The Ur-Quan Masters

The Ur-Quan Masters is a 2002 open source fangame modification, based on the action-adventure science fiction game Star Control II. The original Star Control II was released for the PC in 1992, and ported to the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer in 1994. It has been frequently mentioned among the best games of all time, with additional praise for its writing, world design, character design, and music.

The Ur-Quan Masters
Developer(s)The Ur-Quan Masters Team, Michael Martin, Serge van den Boom
SeriesStar Control
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux
Release2002
Genre(s)Adventure, shoot 'em up
Mode(s)Single-player, multiplayer

After the Star Control II copyrights reverted to creators Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford, they licensed their content to their fan community to keep their series in the public eye. The open source development team was able to remake the 3DO version as a port to modern operating systems. Released under the title The Ur-Quan Masters, the modified remake has since been downloaded nearly two million times, earning critical reception as one of the best free games available, with additional praise for its fan modifications.

Gameplay

The Ur-Quan Masters allows players to freely explore planets and moons.

The Ur-Quan Masters is a re-make of Star Control II, an action-adventure science fiction game, set in an open universe.[1] The game features exploration, resource-gathering, combat and diplomacy.[2] Much of the game is played from a top-down perspective,[3] with real-time combat between alien ships with different abilities.[4] Players are able to freely explore a galaxy featuring hundreds of stars, planets, and moons, which contain resources for the player to scan and retrieve in a lander vehicle.[3] The player also spends much of their time conversing with alien races in branching dialog sequences, with the goal of rallying an alliance to defeat the titular Ur-Quan.[5]

The player plays the role of the captain of a lost research mission returning to Earth.[3] The player soon discovers that Earth has been conquered by the Ur-Quan, and begins a quest to acquire the knowledge, resources, and allies that will help free humanity from slavery.[3] During the story, the Ur-Quan are distracted by a civil war with their more militant relatives the Kohr-Ah.[6] This gives the player enough time to make contact with dozens of unique alien races, influencing the outcome of the conflict.[2] After rallying humanity's former allies, the captain is able to overcome and defeat the Ur-Quan.[4]

Development

Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford licensed their copyrighted Star Control II assets for open source under a GNU General Public License.

The Star Control series was created by Fred Ford and Paul Reiche, with Accolade publishing the games.[7] The first release in 1990 was a space strategy and action game, inspired by the 1961 space combat game Spacewar! from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[8] The 1992 sequel Star Control II abandoned the first game's strategic elements and greatly expanded the story,[9] instead wrapping their combat system into an adventure-based narrative.[8] The sequel was ported to the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer console in 1994, adding fully-voiced dialog and several other updates to the sound and graphics.[9] Star Control received awards upon release, with even more awards for Star Control II.[8] Journalists have listed Star Control among their best games of all time,[10] with Star Control II earning even more "best game" rankings through the 1990s,[11] 2000s,[12] and 2010s.[13] Star Control II is also ranked among the best games in several creative areas, including writing,[14] world design,[15] character design,[16] and music.[17]

By the early 2000s, the Star Control II copyrights reverted to Ford and Reiche, triggered by a contractual clause where the game was no longer generating royalties.[18][19] With the game no longer available in stores, Ford and Reiche wanted to keep the game in the public eye, so that they could one day make another game in the series.[18] Ford and Reiche still owned the rights to Star Control I and II, but they could not successfully purchase the Star Control trademark from publisher Accolade, leading them to consider a new title for a potential follow-up.[20] This led them to remake Star Control II as The Ur-Quan Masters.[21] Their independent studio Toys for Bob hired Chris Nelson as their first summer intern, and his enthusiasm for open source software led him to work with Fred Ford to port the game to modern operating systems.[18] Ford recalled that "we haven't made a sequel yet, so we thought the least we could do is release the source code and let the fans revive it on modern computers."[22]

The open source project officially launched in 2002, when Ford and Reiche licensed the source code from the 3DO version of Star Control II as open source under the GNU General Public License.[23] Ford and Reiche own all the copyrighted content in the first two Star Control games,[24] and granted the fan-operated project a free, perpetual license to the Star Control II content and the Ur-Quan Masters trademark.[25] The first version of The Ur-Quan Masters was inefficient by Ford and Reiche's standards, but Nelson knew skilled contacts in the open source community who could keep progressing with the project.[18] The fan community continued the project with further support, enhancements, and modifications.[9] Ford and Reiche personally credit the open source Ur-Quan Masters for making their creation available from 2001 to 2011, before Star Control became available for sale digitally through GOG.com.[18] In an interview with O'Reilly Media, the fans-turned-developers stated that a for-profit company would not be able to justify the port and remake, and that "without the open source philosophy, The Ur-Quan Masters would never have existed."[23]

Modifications

The HD modification has earned a reputation of its own.

The Ur-Quan Masters has an active fanbase, maintaining both the open source project and an extensive wiki.[22] The most essential modifications extended the original code to operate on newer operating systems, in order to resolve compatibility issues that arose from the transition away from the original DOS platform.[9] Fans have since modified and extended the project several times. Reiche has responded that "our policy has been to let people do whatever they want, as long as they don't turn our characters into mass murderers or make money with it. If you're making money with our stuff, we'd like a pizza."[22]

The Ur-Quan Masters also introduced features from the 3DO version that were previously unavailable on other platforms, including improved scaling in combat, improved planetary graphics, and full voice acting.[9] The extensions further added mod support and online multiplayer combat, neither of which were supported in the classic games.[4] The most notable fan modification is the high-definition version of the game, The Ur-Quan Masters HD, released in 2013.[26] The HD version was created by re-painting every frame of animation by hand.[27]

Reception

Since its 2002 release, The Ur-Quan Masters has been downloaded nearly two million times.[28] Soon after its debut, the game was featured in PC PowerPlay in its compilation of free games, celebrating it as a "timeless classic" from the "golden age of gaming".[29] Finnish magazine Pelit reviewed The Ur-Quan Masters in 2004, rating it two stars for its timeless appeal, as well as new features and remixed music.[30] Retro Gamer featured The Ur-Quan Masters on the cover of their June 2005 edition. They further praised Ford and Reiche for making such a quality game available as an open source project, stating that "this small Californian group has seen fit to grace the gaming world with one of its finest achievements, and at no cost."[8] In a 2011 feature about open source games, Michael Blake of IGN celebrated The Ur-Quan Masters as one of the greatest games, and a "pitch-perfect port to modern operating systems." He lauded the game experience, describing how "UQM completely hooked me, with the genius single-player storyline and the hectic multiplayer of Super Melee mode both good enough to warrant the download on their own".[2]

The Ur-Quan Masters has been included on several best games lists since its release. In 2008, PC Gamer named The Ur-Quan Masters as one of the best free games.[31] Game Developer Magazine featured the game in their 2010 list of open source space games, praising its scale and charm, as well as its new features.[32] The game was also listed in Maximum PC's 2015 "best free games" feature.[33] Tom's Guide included The Ur-Quan Masters in their list of top classic games re-released for free, praising its staying power as "few games today feature the same mix of narrative depth, sandbox exploration and enjoyable space combat that have won the game a cult following to this day."[34] In 2019, PCGamesN ranked The Ur-Quan Masters as one of the top 15 space games ever made, celebrating its characters, dialog and sense of discovery. They additionally praised it as "one of the best free PC games you'll ever find".[3]

The Ur-Quan Masters HD

The HD fan-remake The Ur-Quan Masters HD has received praise of its own. Rock, Paper, Shotgun celebrated it as an "ambitious and well-received fan-made (and free) remake", praising it for "retain[ing] a certain 1990s vibe despite being made more appropriate to modern machines. It lends it a certain psychedelic silliness that today's more self-regarding space games seem to lack."[35] Kotaku likewise praised the HD updates to the visuals and sound,[26] with Hardcore Gaming 101 also calling it "a brilliant port and a fantastic initiative to keep old games relevant".[9] The HD version was also praised by Dominic Tarason of PCGamesN, who describes the detailed hand-painted modification as "a genuinely impressive piece of work."[27] Since its release in 2012, The Ur-Quan Masters HD has been downloaded over 200,000 times.[36]

References

  1. Hamilton, Kirk (September 19, 2013). "The Game That "Won" Our Classic PC Games List (If It Had A Winner)". Kotaku. Retrieved April 3, 2018.
  2. Blake, Michael (June 23, 2011), "PC Gaming: Doomed? or zDoomed?", IGN, retrieved October 8, 2020
  3. Staff (January 27, 2019). "The best space games on PC". PCGamesN. Archived from the original on January 27, 2019. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  4. Haas, Pete (January 1, 2013). "Star Control 2 HD Remake Now Available". Cinema Blend. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  5. Hope, Patrick (September 24, 2013). "Patrick Hope: Into the vault with little-known Ur-Quan Masters". The Dickinson Press. Retrieved May 28, 2020.
  6. Corbett, Richard (February 15, 2016). "The RPG Scrollbars: Praise The Ur-Quan Masters". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Archived from the original on October 9, 2020. Retrieved October 14, 2020.
  7. Kalata, Kurt (September 11, 2018). "Star Control". Hardcore Gaming 101. Archived from the original on February 23, 2020. Retrieved June 3, 2020.
  8. Szczepaniak, John (June 2005). "Control & Conquer" (PDF). Retro Gamer Volume Two, Issue Two. pp. 85–87. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
  9. Kalata, Kurt (September 11, 2018). "Star Control II". Hardcore Gaming 101. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
  10. Polygon Staff (November 29, 2017). "500 Best Games of All Time". Polygon. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  11. Hutchison, Lee (July 7, 2020). Dacanay, Sean; Niehaus, Marcus (eds.). "Star Control Creators Paul Reiche & Fred Ford: Extended Interview". Ars Technica. Archived (Transcript) from the original on July 7, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2020. Fred Ford: Star Control II, well and Star Control I have always been near and dear to our hearts. It's the first things we worked on, the first things we poured our passion in together. We have some diehard fans as a result of those two games and we wanted to service them and lay the groundwork for a return and keep the games in the fronts of their minds as much as possible so that when we were finally able to return to it we would still have a living audience.
    Paul Reiche: There was a confluence of events that helped this. One was Accolade stopped selling the game and we stopped earning royalties right around your 2000 and that triggered the termination of their exclusive right to sell our game. So we got our game back. What we didn't have was the name Star Control. That was a trademark that the publisher owned and we negotiated back and forth with them, but ultimately we weren't able to come to terms for the name. So we decided, well we can't use that name, let's give it a new name, so we used the Ur-Quan Masters. And we had our very first summer intern, Chris Nelson, a guy from Boston University and he was out here and he was a diehard open-source fan and he wanted to port our game to open source and then release it and sort of talked us through the ramifications and the choices we had to make. And he and largely Fred then ended up porting the game to a form that people could launch, but it was by no means beautiful, fast and elegant and then just re-released it. ...
    Ford: Chris was responsible for setting up all those connections and he knew dedicated fans who were interested in working on it.
    Reiche: And so from 2002 until today we have had like the "Ur-Quan Masters" site, UQM I think, and they've been maintaining it and porting it to new machines and revising the audio and really keeping it alive in the doldrums between 2001 and then 2011 when our games went back on sale at GOG. So the "Ur-Quan Masters" project, the open-source release of the game we created as "Star Control II," that really kept our game alive in the doldrums between say 2001 or 2002 and then 2011 when our games began to be sold again through Good Old Games, known as GOG, which is an electronic distributor of classic games.
  12. GameSpy Staff (May 15, 2001). "Interview with Fred Ford". classicgaming.com. GameSpy. Archived from the original on May 15, 2001. Retrieved November 29, 2020. Fred Ford: [Accolade] owe us another payment for our portion of the property. They have told us they are going to default on this payment which means we are back to owning the characters and settings. They still own the trademark/name and continue to look for someone to buy it from them.
  13. Nirvi, Niko (March 21, 2006). "Star Control - Kontrollin aikakirjat". Pelit. Retrieved August 6, 2020.
  14. Walker, Trey (June 26, 2002). "Star Control II remake in the works". GameSpot. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  15. Barton, Matt (April 19, 2016). Honoring the Code: Conversations with Great Game Designers. CRC Press. pp. 203–. ISBN 978-1-4665-6754-2. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
  16. Wen, Howard (August 11, 2005). "The Ur-Quan Masters". O'Reilly Media. Archived from the original on March 16, 2016. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
  17. Parrish, Peter (July 23, 2013). "Open source Star Control 2 team express doubts over Atari IP sale". PC Invasion. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
  18. Ford, Fred; Reiche III, Paul (June 11, 2019). "The Only Way To Win Is". Updates from Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  19. Booker, Logan (January 12, 2013). "Relive The Glory Of Star Control II In Delicious High Definition With Ur-Quan Masters HD". Kotaku. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  20. Tarason, Dominic (October 22, 2017). "DOS classics Star Control 1 & 2 hit Steam, but you might want to try this HD fan-remaster". PC Games N. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  21. "The Ur-Quan Masters - Download Statistics". SourceForge. The Ur-Quan Masters. December 4, 2020. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  22. Noone, Paul (March 2003). Disc Master Ur-Quan Masters. PC PowerPlay Issue 084. p. 112. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
  23. Berschewsky, Tapio (January 2, 2004). "Ur-Quan Masters (PC) – Vapaus tai kuolema!". Pelit. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
  24. Staff (August 2008). "The Final Frontier". PC Gamer - Volume 15, Issue 8. p. 49. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  25. Staff (January 2010). Space is the Place. Game Developer Magazine. p. 4. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
  26. Griliopoulos, Daniel (December 2015). Best Free Games - The Ur-Quan Masters. United States: Maximum PC. p. 54. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  27. Corpuz, John (April 19, 2017). "15 Classic PC Games Gone Free". Tom's Guide. Retrieved November 29, 2020.
  28. Meer, Alec (January 7, 2013). "Ur-Quan Masters HD: A Star Control 2 Remake". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  29. "Ur-Quan Masters HD - Download Statistics". SourceForge. Ur Quan Masters HD. December 4, 2020. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
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