Star Control II

I could never beat thet game...

Which ones did you see? I haven't played that game in a long time.

well for instance SC:II created the term Precurser and the idea of, also I forget where I read it but somewhere they talk about the Dread Lords enslaving a world with a red force field. Yeah that's STRAIGHT from SC:II Also the story of the Dread Lords and the Arnor is pretty dang similar to the Ur-Quan and the Khor-Ah. Also the Precursers from SC:II misterysouly(sp) disappeared from the universe also. A lot of things like that

i think you're grasping a little bit. dread lords and arnor the same as the Ur-quan?

ancient superbeings who disappeared are a pretty common in sci-fi and fantasy. maybe the dread lords are the ori and the arnor the ancients. maybe the dread lords are like sauron and his minions and the arnor are the last of the first born elves.

Meh, while I have to admit that IF SCII used the term "Dread Lord" (which I dont really rember) thanI have to agree that its kinda odd.

But lets be honest, an accient evil/advanced race that long ago disappeared suddenly without a trace and is now coming back to enact its revenge upon all the new races is not new ground in terms of science fiction. In fact lets examine this plot device!

Stargate - ok the gould didnt really disapear, but they did leave us alone for quite awhile!

Battlestar Galactica - The cylons disappeared and left humanity on their own for almost a generation before coming back to wreak their awful revenge.
MOO3 - If youever read the manuel the same thing happened between the Antearns and the Orions as what happened to the Arnor and Dread Lords

Babalyon 5 - Rember the Shadows... They were really just misunderstood

And this is really just the most recent and well known examples! Im sure there are a ton more, but its finals right now and thinking hard is starting to hurt! Anyone else got some good ones?

PS. And offically the story line for this was written by Brad along time ago back in his college days.

I think your grasping because your pulling from a different genre all together. I didn't say the Dread Lords are exactly like the Ur-Quan, I'm meerly tring to point out that if one were to merge the stories of the percursers, the Ur-Quan, and the Kor-Ah you would get almost exactly the Gal-Civ II story, or rather the bare-bones story before the flourishes were added. Don't get me wrong, I think the referances are cool. And considering all of the other little things the game throws in I think I have a fairly good argument. If I were a Dev I would definitly throw in referances to honor one of the "greatest space trilogies ever to hit the gaming scene"

not you Teancum, you make sense

A diffrent genre? Heh, pal we are talking about aliens, space ships, intergalactic travel and adventure... I'm pretty sure we're both talking the SciFi lingo. SciFi has always been just a little insestous in the using and resuing ideas, weather the be book, TV, movie, or in game form.

EDIT: Oh nevermind then. ~whistles absently~

Ha ha, see, your a thinker Teancum, if you were to prove me wrong I wouldn't care because undoubtedly you would do it thtough logical means.

Go read some HP Lovecraft for a modern interpretation of what happens when really powerful things rule the universe, go away for a while, and then come back really cheesed off at humans. Don't read HP Lovecraft by yourself and with the lights down low, though.

well for instance SC:II created the term Precurser

Precursor artifacts are mentioned in Star Control 1, giving the ship that found them a random upgrade to crew, energy recharge, turning rate, or whatever. Come on kiddos, play the classics. Besides that, "precursor" isn't just a word that was made up in a Sci-Fi game. It has an actual real-world meaning, which just happens to be applicable to whatever alien race inhabited whatever region before somebody else got there. Look it up.

I figured if there were SC2 references in GC2, it would be done through the game's humor. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a Starcon joke in there someplace.

i think we all see what we want to see really. i was thinking that the story line itself reminded me alot of MOO, except it also reminds me of star Trek, given that the human flagship looks very much like the last incarnation of the Enterprise in Nemisis. the Drengi remind me of klingons (even look a bit like them) and the Korx if you stretch a bit (ok alot ) invoke the vision of a borg.

but later on when you get to huge hulls im thinking of Star Destroyers as i build from the human stock on the triangel hull shapes.

i like the fact that you can almost make the game into any kind of a setting you want. it takes alot of work, not to mention some good writing talent to create an interesting premis out of whole cloth. the story line for MOO 3 cought my interest and i think thats prolly one of the reasons that i kind of enjoyed the game despite its huge game play flaws. GS 1 and 2 story line is dull as spit to me. i stoped caring why the humans and altarians looked alike about 2 days into GS 1, but the game styles are flexable enough to allow me to create my own story line in my head , heh i actualy change the name of humans to Star Fleet and the leader to Jim Kirk. something i seldom do in games. i also find myself naming individual ships after various Star Trek ships, again something i seldom do.

if this game does remind you of star control (ive never played it) then it would seem that there are indeed alot of "little insestous in the using and resuing ideas".

i think its nice that the game is good enough to invoke a persons imagination. something thats hard to do, and doesnt seek to force feed yet ANOTHER dull as dirt story to add to the allready too large collection of game storys that have mounted over the years.

I think you have a good point. Very good. In fact you have changed my mind. Major Kudos to the writers

For more SC 2 fun download the open source code at this site. It got me addicted again. Oh, and by the way, it's tweaked to run on modern computers.

Link

It is a good website and includes other fan sites.

Yeah, I think you could defintely say there are some spoofs of other SciFi games, books, and shows in here.

I can't really remember where, but I could swear I've seen that Squid ship with the frog tounge that springs out to suck in other ships somewhere. Might have even been in SCII, at the end? Anyway, I'm almost positive I've seen that baby before!

Stargates that can only transfer you to another Stargate? Yeah, I've seen a couple of Stargate: SGI shows in my day.

From the manual...

"Auto Explore: Tasks the ship to go out and explore new sectors, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldy... (our legal department made us stop there)."

Ever come upon a planet and been notified, with a full screen image included, that ...

"Our scouts report that significant portions of the planet are inhabited by a sentient pod-like creature. These pods bond with other sentient life. Those who are bonded by these pods experience significant physical pain at all times, but have heightened intelligence. What are your orders?"

Boy, I don't know about you but the pods in that full screen image look pretty familiar to me. I've seen the movies Alien and Aliens. Acutally I own the quadrilogy dvd set.

-----------------------------------------------------------


BTW, quite some time ago the source code for the 3DO version(the best version which I happen to own) of Star Control II was made available by "Toys for Bob", the creators of SC I and SC II. A group of people has been working on porting it to the Linux OS and compiling it for the Windows OS as well. It's open source now so you can even contribute to it's development(porting) if you so desire.

It's taken quite a long while since the source code was released and it's still only at v0.5, nevertheless you can download a perfectly legal version 0.5 of the 3DO port of Star Control II(called Ur-Quan Masters for legal reasons) here...

Link Ur-Quan Masters

I download the Windows version just a few days ago and played a few rounds of Melee mode. Fond memories. Couple of things to note though...



1) By clicking on the 'Info' link and the clicking on 'See our Wiki's FAQ list.' you can read the following...

"How do I use the 3DO intro and victory movies in the game?

Toys For Bob doesn't have the copyright to these files and so we can't distribute them. But if you own the 3DO Star Control II CD, you can extract them yourself and use them in the game. To do this, you first need to make a .iso file of the CD-ROM, and then run a program called unCD-ROM, which can be found here (link). It includes a .exe file for Windows and the source code, which will also works on Linux. Just run it on the new .iso file. More detailed instructions can be found here(link). Linux users can also add direct support for the 3DO file system with a kernel module, which can be found here.

In the extracted "duckart" directory you will find the videos. The files with extensions .duk, .frm, .hdr, and .tbl go together. At the moment only the intro and victory images can be used in The Ur-Quan Masters. To do this you create a directory "slides" in the content directory. In that "slides" directory you create an "intro" directory where you put the intro.duk, intro.frm, intro.hdr and intro.tbl files from the 3DO CD-ROM. In the "slides" directory you also create a directory "ending" where you put the victory.duk, victory.frm, victory.hdr and victory.tbl files.

If you haven't installed any add-on packages, your content directory structure should now look like this:" (i did not copy and paste file structure for this post)

2) Unless you're really good with keyboard controls you'll want to have a 'gamepad' to play the game with. Make sure when using the gamepad in Melee that you are using the bottom battleship collection. It would seem that only the keyboard works when playing with the top collection.

3) Do not try and use the OpenAL sound support for the Windows version. For me it just crashes even though I have the latest OpenAL beta driver installed in Windows for my Creative SB Audigy 2 Platinum sound card.

4) Have fun with this oldie but goodie! I haven't tried the campaign yet but I hope it works fine. I know the Melee mode does.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Cheers,

Linuxman6

EDIT: I was quite a while in making my post, partially because I was afk for a bit, and I see that XRoadkillX beat me to linking to the available 3DO port of SC II. Still, I hope the extra information I included might pique a little more interest and perhaps be of some use.

I still own my 3D0 AND my Star Control II game

FRUNGI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

stil the ur-quan for me are still THE BEST bad guys with a cause out thier.....damn catapilliars made me feel sorry for what happened to them and i understood the motives for both the Khor-ah and Kerz-za. Its tragic really...

I mean the Path of now and forever is pretty scary but the Eternal Doctrine is a little merciless in any case.

Poor Ur-Quan....

Its a shame they got thier butt handed to them by the Chmmr.......and even stranger that the Chmmr were related to the Taalo which were the only race that could come within 10 meters of an Ur-Quan without triggering thier territorial aggression.

For those you dont know...an Ur-Quan is an aboral predatory caterpiller that is in excess of 10--15 meters in length and basically enslaved the entire galaxy. they gave a whole new meaning to bad guy.

Nothing like the klingon and thier pathetic honor
Nothing like the shadows
nothing like the Drengin

two doctrines....each travelling around the galaxy in opposite directions. each carrying out thier will to what is the true path for the species.

One: enslavement in a form of battle thralls or forever encased in an impenatrable shield around thier home planet.

Or the other

Total "cleanseing" or aiding in the "cleansing" then "cleanings " themselves

Ur-Quan...

Ur-Quan... best thing to Sci FI since Kirk sex and killing the commies with phasers at the expense of life support

The hell? I don't even want to know what "Kirk sex" is. I'm guessing it has something to do with killing the Commies?

Commas are our friends. I can only hope that's what is wrong here. Oh yeah, and Frungy is spelled with a 'Y'.

Ummm.... bit of a PLOT SPOILER above


I managed to finish the game with a touch of help from the walkthrough. When you download it, make sure you realise that there IS a time limit to the game, you can't just fly around forever and explore the galaxy. I found this out the hard way - I think there I finished the game with only a week or so to spare (with some help from a walkthrough . . . I'm a damned cheater )


Anyway, I was a SC1 fan, but only ever managed to get the 'hacked' version where the Earthling ship was the most powerful in the game (maxed health, maxed fuel, rapid fire homing nuclear missiles, super fast and super turning). Took me a whlie to get used to the SCII Earthling with it's pathetic speed, miserable firing rate and minimal health :/

My favourite lines from SC2 - The whole Fwiffo conversation "I am Captain Fwiffo! I know you are going to torture me, so let's just get this over with. My homeworld, Spathiwa, is located at . . . "

The Thraddash and their different cultures . . .

The Umgah . . . "Har. Har. Har." . . .

A lot of fun, and some good memories.

Speaking of references, here's to the awesome Raymond Feist reference in the second (I think) mission of the campaign. Fun little things like that definitely add to an experience, although admittedly for those purists among us, the ancient artifact of awesome power really should have been on Sethanon. ; )

I wish someone here would reference Ascendancy... Love that game. Lots of potential that never really made it. I still own the disk, but I am unable to read the files. I would love to crack them open and use some of the species from there, and the ships.

Ahh, good to see so many *campers* around. ^^

Easily one of the greatest games and universes ever created. Shame SCIII was such utter trash....

The hell? I don't even want to know what "Kirk sex" is. I'm guessing it has something to do with killing the Commies?

hah newb, Jim Kirk got more ass than a toilet seat. hell half his 'missions' were because he got some mud for his turtle and the rest of the crew had to save him from waht ever alien chick he was prongin this week. classic sci-fie at its best.

they gave a whole new meaning to bad guy.

man sounds like a cool story. to date my favorite 'bad guy' are the borg, then again ive read all the books so the 'expanded' universe is part of my education.

the Borg in the shows and movies are kittens compaired to how they are described in the books. hell it turns out that the borg were the reason that the probe in ST the voyage home attacked earth to begin with. and its also postulated that the Borg made Viger in the first movie.

of what use is power with no one to test it on?

Nothing like the shadows

They weren't exactly "nothing" like the Shadows.

The Shadows weren't evil. They weren't randomly blowing stuff up. OK, they were, but they had a purpose to their randomness. They were inciting wars to make the younger races stronger. Conflict, evolutionary pressure breeds innovation and inginuity. They believe that growth is best created by conflict, so they went out and created conflict.

Like the Shadow/Vorlon war, the Ur-Quan war was one of doctrine. Neither could abide the other, and thus there was conflict.

Yeah, If you never saw Babylon 5, do yourself a favor and rent or buy all 5 seasons. There are some cheesy episodes but the overall story is so dark and spooky and the space battles are fairly amazing.

The Shadows were IMHO, the most formidable enemy I know of in any Sci Fi, whether you perceive them as evil or not. They simply attack on sight, and only their arch-enemies, the Vorlons, can match them in battle. The Shadow race is billions of years old and chaos is their theory of "bringing up" the younger races. Their ships simply phase in and out of realspace and are FAST.
Gotta love a race who enslaves telepaths, then uses one in each ship as a CPU

Not to mention they (the actual creatures, the Shadows) are invisible!

SPECULATION: the Shadows could smash any other sci-fi bad guys. The borg? That cube would be cut into 5 pieces by one of the Shadow Battlecrabs inside of 5 seconds.
The Empire? Hmm... Star Destroyers would also get hacked into bits. Deathstar might take out a few Crabs but it would simply be overwhemled.
Now, maybe the Elerians (telepaths from Moo2), would actually have a chance against the Shadows after they tech-up. Telepaths are the only thing the Shadows truly fear, since they interfere with ship control.



http://www.b5tech.com/shadows/shadowships/shadowbattlecrab.html