Notices

I had a response to this prepared and then lost it through a combination of cosmic rays and t.m.o. shenanigans.

You make a good point regarding the dual-purpose nature of the game. Those wanting to play super melee only don't need the 3do content. I'll definitely leave the 3do media as an optional package. What i'm trying to decide is whether to put the default required content in a separate package than the executable.

If it is really true that App Manager removes automatically dependencies that were pulled in during the install of the dependent app then i can't see any more good reasons not to separate them. I can't test whether this actually works as it should because App Manager doesn't work right in my SDK, so i have to use dpackage or apt to install.

Regarding network play: it compiles with network options enabled, but i am not in a position to test whether those options work. If someone could report on that, it would be helpful.

Here's the plan to get this into extras:
(1) release another update of the altstart package that includes the executable with joystick support enabled. Let the wii mote users test it (had one request for this). If Joystick support doesn't cause any problems, then...

(2) release an updated uqm and new uqm-content package that replaces the current uqm and uqm-altstart packages. These would put everything into /opt/uqm, and uqm-content would not be visible in App Manager (only a dependency of uqm).

(3) if those work properly, submit it to testing. Also provide the uqm-3do content in an optional (App Manager-visible) package.

Some things still to test: what happens on the N900s when uqm is put in the background? Does it come back up ok? It does on the SDK. What's the power draw like with it in the background? To actually get into extras, an app is supposed to behave responsibly when in the background. I don't know what that means in the context of a game, but i suspect that this could be an issue for uqm because i haven't modified the multithreaded game code. Does anyone actually expect an old DOS game to behave in a chivalrous fashion in the background? Maybe this is a non-issue.

I can confirm that App Manager removes automatically unneeded depencies which are not in user/ category.


Plan sounds good.

I didn't test backgrounding but if it works in SDK you can assume it works in device too. Power draw in background is about the same as in foreground unless you do something about it.

At minimum sound should be muted when focus is lost. Then you could try to halt the as much as possible. With SDL library runnig it's not possible achieve good power saving. If you'd like to do very good power saving, you should look at hildon-games-wrapper

This is very good question. Most games suck at powersaving, mostly because it's very hard to do with SDL.

There is an update for uqm available (uqm-0.6.7-0maemo). Please uninstall the uqm-altstart package first, and it wouldn't hurt to uninstall the previous version first, either.

This release separates the content package (uqm-data) from the binary package, puts everything into /opt/uqm/, and adds all the fixes discovered through the uqm-altstart releases. It also updates the upstream source code to today's svn, which is tagged as 0.6.7 and includes a patch i submitted that will make uqm pause and go into a lower-power sleep mode automatically when it loses fullscreen focus.

The content package is a dependency and should install automatically when uqm is installed. It should also automatically uninstall when uqm is removed using app manager.

Also in the repo is uqm-3do-data. This optional package will add the dialogue voiceovers and music from the 3do Star Control 2 release.

Testing
* New in this release is enabled joystick support. I don't know if this will work with the wii mote and any other game controller solutions. Please test and report.

* Also in need of testing is network play and power consumption, especially when "minimized" to the task switcher (ctrl-backspace).

* I've observed that the color palette is wrong in the SDK. This is easy to see with the syreen ship, which is blue instead of red, and the starbase captain, who is blue instead of peach. Is this the case on the N900? Tester screenshots confirm this is just a SDK problem.

This release may be promoted as a testing candidate once i get some feedback on these points.

Thanks to screenshots from a tester, i was able to cross off the color palette issue as being SDK-specific. The remaining features to be tested are not essential for enjoyment or functioning of the game, so i have promoted it to extras-testing.

Please vote it up unless you find a problem. In that case, please post about it here!

Let's get this on the list of games for the end users getting their N900s.

PS I'll also be promoting the uqm-3do-data package as soon as m.o and midgard overcome their fail enough to not time out with php errors.

One more note on the new release. If you installed uqm previously and changed any settings, your own ~/.uqm/flight.cfg config file will be overriding the keymap defaults, which were bad in the previous uqm version. Please delete the ~/.uqm directory and its contents to revert to the default settings.

UQM has 4 out of 10 needed karma (tester reports): extras-testing page! If you have an N900, please take a few minutes to install it and test it and vote.

UQM now has its own bug tracker. It's the new official place to report issues or make feature requests, but if you find it too intimidating, feel free to discuss it here.

I'm interested to hear feedback on adding a "grannie" option that will reduce the game melee speed by 20% to compensate for the limited controls. It's straightforward to do but would take a bit of work. Upstream developers have no interest in it, so unless maemo users have use for it, i'll not implement it.

Might be too much of a bother, but have you considered alternate input methods ? I was thinking along the lines of what the Quake3 port does. You could use accelerometers for orientation, the proximity sensor for thrust and the keyboard for fire/alternate (or prox for fire and kdb for thrust).

Yeah, i have considered it. At one point i was looking into wrapping the accelerometer readings into a generic joystick device (for multiple projects), but i decided to put all device-specific things on hold until i have a device to test with. That includes optimizations and controls.

Furthermore, UQM has fairly simple controls that are not very fine-grained, so i'm not sure how useful something as analog as a tilt interface would work.

In any case, i'm open to specific suggestions, but am not likely to make changes until i can try them for myself OR get a lot of similar feedback from the community.

I know it's not fine-grained, but I don't think it's an issue. Just say a tilt over 15 degrees left is Left, over 15 degrees right is Right. If all you miss is a tester, let me know, I have a loaner so I can try it out (or do minor code fixes if I ran into problems that do not require the understanding of further UQM code)

Im expecting my n900 through this week and I have bookmarked this thread for when it arrives..

Tried this, since Star Control 2 is one my all time favorites. The keymapping was not good for my scandinavic keyboard. For those who don't know it - up and down keys are fn+left / fn+right. I wasn't able to move on the main menu. Enter worked and I was able to create a new game. In the game I was able to move the spaceship left/right, but not able to accelerate. Space took me to the menu and I was able there to move up/down.

I had similar problems last night when trying this out. It seems that fn button is not recognized at all in the game and that is why default arrow key up/down is impossible with scandinavian key layout.

I managed to solve the problem by manually editing the key config files in uqm installation folder. Easiest way is to just edit the menu.keys in uqm/content folder and change up/down to something else. After that you can access the in game key config which is more convenient to use. Editing requires root shell so be careful not to mess up the device.

BTW, it's really awesome to have SC2 ported to maemo. I used to play the super melee with my current desktop machine also.