Let's talk about visual ship design
Stardock Forums
A new Star Control has me so worried about how Stardock can get everything right. There's so many things innate, integral and imperative to the spirit of Star Control that we have to discuss them constantly and non-stop until we're sick of hearing about it, just to make sure they get it right. Just to make sure they understand the awe of Star Control. The resource-gathering, the exploration, the wonky aliens, the humor, the star map, the space combat, the upgrade system - those are being discussed to death in this very forum. That's a good thing because it all has to come together as a wonderful amalgam of everything Star Control is at its core, for it to be successful.
One of these things that must be discussed, and is a huge part of the charm and beauty of Star Control, is ship design.
You're travelling through Hyperspace, minding your own business, trying to get where you want to go, when a black bubble pops up behind you. You can't outrun it. It's gaining on you, there's nowhere to go, and it sucks you in... alarm claxons sound... the encounter screen pops up and you see the high-lighter green, smooth, rounded edges of the Urquan Dreadnought, with its giant blasters on either side and yellow cockpit. And he brought two friends along to vaporize you. You know immediately you're going to take a big hit. Game may even be over. But it's not the power of the enemy ships that I'm commenting on. It's the fact that you knew IN ONE SPLIT-SECOND what you were up against. You know that green. You know that shape. You know what lives aboard that vessel in the blink of an eye. Or maybe it's the buzzing, electricity-bound spinning orbs of the Slylandro Probe, all bright red and blue and completely alien. The dragonfly-like Pkunk Fury with speed to match its design or multi-globular Spathi Eluder, spitting out missiles from its tail-pipe as it runs like a coward... or the dreaded, dark, foreboding husk of the Kohr-Ah Marauder. You KNOW these ships, you KNOW the pilots, you KNOW, before your conscious brain does, whether it will end in bloodshed or not.
Video game spaceships these days all tend to look alike. A personality-free amalgamation of undifferentiated gray ship-chunks bolted together. There's no way to tell them apart, really. The designs are so similar and clunky, you REALLY have to be familiar with them to have any clue who you're up against, and only through extreme repetition do their lifeless forms ever seem to become recognizable. It's the Movie Transformer-ization of space ships, and it has to stop. Just a mish-mash of steel won't work in a Star Control game. Here's some examples from other games - can you tell anything about them? Even what game they're from?
You KNOW the look I'm talking about. Maybe the last two screenshots are a low-blow, being from GalCiv and all. But they illustrate my point perfectly: What's even going on in that battle?! And the last screenshot, with the formation of three ships about to attack that crystal? At a glance, do you have ANY idea what their capabilities are? What to fear? How to fight them? What tactics to use? Are they friend or foe?!?! It's just a jumble of parts clumped together. They just look like a gray and slightly orange mass of blah. And all the other screenshots?!? I've never been so bored in my life, pulling those together. Uninspired, personality-free drivel. Great technique, don't get me wrong, I couldn't do half as well. But completely uninspired, same-y collections of gray parts. How would you know or even recognize those ships in any way??? They are completely indistinct from each other.
So really there are two points to all this:
1) By all means - allow the player ship to collect ship-parts to differentiate the empty Precursor husk, but make them LOOK like what they do.
2) This post is really about the ships, both friend and foe, that you encounter in space. They should be distinct, differentiated, recognizable at a glance, with RISKS TAKEN to come up with new architecture and interesting ways to portray each one. And they should REFLECT the persona of the alien species piloting them. Look at the Supox - an intelligent plant-species, with a ship that looks like a sprout or a grasshopper. The Arilou have a flying saucer (of course). The Chmmr LOOK like they have a high-powered laser that'll come out the front.
(There's a term that I can't seem to remember at the moment - where something is constructed to LOOK like what it does. It looks like its purpose. Can someone help me out?)
Either way, distinct, differentiated, recognizable at a glance. These are the words Stardock should live by when designing alien ships.
Does anyone have any ideas to help out Stardock in coming up with some ideas that would set them apart from the legions of spaceships corrupting popular culture these days? Explain some ideas! Get into the alien design/history and how it relates to ship design! Maybe Stardock will grab some of these ideas and use them in-game if they're well-thought-out enough?!
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