Ur-Quan Masters - Hunt of the Kohr-Ah
A downloadable game for Windows
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Based on the freeware game The Ur-Quan Masters, this space survival simulation puts you in an alternate timeline with humanity on the run from the Kohr-Ah.
It's really difficult. So there's detailed instructions and a sort of mini walkthrough. But it's still super tough. You need to survive through 100 warp jump gates, while managing the last surviving humans, growing food, repairing the fleet, researching science, all while trying to stay one step ahead of the Kohr-Ah and scavenging resources from planets.
It took about 120 hours to write, and uses about 3000 lines of code. Think of it as a cross between the computer classics Oregon Trail and Masters of Orion, but using the characters from The Ur-Quan Masters, and with a theme similar to the Battlestar Galactica reboot for TV.
Imagine if the Kohr-Ah had won the doctrinal conflict, had wiped out life across the galaxy, and were now hunting the human race. The Arilou appear suddenly, give the last remnants of Earth's survivors a pre-programmed jump gate engine, and your task as fleet captain is to guide everyone to the final destination and some answers.
You need to manage food, water, fuel, plus minerals & chemicals, balancing it along with hull integrity, biological health, morale, skills, science, and law & order.
To do this you need to assign your dwindling crew to various fleet positions: recycling, hydroponics, fleet repair, cruiser construction, medical facilities, training, military police, entertainment, navigation, science research, and finally - a network of spies which monitor Kohr-Ah sympathizers. Amidst the fleet is a secretive cult which venerates the Kohr-Ah and will try to sabotage your efforts.
During gameplay you can manage the crew roster, harvest the current star system for resources, hunt down nearby Kohr-Ah ships, tax the fleet, scrap cruisers for resources, jump to a new system, or simply wait...
Combat can either be automatic, or manual where you issue typed commands to the squadron.
The game can be finished in less than 90 minutes if you're playing casually, or about 5 minutes if you exploit certain things.
The game was programmed in QBasic 64, which allows Windows compatible executables to be made. I have included the source code in case anyone wants to play around.
LEGAL DISCLAIMER
All characters from the Ur-Quan Masters belongs to Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford.
The franchise name Star Control is copyright of Stardock.
This game is not affiliated with either. Nor does it use or purport to use any copyrighted materials from Stardock. It simply exists as a satirical examination of characters created by Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford, which were given to the public to create The Ur-Quan Masters game for PC.
If any party objects to this free game, which I am making available for free, and I am not asking for any donations, please just email me and I will take it down. Many thanks.
Download
Install instructions
Download the ZIP and click the EXE. You can also play around with the source code using the BAS file in any decent text editor. There are 3 blank save files.
Comments
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I haven't played this yet, but it mirrors the ending I playacted in my first, and failed, runthrough of Star Control II. SPOILERS: As the Kohr-Ah won the war and it became clear that they were wiping out the species one by one, I assembled a fleet of ships, one from each remaining species, and traveled to the green warp space to hide out. I still have the notebook in which I wrote out this endgame survival scenario. My last entry was of waiting for the Arilou to show. Of course, they never did, but your game concept is at least an answer that the original game wasn't able to give me. I didn't necessarily envision the resource management I'm seeing here, but any response that the game would have provided to my actions would have been pretty cool, even if it was just a slightly different game over screen.
Greetings fellow SCII enthusiast! I'm glad this caught your attention. I absolutely love SCII, and have played through it multiple times. More than 10, easily. Each time doing things a little differently. Selling humans to the Druuge was fun.
Anyway, thank you for your interest. I'm not sure how playable this game is now. I've gone back to it, years after finishing it, and it's extremely unbalanced. Like, horrendously bad. There's no balancing at all! I thought I was being super clever with so many different little things, for example hiding stats unless your science or whatever was high enough - the bit about spies was kinda broken. The game is basically either stupidly hard and unintuitive, or ridiculously easy (science is way too powerful). And if you do too well, the game punishes you with surprise catastrophes! And if you do super badly, it surprises you with bonus events to help you. This was my attempt at "balancing" it.
The resource management came from watching Battlestar Galactica, but given that I love SCII, I had to use that scenario. Lots of fun.
It's nice to read that you also loved the game so much you were writing your own follow-up scenarios. Super cool. Did you ever play Star Control 3? I finished it twice, but I didn't like it much. And then I played the newer recent Star Control game, but I didn't like it at all! It just didn't land right.
The original creators are working on a true sequel, with a different name but the same races. Are you following that? I forget the name they use. Free Stars? By Pistol Shrimp Games.