trek, and his techniques for working with physical mediums. It contains several sections where George, Paul, and Fred are rifling through sheafs of artwork which, unfortunately, are not able to be appreciated entirely in an audio recording. A transcript is also available below.
However, this interview is also special for another reason. In Paul’s own words:
Some of this artwork was, indeed, created for other purposes without UQM2 in mind. We wanted George to be a part of UQM2 just as much as we wanted him to be a part of UQM, and we’re excited to show you some of his involvement. Spoiler Alert: These images are going to be part of UQM2. Also Spoiler Alert: We may or may not have no idea how or why just yet. Maybe you can tell us!
We hope you enjoy this conversation with a key member of the original UQM team and a first look at some of the new pieces that have been created for UQM2 (even if no one knew it at the time).
Last but not least, some of the original UQM pieces seen here are being provided for the first time in the form of high-resolution scans. They contain many pixels and can be downloaded in a very large zip file here.
UQM Original Paintings
The Umgah
The Orz
The Druuge
The Syreen
The Arilou
The Arilou – Monochrome Study
A new settlement
A new settlement – Monochrome Study
Discovering the Unzervault
The Captain and their legacy
Mark II – Monochrome Study
The Chmmr – Monochrome Study
The Mycon Deep Child – Monochrome Study
UQM2 Works
UQM2 Concept #1
UQM2 Concept #2
UQM2 Concept #3
UQM2 Concept #4
UQM2 Concept #5
Transcript
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https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2022/...asavin-creative-director-of-supergiant-games/
Reflections on The Ur-Quan Masters from Greg Kasavin, Creative Director of Supergiant Games
As part of our 30 year celebration, we were honored to hear from Greg Kasavin — creative director of Supergiant Games and author of one of our favorite articles about UQM — who graciously shared some thoughts on the game and its impact on him after these 30 years.
Happy 30th anniversary to one-of-the-greatest-games-of-all-time-if-you-ask-me, Star Control II! I’ve been an avid game player ever since, and can still safely say that, all this time later, I’ve still never played anything quite like it.
StarCon II‘s unique blend of action, exploration, and role-playing, and its spectacular science-fiction world filled with weird, wonderful, sometimes-scary, sometimes-funny alien species created an unforgettable and incredibly inspiring experience for me. And, unlike many other great games from that early-’90s DOS era, it still holds up really well, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the team behind The Ur-Quan Masters project, who have ensured this classic game can still be played and enjoyed.
Title Screen from The Ur-Quan Masters
I grew up wanting to become a game developer, playing everything I could get my hands on. But StarCon II stood out as one of a special few games that truly sparked my imagination and made me think “I wish I could someday work on something that could make others feel the way this made me feel.” I’ve now worked on close to 10 different games, many of them quite different from each other, though let me tell you… StarCon II remains a constant source of inspiration, both spiritually when it comes to finding a distinctive tone, and often practically as a design reference, too. Whenever I’ve been in design brainstorms and we’re thinking about interesting, imaginative player abilities, I always think of StarCon II.
“Loser! Idiot! Jerk!”
When I was reflecting on this anniversary recently, I decided to fire up Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters for old time’s sake, start the campaign for the umpteenth time, play some of the awesome Super Melee combat mode. I still vividly recall many things about the game, such as how the Pkunk Fury starship has a chance to resurrect itself amid a glorious/hilarious Hallelujah!, and oh, the music…. But some details came back to me, such as how that same Pkunk ship regenerates its energy by ceaselessly insulting the opponent (“Loser! Idiot! Jerk!”). I laugh at almost nothing these days but busted out laughing at that, just as I must have when I was a kid, as the joy and imagination of this game came rushing back all in that one little aspect.
It’s difficult to single out the best part of StarCon II, which is part of why it’s so good. But for me it’s that great big personality that ultimately shines through. Of course its personality wouldn’t have meant as much if StarCon II wasn’t a blast to play. But the vibrant tone, the confident balance between absurd humor and serious high-stakes space opera, all of that helped open my eyes to what games could be.
The Ur-Quan Masters project is testament to the fact that this is a deeply loved game, and I hope many people out there will be playing and enjoying it not just another 30 years from now, but far into the future. If nothing else, it’ll give everybody something to do once the Ur-Quan arrive in the middle of the next century and cover our planet in their slave-shield and all that…!
Greg Kasavin, Supergiant Games
Greg Kasavin is creative director at Supergiant Games, the small independent studio behind Hades, Pyre, Transistor, and Bastion. He has done the writing and contributed to the design of each game.
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https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2022/12/community-story-showcase-30-years-of-the-ur-quan-masters/
Community Story Showcase – 30 Years of The Ur-Quan Masters
At the start of November, we asked our community to share anything and everything they had to help us celebrate 30 years since the original release of The Ur-Quan Masters, including a request for stories. We wanted to highlight some of your own tales for how you experienced the game and what you have to say after all this time. This is just a small sampling of some of the favorite things we heard.
Author’s Note: I also was a member of the Nokia tablet cult and vaguely recall showing UQM running on my N800 to the TFB crew. That thing ruled!
We received a few notes by way of email too!
One member of the community even asked to write about the precursor (haw haw) to UQM as part of the game’s legacy:
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https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2022/12/studio-updates-end-of-year-2022/
Studio Updates – End of Year 2022
It’s that time of the year again. You know, the time when people say “it’s that time of the year again,” which could arguably be said at any time of the year. But we usually can’t. In December, we have collectively acknowledged that this is really the time to say the phrase. Don’t believe us? Go on, try saying it during your next social gathering in May and watch the confusion on the faces of others.
At this time of the year, we at Pistol Shrimp have a few special things going on we wanted to share with you as the year with the most number of 2’s in it during our lifetime comes to a close.
Studio Holiday
The Pistol Shrimp Team IRL
First off, Pistol Shrimp will be formally “closed” from December 16th until January 16th for various holiday breaks. If you want to reach out, some of the team will likely be lurking around our Discord. Dan, who covers most of our communications, will be taking a long-delayed trip to the jungle where he will instead be communing with various animal species and hopefully avoiding death. If he doesn’t come back, he wants you to remember him by his final words, “Boy it sure would be funny if this blog post was the last time anyone ever heard from me.” Please also abide by his request for his funeral: pay 3 dancers to pop out of the ground dressed as zombies and dance “Thriller,” interrupting what he is sure will be a quite moving eulogy. Anyway.. if you don’t hear back from us for a bit, now you know why. If you don’t hear back for a really long time, boy that would suck (especially for Dan).
2022 in Review
Secondly, we wanted to do a little retrospective on what we accomplished this year together! There’s far too much to list in its entirety, so we’ll try to sum it up with a few big ones.
For The Ur-Quan Masters 2
- We created a feature-complete implementation of the foundational gameplay from UQM! Hyperspace, a starmap, interplanetary space, approach, orbital view, planetside, resource gathering, procedural system generation, and alien conversations.
- We prototyped new gameplay loops we want to try mixing in the Adventure mode for the player, like trading posts, fleet ship upgrades, flying fleet ships through hyperspace, and traversal mechanics to get around the starmap.
- We have functional, co-operative Adventure mode play and have prototyped new paradigms to make UQM2 even more fun to play with friends, like exploring how players might have different capabilities, how we handle defeat scenarios, and looking at what were previously timed events racing against the clock of a single player (the Kohr-Ah would like a word with you).
- We implemented all the UQM ships — except the Slylandro Probe, which you broke in the first game with the self-destruct sequence — for our Super Melee prototype. Some of them, like the Chmmr, Arilou, Spathi, and Kohr-Ah even became prototypes for how we will be doing art and audio.
- We prototyped additional game modes for Super Melee to understand what it would take to have fun with more than 2 ships/players: from a 4 player free-for-all, to separate teams with multiple players, to cooperative experiences players could play against AI enemies.
- We support all of this through online, serverless network play for end users, and even tested a simple proof of concept of our technology live with viewers on Twitch.
For Pistol Shrimp
While everyone certainly wants to see and play the final game, all of these are massive accomplishments for our still-small team. We couldn’t have done this without the help of our community. Whether you support us on Patreon or Twitch, participate in our development discussions, or just follow along with our updates: thank you for being on the journey with us.
- We launched our Patreon! This was the very first step we took toward funding our studio and projects, and we are so honored by the generous support and engagement from the community.
- We started a Discord server as a community gathering place. While our subreddit was good for talking in slow-time with structured questions, getting instant communication going and pausing our heavy Q&A posting was a big step forward for us.
- We released our in-development tools and content (including our Super Melee prototype), freely available for anyone to play with or use to create their own things. While we’ve been behind on updates at the time of writing, some community members created their own experiments, from ships for Melee to their own, made-up games. The tools are very nascent and rough around the edges, but they are what we are using to make and power UQM2.
- We started our Pistol Shrimp Podcast series, both as a thank you to our Patreon supporters and as a way for everyone to learn a little about us and game development! Whether it’s the history behind UQM, how we think about creating games, insights into UQM2’s development, or just hearing from the people working on games, we were excited to create something new to share.
- We continued to stream live development of UQM2 on Twitch with Dan and Fred. All of the parts of UQM2 detailed above were implemented or iterated upon live on Twitch for everyone to see. Twitch chat even influenced the creation of things, live, making everyone truly a part of our day-to-day development. If you miss the streams, VODs are always available on Vimeo.
- We celebrated UQM’s 30th Anniversary in November! We collected stories, fan creations, and a testimonial or two from other developers, highlighting them for everyone to enjoy. We shared special interviews with Erol Otus and George Barr, releasing high res scans of George’s original UQM art and some UQM2 concepts. We gathered members of the original UQM team for a live stream with x33n on Twitch on the 30th. Everyone also tried their best to help the Talking Pet.
A Huge Thank You
In that vein, we have some notes the team wrote to share with you:
From Dan
I realize you hear from me all the time in text or in my live form on stream, but I wanted to speak a little more personally for just a moment — ok, viewers of our stream know I don’t exactly hold back there, either, but not in our blog posts! I love games, but I intended to leave game development for good. Then the opportunity for Pistol Shrimp arose, with the chance to do things differently: making a game and a studio alongside a community! You and I both have access to tools, interactions, and creations that might normally never see the light of day. I am so proud of what we’ve been able to do transparently with all of your support. Thank you for believing in us and what we’re doing.
From Ken
It’s been a blast working on this game and these tools with my fellow Pistol Shrimpers: Dan, Paul, and Fred. Beyond that, it always amazes me (and fills up my heart!) to see the passion of you UQM fans — both for the original and the sequel. I’m glad we (well, mostly Dan!) are including you in what’s going on and eliciting input, reactions, questions, and answers as we all go on our journey together. Some things can (and should?) be “secret” (to avoid spoilers), but everyday trials, tribulations, successes, and laughter should be celebrated as widely as possible. I hope you’ve felt included, because without you, there would be no game! Thanks for supporting us and continuing to believe in us. It is most appreciated.
From Fred
I’ve been making games at other people’s behest for too long! The Ur-Quan Masters (well maybe the Horde) was the last game that we made the way we wanted to make it. Finding a time, a place, and support from like-minded colleagues and supporters where this is once again possible is an unexpected gift after all this time. I’ve made this comparison before: I feel a bit like Odysseus must have felt. After the Trojan War (Ur-Quan Masters), he thought he’d quickly return home. It didn’t exactly work out that way and after many intervening years and adventures he eventually made it back to Ithaca. So thanks to all of you for keeping the home fires burning and welcoming us back. I think we’d like to stay awhile.
From Paul
*ASK THEM ABOUT THE FLOWERS* *SO BEAUTIFUL* *WHERE’S MY SPACESHIP?!* Hey, what happened?! In all seriousness: Paul is currently unavailable at time of writing and definitely not working on mind control.
What’s next for Pistol Shrimp?
Lastly, seeing the entire next year with certainty is too challenging, but we do want to share a bit of our outlook on what we want to accomplish in the near term when we return:
Those are just some of what we want, but we’re also interested in what you want! If you follow our Discord, subreddit, Patreon, podcast, or Twitch channel, what things would you like to see happen in those spaces? How would you like to engage with us or your fellow community? We want to know. Tell us on Discord, Reddit, or Patreon.
- Updated Tool & Content Releases: Our initial takes at releasing our tools (Simple) and content (test content and Super Melee prototype) were good, but we have learned a bit about sustaining them. We have ideas and look forward to developing better processes.
- Community QA & Playtesting: We want the most crucial parts of our game, especially the parts over the network, to not just function but be fun too! Our unique community, livestream, and publicly available tools offer us a chance to validate that long before the game is even done. Look forward to more information on how we’ll be doing this and how to participate.
- Pistol Shrimp Podcast: This is an obvious one, but we enjoy producing these and we hope you enjoy them too. We recently were able to syndicate it via distribution platforms, and we look forward to creating more for you.
- Asset Creation: Probably obvious for those of you watching the development streams and VODs, but we have not been focusing much on the creation of what we call assets (art, audio, visual effects, etc.). This is largely due to our very small team size and its respective disciplines, but also part of how we have been working. We are prioritizing being able to make fun, engaging gameplay and — especially for UQM2 — a story we’re excited for players to experience. We are trying to be prudent about creating expensive assets for parts of the game that may not make it to the finished game. Many parts are now becoming ready for this important coat of paint, so we hope to share some more with you as we create it.
- Funding: We want to be able to pay the people working on the game, especially those whom we will be bringing in to work with us on the asset side. Our Patreon page was an amazing beginning for the team, but a crucial next step for UQM2 is also being able to fund its entire development. We have been focusing on this internally and want to solidify our next steps to help us see UQM2 through to completion.
We wish you happy holidays and look forward to being back and more alive than ever in the new year. We’re excited to continue the journey with all of you.
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REDACTED design document from a prestigious merchant: https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2023/03/incoming-hyperwave-intercept/
https://pistolshrimpgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/UQM2_REDACTED.pdf
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