3do-star-control-2
Source code to the original 3DO version of Star Control 2
Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters
This repository contains the source code and misc resources to the 1994 3DO title Star Control 2.
Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters is a 1992 video game, the sequel to Star Control. It was developed by Toys for Bob (Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III) and originally published by Accolade in 1992 for MS-DOS. The game includes exoplanet-abundant star systems, hyperspace travel, extraterrestrial life, and interstellar diplomacy. There are 25 alien races with which communication is possible.
Released to critical acclaim, Star Control II is widely viewed today as one of the greatest PC games ever made. It has appeared on lists of the greatest video games of all time.
The game was ported to 3DO by Crystal Dynamics in 1994 with an enhanced multimedia presentation. The source code of the 3DO port was licensed under GPL-2.0-or-later in 2002, the game content under CC-BY-NC-SA-2.5. The 3DO source code was the basis of the open source game The Ur-Quan Masters.
Rerelease Of Source Code
In 2002 a modified version of the 3DO source code to Start Control 2 was released as "The Ur-Quan Masters". The code released was already substantially modified from the original 3DO code in an effort to port to libSDL and as a result was missing a lot of 3DO specific code.
In May 2024, trapexit reached out to some of the original email addresses for those who worked on the project early on inquiring if the original 3DO source was still around somewhere. While most of the email addresses were defunct Alex Volkov's address was still active. It turned out that a poorly converted version (Mac -> Windows) of the code was in Alex's backups and after approval from the IP holders released the archive to trapexit.
Contents
The archive appears to be reasonably complete in terms of the source but has little or no media assets. Due to the improper conversation from classic Mac formats a number of binary files may be corrupted. It is not known if this is the retail version of the code or something before (or perhaps after) the 3DO release.
The files have been modified and renamed where appropriate to address improper conversions.
It is possible that an uncorrupted variant of the archive is stored in old tape backups of Felix Lazarev (felix) but he has yet to look through them all.
Future Plans
Like with other 3DO source code releases there is a intent to port the title to build against the 3do-devkit project in order to provide a convenient base for new development.