To be fair, Brad, part of the “issue” in SC3 was having the Captain go gallivanting off the edge of the galaxy with only some of their old allies coming along and mostly playing a side-role as the player engaged with a lot of new (and almost all very bland) races.
I’ll admit that my optimism above was written before I realized you guys would drop the races entirely in the new game. I think that might officially downgrade me from “giddy and hyperventillating everytime I remember this is happening” to “excited and willing to follow news religiously.” Which is probably still a tier higher than I’d be for any other game release in the next 3 years unless the new Mass Effect title ends up being everything I dreamed for, so don’t feel too bad. . . and I know y’all are capable of thinking up goofy, fun aliens. . . but I will really, really miss all the races from SC1/2/3 (well, okay, not everyone from 3. . . ) however much fun this ends up being :)
Really glad to hear the adventure elements are still in and an area of heavy focus (I was always too slow/nonreactive to do well at supermelee and usually let the computer play for me in battles during the main plot). I am wondering whether you guys will end up leaving it so utterly open-ended like SC2 was and if there will be any sort of territory acquisition/basebuilding/expansion mechanics like 3 (and to a lesser extent, 1) had, though. It was kinda neat to play a basic 4X in the midst of the plot, since I found it marginally more engaging than the frustratingly difficult mining minigame from SC2, but neither really felt like they had a strong gameplay connection to everything else (RPG/adventure elements and SuperMelee) that was going on in the game at large that made it so unique. I guess I’m mostly just curious to see what will end up filling this galaxy and what kinds of freedom the player will have to explore all of that while they try to sniff out plot threads, as that was sometimes a source of frustration in the past, but could be a lot of fun if it were done a little differently.
You keep saying that, and while on one hand, I think that’s very respectful of you, on the other hand I think it’s a strange argument. If you want to make a game in any established universe (and by calling the game Star Control you basically say you want - mechanics do NOT make up a franchise, at least not in my opinion), you HAVE to play around a bit with their creative vision. For years, people were afraid to mess with the LotR universe for a similar reason, the result being almost no video games set in it and even less good ones. And if you are in touch with the guys, you could have come up with a outline and let them approve it first or make changes to it according to their wishes.
You could even have asked them for a brief outline of what they deemed acceptable - as long as there’s no official involvement, I don’t think there would have been any problems with that, legally (IANAL, though).
It’s not like there’s a decent chance for another “fully official” SC game coming out anytime soon. Or ever, for that point.
Dropping everything that made up the Star Control universe is just throwing the baby out with the bathtub.
Edit: I only now skimmed through the sc.com thread you linked to and saw that you utilized the same LotR analogy, which should make it even more relevant.
And I just fail to understand your way-overblown feeling of respect of someones intellectual property. Imagine, if, 15 years from now, it’d have come to pass SOMEHOW that another company ended up with the rights to the GalCiv franchise, with you being in another company prohibiting you from working on another GalCiv game, and the new owner of the GC franchise would approach you about wanting to make a new GC game, would you really be that more happier if they pretended to be making a GalCiv while dropping anything that made up the lore? What do you think the GalCiv fans would think of that game?
I think expanding on somebodys universe can also be incredible rewarding for the original creator, who then gets to see his creation taking on a life of his own. Almost like seeing your child moving out and taking on a life of his own.
There were two main draws to SC2: the writing, which was exceptional, and the Starflight-type feeling that you could go anywhere in the galaxy and explore any planet, and the game gave you good reason to do so because you wanted materials and biological data. SC3 lacked both. If a new story requires new races, that’s fine, so long as it’s a good story. It’s hard to do another story about the Ur-quan, given how throughly SC2 dealt with them and their history.
I never cared for the arcade combat in SC1 or SC2 - the main saving grace was that the ships were so very, very different from each other, and many had a theoretical hard counter. “Theoretical” because the Humans for example had that laser defense that killed Ur-quan fighters, but was such a dog otherwise that they died anyway. I’d be much happier with a SC / Starflight game where the combat was turn-based tactical like Master of Orion 2.
It really boils down to how someone defines Star Control. To me, Star Control is a sci-fi adventure game where you can explore the galaxy, interact with aliens with extremely well written/crafted characteristics and has an epic story that the player has some affect on.
That isn’t to say I don’t think that the Spathi or Vux or Ur-Quan aren’t important. I think they are wonderful characters and we’d love to have them. But I can’t promise that because the only way that will happen is if we get the explicit license to use them from Paul and Fred.
I’ve talked to them about this and their feeling is since they can’t be involved on the project due to their commitments with TFB/Activision that they wouldn’t be comfortable with someone else using their established canon. That’s not only a position I respect but one I agree with.
Now, it’s possible that between now and release that we’ll come to some agreement with them regarding using the aliens from SC1/2 but I would rather make sure it’s clear from the outset that the new Star Control won’t necessarily have Spathi and Druug running around in the galaxy that player is exploring. That way, if they show up later, it’ll be a bonus.
I do think, however, a substantial number of people are going to feel the same as you do Rezaf. In a sense, that provides the game with a metric of success. If the final game can win people who feel like you do over, then that’ll be a good sign.
I might play it, but I won’t consider it SC. Like the new “XCOM”, although I got bored halfway through that and reading what people said about the end mission…ugh.
The reality is that in other creative media, stuff gets remixed the entire time. Look at how often Buck Rogers has been reinvented (An incomplete list; Armageddon 2419, Buck Rogers: A Life In The Future, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D., Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Buck Rogers (Radio), Buck Rogers (Serial Film), Buck Rogers (AEC TV series), Buck Rogers (NBC TV series), Buck Rogers XXVC, Buck Rogers (Dynamite Comics), Buck Rogers (Hermes Press Comics)).
I totally get this, but then why buy the rights? You didn’t have the Master of Magic rights and still made the Elemental series. What does having the Star Control rights do for you that not having the MoM rights did for Elemental? (Other than the marketing/buzz for having “Star Control” on the box, rather than “spiritual successor to Star Control”.)
(Not trying to be snarky–as someone not in the industy at all I’m genuinely curious.)
That’s actually quite a lot. While I think it’s easy to over-estimate the popularity of older titles, since the market was smaller back then, I think SC2 is like XCom in that a lot of people who never played the original have heard of it from people who did, and that can be a huge marketing boost.
It’s a really good question. What you are weighing is the cost to create awareness X organically versus the cost to “buy” that same awareness. The Star Control publishing rights and trademark rights ensured that awareness and creates excitement amongst the existing fanbase that there is a new Star Control game coming.
Heck, I wish we had gotten Master of Magic, it would have put more pressure on us to stay true to THAT game instead of going off in the bizarre, unfocussed directions that War of Magic ultimately went into. That game is going to haunt me forever even though it ultimately is what transformed the company into a serious game studio and not that side hobby it had been.
Now, that said, great care and respect has to be taken with such a property. People have a pretty good understanding of what a new Star Control game should be like. It’s one of the reasons why my role in the new Star Control is largely about gathering talent across the industry and fan communities and making sure they get the time and budget to make something spectacular.
Gus, but wouldn’t you agree that the farther you remove the game from it’s predecessor(s) that garnered the recommendations, the more unlikely it is for the expectations of those picking up the game to be fulfilled?
Brad is absolutely correct, it all depends on what you think makes up the Star Control franchise.
I can’t wrap my head about the idea that just having more or less similar game mechanics is all it takes to make a “worthy sequel”. It’s definately a factor, but not the only one.
For example, to me, Act of War would have been a far better Command & Conquer sequel than Generals was, which went a similar route and preserved the mechanics while jettisoning the “lore”. (Though arguably this had happened before in the series with Red Alert.) But Act of War was NOT a C&C sequel because it wasn’t a C&C game (doh!) whilst I felt Generals wasn’t a “proper” C&C game either, because of the radically different setting.
Thinking about this with regards to the thread title, X-COM pulled off the same thing with Apocalypse. They constructed some barely plausible plot explanation and had some nods to the earlier games, but as far as the actual gameplay was concerned, you were fighting completely different aliens for completely different reasons (more or less).
Apoc was ONLY a X-COM game because it was released under that name, but it could have easily been made a standalone game with no relation to the X-COM universe with minimal changes. And the game received a lot of flak from many folks for this very reason - for the record, I’m quite fond of Apoc though I liked the original X-COM best.
Unlike in X-COM, which had minimal ingame plot anyway, the actual characters and their histories play a much, MUCH more important rol in SC2. It’s definately got some adventure-game elements to it’s game design.
So, to return to that example, there’s making a LotR licensed game without any characters in it that appeared in the books, but still setting it on MiddleEarth and referencing the “original” events somehow.
And there’s making a LotR licensed game that doesn’t take place on Middle Earth and doesn’t have any of the known characters, nor their races and none of the myth, because “mystical different decision 250k years ago!”.
It’s pretty clear that the decision has already been made, though, so I’ll stop boring everyone by repeating the obvious - I CAN see liking your game anyhow, based on it’s own merits, but to me, it’ll NEVER be a Star Control game, even if you cram in a Ur-Quan appearance as an afterthought.
It sounds so easy when you write “interact with aliens with extremely well written/crafted characteristics” in your design document, but I’d have thought you had learned more from your … recent experiences. Actually making that stuff good isn’t easy and always a gamble.
And, sorry to say, there’s folks I’d trust this more with than StarDock, with their wonderful, exciting “Laser 1, Laser 2, Laser 3” tech progression. For now, I’m most reminded by this course of action of this picture:
If you take the mechanics of Mass Effect but then remove the setting, you might have a wonderful game, but it won’t be Mass Effect. Same thing for Star Control.
Sure, mess with the story, change details about the aliens, etc., but have the setting be recognizably Star Control. Otherwise, it will be like trying to pass The Walking Dead for the Wolf Among Us or Back to the Future.
My point being that many of the people playing won’t know SC2. They’ll just have heard of it, so their only real expectation will be that it’s a sequel to a classic game they never played.
Nor was continuity all that important between SC1 and SC2. SC2 had some of the races for SC1, but several vanished (AndroSynth, Chenjesu, Mmrnmhrm), and SC2 introduced 12 new races. If SC1 had never existed, it wouldn’t have mattered, because the backstory mentioned in SC2’s dialog would still make sense even without a prior game.
This won’t get me any love in this thread, particularly from Brad, but I agree. Not many game designers write good dialog, which is why SC2 stood out so much. Most developers, even ones known for writing lots of dialog like Bioware, write mediocre to bad dialog. Stardock is not known for being exceptional in this area.
I’m awfully skeptical of their ability to pull of engaging exploration mechanics as well, the other pillar of SC2. Not because they’re bad - I liked Sins of a Solar Empire, for example - but because it’s not easy. We’ve got 3.5 games that have managed it, Starflight, Starflight 2, Star Control 2, and a near-miss with aspects of the space stage of Spore. I don’t expect a MoO 3 disaster, but I wouldn’t be surprised by something on par with SC3.
I’m still really mystified that SC2’s exploration mechanics are held in extremely high regard as something to be emulated in the modern era. Far as I could tell, the only thing that set systems apart is that some were colonies/homeworlds, and discovering those could be relatively painstaking (it made the accomplishment of doing so via clues pretty nice-feeling, but the progression for that happening always felt “off” to me, especially since there are some hard “time-limits” in the game logic like recruitable crew and increasing attacks). Otherwise, each system just contained a few landable worlds, a few unlandable worlds, and a lot of fiddly maneuvering between concentric rings. The worlds themselves were only really measured by your capacity for dodging bad stuff to a certain point, after which the tectonics/storms/etc. would become so overwhelming that it just wasn’t feasible to make profitable trips there, so–to me–“discovered” worlds mostly came down to “Are any of the danger ratings over a 6? K, next. Otherwise, land, scoop, depart.”
I dunno. In a world where ME2 caught extreme amounts of flack for its orbital scanning system (which had less arbitrary challenge but required even less thought) and even ME1’s dead “planetscapes” were roundly criticized, I just can’t imagine the exploration elements of SC2 being held in high regards or brought forward with few changes and pleasing just about anybody.
But again, I played the game like 20 years too late and well after playing SC3 to completion like 3x, so my perspective may be wildly different from others in the thread.
There was more to it than that. There was the matter of how rich they were, either in materials or biologicals, and in the case of materials there was total value and resource density. Further, there was a system to it, in that mid-sequence stars were more friendly to life, and hot suns (i.e. blue giants) tended to be rich treasure troves, but dangerous if you didn’t have heat shielding tech. Which leads to the other aspect you’re neglecting - tech would negate certain dangers, which in turn unlocked worlds you couldn’t safely land on before.
Another important aspect was that you could go anywhere, so there mere presence of a star and its planets didn’t mean it was important. Which in turn meant that you had to collect story clues for certain things, like the location of the beast the VUX pervert wanted. Starflight and Star Control 2 were the earliest examples of the sandbox games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim.
The comparison to ME2’s planetary scanning isn’t fair, since the land-and-collect-stuff thing was a minigame, in which you had to decide whether a trip to the surface was worth the fuel, and you had to dodge dangers. It wasn’t deep, but it wasn’t tedious. ME1’s planets were better than ME2’s scanning, but they were painful to navigate since it was hard to tell a navigable mountain you had to climb from an unclimbable barrier.
I don’t doubt for a moment that it’s possible to keep the basic outline (land on planets and search for stuff) of SC2’s exploration and do something more interesting. It’s just that no one has done it. Spore had a much better planetary exploration engine, but it lacked even SC2’s simple resource gathering framework. You occasionally nabbed animals for terraforming, or bombed cities if it was inhabited, but that was it.
It is funny but my daughter and I always watched this when she was little and we would sing the song by Tom Jones at the top of our lungs. I just bought the first season in HD on Amazon and watched a few episodes with her again. It is worth watching!
That is exactly what Star Control to me is. Anything else would be a disappointment. Your respect for the original and the idea to do a sideline is very honorable. Just continue to make sure people understand why it’s not Star Control 4 like you’ve already done.
I really wish more developers experienced as much emotion and joy as you did from various games. This is a problem nowadays where you have people designing games with no background outside of mechanics where the game comes first and the graphics are secondary. They forgot (don’t know or don’t care) story, background, music, immersion, are so much more important than looking at meta data analysis to make the foundation of a game.
So, since I missed a ton of useful information, I figured I’d compile what I found most interesting and post it here for y’all.
Posted by Frogboy, 9/30/14:
It’s not a secret that the new Star Control reboot is in development. The approved budget is approximately $5 million (Star Control 2’s budget was $50,000 - that’s how amazing Paul and Fred were!).
Fairly modest compared to AAA pricing, but in-line with the spate of good-sized Kickstarter super-successes (although I suspect most of those have had extra funding–like the doubled-or-more final cost of Broken Age). I almost wonder if this’d be a Kickstartable title in the vein of the Shadowrun games from Harebrained: use the crowdfunded bux to finance extra-budgetary niceties like goofy FMV captures for the aliens or the inclusion of classic ships in SuperMelee. Probably too late in the process for that, but a man can dream. . .
Posted by Frogboy, 3/5/15:
We had a great meeting with Paul Reiche and Fred Ford. Really great guys. We went over a status report of where the new Star Control stands and emphasized that we would not make any attempt to touch the Ur-Quan continuity. Paul has given us hope that someday he will return to his universe and make a new game in it (he spoke about this at GDC today).
Ah, but a man can dream. . .
Posted by Frogboy, 3/20/15:
First thing, I talked to Paul and Fred and they suggested I talk to Riku Nuottajärvi about doing music for the new game (he worked on Star Control 2’s music) but I don’t know how to contact him. . .
A user downthread got them in touch via email.
. . . The core team is already in place and development has been ongoing for awhile (though very little art yet).
Third, the basic plot of the new game has been finalized. We think people will like it. Chris Bucholz (cracked.com columnist) is leading the writing effort. You’ll be hearing a lot from him in the coming months.
I really enjoyed Bucholz’s writing in Sorcerer King, but found it got kinda washed out by the high randomization and sheer volume of quests. Running 4 hero-teams around the map late-game snagging Deadly Dungeons for extra loot and equippables encouraged rapid-clicking through dialogue, removing a lot of the charm. Hopefully Star Control winds up with a little firmer narrative structure and makes sure to place Bucholz’s writing in gameplay situations where it’s less a burden and more the star of the show.
Fourth, from talking to Paul about what sorts of things really matter to him about Star Control we’ve expanded on the community element of the game. So in essence, the game will ship with all the tools necessary for modders to create their own “galaxies”. . . that has their own ships, aliens, etc. where users can download and add it to their in-game universe from within the game.
Fifth, the player’s flagship will be very very customizeable both in terms of weapons, crew, etc. as well visually. When players explore planets, they’ll find lots and lots of cool stuff including ship parts. These ship parts (think of them like lego pieces of various shapes) will let players make their flag ships look however they want. . .
Sixth, while we will be creating (and supporting) alien ship designs via Maya and 3D studio, the plan is to allow players to also use a GalCiv III-like ship designer so that when they create their own galaxies to share with the community, they can easily give each race their own unique ships along with their own stories, aliens, etc. . . .
Lots of talk about customization and modding support, which is interesting. I wonder how easily that stuff will be slotted into the main campaign, or if there will be game modes that support more free play without letting the uberstory interfere as much (something I found myself wishing for sometimes in Sorcerer King).
In the comments, Brad had this to say: “Re Lore. The galaxy is planned to be full of “Stuff”. A lot of our work is on creating the tools. If you’ve followed the amazing work on the Ur-Quan masters community, you can imagine what amazing things they could do if there were tools designed to allow them to expand the universe with more life, adventures, aliens, etc. that all can become part of the game as in-game downloadable content should the player choose.”
Ninth, there won’t be any official announcements in 2015. We’re not sure if we’ll have a public beta but we are sure that we will be offering beta access to the Ur-Quan community and related communities.
Tenth, The game will be using the same engine as Ashes of the Singularity (www.ashesgame.com).
More on the beta bit in a bit. Cool news about the engine, though little insight into how it’ll be used (please no rotating starfield of madness from Star Control 3–God that screwed with my teenaged head something awful).
Posted by Frogboy, 4/7/15: Q: Will Toys for Bob be involved in the new Star Control series?
A: Maybe but probably not. Toys for Bob was acquired by Activision and is currently working on the Skylanders series. However, Paul and Fred have both expressed a desire to return to Star Control in the future.
Q: How does Stardock plan to do a new Star Control series without the original story and aliens?
A: The new Star Control will be a reboot with a new story and new aliens. The classic Star Control series (or at least, 1 and 2 which are what we consider as canon) will be preserved as the Ur-Quan continuity. . . .
Q: How does Stardock plan to handle the new aliens?
A: The new Star Control universe will be broken up into “star clusters”. The base game will include the “Home” star cluster which includes the Earthlings along with a dozen or more new aliens presenting their own challenges to the player.
Think of the 500 planet or so galaxy of Star Control 2 as being a star cluster in the new Star Control. In addition to providing a star cluster of this scope, we will also be including the tools for players to design their own ships (see GalCiv III), their own aliens, their own stories, star systems, star clusters, etc. . . .
Q: How will these star clusters work?
A: In the base game, player will start 2112 with the first human contact with an alien race. From there, the humans will launch their first interstellar ship and begin exploring this area of the galaxy. The ship will be highly customizeable (both visually and in terms of equipment). Thus, by the end of the base game, the player’s ship will have evolved into something truly unique while at the same time gathering a fleet of alien allies to fight the primary antagonist and their allies.
By the end of the game, the player may want to explore other star clusters. From within the game, the player can visit other star clusters. The suite of tools we’re creating will be called the Precursor workshop. . . . At the time of this writing, much of these tools have been created since we’ll be using them to create the game assets with them.
Lots more good info in the FAQ, and I’m not cutting this one up as much cuz it is so good, but yeah, important info contained above. This probably answers my above questions about how new content gets slotted into the game, but I still wanna know how it works mechanically. e.g., can you travel to custom clusters in the midst of the main plot (if there even is one), or will it be reserved for the free-play endgame after the story is finished?
Posted by Vaelzad, 4/15/15:
Greetings and various apropos felicitations everyone!
I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself. I’m Andrew Zoboki and I’m the Lead Game Designer for Star Control. I’m extremely excited about working on such an awesome project at Stardock. The Star Control franchise for me, as I am sure it is for all of you, is one of the shining gems of games that I enjoyed playing in my youth. . . .
Currently we are smelling the heavy space and working on the levels to make it happy time. There are so many, but you only play on this one. One is not enough. We are friends now. Never be afraid to open enough and spread the wax.
Zoboki hails from Petroglyph by way of Relic, where he worked on Warhammer: Space Marine. Looks like he did a lot of the press-work for Grey Goo in the run-up to its launch, though I’m not positive he was Design Lead specifically for that game (though I assume he was). Both wound up intriguing, fun, but mildly flawed games that I think a ton of people enjoyed (I certainly liked my time with Space Marine a lot). Looks like he’s been kicking around the industry a good long while, and certainly has a good Orz translator, so I’m down with all that ;)
Obviously exceedingly early, but as a fan of the goofball voiced, synced dialog in StarCon 3, I am actually really excited by this direction, assuming good voice acting talent can be brought to bear.
Posted by Vaelzad, 7/31/15:
As you may have seen in the earlier sneak peak, we are doing a lot of R&D work on making the aliens interact in real-time. The R&D results have been very positive though there is still a lot more to do. Our goal is for you to be able to interact with the aliens in a way that immerses you into the communication experience. We are in the process right now of casting voice actors for our alien races. Additionally when you are interacting with the aliens you will have their translated dialog come across in race specific fonts. . . . I can also say we are striving to make sure all of the aliens you will be encountering will be unique and non-humanoid.
One of our big milestone developments we hit recently that I want to share with everyone is with regards to multi-player. The team has gotten our first prototype multiplayer game up and running.
Cool and also good stuff here that expands upon the above, so I was glad to hear it, personally, although I think it bugs some SC2 fans in the forums a bit. Still, good to know the direction they’re probably going with in any case.
Also curious to see how much they’ll focus on MP “balance.” Individual ships could have very lopsided matchups in the previous games, which was offset somewhat by their point-value in SuperMelee. I think I read somewhere in one of these threads that, although the classic races wouldn’t return, some of their ships might get riffed on in the new designs, which I think is good. Esp. by SC2 & 3, there were such a vast number of ships in the games that I think you start to really strain the design space of top-down, 1v1 spaceship combat mechanics if you try to swear off everything the older games did.
Posted by Frogboy, 9/3/15:
The team is now fully staffed with the exception of bringing on one additional animator. It is now, the largest game project currently underway at Stardock across all studios in terms of monthly budget.
For those of you who remember the development of the original Star Control series, you may recall that Paul and Fred worked very closely with fan (SC2 mainly). In fact, thanks to Paul and Fred we’ve been able to team up Riku who did most of the best known tracks for Star Control 2 back in 1992 and he’s in charge of the new sound track.
Now, that said, we have a number of challenges that we need help with. . .
#1: IS Star Control Star Control without the Spathi?
However, we don’t’ own the rights to the aliens or the lore. We have a license to use them for the publishing of Star Control 1/2/3. . . The bottom line is that the new Star Control will NOT have the aliens from the original in it. The most we will likely to is have illusions to them. We’re going to create a new continuity where the Star Control classic continuity (Star Control Ur-Quan) is separate from the new Star Control. . .
#2: What IS Star Control?
. . . It’s an action adventure game. Specifically, an action adventure game in which you play as the Earthlings, go out into the galaxy and meet aliens, go on quests, explore planets, and have space battles.
That is what we’re in the process of creating.
#3: Defining some core values
. . . I want to interact with really interesting aliens that are well written, funny, charming and try out lots of cool ships, design my own custom ship, etc. That’s why we brought on comedy writers early on and have put a lot of budget behind making sure that we’re prepared to record 11 hours of voice acting that will be handle through our engine’s lips syncing tech. . .
#4: Satisfying the super fans
. . . Broadly speaking (without giving too much away) we plan to provide fairly extravagant mod tools. Tools well beyond what has ever been made outside of say Spore.
If you’ve read “Ready Player One” then you have a pretty good idea of the authoring level we are going for. . .
I think they really hit upon the big things facing them here in a mature and respectable fashion. Brad’s talked here and elsewhere (including, more expansively, in the comments on the above post) about how this decision’s more a moral and artistic one than a legal one, driven by an intense respect for the work of Paul and Fred @ Toys for Bob. As a writer who’s never really jived with the whole “published works are the property of the consumers, not the creators” mentality that suffuses a lot of artistic academia, I actually find Brad’s stance here really refreshing.
And for those moments when I really would like to go bully some Spathi, I’m confident that enterprising modders will have fully animated+voiced cowardly molluskoids available to download into my game within a week of release day.
Kay, just taking a break here to recommend anyone interested in this title go take the survey now. Make sure you’re on or have remote access to the PC you’ll want to “register” for the program, since it’s gonna ask you for your DXDiag stats early on.
Topic #2: The Tech
The game will be using the same graphics engine as Ashes of the Singularity. That means it’ll be both state of the art but also . . . be able to run on relatively modest hardware (it’ll still require a 64-bit OS, DirectX 11 or later but you should be able to run it fine on an Ultrabook).
The visuals are already quite stunning. Remember,. Nitrous’s claim to fame (the engine)_ is that it renders similar to how CGI in movies is done except in real-time. You can see that already in Ashes despite it having relatively simple 3D models. Wait till you see what we can do with the aliens.
Goddammit, the visuals have apparently stunned the “creative phrasing” center of Brad’s brain already ;)
Topic #3: Lore Update
Since this is a reboot, the game will take place before the events of the original Star Control 1. Without giving too much away, something happens in 2085 leading the Humans to form Star Control to begin exploring space and making contact with alien worlds. The story will unfold from there.
Topic #4: Core elements
[ul]
[li]Super Melee. Without spoiling it, Super Melee will take place within a solar system, not around a single planet. It will support Internet multiplayer and will likely be the first component released to Founders (2016).
[/li]> [li]Planet Exploration. This part is actually pretty far along and one of the coolest looking things I’ve ever seen and, after you see, it, it’s “duh, of course that’s how it should be done”.
[/li]> [li]Encounters. This is the most complex part of the game (or at least expensive). Combining Nitrous with real-time emoting (not just lip syincing) is definitely proving worth it. For the record, I was originally against this because I thought it would be cheesy. I’ve now seen it in action and it’s really amazing.
[/li]> [li]Ship Customizer. You wlll have a flag ship which will also pick up fleets of ally ships. However, this time around, you’ll be able to visually customize the ship such that everyone’s ship will look different (which should prove fun in multiplayer and when exploring the multiverses created by others). Think GalCiv III level customization combined with Nitrous fidelity. This part of the game is already working (though primitively).
[/li]> [li]Exploration. This part is working minus non-programmer art.
[/li]> [li]Music. We scored a real win getting Riku back after 25 years to score the new Star Control music. It’s part of the charm of the original series.
[/li]> [li]Writing. Chris Bucholz of cracked.com is in charge of the writing. The aliens are, well, pretty awesomely insane and ridiculous already. There are already some catchy memes that have spread across the office. It’ll be interesting whether they spread once others are exposed to them. . .
[/li]> [/ul]
Topic #5: Road Map
Here’s the near-term road map:
[ul]
[li]Founders Program begins (4Q2015). This will be access to our vault and a private forum where we can bounce ideas off those passionate, like us, about the Star Control reboot.
[/li]> [li]Founders Prototype (1Q2016): Founders under NDA will start to be able to give feedback and try out some of our tools and early prototypes of what we’re working on to give feedback and suggestions.
[/li]> [li]Founders Alpha (2Q2016): Founders, under NDA, start getting Alpha builds.
[/li]> [li]Early Access (4Q2016).
[/li]> [li]2017: 25th anniversary of Star Control 2.
[/li]> [/ul]
He goes on to define their vision of the “multiverse” (the in-game method of handling imported player-created races, planets, stories, etc.), which is sort of neat, but I’d still like some more ideas as to how it functions in the midst of (or in the absence of) the main campaign. Maybe that’s just me, though.
