About
The Ur-Quan Masters
The project started in August 2002, when Toys For Bob
released the partially ported sources of Star Control 2
3DO version to the fan community. Our goal is to port this wonderful game to current
personal computers and operating systems. It is and will remain 100% free of charge,
and anyone can contribute to the project and thus help make it even better.
For more information, look at our info page.
News
Finding the UQM Community Online(Tuesday, Jun 15 2021)
Over the years, we’ve maintained two major online communities of our own—the official forum and an IRC channel that was mostly about day-to-day development work.
In light of recent events, the IRC channel has been moved to #uqm at Libera.Chat.
There are also multiple active fan communities online unaffiliated with us; the Pages of Now and Forever maintain an active forum of their own, and The New Alliance of Free Stars hosts channels for UQM, some of its forks, and its related commercial games.
It’s an exciting time, and if you’re a fan, you’re not alone!
Announcing The Ur-Quan Masters 0.8.0(Sunday, Jan 10 2021)
Happy 2021, Humans. It has been almost ten years since Version 0.7 was released, and a lot has happened since then. UQM 0.8 has now been released to catch up with that.
This newest release has a lot of changes in it, but the highlights are:
- Namable savegames
- A new save format that should make it easier for mods to coexist and should also make it much easier to edit save files
- A new graphics, sound, and input backend based on SDL2, which in turn grants much-improved fullscreen support as well as Metal and DirectX support on Mac and Windows, or VC4 support on a properly configured Raspberry Pi
- Nine years of sporadic bugfixes from the community post-0.7
- TLS support for the Windows installer, which should restore the functionality of the net installer
- Unified build system on Mac, Linux, and Windows, with better coexistence with systemwide standard libraries
- Official support for the final Remix Pack 4, which came out after 0.7 did
- A revised version of Remix Pack 4 with some fixed audio mixes
Overall, this release is part “years of deferred maintenance” and part “actually release the unpublished work that still fits in well with the popular mods”.
Get the new release from the downloads page, or discuss it on the forum!
Compatibility Release for macOS 10.14 and onwards(Sunday, May 6 2018)
If you are using macOS 10.13.4, you may have noticed a warning that UQM needs to be updated to improve compatibility. Apple has announced that macOS 10.13 High Sierra would be the last version of macOS to run 32-bit apps “without compromise”.
We have now created and released a fresh build of UQM 0.7.0 that has rebuilt not only the main program but also all of its libraries for maximum compatibility backwards and forwards. We have tested it on 10.7 Lion, 10.9 Mavericks, and 10.13 High Sierra—it is our belief that it should work even on 10.6 Snow Leopard. We also expect that this edition will work without compromise on future Intel Macs for some time to come. You can get it from our downloads page.
Compatibility Source Code Release for Modern Linux(Sunday, January 21 2018)
Recent releases of GCC have trouble compiling UQM 0.7.0 from its source release. We have created a new source update that has been tested on the current stable versions of Debian, Fedora, and OpenBSD. You can get it from our downloads page. Note that this is purely a change to build-time configuration and logic: nothing about this release has changed the the resulting program. If you have a working build of UQM 0.7.0, you don’t need to take this update.
Compatibility Release for macOS Sierra(Sunday, September 25 2016)
The release of macOS Sierra has finally removed some of the old graphics and sound APIs that our releases of UQM depended on. We have created a new macOS package for The Ur-Quan Masters that has been tested on 10.12 Sierra and should work at least as far back as 10.7 Lion. You can get it from our downloads page.
Development migrated to Git(Saturday, November 2 2013)
After a number of requests from modders, we’ve converted the Ur-Quan Masters code repository over to use the Git revision control system.
This should make it easier for modders to collaborate with one another and to track changes made in the vanilla development track.
The code page is thus available here.
The Subversion repository will be kept available for the forseeable future, but it will not be taking additional updates.
If you are planning on creating your own personal mod of UQM, we encourage you to develop it in Git by creating a branch from one of the release tags of the vanilla UQM repository.
That way, it will be easier to update your mod with new releases from vanilla.
Remix add-on package four ‘The New Alliance of Free Stars’ released(Wednesday, February 20 2013)
The official Ur-Quan Masters remix add-on package four: The New Alliance of Free Stars
has been released.
Be sure to visit the
download section to grab your copy!
This add-on pack includes almost 60 minutes of music in 16 tracks:
- Main Menu – Control the Stars
- Intro – Into the Void
- Chmmr – Photosynthesis
- Shofixti – Bonsai!
- Syreen – Close Encounters of the Seventh Kind
- Yehat – Years Late Mix
- Pkunk – Pkunks Not Dead
- Utwig – Mask of Ultimate Embarrassment and Shame
- Zoq-Fot-Pik – Frungy Party
- Orz – *Squeezing* the *Juice*
- Utwig – The Ultron
- Supox – Shake Yer Rootz
- Spathi – Fwiffo’s Starrunner
- Super Melee Menu – Fight!
- Outro – Awaking Dreams
- Credits – So Long and Thanks for All the Orz
Check out the
PRECURSORS web site for more information about the releases and future
plans.
– Precursors
Announcing The Ur-Quan Masters 0.7.0(Monday, July 4 2011)
Hello everyone!
Guess what day it is today?
It is the fourth of July, the day when we remember aliens taking over Earth,
beings from another solar system mining planets for resources, and the
destruction of historic buildings (as well as tourism).
It is the day when we celebrate a brave few in a ship built with alien
technology carrying a huge bomb into the alien mothership in a near suicide
attack. It is the day when the shields went down.
Today is the day of the greatest science fiction of all time:
Star Control 2 – The Ur-Quan Masters!
The `The Ur-Quan Masters’ development team is happy to announce:
The Ur-Quan Masters 0.7.0.
So what is new? Well, you can find the complete list here, but here are a few of the highlights:
- some missing bits of content added, including two new lander reports directly from Toys for Bob
- support for Windows CE, and experimental support for Symbian S60
- many bug fixes, including some that have been long anticipated
- various small improvements and polishing
- lots of internal cleanups and restructuring, making the game more customisable and modable, and making the code a bit friendlier
So download the game from here and join us in the celebrations! And do not forget to *enjoy the sauce*!
The `The Ur-Quan Masters’ development team.
Arts and Crafts for Star Control(Tuesday, August 12 2008)
The petition
to get a new Star Control made has generated quite a bit of response, but
more can be done. I would like to direct your attention to a cunning plan
that Alex Ness from Toys for Bob has come up with. In his own words (from
the Toys for Bob website):
First We Hit Them With Letters, Next Arts and Crafts.
After that, they won’t know what hit ’em. Activision, I mean. As part of my multi-pronged strategy to convince Activision to insist that our next project be a Star Control one, I have come up with idea to harness the powers of arts and crafts as well as fans everywhere.
What I want to do is this: Make a giant map of the Earth. Maybe I should just buy one. I’m not map maker. If I were, I’d probably be instantly fired fo
