Project 6014

Project 6014 (working title) is a mod of The Ur-Quan Masters, the open source release of the classic game Star Control 2.

• Project website:  code.google.com/p/project6014/

• Related blog posts: Project 6014 category

Star Control 3 was the official sequel to SC2. But it’s commonly regarded by fans as less than canon. For one thing, a lot of the gameplay was dramatically different from the well-designed mechanics of SC2 (which in turn were naturally evolved from the original Star Control). The melee mode looked and felt different from the fast-paced and well-balanced action of the previous games. Elements inherited from SC2 were not consistent with their forebears — the aliens, especially, were often quite different. And the overall execution — story, gameplay, graphics, sound — were not up to the incredibly high standards set by SC2.  It’s telling that SC3 is not even mentioned in the SC2 Wikipedia entry.

To be fair, Star Control 3 was not a bad game.  It had an interesting travel/colonisation mechanic resulting in a different gameplay to SC2.  Some of the plot ideas and aliens (symbiotic predator/prey, parasitic, malfunctioning Chmmr, etc.) would have fit into SC2.  But SC2 was a great game, and deserved a great sequel.

So, a bunch of us are creating a new sequel. This one doesn’t have official backing or large-scale resources. But it is being made by people who want to recreate the epic feel of the original game. We want to modestly extend the universe and the story in way that doesn’t rewrite anything. Our sequel is:

• Based on the same engine (with many upgrades, including higher resolution).
• Set in a similar part of the universe, and soon after the events of SC2.
• Reusing most of the same characters and races (we are revamping the graphics, but in a way that’s in tune with the original designs).
• Modestly avoiding trampling too much on the possible future of Star Control. We are not the official sequel; if Toys for Bob ever create one, we will be overjoyed and quite understanding if they take it in a direction different from ours; ours can happily remain non-canon.

The project was started by my brother who emailed me:

Subject: sc2 blah blah
Date: 20 January 2009

Hey man, big eye-rolling question:

How easy would it be to make a mod of UQM? (new story/dialogue/aliens/ships, old engine/graphics). Let’s assume for the time being that graphic art is not an issue…

I’ve done some archaeology in the UQM Forums and the first public announcement of the mod seems to have been this thread.  You can see how prescient my brother was to pick the name “Cedric6014” years before Project 6014 was born.

I find it remarkable that we’re still working on it three years later. I would estimate that that puts this game mod project in the top few percentile for perseverance.  There are innumerable open source game projects that generated reams of design and amounted to nothing in the end.

But we made real progress.  Will we see the true, feature complete beta in a couple of years?  I think it’s likely.  Definitely one of the more successful projects I’ve been involved with.