Is that missing something, because it didn’t really say anything about how to duplicate it in game, only that “Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
I’ve often wondered what kind of impact the location of our solar system has on our world. For instance is we didn’t live in a far flung arm of the Milky Way and instead lived near the center (obviously not right in the center since a black hole sits there). Would Earth still have life due to the possible increase in stellar events that would tear through the system? Would there be a large increase in the heavier atomic elements due to the density of stars and those supernova events?
Imagine what the sky could look like with the naked eye nearer middle the center of the galaxy. Well, the galaxy picture made me think of those questions again, sorry for derail :)
One thing I’ve heard is that Jupiter acts as a sort of meteor shield for the inner solar system worlds, giving us longer periods between catastrophic crash events.
There’s a bit of a misunderstanding on this one; Jupiter and Jupiter-like/Jovian planets have been modeled to show they help clear the small stuff in the early stages of a solar system like ours. In that respect, they’re helpful. However, once cleared they don’t really do so much on a positive note aside from the occasional interception. Far more frequently, they simply change the orbital behavior of near misses. Sometimes this causes the object to be flung into deep space, but other times they’re caused to return to the inner system more quickly (eg - Comet Hale-Bopp, who instead of returning about 4200 years from now will instead return in about 2300 years).
Think of it this way; Jupiter is pretty darn far from Earth, and the Sun exerts a much stronger gravitational force than it does. We circle the sun once a year. Jupiter takes 12 years to complete its orbit. The vast majority of the time, Jupiter won’t be in the way to shield us from objects being pulled into the inner solar system.
Your going to have all that in your game? If so, you sure have the start to a star control grand strategy game. To bad I can’t envision a star control grand strategy game, unless it starts of something like: “Two ur-quan children playing; One dreams of having giant space ships filled with fighters and ruling the galaxy…”
We have a new official subreddit and Brad posted a new FAQ over there.
Woohoo! Now I can stalk the game on my two favorite online hangouts ;-)
Looking forward to more on this!
Hm, beta this fall, eh? Sounds good.
The Ur-quan Kzer-Za was one of the coolest anthems ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VNul2QETPE
Would love to hear that kind of music in this release :)
Amiga trackers were bad-ass back in the day. (SC2 soundtrack is all Amiga tracker stuff)
I’m just thrilled with the confirmation on the modding tools - Star Control just wouldn’t feel right without Fwiffo.
Wow. The crafting/modding system–based off what little they said about it–seems like a big ambitious swing for something more than just a great action-adventure space game. I’m not sure how I feel about it. It’s hard enough to make a great new Star Control game. Why bog yourself down as developers with tools, interface, online functionality, etc. that you don’t have to, when the heart of Star Control is exploration of a galaxy, talking to fun aliens, and sometimes shooting things with your spaceship?
If the tools they’re creating for players are the same ones they’re building the game with, then that might be another thing–I’ve always wanted to work on a project that’s creatively handed off to the community like that. But that makes it even more ambitious, since the tools then need to be released capable of building the high-water-mark content of the game.
Star Control 2 had a lot of content. Maybe that’s why this is the strategy for SC: Origins? Is Stardock not quite equipped to make that amount of content, so they’re looking to engage a community that can?
Well, it’s an intriguing development, either way. I guess we’ll see how things shape up.
I’m not too thrilled about the modding news, mainly because I’m a little concerned about bloat in what was a straightforward little game. I’m willing to give it a chance to win me over though.
Somebody remind me- is the writer for this one Chris Buchsomething (Bucholtz?), the guy who did the writing in Sorcerer King? Because I really, thoroughly enjoyed that.
Yeah, I think I agree with all that. Remember they included modding tools with Elemental/Fallen Enchantress and that didn’t really catch on because the tools were difficult to use and there was practically no decent documentation for them. These kinds of tools are only broadly embraced by a community if they are either a) well documented or b) intuitive/easy to figure out. NW Nights did both well. The modding tools for Divinity OS were great tools functionality wise but met neither criteria above and therefore bombed.
I think multiplayer in what are otherwise SP games is a scourge on modern gaming. Every SP game out there these days must have MP or people on the game’s official forums scream about it day and night. Never mind that adding MP not only costs extra but also usually largely destroys the fun in the game because then the devs have to make sure everything is “balanced” (my new gaming curse word).
Stardock seems to consistently bite off more than can be delivered with focus on their projects. The result being buggy messes like Fallen Enchantress, which is a very fun game, but even now still has a lot of issues. Sadly, I think this project is not going to end well.
Looks like yes:
Like you, I loved Sorcerer King. Like those above, I found its greatest downside the relative paucity of content, despite being designed as a replayable game. My hope is that Star Control is receiving a budget capable of producing what it should be. . . but yeah.
Still, Chris’s writing in SK gives me great hope for the dialogue/interactions in StarCon.
Well, balance will probably be a problem in Star Control anyway, multiplayer or not. Star Control 2 had Super-Melee mode for multiplayer, and certain ships were really great against some ships, and really weak against others. So in order to counteract ships on the other player’s fleet, you had to pick some counter-measures. But then he saw you picking your counter-measures, and he would then pick counter-measures to that. It was a whole lot of fun picking the fleet to go into battle in the first place.
But then in Star Control 3, they made the new Sector’s gray ships, and some of the newer races didn’t have that same kind of imbalance of being weak against some and strong against others. There was this dog-like race whose ships were big and strong and badass against nearly ever ship. It made Hyper-Melee mode in Star Control 3 not very fun compared to Super-melee in Star Control 2. This also had an effect on the single player game. Once you got those strong ships in your fleet, you felt kind of invulnerable, and unbeatable.
I’m missing the announcement of MP in this. Did they make one?
I pretty much directly ripped off the Droogs for a race in one of the RPGs I run.
Then again I pretty much straight-up ripped the Chenjesu, Mmrnmhrm, and VUX, too. . .