KickStarter Free Stars: Children of Infinity - upcoming Star Control 2 sequel from Fred Ford's Pistol Shrimp Games - Kickstarter Live

[Grauken]

So when will this come out, 2030?

 

[Zarniwoop]

So when will this come out, 2030?

Real Soon

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

So when will this come out, 2030?

Sooner than Grimoire II and probably even before Armoire.

 

[karoliner]

So we are supposed to make the game ourselves or something?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

So we are supposed to make the game ourselves or something?

The real star control all along

 

[booksarecool123]

Hello Extremely!

 

[Infinitron]

Seems like development is starting to rev up: https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2023/07/uqm2-update-mid-year-2023/

UQM2 Update – Mid-Year 2023​

Engaging HyperWave Broadcaster.
Determining send and receive frequencies.
Calculating optimal relay delivery route.
CONNECTION ESTABLISHED

>>> Submit to the will of Dogar and Kazon, vile Earthlings, or else you will never lay eyes upon your most beloved of sacred artifacts – the World’s Largest Rocking Chair of Casey, Illinois – ever again!

Carol, knock that off!

Ahem, excuse me. Our resident Umgah got ahold of the transmitter again. We’re still working on our security measures. Who’s Carol? Oh, never mind that. It’s a long story.

Greetings friends, supporters, and other many-appendaged creatures! Dan here, and I wanted to share an update on our progress, advancements, and learnings in the past 6 months, our trajectory for the near future, and really just say hi because I miss ‘seeing’ you on stream. Carol wants me to say hi and thanks for all the fish, too. Also, please stop sending us fish.

Tl;dr​

If you just want the short version, here it is:

• Pre-production – which you can think of as scoping and exploring the size of the box – has ended.
• Production – which is filling the box – has started!
• Our twice-weekly dev stream will be pausing for now.
• We have some more people working with us and are doing some new kinds of work.
• We have a plan for the fall which involves sharing a lot more content we think you’ll be excited to finally see. Because we’re producing it!

Pre-Production to Production​

This week, we were able to put together our first production kickoff (see above slide from that meeting)! If you’re not familiar with this kind of creative & technical development, a framing mechanism we use to separate the kinds of work we do is grouping it into pre-production and production. In broad terms:

• Pre-production is when we are still making decisions about what we want to be making and how we should be making it. We prioritize that exploration and optimize for being able to grow, learn, and make good decisions in the future.
• Production is when we have a firm enough idea of what to make and how to make it. We prioritize streamlining the process of getting all our creative contributions being made and woven into the actual game alongside a schedule.

That is a somewhat simplistic representation of the difference between the two, but UQM2 is more than one single piece. There are parts of our game which can be in pre-production longer or production longer, based on dependencies and schedules. The end result looks less like a clean break and more like a dovetail, sawtooth, or kraken wrestling a wooden tall ship as the dread pirate captain seeks to maintain control.

Does that make sense? I hope so. I spent, like… 5 minutes on that drawing! That takes us to the next change.

Development Streams on Pause​

If you’ve been following our live development streams, you may have noticed we’ve been unable to do them for several weeks. I love being able to share live development on stream and interact with everyone who attends, but, for the (hopefully short) time being, I have to pause them.

First and foremost, I have lately been knee-deep in highly sensitive material that we don’t want to show you yet. Not because we don’t like it or want you to see it, but because we care about how you get to receive it. An important part of UQM2 is going to be exploration and discovery, and there are elements that we will want you to actually have fun exploring, discovering, and experiencing interactively as a player, not just as an observer. From things like the overall story to the starmap, I’m now inundated with parts of UQM2 coming to life that reach far beyond the narrow bits of work you’ve seen me do. It’s great to have them shape up and become part of the game, but it also means it’s not as easy to conceal them as I have in the past.

Secondly, since we’ve entered production, I’ve been taking on more responsibilities as what we call in games a producer. That means I’ve become responsible for getting everyone on the team what they need to make forward progress and helping prepare for the deluge of content which will be filling up our game. It’s a little bit like a project manager, but with cool mutant powers and a confusing name. I also have someone else taking on some of those design & scripting responsibilities, but more on that in a moment.

To cap it off, the plan is to pause – not stop – development streams for the near future. It’s possible I’ll be able to come out of the woodwork to do a one-off here and there if the no-spoiler stars align, but the plan is to find a way to resume once a few more cats are out of their proverbial bags. Don’t ask me where the cats came from or who even put them in the bag. I’m still trying to determine the ideal cat-bagging material.

This trade-off on streaming is coming with some more goodies for you, though. More on that at the end of this post.

Team Additions​

The Orz
To help us get some of this very important production work done and support development, we have a couple new members of the UQM2 who have come on board. Our friend Danny is joining us with experience in the music industry, helping us with both audio and business development. Another former Toys for Bob-ite, Jesse Browne, is also joining to take on design and scripting responsibilities after working across many technical fields.

We’re really excited to have them on board, and they’ve already been doing some awesome work to make UQM2 even better. I’m looking forward to showcasing their work too!

Funding Updates​

In our end of year update from 2022, I detailed the work ahead of us for 2023 and included funding as part of it. This is still an essential part of taking UQM2 to completion, but it deserves its own blog post describing the process, what we learned, and where we’re going. Needless to say, the same sentiment as last year is still true. We are incredibly grateful to our amazing Patreon supporters who have helped us get this far. This wouldn’t be possible – much less enjoyable – without all of you. One of the reasons we’ve been able to move into production has simply been because we can utilize all of your support to work with some amazing artists helping us! Your support goes almost entirely to funding this process.

What’s Coming Next?​

We are really excited to move into production, and the other half of what we’re gearing up is our community building endeavor. We have already established an incredible community of people here who believe in us, are excited for the game, or maybe just want to see my birds and hear bad jokes. Whatever reason everyone is here so far, we don’t take that for granted. Seriously, this is the kind of thing so many artists wish for! Few things are more encouraging to me, personally, than being able to create a virtuous cycle of everyone cheering each other on.

To that end, we are going to be ramping up our own endeavors to give everyone something to get excited about this fall. We appreciate that we’ve gotten enough people here on what seems like pure enthusiasm so far, but it’s time to roll up our sleeves, unfurl our tendrils, and deliver more than just hope and imagination. We’re getting ready to show you much more, especially on the visual and world-building side. We can’t wait to show you in much more vivid detail just where we’re headed as we create an even more inclusive and enthused community.

Though I won’t be streaming, you can look forward to much more frequent communication from us, starting with posts like this but ramping up to even more of the real game content.

Thank you for being on the journey with us so far, and an extra special thank you to our generous Patreon supporters. It’s only going to get better from here on out.

If you want to keep in touch more often, please join our Discord where the team and community keeps the *party* going and will welcome you with open claws.

 

[Zarniwoop]

It's going to be very **frumple** if this game isn't vastly better than the one from Stardick.

Which is not exactly a high bar.

 

[Zombra]

"Ramping up" 6 years later is not going to cause a stampede of preorders.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

"Ramping up" 6 years later is not going to cause a stampede of preorders.

Yeah.
There has to be a trailer at least for that.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

"Ramping up" 6 years later is not going to cause a stampede of preorders.

Yeah.
There has to be a trailer at least for that.

Probably worst thing is that I'm not even joking as far I'm concerned.

 

[Zombra]

Probably worst thing is that I'm not even joking as far I'm concerned.

It's even funnier because it's true.

 

[Infinitron]

https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2023/07/exploring-the-planets/

Exploring the Planets​

Do you know how many planets were in the original UQM? No, seriously… do you? If you did, you probably read the hint book from back in the day. But anyone who played could tell you: there were a lot. We accomplished that via procedural generation. While the starmap was laid out by hand, the many planets in the many solar systems were created based on a random seed. Most modern agricultural laws block importing random seeds, but we’re in space now. No one can stop us! Take that, Argentina.

In addition to placing the planets, one of the key uses for procedural generation was in creating the planet artwork. We’re excited to be working with some amazing artists on UQM2, but we don’t think they’d be excited if we asked them to paint 10,000* different planets.

*This is not the actual number of planets in UQM2. Unless it is, but we actually don’t know it yet. That would be pretty funny if I guessed it right.

One of our artists, Damon Czanik, dug up a tool which provided a proof-of-concept for procedural generation of planets. We think we could fit these into the UQM2 universe artistically and technically, and we even found some seeds that made worlds that felt like UQM planet types. You can even go play with the tool, picking from some predefined UQM planet type seeds we like, or just trying your own seeds!

While it was a pretty good proof of concept, we knew there was more work to extend it.

Planting the Seed(s)​

Here’s what this tool shows so far:

• It already generates planet surfaces with pretty diverse looks, but it doesn’t make gas giants.
• Each seed always produces the same result, but it isn’t controlled in any way by something like a planet type or other parameterized knobs from our game universe (e.g. atmosphere, temperature, etc.).
• It generates textures which can be used as flat surfaces.
• It generates textures of different sizes, which might be able to support mip-mapping, but otherwise doesn’t have a notion of level-of-detail for that purpose.
• It does not support optional, physical features like craters or rings.

UQM2 Goals​

Using this tool as a starting point, we wanted to set some goals for how it could work in UQM2:

• It should be able to generate many varieties of the UQM2 planet types, like the ones we know from UQM such as Emerald Worlds, Treasure Worlds, Gas Giants.
• Each planet should be different, but exactly reproducible and recognizable by type.
• Optional physical features can be present, like impact craters, storms on gas giants, and planetary rings.
• Ideally, we can unwrap the orbital planet into a flat surface to use as a planetside experience.
• Ideally, we could also use the planet being generated in interplanetary and melee views, with level-of-detail techniques to make it look acceptable when rendered at a smaller size.

UQM Planet Types​

We have some modern, hand-painted concepts of UQM planet types courtesy of Damon that showcase the kinds of things we’d like to procedurally generate.

Emerald World Concept

Treasure World Concept

Gas Giant Concept

Discover Strange New Worlds​

While creating hundreds of thousands of different planets is clearly doable, we know it can be better. The team often refers to planets as characters, where you get an evocative experience from meeting someone new, someone familiar that you like (or dread), or want to learn more about them. More than just interesting art, UQM planet types are emotional set-pieces for players to relate to.

One of our big questions is how we can get lots of our unique, fantastically or scientifically inspired planets that have their distinct, UQM character. This is where you come in!

The team has started with this general approach. Do you:

• Have experience working with procedural generation or shaders and want to contribute to solving some of our UQM2 goals?
• Want to make the experience of using this toy more fun in a web browser?
• Know absolutely nothing technical but just want to show off cool-looking planets you were able to make?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, please check out the running tool, our GitHub repo, and join us in Discord if you have ideas! If you have an even better idea than what we’re starting with, we want to know that too.

In the past, we’ve opened up our tools with distributions of Simple and our Melee prototype. They’re essential building blocks of UQM2, but they’ve been released as a way of sharing our output. The planet tool is a big step forward since we’re sharing some of our graphical techniques and able to support community input! Our goal is to collaborate on this, improve it together, and share it with everyone as part of UQM2 and beyond.

 

[Infinitron]

https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2023/08/follow-us-on-social-media/

Follow Us on Social Media​

Did you know that we’re building out our social media accounts? We’ve slowly been creating some more places where you can follow us. It’s not stalking, it’s keeping in touch! For all we know, one of our communication methods could explode at the whim of the plutocrat du jour, so we figure it’s good to diversify.

You can already find us on the following channels:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/theurquanmaster
• Discord: https://discord.gg/rasVCDmYKp
• Blog: https://pistolshrimpgames.com/blog/ | https://patreon.com/pistolshrimp
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@urquanmasters/

We’re also cross-posting the above content on other channels (albeit with less focus):

• Reddit (still a good place to discuss blog posts!): https://www.reddit.com/r/uqm2/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urquanmasters/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urquanmasters
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@pistolshrimpgames

We plan on being most active on Twitter and Discord, with regular blogs both here and on Patreon, and short stories on TikTok. (I know, we’re shocked about that last one too. It’s an experiment!)

Even though we’re intentionally keeping a few things under wraps, we’re going to be sharing more and more about The Ur-Quan Masters 2 in the coming months. For now, we’re mostly sharing Dan’s random alien thoughts and neverending nonsense. In time, we’ll also reveal more of the game, with bits of text, images, and video. The idea is to have fun and try things – just like we do with game development – to spread the word about The Ur-Quan Masters and its passionate community.

When we resume some more of our live streaming activities, you’ll still be able to find Dan at https://twitch.tv/pebby. And if the social media landscape has scared you into the deep recesses of the internet, we still have an email list you can join at https://pistolshrimpgames.com for big announcements when they come.

 

[Zarniwoop]

The Twitter X account seems to be 99% cringey memes and almost nothing about the game.

 

[Infinitron]

Paul Reiche departs: https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2023/09/uqm2-update-summer-2023/

UQM2 Update – Summer 2023​

Greetings, Hunams and other lifeforms. We’re coming to you with some updates after an exciting summer of effort on UQM2. Our mission at Pistol Shrimp is about creating a better environment for game development. Being open about our process is an essential way we strive for that. We want you to feel as involved, inspired, and valued as we feel!

We’ll be breaking this into a few parts because a lot has changed, and change is the only constant in the universe. Let’s start with what may come as the most radical news.

Bidding Adieu to Paul and Ken​

We wanted to let you know that Paul and Ken have wrapped up their work with Pistol Shrimp and will be moving on. The four of us had been working hard in pre-production, building our tools, outlining the story, prototyping the gameplay, and setting up the studio as a company. Now that we’ve entered production, it’s time for a different set of talents to bring this project to completion.

Paul has written an amazing story which has been in progress long before Pistol Shrimp joined up. To quote Paul, himself, “These characters have been living in my head for 30 years.” They’ve even shown up in amusing places like the writing for Persephone, one of the main characters of the Skylanders cast, who speaks just like the Orz. Entire ship designs were turned into Skylanders, and even Wimbli’s Trident appeared in The Horde. Now in UQM2, we have Paul’s wonderful, new rogue’s gallery of aliens to sit alongside some of the familiar, returning cast. He can’t wait for you to meet them all.

Ken has been looking to retire for a while now after a long career, but we had lured him into giving us one go-around helping to build out our cool technology. After he helped pave the way for production work to happen, he thought it was a good time to stop. We are going to miss him, but we won’t hold him here against his will, and we knew from the beginning that this was part of our plan. We hear retirement is awfully boring, though, so he knows we’re always here if he wants to contribute again.

A Personal Message from Fred​

Permit me a tortured analogy. Getting to this point I have often felt like we were collectively Odysseus. I have worked with Paul for over 30 years, Ken is my brother and off-and-on collaborator for many of those, and Dan is pretty close behind. This Odysseus-Voltron completed its Iliad, lo these many years ago, letting the Trojan Horse, UQM, do its work with Accolade and starting the quick journey home to a sequel.

Spoiler alert! Many trials and tribulations intervened (AKA careers), but the flame to return to our universe was never extinguished. In the fullness of time and circumstances we found an opportunity to reassemble. Paul with his well and truly marinated story, Dan with his unmatched design and modern gaming sensibilities, his care for the community, and his infectious enthusiasm. Ken with his dependable output, collaboration, and reasoning. And me, eating sandwiches.

Like any good tale, however, and with the goal in sight, we find our Odysseus-Voltron once again split into components. To continue the abusing and torturing of the reader: Gandalf is occupied with the Balrog. Boromir has blown the Horn of Gondor (I always knew Ken wanted the ring!). Yet the brave Hobbits, Dan and Fred, forge onward.

Yet we are not lost! Paul has set down the story. Ken has laid the foundation for engineering success. Dan has completed the design skeleton. And sandwiches remain (including with my frequent lunch buddy, Paul)! In effect we are at the end of pre-production, where we now engage artists, animators, writers, and musicians to put the meat on the bones of the skeleton. This was part of the plan all along.

Please join Dan and me to bring this home, where we will string our bow and kill everyone else in the room!

NOTE: No Trojans were actually harmed or killed during the making of this statement. The story of the Sirens stays in Vegas.

A Personal Message from Dan​

I got my start in professional game development as an intern at Toys for Bob through a mutual connection with Paul. When I started, I was interested mostly in art and animation and even did some contract work in the title they were shipping while I was there learning. When a new project rolled around, Paul suggested I try my hand at design. After spending a week of time reading a two page instruction manual, working with the amazing tool Fred had built, and getting Paul’s guidance, I made something reasonably playable. I was hired full-time and worked at Toys for Bob for 7 more projects.

Over my 12 years at TFB, I learned so much from Paul and Fred. Paul is the ultimate giver of excellent feedback. If you had something running at your desk and a controller to hand to him, he would want to see it and give you amazing insights. My contributions over the years at Toys for Bob largely were driven by trying to shape Paul’s wants and our back and forth dialogue into reality, and, before long, realizing that his voice lived permanently in my head. People tell me I sound like him sometimes, and it’s because his ideals shaped a lot of my own visions for what it means to pick up a controller and just connect with something fun. Thanks to him, one of my favorite parts of game development is what I’ll call the “last 10%,” where he helped me learn to take something functional and add or subtract little touches here and there to make the player’s experience go from walking to flying just through a collection of small pieces. That was one of Paul’s many strong suits in a nutshell: the moment-to-moment details that made huge differences for the player.

Fred was an inverse of Paul, known for ‘sheep-dogging’ (his term) around the TFB office and learning what people needed by observing their failures, moral or otherwise. Jokes aside, I think a lot of people were afraid of Fred because his unassuming nature of checking in would frighten people since Fred was always 10 steps ahead of you. But that was the point! Fred is always 10 steps ahead. Thanks to Fred, I learned to value not just the people who make the game, but the tools and processes they used. Fred envisioned and crafted an amazing tool that anyone who worked with would espouse as the best thing ever. A big ingredient in our ‘secret sauce’ was the person behind the curtain who actually made it possible for folks like us with crazy ideas to actually realize them without making it unwieldy to even try. While ‘failing fast’ has become something of a commonplace term now, I really learned from Fred how to eliminate complications and just do it. Fred is still one half of the UQM genetic material, and he carries not just the same mentality about finding the fun, but the mind, heart, and spirit of the original UQM with Pistol Shrimp.

Ken and I simply exchanged bad jokes and puns on a regular basis. He is one of the most hilarious people in the known universe, and my jokes will only get worse and more grammatically terrible without his guiding inspiration.

Conclusion: Not the Conclusion​

Every member of the Pistol Shrimp team has worked alongside both Paul and Ken for much of their own professional careers. From Fred, who carries the original UQM torch as an essential part of that game and a co-conspirator with Ken, to Dan, who worked directly with Paul and learned his formative lessons on design from him at Toys for Bob. UQM2 has been a team project from the very beginning, with different members taking responsibility for different pieces. With the story complete and the design sketched out, Paul is off to his next challenge. With Ken’s work on our technology finished, he’s free to (finally!) rest.

As we look to the future, the team is incredibly excited to be able to take Paul’s story and creative vision, which we know you all care about a lot, and finish UQM2 out. We’re hard at work now with a core group of contributors:

• Fred has created the amazing engine that supports all of UQM2’s gameplay and the work Dan has been doing already, and he’s only supporting more of what the game needs. Fred is still one half of the original UQM super-brain too.
• Dan is building out gameplay which many of you have seen during our development streams, some of which will feel like a cozy, familiar return to UQM and some of which we want to feel fresh and new.
• Lee has been talking weekly with Paul during the entire process to absorb the story and characters, turning them into the alien conversations you’ll experience. He’s working with the team on actually connecting that writing glue with the gameplay.
• Danny has been building a UQM2 encyclopedia with Paul to document all the ideas that have had 30 years to germinate. He’s also making some awesome music that feels right at home in UQM2.
• We have been working with our amazing community, which has already taken the ProceduralPlanet toy we released and has been improving it and actually integrating it with Dan’s help into UQM2.

Please join us in bidding farewell to Paul and Ken. They are irreplaceable contributors with wells of creativity, and we are so happy to have had their contributions.

Coming Up Next​

This post is already quite long even though we have so much more to say. We’ll be sharing that in a series of notes coming up, but, even better, the development streams are back, baby! They won’t have the same, twice-weekly cadence that we used to have, but we miss you and we love using them to be together with our community and show our work in a fun, authentic, and inspiring way. Plus, Dan and Fred can talk at least 10 times as fast as they write.

We’re sure you’ll have questions and thoughts, and we welcome you in the discussion on Patreon, Discord, Twitter, or Reddit.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

For once, I read a Reddit-thread. Found this:

Want to experience the thrill of beating Star Control 2 for the first time?

During lockdown, I modified the UQM source code and made it a 100% randomized universe.

Every game you play “re-rolls” the universe - meaning you’ll have to rediscover how to beat the game’s complicated puzzles, just like you did in your childhood - adding INFINITE replay-ability to this already classic game. I also updated the game’s dialogue, accordingly, to provide the hints necessary to beat the puzzles.

I call it “Infinite UrQuan Masters”
https://www.infiniteurquanmasters.com

Also, just in case you wanted to make your own mod, I added a COMPLETE WORKING COPY of the game’s source code - downloadable with its own runtime shell, so that its reverse-compatible with every version of Windows.

Remember this? I decided to give it a go. The first noticeable difference is that speech is disabled, because the text has been changed.

It's not kidding when it says that it randomizes everything. That is both good and bad.

I started in Alpha Lalande, which is in Orz-space. Not a big difference from a vanilla game. Actually the system just had the Sol-system overwritten on it, so it has the same planet configuration as Sol. Makes sense.

I finish the tutorial, explore the 'Sol'-system (I think some of the minerals on the planets here have been 're-rolled') and then I step out into Hyperspace.

And see the Quasi-Space Portal just to the right of me, on-screen, it's that close. I immediately hop in, and go talk to the Arilou. They give me some info, and the Ur-Quan crashed vessel is now close to Supox-space. That's quite a journey to go, so I hold off on that until I can upgrade my ship.

So I take the 'K'-exit out of Quasi-space, and am relieved that the Quasi-space exits are still the same. Checking the starmap I now see that the Ilwrath are just to the west of Thraddash-space, the Spathi are in Umgah-space, and the Arilou are in Orz-space... meaning that my starting system is actually in Arilou-space. Weird. I go talk to Commander Hayes about background information, and get a lot of leads to follow up on.

Using those leads, I find that the Orz are in Pkunk-space, the Syreen's starbase is in Ilwrath-space, the VUX are in Mmrmhrm-space, the Chmmr are between Yehat and Shofixti-space, the Druuge are in Yehat-space proper, the Mycon appear to be the top-left corner of the map, and the Zoq-Fot-Pik... are squeezed into the bottom-left corner of the map. Strange... aren't they supposed to have front-row seats to the Ur-Quan/Kohr-Ah duking it out?

I then decide to explore the 'new' Arilou-space for resources, and in the system closest to Alpha Lalande and the Quasi-Space portal I'm shocked to find... Unzervalt. Guess The Vindicator's hazardous journey back to Sol was exaggerated to stroke some poor egos. Anyway, this gives me an opportunity to 'safely' bag an Ur-Quan and get their sphere of influence on the map... and they're centered around Aldebaran, between the old Mycon and Druuge-spaces.

Far, far away from the Zoq-Fot-Pik. This is where the bad parts of the mod start to appear.

Currently I'm looking into two things which I want to know how the 'Infinite'-mod resolves: The location of ZEX's Beauty, and the Rainbow worlds. As there are no real in-game clues to the location of ZEX's Beauty, I'm wondering what Admiral ZEX will have to say. As for the Rainbow Worlds, I checked... and they've been 're-rolled'. Only a handful of the Rainbow worlds have in-game clues to reveal their location, so I'm wondering how they've been re-rolled - is it completely random, or is the 'pattern' maintained somehow?

Until I have those answers, I'm not certain how to rate this mod. Some sort of randomizer to gain replay-value would be very nice, but it seems clear right away that the mod is overstepping its boundaries.

 

[Infinitron]

Burnout: https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2023/09/parting-words-from-ken-ford/

Parting Words from Ken Ford​

I have decided to step away from work.

This decision has been several years in the making, although I have — more or less effectively — avoided coming to this realization over that time.

Several life events have helped me realize that my ability to healthily — physically, mentally, and emotionally — balance my professional career with my personal life has become increasingly ineffective. Being somewhat older and somewhat wiser (or at least more aware of this lack of balance), I have come to the decision that to lead a healthier personal life, I need to step away from my career.

This is not an easy decision and, as I’ve said, I have been struggling to come to this point for several years. But once I allowed myself to see a life separate from my programming career, a lot of my anxiety and stress has eased.

I regret leaving in the middle of a project, but I think any “break up” (external or internal) is always challenging and will always feel ill-timed. In the interest of my health and serenity, this is the correct choice for me.

This decision has nothing to do with any individuals, teams, or projects. It has everything to do with me. I recently said, “Part (a lot?) of my [professional] success has been due to my frenetic pace, trying to outrun my self-doubt! And that just ain’t working any more.” I am tired, and want to “relax” and enjoy some quiet time, without work deadlines, without worrying that I am “failing”. Having never had any real computer science education (well, except for Introductory Pascal back in the early 80s!), I have always felt like an imposter. I feel I have succeeded by sheer dint of will, effort, and pace. At this point, I am exhausted.

I appreciate all who have shown me friendship, love, and support over the years. Almost to a person, I have been accepted and treated warmly throughout my career, and my current “crew” at Pistol Shrimp is no different. As I’ve stated, it’s not about “them” — it’s about me. I have never doubted the current and future success of any team I have been a part of, and that continues. But my future success needs to be based on more than my ability to think, react (and type!) quickly. Although slightly chagrined at realizing I’m just not producing work (or enjoyment) at the level I should be, I need to make this change.

Work has defined me for decades. That is probably unhealthy to the extreme to which I took it. I am grateful for what my career has afforded me, but I am relieved to look at a life beyond work. I suppose I may miss the daily challenges of work. Then again, maybe not! But I am looking forward to different challenges: helping my kids build their careers/lives, reading all those books I’ve been meaning to (and maybe getting the gumption to try writing one myself?!), becoming world renowned for my fantasy sports success . Mostly, though, I’m simply looking forward to not feeling inadequate for and overwhelmed by the tasks in front of me, whatever they may be.

Thanks again to any and all who have trudged alongside me on this journey. I couldn’t have done it without you!

Regards,
Ken

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Until I have those answers, I'm not certain how to rate this mod. Some sort of randomizer to gain replay-value would be very nice, but it seems clear right away that the mod is overstepping its boundaries.

Update: I have those answers.

Admiral ZEX reads out his clue as usual, but the translated text is just a direct reference to the Beast's location... which in my case was about three systems over, not in some distant and remote part of the quadrant.

But it's the rainbow worlds where the mod shits the bed. At least two rainbow worlds can be found by talking to people (let me know if there are more, as I could only get rainbow world-info from the Shofixti and the Slylandro) but in my game both clues pointed to the same rainbow world, which was located at Beta Centauri. But just prior to that, I had discovered another rainbow world by accident, in Alpha Geminorum.

But it was while talking to the Slylandro that I got a second, more cryptic clue: "Rainbow worlds all orbit the same-looking star." Meaning that if I can find one rainbow world, I have a solid lead on the others. That narrows things down to about... ooh, ~60 worlds or such?

But in the end, I can't recommend this mod as it's too random. Dumping the Kohr-Ah and the Zoq-Fot-Pik in two different corners of the map, and then the same with the Shofixti and the Yehat, and almost the same with the Utwig and the Supox - while dumping the Quasi-Space Portal, Unzervalt and the Slylandro homeworld all in the same stamp-sized part of space - it just feels silly. Especially since I noticed that the "new" locations of the alien races are almost always confined to the "old" locations of some alien races.

If a mod was released that only randomized the planets within the systems, and the resources on the planets, but kept everything else in place - that mod could be a winner, by adding some random element into what is otherwise a static game, once you get to know it.

EDIT: Spent some time trying to figure out the rainbow world-logic being used in the mod. I found one 'arm' of the rainbow worlds, which spanned Beta Centauri -> Alpha Vitalis -> Beta Tucanae -> Alpha Geminorum -> Gamma Lyncis. These form a straight line of stars that are all the same color, but NOT the same size, so keep that in mind.

But after having visited ~90% of all the same-colored stars on the map, I've only found two rainbow worlds on the other 'arm' - Alpha Sculptoris and Alpha Arietis. I cannot find where (or even if) that arm hooks up with the other arm, or where the three other rainbow worlds might be. The rainbow worlds on the other arm are pretty evenly spaced out - but I've checked every same-colored star along the purported axis of the other arm, and there aren't any rainbow worlds there.

Is it possible that the mod managed to create a nicely laid out 'arm' of rainbow worlds? Or does it create one arm and then dump the others wherever they can?

Whatever the case is, I've had enough.

 

[Infinitron]

(They actually weren't using Unity before but their own engine)

https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2023/09/no-longer-waiting-for-godot/

No Longer Waiting for Godot​

What’s in an Engine?​

A little bit of background: when we charted our course for UQM2 and Pistol Shrimp, one of our guiding principles was “own what we make.” That had a lot of meanings, but it directly pointed to building our own technology, and leveraging other open-source technologies. Fred was passionate about making Simple, our tool for creating gameplay and netplay. Working together, Ken started creating tools to apply audiovisual layers on top.

We are well aware of a lot of game development technologies, having worked with them professionally or as tinkerers. Unity and Unreal are two of the most familiar proprietary packages, while GameMaker is another, accessible starting point. Simple actually ran within Unity at one time in the past, too!

We could have used any of those technologies, but we didn’t. A major reason was that it would take our ownership of what we made away. The other one is a general peril of any monolithic software package: you often spend more time working around its 100 unneeded features just to use the 10 needed ones. It might have saved us time – we truly don’t know – but it would have put our project at risk in other ways.

The recent events surrounding Unity are painful to hear about and must feel like shocks of cold water for other developers and players.

On Ownership​

For better or worse, we’ve been through losing ownership many times before.

Having worked for larger companies in the past, we never really get to keep the work we’ve done. If we have a cool solution to a problem on one project, we may not be able to use it on the next. While the idea can live on in our head, the intellectual property and sweat output belongs to the company. Even technologies we license on a project may not be up to us, and the parent company (or owner of the technology) could decide we can no longer use it. We didn’t want to lose our ideas and technologies – no matter how good, bad, or otherwise – anymore.

The Ur-Quan masters is open source, and that also means no one can take it away. As long as someone is willing to port it, it can be made to run on anything. We like that. As long as Pistol Shrimp owns what we do, we can decide our own product’s destiny. We can make different platforms support it. We can release it freely. We can make sure it embodies what we want for it, even if that changes, just as UQM became open source many years after its original release.

UQM2’s needs were fairly modest, so we calculated it would be easier to build what we needed ourselves rather than buy into one of the behemoth engines. When Ken journeyed into retirement, Fred and I took stock of the remaining work. Our question was simple: without Ken, is it going to be faster to just finish in the direction we’re going, or is there another way to do this that will simplify and expedite our work? One way or another, we would have to pick up the remaining work somehow. We took a week to seriously research options, and we arrived at an answer. It was time to pivot.

Enter Godot​

I (Dan) have watched and toyed with the open-source Godot engine with some interest for its relatively short lifespan. Frankly speaking, I like it, and I’ve even enjoyed a couple games that were made with it. At the end of July, I suggested to Fred that we give it a look as a potential candidate for how we would be handling our audiovisual needs.

After a week of building some proof-of-concepts, both Fred and I weren’t turned off. We might have too much experience to ever be really sold on anything, but we hadn’t found anything to terrify us, and we liked what we were able to do.

Within another week, our proof-of-concept quickly stopped being a proof-of-concept and became the answer. We had almost all of UQM2 running within Godot! Within less than a month, we had all of UQM2 functioning, as well as features we had planned but had not been able to do.

So why do we like it?

By working in a world that was more fleshed-out, we empower ourselves to not only do more work on our own, but also more readily bring in additional contributors. A few of our community members who had been working on our ProceduralPlanet toy, for example, have turned to work on a Godot implementation. That was made much simpler by having a more standardized framework for everyone to work and learn in instead of our bespoke solutions.

Godot leaves a lot to our imagination as far as how to answer tech questions. Unlike larger tools which try to provide a lot of easy answers (which are only easy if you promise to color inside the lines), it leaves a lot of implementation left to the end-user and the project. It’s “just enough engine”.

Permit me to wax philosophical for a moment. Video games – still a new idea, relatively speaking – are a marriage of technology and artwork, and the tools we use often inform the kind of art we can make. If the only tool the world had for 2d art was a pencil, we would have a lot of pencil drawings. What about paint, crayons, and inks? Massive, proprietary tools often optimize for their own solutions to problems like how a camera should work. Applying different solutions or trying to deviate becomes difficult. A ‘best practice’ becomes a solved problem, and then developers don’t have the opportunity to offer new, different ways to do it. Most importantly, tools represent the visions of creators, and we want them to be as individual and as varied as the people who use them. We celebrate the diversity of art through technology which gives people the ability to decide, for themselves, what tools, mediums, and ideas let them feel and be creative. Godot fits this spirit!

Not even last and certainly not least, Godot is available under the permissive MIT license. In the original spirit of UQM, we – and others – can build our own versions of Godot and guarantee it will be supported as long as we want. Any improvements we make to Godot or anything we build just for Godot is something we can also share outwardly as well. Simple running on Godot means there is a long future for not just UQM2, but games that haven’t even been imagined. The ProceduralPlanet toy that’s part of UQM2 is something we want to release for everyone and we hope will help someone else make their own game. Whatever we do, Pistol Shrimp and the world at large will never lose access to it or have the privileges of ownership revoked. We deeply feel that it touches the heart of our goal: “owning what we make”.

Last, for this blog post, anyway, is simply: shifting to Godot will help us finish UQM2. There’s almost no better reason than that, but, as outlined above, we hope you can appreciate our multifaceted thoughts as well.

What Did it Cost?​

The short answer is: about a month. The longer answer is more nuanced. With a shift into some new technology, we had to pause, learn, and re-create some things. However, we had very few things we needed to actually re-create from scratch. Ken’s work on the game viewer already told us how we would be doing things, and it was just a matter of porting over some of those ideas. As people who work in technology may know, ideas are cheap, but proving that an idea works from front to back is the hard part. We already had done a lot of that, and going from our handmade game viewer to using Godot as a different game viewer was fairly straightforward.

There are lots of little details that are far too technical to write about here, but the other big aspect of our work is in the content. Not just code, but the actual game part a player will experience. Because so much gameplay had been built in Simple, we got to keep all of that. We had a few rendering tricks that were used in our own game viewer, but the actual content that makes a ship look like a ship had been made and just came along for the ride. Beyond that, because some of our solutions to certain things like UI were still just coming online with our current technology, we were able to build all new kinds of content we had been waiting to build until later.

While we spent about a month on the pivot, we also shot past where we were previously on other fronts during that time. We had to slow down certain aspects, but others became much faster. We started having entirely new questions about how we would do certain things because Godot enabled us to reach those milestones faster. It had given us a tool to solve so many old problems that we started uncovering new ones. That is a strong and exciting indicator of progress. We like that!

Lastly, as we touched on in the previous section, we are happy about what it didn’t cost. We’ll never have to worry about an onerous license or surprise fee that affects our future. We’ll never encounter an intractable problem because our technology is locked behind closed doors. And we’ll never have to worry about the game relying on anything that could disappear tomorrow and make it unplayable.

And We’re Off!​

This would be an awfully silly blog post if we didn’t have any Godot to show you, but we’d actually like to take this opportunity to walk through everything on one of our development streams. We can show you things, you can ask questions, and we can learn what’s really exciting about these changes together. Games are built on a lot of imagination and “what could be”, and it will be much more fun to show and tell together. We’re much more interested in what you have to say than what we have to say!

Join us on Wednesday, September 27th at 11am PT at https://twitch.tv/pebby. In the meantime, feel free to join the discussion on Patreon, Discord, Twitter, or Reddit.

Interplanetary concept.

Starbase menu concept.

Orbital view concept art.

And thank you to everyone supporting us on Patreon for helping us continue to own what we make.

 

[Infinitron]

Big article for Godot engine fans: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/pistol-shrimp-and-the-importance-of-owning-what-you-make

Pistol Shrimp and the importance of owning what you make​

Ex-Toys For Bob developers Fred Ford and Dan Gerstein talk about The Ur-Quan Masters 2, tools, and what it was like switching engines to Godot midway through development




Pistol Shrimp was established by a group of veteran Toys For Bob developers who had learned the importance of owning what they make through first-hand experience.

Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, two of Pistol Shrimp's four co-founders Fred Ford and Dan Gerstein say it's an important consideration because while the medium itself has changed tremendously in the decades they've been making games, some things remain largely unchanged.

"I've seen it in many stages and many guises, but one thing that's pretty constant is publishers tend to want to keep everything they can [in exchange for] the money that you get from them," Ford says.

Fred Ford

Ford has been involved in legal disputes for control of the sci-fi strategy series Star Control he created with fellow Pistol Shrimp co-founder Paul Reiche under the studio name Toys For Bob.

While working for Crystal Dynamics in the '90s, they built a long-term tool suite and pitched an IP that was never picked up. Since they were employees, Crystal Dynamics technically owned both, which became an issue when Reiche and Ford stopped working with the studio.

"When we separated from them, not only could we not have our IP, but we knew they were never going to use their tools and it was pretty clear our IP was just going to languish there as well," Ford says.

"So we asked them can we have these back because you're not going to use them? And they said 'Sure, for $1 million.'"

Fortunately for the newly independent developers, Crystal Dynamics came back shortly after saying it needed their help with a matter, giving them the leverage they needed to get their tools and IP back as they struck out on their own as Toys For Bob.

Ford says the IP in question served as an inspiration for a key part of Toys For Bob's 2011 hit Skylanders, but the benefits to the studio were not as large as you might imagine considering Toys For Bob accepted an acquisition deal from Activision in 2005.

There were other problems with lack of ownership. Toys For Bob had been relying on Criterion's Renderware middleware when it was working on a contract basis for Activision, but after EA acquired Criterion (including Renderware), Activision refused to include its rival in the development pipeline and insisted on the company dump it. A similar thing happened when Microsoft acquired physics engine middleware Havok.

Gerstein says the studio learned its lesson, even though it was already fortunate to be working in a way that made such switches less painful.

Dan Gerstein

"Even though we had to switch out parts and move the bricks in the building, so to speak, the people working in the house maybe didn't notice as much. We were able to keep a lot of stuff because we put our stake in the ground and said, 'This is how our game logic works, period.'"

After years of working with the Toys For Bob toolset to build it out as needed and a team of developers at the studio who tended to stick around for many years, Gerstein said the company had built up a team that worked especially well with the tools it built.

"We were able to go from Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, which was a Wii only title, to the next year shipping Skylanders Giants multiplatform all within the span of a year because we had built up a technological… what's the opposite of debt? Cache? We were able to build a lot of stuff and spin it into more things and that became so much easier because we got to keep what we had already done."

But as the Skylanders series progressed, Toys For Bob alternated installments with Vicarious Visions, which had its own tools. Gerstein says in seeking to unify the series, Activision mandated that Toys For Bob drop its own tools in favor of Vicarious Visions'.

"When we started using Vicarious Visions' tools, we lost all of that [technical cache]," Gerstein says. "And we lost all that institutional knowledge and had to learn how to do it a different way… The initial transition was pretty rough because we felt like we had solved a lot of problems. And if we had license to do it the way we thought made sense, we probably would have kept on going."

All of those experiences have informed Pistol Shrimp's approach to game development.

In his waning days with Activision, Ford received a conflict-of-interest waiver from the publisher so he could start working on the next conceptual evolution of what he thought Toys For Bob's tools could be, and that tool (which he calls Simple) is how the studio is building its Star Control follow-up The Ur-Quan Masters 2.

As for the engine underneath the thing, it was up until recently a "homebrew" engine the team planned to stick with for as long as it made sense. A switch to something else – be it Unreal or Unity – was always a consideration eventually, and Ford had designed the tools with basic engine functions in mind so it could be adapted wherever needed.

Concept for The Ur-Quan Masters 2 by Caleb Worcester

"We've always been leery of third-party stuff," Ford says, "not just because it can be taken away from us, but also because it tends to give you everything and the kitchen sink and the gas station down the road and the city 50 miles away. It's easy to lose focus on what you're making because of all the things you can grasp, but maybe not master."

While Gerstein says it's great that engines like Unity and Unreal are making game development more accessible, he is less thrilled with the effect ubiquitous corporate solutions for game development have on developers and the games themselves.

"One thing I don't love about these monolithic tools is they try to solve everything for you," Gerstein says. "Regardless of the corporate control, it's really when you think about it one person's idea of how things should be done. And as we're seeing with all technology, we're still learning better and better ways to do things.

"So if you try to make a monolithic package that assumes it knows how every single person is going to use it, it's kind of like creating a universal paint brush and saying, 'You get one paint brush.' Well, what if I want a fan brush? What if I want a thin one?"

As an example, Gerstein says he's particularly not a fan of visual scripting used in Blender and Unreal's Blueprints, among others.

"I have really strong feelings about visual scripting and I feel like it is a mistake to do that," Gerstein says. "Some people like it and that's fine, but the point is at least we're allowed to have different viewpoints on it.

"But if a software package comes along and says, 'This is your only entry point; have fun with visual scripting,' then you're going to turn off a lot of people, and you're also going to train people in a very narrow skillset and it starts to feel like a production line and a factory… These giant packages, by trying to solve problems for everyone, start to feel like, 'I'm not really learning how to make a game; I'm learning how to play with all the bells and whistles that I've been given in this box.' And I never think about, 'What other things could I want? What other things could I have?' It gets so rigid.

Concept art for a ringed world in The Ur-Quan Masters 2 by Damon Czanik

"From a player's standpoint, my running joke is that I can smell an Unreal Engine game just when I look at the UI because it makes certain things so easy to do, and some things so much harder. Why would you take the path of most resistance? But then it starts to normalize games and you start seeing it. 'I see that camera motion. Yup, that's the default motion from Unity with a few tweaks applied to it.' or whatever. I love that people can get up and running, but it kind of pigeonholes you and puts you in a little box to work in."

Be that as it may, Pistol Shrimp has found an external engine solution for Ur-Quan Masters 2, and it's one that people have been talking about a lot lately: Godot.

Ford's brother and fellow Pistol Shrimp co-founder Ken had been putting together the homebrew engine the studio was working with, but recently retired. Ford felt he'd be spread too thin if he tried to take over that part of development, so Gerstein suggested taking a look at the open-source engine Godot.

Ford took a look, and within a month had the gameplay fully ported to the engine, just in time for Unity to announce its Runtime Fee and send interest in Godot skyrocketing.

"I would say Godot is more spartan compared to Unity," Ford says of the engine. "That appealed to both me and Dan. It's also C++ based and open source, and we're making our stuff in C++. I had done a Unity port of our gameplay really early on, but the fact that was just more difficult to get the C++ stuff inserted into Unity – it was just more trouble from a development perspective. Godot was just an easier path for us to follow."

Gerstein says the switch was made considerably easier because of the development principles the studio had embraced.

"So much of the work we've done is preserved. We learned our lesson… When we had everything up and running in a month, it's because we had invested a lot into our own technology – not just tech but the actual game we're working on – and the work I put into Ur-Quan Masters 2 was 100% portable and would work in our custom viewer. It would work in a Unity viewer if we made one, and now it works in Godot. We had not done anything that bound ourselves to work in any particular engine."

As for how Godot is to work with, Gerstein says it naturally feels like an open-source project. Because it's being made by people putting their time into it for free, there's a vast disparity between the parts that are more finished and polished and the parts that haven't yet had anyone give them particular love.

"One thing you'll find that's quite different is it doesn't really try to solve a lot for you, but it gives you a lot of options for how to do things," Gerstein says.

It also might be a challenge for less technical users, he adds.

Concept painting of the Syreen from The Ur-Quan Masters by George Barr

"It's not user-unfriendly, but it expects a little bit more of the user and it wants the user to learn a little bit more," he says. "But it works quite well; you just have to get over some of those learning hurdles. If you're more artistically/designer-minded, you have to become a little bit engineering-minded, and a little bit will take you far.

There's also a great community behind it, he says, with "lots of wholesome intent" and support for it just because it exists.

"Not to sound overly sappy, but that gives me warm fuzzy feelings and I think that attracts the right communities who are here for the right reasons," Gerstein says.

As for what he would tell developers interested in picking up Godot, Gerstein is clear.

"You're not alone," he stresses. "There's a large Godot community dedicated to [providing advice for devs picking it up]. Their own Discord has set up channels for it. It's literally like refugees coming in, they don't know anything about Godot but everything about Unity. So there's this whole microclimate of Unity people coming to Godot."

Beyond that, Gerstein suggests developers just maintain their ability to adapt, when possible.

"I know agile is such an overused term, but the agility is so valuable," he says. "Agility is a strong suit. It doesn't mean 'don't commit to anything,' but if you can do things in a way that is portable, your life is going to be easier.

"For a first-time person, that might be too hard to imagine. But so many game assets can work in different places as long as they have the right implementation. It ain't so bad to learn how to do that. But if you buy in so deeply into a proprietary technology, it can be hard to dislodge yourself from that."

He notes that relying on certain technology from proprietary engines – particularly in graphics – can be committing a developer to either going with that engine or facing a painful reworking to get up and running with an alternative.

"We maybe find a little more freedom because we're gameplay-focused, and that's not a one-size-fits-all," he adds.

As for Ford, his advice echoes Gerstein's, but applies it to basically every decision in game development.

"One size doesn't fit all," he says.

 

[Infinitron]

The game has been renamed again: https://pistolshrimpgames.com/2023/10/introducing-free-stars-children-of-infinity/

Introducing Free Stars: Children of Infinity​

In our bubbling cauldron which is the potion that will be UQM2, we have been adding the odds and ends we need for the game. Design and audiovisual content are like ingredients which add foundational magic but are there to be enjoyed later. Sometimes, though, we add a big, phosphorus ingredient, spilling out some awesome theatrical fog that curls all over the stage. Behold:

• Our game’s official title, Free Stars: Children of Infinity
• The launch of our corresponding website.
• The upcoming re-release of The Ur-Quan Masters on Steam.

To continue our Halloween-themed metaphor, follow us, the cackling witches, as you imagine gnarled fingers beckoning you forward: “Walk with us, and inhale the wonders of our brew.”

Children of Infinity​

When we finished pre-production a few months ago, we knew we were ready to create a fitting title. The Ur-Quan Masters was a solid subtitle for the original game, describing the main threat, and evoking its epic themes about freedom versus servitude. We searched for another name that would hint at what this new story is about and how the game might feel. With the story finished, we decided on Children of Infinity to describe the adventure awaiting you after vanquishing The Ur-Quan Masters. Let the speculation begin!

Free Stars:​

For fans of UQM, we hope you’ll immediately understand the inspiration behind the name for our series. Following the Title: Subtitle paradigm, we wanted a phrase to tie our whole saga together without boxing in our story. If The Ur-Quan Masters was about the Ur-Quan, then the series is really about the Alliance of Free Stars, implying an iconic cast of characters, and their many adventures through hyperspace and beyond.

By adopting Free Stars as the name of our series and setting, we have a direct way to talk about all of our games that we’ve worked on. After all, we don’t want to claim games we didn’t work on, let alone stories that aren’t connected to our multiverse. We want to identify which stories and games are ours and continue building our saga around the Alliance of Free Stars, from The Ur-Quan Masters to Children of Infinity.

Names are Hard!​

We look forward to sharing a write-up of how we came up with these names and the hundreds we didn’t wind up using. The short version is that we tried to put a lot of thought and care into our choices. For example, the most obvious choice – The Ur-Quan Masters 2 – doesn’t make sense given our new story’s focus. Even with all that, names are inherently subjective. The same word can have different connotations and meanings as we go between cultures and languages. While we had fun trying to find some words that satisfied our own ideas, words are really about communication, and we hope it conveys our vision for this game. After all, this is the title of a game that we are making for others to play. We truly hope you’re as excited as we are.

Broadening Our Reach​

If you’re reading this, you already know at least a little about our development. Maybe you even support us on Patreon or hang out in our Discord! If you do, you must be exceedingly attractive and intelligent (we collect a lot of analytics). However, not everyone may know about Children of Infinity, much less The Ur-Quan Masters! We want to start taking opportunities to get the word out, and it’s important for us to create a presence online, so that people can have a chance to hear about us, with fun, weird, and enjoyable places to grab on to. You’ve seen some of that with our ongoing social media presence, but it’s time for something meatier (Dan is vegetarian and apologizes for not finding a suitable replacement word… veggier?).

The Ur-Quan Masters – Now on Steam​

First off, we’ve taken the steps to get the previous game on Steam, which now has the full title, Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters. While UQM was – and always can be – available elsewhere, having a presence on Steam for UQM is helpful in a few ways. It’s a place where we can showcase the work of our community in maintaining UQM and maybe even help it reach new audiences. It also lets us establish a presence for the whole series. If game number 1 is on Steam, when game number 2 is coming, we can tie them together nicely in a way both new and old players can understand. Book stores, as an analogy, usually put each book in a series sitting next to each other on a shelf, and we want to do the same.

A Game Website​

Secondly, we have an actual website for Free Stars now. It reveals at least a few things no one has seen before, and as we share more and more of Children of Infinity, we will continue to grow it with content soon. We want it to be a home for the series and take one more step to making this sequel a reality, especially for the fans who don’t even know there’s a sequel coming, or even the new fans who might learn about this series. Lastly, as we talk about the game to other people, it is a helpful tool to remind everyone of the legacy and influence of the original UQM. There’s a reason we’re all here and excited to work on or play a sequel.

Coming Soon​

Now that we have all of this in the open, we are only going to build on it. Stay tuned for more cool things coming, including our 31st anniversary next month. We need your help too! Please share links to this blog post, to UQM on Steam, and our website for Free Stars. Remember, like Will Rogers said, “Someone who hasn’t played UQM is just a fan who doesn’t know it yet.”




Thank you for reading, and please come join the discussion on Patreon, Reddit, and Discord.

They've put up their own version of Star Control 2 on Steam, in before another Stardock lawsuit or has that all been taken care of?

 

[Infinitron]

Some bits of lore from the new website: https://freestarsgame.com/

The Precursors​

The Precursors vanished 200,000 years ago, leaving behind relics of their highly advanced technology. After the Ur-Quan used a Precursor battlestation to conquer Earth, a rogue human found a way to strike back with a Precursor starship of their own. It has become clear that Precursor relics are dangerous in the wrong hands, and the Alliance is forming a special investigation to search for them.

Zoq-Fot-Pik​

The Zoq-Fot-Pik are a union of three species who evolved on the same world. One of the youngest civilizations in hyperspace, they joined the Alliance of Free Stars at a time that it was being rebuilt. They have been keen to share their knowledge. One species has asked for a separate profile – not for their species history, but for a sport called "Frungy".

Umgah​

The Umgah are driven by two main motivations: boredom and humor. Even when we were officially enemies, the Umgah would abruptly prank their own forces, and even help our allies. They have been suspiciously quiet since the war turned, and their boredom will probably ferment another galactic-scale prank.

Orz​

As new recruits to the Alliance of Free Stars, the Orz have been loyal but strange friends. Their arrival near Earth came just as suddenly as the exit of the Androsynth –– the rivals to humanity for the past century. Rumored to be from another dimension, the Orz have aroused suspicion from several of our allies.

Seems like more will be revealed over time.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

in before another Stardock lawsuit or has that all been taken care of?

That's done and dusted.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Giga cringe.

This is giving off Star Citizen vibes now, as in, every new announcement will be about a NEW site, NEW social media post, NEW content, NEW Kickstarter campaign. Everything NEW except when the goddamn game is actually coming out.