The Urquan Masters HD Remix Windows game

Star Control II is a space adventure game that features role-playing elements alongside 2D combat and space exploration. It was a milestone for early PC gaming and a huge influence on many modern sci-fi games such as Homeworld and the Mass Effect series. Many consider it one of the greatest computer games of all time.

UQMHD Remix is a fork of The Urquan Masters HD (aka the hi-res version of the open-source version of Star Control II) which fixes some outstanding bugs, improves some of the settings/backgrounds, makes the game easier to run for newbies, and enables the use of the higher-quality remix music from the Precursors remix project.

The Game:
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Game play is divided into six basic modes:

• Conversation - Interact with other sentient species; Learn from them, trade with them, form alliances (or attack them).
  
  
  
  
• Solar system exploration - Navigate with your flagship, exploring various planets and moons, while contacting or avoiding other races.
  
  
  
  
• Planetary exploration - Control the Planet Lander to collect minerals and biological data while avoiding earthquakes, hotspots, lightning, and aggressive life forms.
  
  
  
  
• HyperSpace travel - Travel from star to star in HyperSpace.
  
  
  
  
• Flagship/fleet management - Spend your accumulated resource units, outfit your flagship for whatever lies ahead. Construct a fleet of up to 12 escort ships.
  
  
  
  
• Space combat - Fight your armada against alien ships in an all-out brawl to the death.
  
  

Installation:
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The download is a simple .zip file, to unzip wherever you want.
To run the game, run uqm.exe or the 'The Urquan Masters.bat' batch file.

Please note this release is windows-only, english-only, and does not attempt to fix any of the online supermelee bugs present in UQMHD, instead focusing on the main game experience of the single-player campaign. If you want working online supermelee (netplay), I recommend the vanilla Non-HD UQM, as they were more active at fixing those sorts of things.

If you are new to the game please check out the included "tips for newcomers.txt" text file for basic instructions and tips for playing the game.

Changes from UQMHD to UQMHD-Remix:
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* Fixed galaxy map snap so that it was less annoying/impossible for dealing with stars which're very close to one another
* Edited syreen voiceover to remove annoying narrator voice
* Fixed credits speed
* Corrections to intro and end sequence timing
* Correction to ending slides (explosion)
* Removed utwig credits voiceover (as none of the other races have voiceovers for this section, it feels wrong)
* Correction to setup menu for 320x240 (would not allow alternative scalers previously)
* Added the hi-res ship pics to supermelee ('alt' at ship-choice on main menu) - work by Zenzmurfy, Schizoid and myself
* Fixed the dumb bug where the planet textures and sun corona would 'pop' onto the screen half-a-second or so -after- seeing the solar system pre-draw.
* Correction to UQMHD code on display of past Orz conversation summary
* Minor correction to UQMHD options code
* Update to credits
* Updated menu delay values so it no longer takes an age to (a) fill up your fuel tanks (b) fill up your crew (c) search through your saved games.
* Changed main menu so that game restarts if music type is changed (otherwise music will not change), as it does with a resolution change
* Updated previously-unusable acceleration value on the starmap and fixed autopilot cursor snap
* Corrections to various new Utwig voiceovers to match original script
* Resampled all new utwig voiceovers down to 11khz to match tone of all other original voiceovers
* Correction to fluctuating volume levels between dialog lines for shofixti
* Changed solar system star draw algorithm to be more atmospheric.
* UQMHD Remix now uses it's own folder to store savegames and settings, so that it doesn't read the default settings from a previously installed version of UQMHD. If you've got previous savegames, you'll need to copy the %appdata%/uqmhd/save to %appdata%/uqmhdremix/save.
* Removed 'partial pickup' code for planet lander - now you only pick up the whole unit, or you don't.
* Better detection of correct fullscreen resolutions (previously was broken for desktops using 5:4 ratio resolutions)
* Copied the updated english dialogue, credits, intro and ending text across from UQM vanilla
* Corrections to all race's subtitles based on 3DO voiceovers
* Subtitle formatting consistency updates to thraddash, slylandro, talking pet, utwig, safe ones
* Includes the remix music and enables the remix music on the intro and ending sequences
* Changed the volume options so the dialogue is more audible against the music
* Corrected a bug related to building the game in VS2013
* Game now autocorrects resolution factor (2x, 4x) based on screen resolution
* Optimized SSE2 release build - faster on both older and newer equipment.
* Remix music is now the default, 3DO music still selectable if preferred. This excludes the beginning and ending sequences which have the remix music, because the UQMHD team somehow broke the code which overwrote the intro/end sequence locations if you had installed the remix packs.
* Graphical menu and planet-scan options are the default, as they feel more 'game'y and less technical. I didn't originally like the 3DO graphics, but the hi-res versions are really good.
* Log is now outputed to uqm.log, not the console.
* Toned down the nebulae significantly - they were interfering with gameplay mechanics, and in my opinion, the atmosphere of the game. Also added five new nebulae variants.
* Added code so that some solar systems do not have nebulae.
* Removed dev files from the release, for easy identification of which files are relevant to end-users.
* Added some .txt instructions for newcomers.

Credits:
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All props and respect go to the original UQMHD crew, as well as to the original UQM crew and to the original developers of Star Control 2, Toys for Bob, and of course the composers of the Precursors remix project (including myself). I am merely iterating in a long line of tradition. Thanks.

The game source and contents are online at:
Sourceforge.net