pistolshrimp

Dev Diary: Procedural Planet Art

Today’s episode of our dev diary is about how we’re generating our procedural planet art. It’s a big task, but we want to share the journey so far and highlight some of the amazing work we’ve been doing in what is our biggest, most collaborative undertaking so far.

Our process for planet art is following the general model from The Ur-Quan Masters which we loved. Planets serve a particular purpose in our game, and we want to be able to satisfy that big goal by being...

Happy Holidays and Have a Little Teaser

Thank you to everyone supporting us here on Patreon. You should have received a note in your inbox from the team, and we wanted to share one more little thing.

With the leverage you've provided, we've twisted some bureaucratic arms and extracted the following report from the New Alliance of Free Stars Security Council. It's largely redacted but contains a few interesting pieces of information. Please peruse the attachment at your leisure.

Have a happy holiday, and we're l...

Studio Updates - End of Year 2023

Grab your festive drink, warm your feet by the Druuge furnace, and sit down for our seasonal end of year update. 2023 was a big year for us – 1 bigger than 2022, to be precise – with some unexpected turns, twists, and folds.

We’re winding down this year to start on some new, exciting things for 2024, so, in Dickensian style, let us walk for a moment with the spirits of the past, present, and future and hopefully scare a rich person into giving us some money.

The Present - S...

2023-12-21 20:41:02 +0000 UTC View Post

Upcoming Live Streams this December

We really miss being together with our live development streams. They’re on hold for a lot of good reasons, including the delicious spoilers we’re drowning in. In the meantime, we wanted to bring something fun back for the mandated time of seasonal festivities. Please celebrate with us, or else.

This month, we’ll be hosting a couple special live streams with other game developers who we have some things in common with: a love of The Ur-Quan Masters.

• F...
  2023-12-04 22:33:22 +0000 UTC View Post

31 Years of The Ur-Quan Masters

Last year during November, we celebrated 30 years of The Ur-Quan Masters! This year, it’s not quite as big and round as 30, but it is 31. We wanted to have a quieter month but still celebrate the legacy of UQM and the wonderful community we have. We had lots of ideas! There were going to be balloons, dogs, balloon doggies. It was going to be great. Reality stepped in, and this month got away from us for a lot of reasons. Without going into specifics, 13 involved feathers, and 62 involved co...

Dev Diary: Bringing Ship Art to Life

We wanted to share a little bit about the technical processes we are using to bring ships to life in Free Stars: Children of Infinity. If you’ve seen our development streams, most of our visible development effort has been in design, and we’ve recently been hard at work painting layers of content over it.

Lately, we’ve been working on ships. They’re not real ships, but we want them to feel like real ships to the player. As opposed to a painting or a video, game ships ne...

Free Stars Hi-Res Poster Art

We had a number of requests for a full resolution version of our Free Stars site art! Please take and enjoy this awesome image by our artist, Robert Mauritson. Make it a cool wallpaper for your desk, turn it into graffiti (we do not endorse actual crimes), or just zoom infinitely into the pixels for your entertainment.

It is also hosted on Google Drive at https://dri...

Introducing Free Stars: Children of Infinity

In our bubbling cauldron which is the potion that will be UQM2, we have been adding the odds and ends we need for the game. Design and audiovisual content are like ingredients which add foundational magic but are there to be enjoyed later. Sometimes, though, we add a big, phosphorus ingredient, spilling out some awesome theatrical fog that curls all over the stage. Behold:

• Our game’s official title, Free Stars: Children of Infinity
• The launch o...
  2023-10-24 22:40:44 +0000 UTC View Post

Interview with GamesIndustry.biz

Fred and Dan had the opportunity to sit down with Brendan Sinclair of GamesIndustry.biz and talk about our history of switching technologies, losing ownership, and our change to Godot. There's a little bit of our own histories and insider experience in there. Give it a read and let us know what you think!

No Longer Waiting for Godot

What’s in an Engine?

A little bit of background: when we charted our course for UQM2 and Pistol Shrimp, one of our guiding principles was “to own what we make.” That had a lot of meanings, but it directly pointed to building our own technology, and leveraging other open-source technologies. Fred was passionate about making Simple, our tool for creating gameplay and netplay. Working together, Ken started creating tools to apply audiovisual layers on top.

We are well aware o...

UQM2 Update - Summer 2023

Greetings, Hunams and other lifeforms. We’re coming to you with some updates after an exciting summer of effort on UQM2. Our mission at Pistol Shrimp is about creating a better environment for game development. Being open about our process is an essential way we strive for that. We want you to feel as involved, inspired, and valued as we feel!

We’ll be breaking this into a few parts because a lot has changed, and change is the only constant in the universe. Let’s start with what m...

Follow Us on Social Media

Did you know that we’re building out our social media accounts? We’ve slowly been creating some more places where you can follow us. It’s not stalking, it’s keeping in touch! For all we know, one of our communication methods could explode at the whim of the plutocrat du jour, so we figure it’s good to diversify.

You can already find us on the following channels:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/the...
  2023-08-22 21:44:59 +0000 UTC View Post

Exploring the Planets

Do you know how many planets were in the original UQM? No, seriously… do you? If you did, you probably read the hint book from back in the day. But anyone who played could tell you: there were a lot. We accomplished that via procedural generation. While the starmap was laid out by hand, the many planets in the many solar systems were created based on a random seed. Most modern agricultural laws block...

UQM2 Update - Mid-Year 2023

Engaging HyperWave Broadcaster.
Determining send and receive frequencies.
Calculating optimal relay delivery route.
CONNECTION ESTABLISHED

>>> Submit to the will of Dogar and Kazon, vile Earthlings, or else you will never lay eyes upon your most beloved of sacred artifacts – the World’s Largest Rocking Chair of Casey, Illinois – ever again!

Carol, knock that off!

Ahem, excuse me. Our resident Umgah got ahold of the t...

Simple Build 20230327 and Melee Prototype Release

It's been a long, long time coming but we're finally releasing new tools and content for our extremely patient and supportive public. If you've never dived into our in-development development tool, Simple, or tried to check out and run our Super Melee prototype, now is a great time to give it a test if you're willing to walk through some rickety, rocky stuff. Our hope is that, with this release, some people will have success being able to play networked Super Melee together. ...

Incoming Hyperwave Intercept

From: Melnorme InfoRelay Prime Trade Network <noreply@besttradersever.nafs.mel>
To: <recipients undisclosed>
Date: 3-8-2163
Subj: Hyperwave Intercept 

Greetings, valued trade partner!

We of the Melnorme Ultra-Trade Value Complex are always striving to maximize engagement opportunities for InfoRelay Prime traders like yourselves. Our unparalleled information-gathering network uses vastl...

End of Year Updates from Pistol Shrimp

Greetings to all of our wonderful Patreon supporters! We wanted to formally announce that Pistol Shrimp — and me, Dan, in particular — will be taking a break for the holidays. I'll be gone from December 15th until January 15th, so we will be a little quiet during this time. You will likely still find some action in our Discord if you get lonely, so please come visit if you haven't already.

Check out the linked 2022-12-14 23:06:19 +0000 UTC View Post

Pistol Shrimp Podcast – Episode 4 – George Barr 30 Year Special

For our 30th Anniversary Celebration, we have an additional, special episode of the Pistol Shrimp podcast with UQM illustrator George Barr. George was responsible for many of the iconic, physical illustrations which would then become digitized for use in UQM. Beyond UQM, George contributed artwork to science fiction and fantasy works from books, to magazines, to Dungeons and Dragons rule books.

This interview was originally conducted when Paul and Fred visited George’s residence to ac...

Pistol Shrimp Podcast Episode 3 - Erol Otus 30 Year Special

For our 30th Anniversary Celebration, we have a special episode of the Pistol Shrimp podcast with none other than Erol Otus. Erol was responsible for several creative parts of The Ur-Quan Masters – art, sound, writing, and voice – but was primarily responsible for creating physical and digital paintings of the various aliens' communications screens. Beyond UQM, Erol has contributed art and design to products and games ranging from Dungeons and Dragons to Skylanders.

Originally recor...

Save the Date and Time for the 30th Anniversary!

Hello Hunams! Save the date and time for our fantastic, amazing, wonderful live event for the 30 year anniversary of The Ur-Quan Masters. Pistol Shrimp is excited to have x33n hosting us at https://twitch.tv/x33n on November 30th starting at 1pm PST (4pm EST). More info to come, and hope to see you there! <3

30 Years of The Ur-Quan Masters

Happy November 2022 everyone! I am sure many of you know there’s something special in November. Something some of you have been asking us about. Something on your mind for 30 years, perhaps.

That’s right, in November we celebrate National Vichyssoise Day!

Are you excited? Maybe? It’s ok, we’re sure you’ve been thinking the same thing as us: why does vichyssoise get to celebrate, a...

Pistol Shrimp Podcast Episode 2 - War & Space

Two weeks early for our Patreon supporters, we have Paul Reiche and Lee Hutchinson returning for another episode of our podcast about the creation of UQM, UQM2, and the many steps taken to get here.

The main topic for this discussion is all about how war & space (and war in space) influenced our personal upbringings and the history of gaming through our lenses, which in turn influenced us. Why is Paul so obsessed with space combat? What did we learn from science museums, the threat ...

Dialogue about Dialogue - Episode 1

Howdy, folks! Pistol Shrimp is pleased to release something special and exclusive as thanks to our generous supporters on Patreon. We will be making this publicly available in the future but want to give our supporters early access to the very thing they asked for: relics, stories, and insights about the making of our games.

This is the first in what we hope will be a series of dialogues with Pistol Shrimp about the making of The Ur-Quan Masters 2. In this opening installment, UQM2 cont...

Modding Melee to Add a New Ship

Hello Frungy Fans! Dan here again. While the sport of kings is still a contender for all of our attention, another fun thing we're working on is Melee. Did you know you can get Simple and play around with our Melee prototype right now? You can! In fact, some of you did and remarked - rightfully so - that it was difficult to add in new ships. That didn't stop folks who made and even submitted ships to us. I've even rev...

Rare Doctrinal Conflict Footage!

In our work on UQM2, we have been doing a lot of archaeological digs – if that is something one can even do in space – to reveal what really went on when the player wasn't looking in UQM. We are pleased to share this never-before-seen, behind-enemy-lines footage captured of one of the many battles during the Doctrinal Conflict.

(PS: This is just a proof-of-concept of our Mele...