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
30-ish years ago then-boyfriend & I both loved #StarControl2 & played the Star Control head-to-head melee battles. He was very pro-Kohr Ah and deeply offended I once killed his with an Androsynth in comet form. 😂 I crocheted him this, Xmas 1996? We're still friends. #uqm30yearshttps://t.co/xw2LYC9Eeqpic.twitter.com/KuuIUUicPk
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.
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!
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.
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.)
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”
Two weeks ago, we released episode 2 of the Pistol Shrimp podcast, entitled War & Space, early for our Patreon supporters. It features Paul Reiche and Lee Hutchinson discussing the influence of war, the possibility of war in space, and our childhood science museums on UQM. That episode is now available for everyone! Per your request, we are also looking into syndicating the podcast for consumption on your favorite (or least favorite – don’t let us tell you what to do) platform.
As always, please let us know if you have any feedback by joining our Discord or commenting on Patreon.
Happy November 2022 everyone! I am sure many of you know there’s something special in November. Something some of you have been asking us about. Something on your mind for 30 years, perhaps.
Are you excited? Maybe? It’s ok, we’re sure you’ve been thinking the same thing as us: why does vichyssoise get to celebrate, anyway? A whole day just for soup… why – that’s crazy! Does it get a day just for the sheer number of letters in its name? Did anyone even consult with France on this?
This November, we’re going to correct this imbalance. Move over, vichyssoise, because this time we will honor the 30th anniversary of The Ur-Quan Masters, looking back and celebrating one of our favorite games of all time. In particular, we want to celebrate the passionate fanbase that has kept this universe alive for so many years.
You have our deepest thanks for keeping our game in the collective imagination, with your stories, art, music, and countless other acts of support. Did you know that the game just reached #33 in this reader’s poll at Rock Paper Shotgun? It warms our hearts that this is still a thing that happens, and it’s all thanks to your years of loyalty and excitement. We wouldn’t be here without you!
If you follow our channels on Discord, Twitter, and Reddit, we’re using this whole month to share relics from the deepest vaults of The Ur-Quan Masters as well as some things Paul may or may not have just made up. Part of the fun is figuring out which is which. We’re especially excited to cap it off with an online celebration on Twitch on November 30th. Put the date in your calendar, and help us get the word out on whatever your favorite channels are.
Throughout the month, we also hope that you’ll share your own UQM relics. We have some more ideas coming down the line, but it can be a story, some art, or even just a selfie of you and the box if you still have it. We’re finding out that UQM has inspired a whole new generation of game developers! Wherever our fans and communities are, we are going to find ways to give you a moment to shine. Have something to share or find something you think should be shared? Email us or tweet it with the #uqm30years hashtag. You can also reply to our thread on Reddit.
We still have some more surprises for you and French soups throughout the month, so be sure to stay tuned! (We’re looking at you, French Onion!)
Two weeks early for our Patreon supporters, we have Paul Reiche and Lee Hutchinson returning for another episode of our podcast about the creation of UQM, UQM2, and the many steps taken to get here.
The main topic for this discussion is all about how war & space (and war in space) influenced our personal upbringings and the history of gaming through our lenses, which in turn influenced us. Why is Paul so obsessed with space combat? What did we learn from science museums, the threat of nuclear warfare, and pressing buttons in front of screens?
A couple weeks ago, we released our special Dialogue about Dialogue – Episode 1 podcast with Paul Reiche and Lee Hutchinson early for our Patreon supporters. That episode is now available for everyone (seriously, it has tons of cool visuals too, go check it out!), and we have also added a text transcript to go alongside the audio.
As always, please let us know if you have any feedback by joining our Discord or commenting on Patreon.
Howdy, folks! Pistol Shrimp is pleased to release something special and exclusive as thanks to our generous supporters on Patreon. We will be making this publicly available in the future but want to give our supporters early access to the very thing they asked for: relics, stories, and insights about the making of our games.
This is the first in what we hope will be a series of dialogues with Pistol Shrimp about the making of The Ur-Quan Masters 2. In this opening installment, UQM2 contributor Lee Hutchinson sits down with series co-creator Paul Reiche and digs in on the role character dialogue plays in storytelling. Come for the behind-the-scenes details, stay for Paul’s anecdotes about the early days of the games industry and the role Pogo the Possum played in UQM’s conversation engine!
Give it a listen and let us know what you think on Patreon.
Pistol Shrimp just wanted to share a gigantic “Thank you!” with everyone who has joined our Patreon. We are honored, excited, flabbergasted, and really so happy to have so much support in a just couple weeks since our announcement.
Thus far, all of us have been investing in Pistol Shrimp using our own savings. For the past couple years, we’ve looked at the usual methods of funding like traditional investment, venture capital, and publishing deals. Those can work, but in each case we have learned from experience that we’d have to compromise UQM2’s development somehow: to make it more commercial, to make it less accessible to players, or to be less open with our development.
We’ve also come up with some downright crazy ideas, like having the Druuge and Melnorme launch competitive digital currencies, or actually ransoming parts of the game (“Cough up the dough or the Yehat takes a long walk out of a short airlock!”). There was even a plan which involved sending 25 lbs of cheddar cheese to William Shatner. We’re not sure how that would have made money, but – trust us – it was going to be a guaranteed success.
While we still have some wild ideas in our back pocket, we believe our community is our greatest asset—for funding, for developing UQM2, for creating our studio, and for making things that people will enjoy. We are so glad to have you all here, and be sure to join our Discord to participate directly.
Thank you, again, to everyone supporting us and our journey together. Please check out our Patreon if you’d like to join!
Add content_installer.exe, which installs the latest content from our github repo and sets it up alongside Simple.
simple
Note: All ‘remembered open scripts’ in sims when upgrading to this version will be forgotten. You will have to re-open them in the UI.
Functionality: Separate sim ‘user layout’ files from the sim files themselves. New .sim.cfg files will be created which will track open files and their line locations for a given sim. Note: these files should not be included in any source control systems.
Functionality: Add Find in scripts: new ‘Find’ tab in the UI, Ctrl+F hotkey raises it as well.
Functionality: Create separate log outputs for different error levels which are displayed in the UI. Designer-added prints and errors are together, and warning/notice/info elements are in a separate group.
Runtime/Tool: Various crash fixes.
Runtime: Add additional warning and notice logging for property initializations.
Runtime: More varied random numbers.
Runtime: Save State fixes.
Script: Add new mods markup for extensions, which causes any Conjures of that component (and its extensions) to also receive the mod, which may include alternate property initializations and additional script SECTIONs.
Script: Support complex initialization for synchronized properties.
Script: Add some limited implementations of orientation arithmetic.
Script: Fixes for problems when accessing singletons.
UI: Fix crash when trying to Conjure a in a repeat Filter.
UI: Fix being able to set failable on a Conjure’s property initialization.
UI: Fix casting a UI Capture to a collection.
UI: When working with multiple sims, add logic which organizes the definitions list based on what sims contain what definitions.
Physics: Minor fixes for Capsule Shape behavior.
Physics: Fixes for occasional crashes when handling Capsule Shape collisions.
Breakpoint crash/leak fixes.
Fixes for errors when running simple if the last known .sim file cannot be opened.
