The planet design

The original Star Control games are anything but believable. It delivered the fun and the fantasy in a fun interactive way, and that is what we are holding onto. 

Both the original Star Control and Star Control 2 have a very cartoon style to it, both in its designs and color pallets. We have kept with that line of thinking with the reboot. After all seeing what SC3 did by trying to go more down the realistic path was.... catastrophic to say the least.  A dingy and dark art style is not as lively and fun as a very colorful one.

The lander that explored planets would have been the size of a small country, with aliens that would even be larger.  The terrain of a planet did not matter, and only the planetary stats did.  If you look at the difference between Star Control 2 original and then the 3DO and Ur-quan masters release, one of the major differences is that the planetary lander gameplay kept getting enhanced and made more central to the game. We have continued that direction with what we are doing for the planets. We haven't revealed too much of the lander gameplay yet, but it is definitely a fun experience.

I feel you're both right and am reserving judgment, but I understand Tilt's reservations. Bear in mind this is only concept art and not a finalized appearance. Brad already compared the art style to the look of Pixar's Inside Out and I can see that coming through in these pieces of artwork.

The use of a very vivid and bright color palette is a reminder of the more fantasy-based nature of this universe. Most sci-fi games have a lot of cold design motifs with metal and rugged industrial appearance. The bright colors immediately create an unconscious connection with me to rainbow worlds, which I definitely noticed an homage to in the planetary concept art.

I feel SC3's characters fell flat but not due to their realism or lack thereof. Those puppets failed mostly because they just felt rushed into production and their design and physical articulation was of disappointing levels of low quality, even for their time.

I am glad to see that the more painterly style of character animation is being preserved and modernized, but would like to see the art style maintain a happy medium between realism and fantasy without stepping too far into either realm.

Actually I think that there is nothing bad in cartoonish style per se. In my opinion it matches the first alien art we got - the "o rly guy". Cartoons can also express various atmosphere - think - the Ugly Americans or Rick and Morty Shows.

If this part of the  game is moddable then wait for a month or so and you will get real life planet textures imported.

I, for one, like cartoonish art style. I'm more than sure it won't look as cartoonish as in concept JPEGs when transferred into 3D.

I like the cartoon style as well.  I feel that this style fits best with the Star Control color palette and alien races. I mean SC2 did have rainbow planets. This style also brings a lot more in terms of replay ability in that you can mod any kind/style of planet. I've never felt when playing star control it went for realism.

I was a big fan of Spore and after seeing the concept art I could not help but make that connection as well.  I do like stylistically how Mass Effect handled Planetary discovery and scanning.  Not so much the actual exploration mind you.

It seems you guys subscribe to a different idea of what "cartoony" means than I do. When I use that word, I don't mean "colorful" or "fun". If I were to replace it with one other word, it would be "exaggerated". Yes, the entirety of Star Control 2 (and very little of Star Control 3) is very colorful, but it is very deliberate about how it uses its exaggeration (ie. its cartoony designs). If you will indulge me for a moment, let me analyze SC2's design:

One of the great strengths of SC2 is how it manages to successfully build a universe that holds both Douglas Adams-like comedy and truly deep villains that resonate with the player and makes him or her think. It creates stark contrasts in its approach to storytelling, and it works. Most people attribute this to the writing alone, but the reality is more complex than that. It's a combination of writing, visual design and (to a smaller degree because of the way in which the music was made for this game) the audio design. 

SC2 is very particular about where it becomes cartoony and where it doesn't. Notice how the races we consider the most hilarious are also the ones who are the most exaggerated in their visual design. The Pkunk look almost abstract and extremely exaggerated, while the Kohr-Ah are played straight and look like a drawn representation of what could be an actual alien race. Both are colorful 2D drawings, but one is cartoony where the other isn't. Some races mix comedy and seriousness, and their visual representation is also halfway between the two extremes. Take the Thraddash, for example. The Spathi visuals are, in a word, crazy. The Mycon design is subtle in comparison. The VUX are a little bit of both. This is no accident. 

Star Control 2 uses exaggeration to emphasize comedy (or in the case of the biological life on certain planets, exaggerated to make them distinct since there were a scant few pixels to draw them with), but defaults to playing it straight. This is what your average planet looked like in that game:

There's nothing cartoony about it. It's played straight, with a simple simulation using real-world physical values to make it believable. There are no exceptions to this when it comes to planets in the game, not even for Rainbow worlds. The reason is simple: The planets aren't used as comedy. 

This however, is cartoony exaggeration for comedic effect:

While this is not:

In my opinion, claiming that Star Control 2's design was overall cartoony reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what that game was trying to accomplish with its visual, audible and written atmosphere. That Stardock's team is going all-out cartoony for planets is surprising and a little bit disturbing. 

Yet on the other hand, other parts of the design seems to reveal that the team might understand these distinctions after all. Take the contrast between the visual design of the alien race that has been made public (a cartoony design that implies that this race will be played, at least to some degree, for comedic effect) and the scrapped humanoid alien design from the Founder's package (a more serious design that implies that such a race would have been played straight, with little humor). If Stardock manages this contrast in their alien encounters, why are they suddenly also going for the comedic style for planets. Is planetary exploration supposed to be laugh-out-loud funny this time around? If it is, then my arguments fall flat and I will withdraw my criticism of the planets' visual design. Otherwise, I'm not really sure what Stardock is trying to accomplish here. 

I know this isn't the fun kind of feedback, especially since visual design typically gets locked down pretty early on in the process, but I would be remiss in not speaking out about something I felt strongly about the moment I saw the concept art. Atmosphere and design is near and dear to me. Listen to my Arilou remix ("Welcome to Falayalaralfali") for example. I deliberately exaggerated the mood in that piece to make it seem too relaxing, as if the Arilou were trying too hard to make you comfortable, hopefully making the player feel vaguely uncomfortable instead. The remix isn't relaxing and soothing by accident. Good design doesn't come about by accident, and as mentioned, Star Control 2 seems very deliberate in how it handles its own design in a way that I'm not recognizing in the planetary concept art for this new game. 

That's what I mean when I saw that the planets appear too cartoony, and that's why I'm worried enough to post a thread about it.

^ I'm looking at SC2 planets and alien design and it clashes alot more than new SC to me. If anything, the new SC design is more consistent. I'd wait for 3D images of both planets and aliens and make a final judgement then, rather than raising the alarms from looking at literally 2 concept pictures.

I think it is too early to make any conclusion as we first have to see more art and actual renderings, early in game pictures and etc. But i have to agree that Precursors_TiLT has many valid points. But again, it is also important to understand - which parts of the game are planned to be modable.

Percursorsors_Tilt  you are right on the money. There is a balance between the amount of humor that is being used for which aliens. Not all of them are "funny" as there are some that are pretty serious. You'll see some more of the concepts soon. 

With regards to the planets they need to fit into the context. I think one of the biggest issues when you arrived in the solar system in SC2 is that you had no idea which planet you should visit. Which planet do you want to visit. Can you tell what the planet is or where the unique one is? Is forcing the player to have to visit every planet to find the special one fun or just tedious?  

While the solar system below is slightly better, the realism just isn't working for star control. Sure there are unique planets there, and you may want to go to visit it becasue it looks different, but does it fit the style of Star Control? I would say no. The planet looks unique, but does that mean it is going to be fun to visit? 

Now these are closer but they still look very similar and the uniqueness of each individual planet is still missing. These planets even though they have some different features still all look the same. Could you tell what kind of surface gameplay you are going to encounter on any of them? (I realize that I'm backing my explanation with features that haven't been shared yet)

We want to push it just a tad more to make them even more unique, and brake the traditional round planet paradigm even more. We also want the player to know what kind of gameplay to expect from visually looking at it, and not have to play the guessing game or learn the hidden meanings of the stats of a planet, 

You look at this planet and unless you know what the Gravity, Temp, Weather, and Tectonics mean; which themselves are a small subset of stats buried in stats that have no effect on your gameplay, you would have no clue as to what the planet is like from its visual appearance. 

I have an idea to share, but I'm afraid it's way too complicated/insignificant to implement. Still, here goes nothing:

Let the planets have day/night hemispheres. That means that the planets like Mercury will have different stats for each hemisphere. When the daylight side will have raging volcanoes, lava streams and lotsa tectonic activity, the dark side will have cold rock and "exploration friendly" weather. Add rotation to the planets and you get your ancient spaceship wreck cave available to you for exploration only at night. And during day, you're just gonna have to visit some other planets.

Same with water planets. At night it's covered with ice, prohibiting access to underwater caves. And during day you can dive and have some loot picked up (assuming underwater exploration is planned). Throw in some tech/upgrade that gives your lander underwater travel capability so you can't access some areas early in the game.

Maybe not entirely realistic, but pretty fun. Only small number of planets need to be like that too.

^ I think this is a pretty cool idea I hadn't thought of, but as you acknowledge, some parts aren't realistic.

The underwater exploration idea is freaking awesome and Stardock is not doing their job if they haven't already thought of it!

I feel temperature should vary based on the proximity to the star, so that daylight on very hot planets will slowly burn away lander armor requiring you to either find shelter or take off (or install better armor) while at night you will be safe.

Tectonic activity and lava flows are also awesome, but I think they should be a separate climate feature not related to the temperature and proximity to the sun.

I'm not sure planets cold enough to be covered with ice would have time to thaw and refreeze on every rotation, though.

What you're describing are traits that are inherent to planets. They're huge and round and come in a limited variety of colors. You've decided that this is an unacceptable thing for this new Star Control, and have decided to embrace cartoony exaggeration as a way to add distinction to each planet. I do understand your reasoning behind it, and it might turn out to be the right call in the end, but I don't recall anyone ever complaining about the things you just mentioned as detriments with exploring solar systems in Star Control 2. Are you sure that the problem you're solving is an actual problem and not just a theoretical one? Because you are sacrificing a small part of Star Control 2's identity by going for the style you've chosen, and that could end up being a bigger problem.

In short, I understand your arguments and your reasoning. I'm just not sure if the solution you chose is the right one for Star Control. I'm afraid that the feeling that SC2 gave us of exploring the galaxy will be replaced by the feeling of exploring a game world. 

I like the exaggerated planet style.

Although I appreciate Precursors_TiLT's detailed contribution and understand his concerns, I'd like to raise the counterpoint that the reboot is its own game (though inspired by StarControl 1/2/(3)) and does not need to slavishly adhere to the paradigms established by its predecessors.

That said, I would be disappointed if Stardock's approach didn't mirror the points that were pointed out: we've only seen relatively straight-forward and to some extent "natural" looking planets. But wouldn't there also be planets with a foreboding deathly hallow? The kind of serious and deadly planet that makes you very wary of setting foot on it. What about a glassed planet - the remains of some war. Or a shattered planet with many large chunks loosely held together by gravity. What about a planet that is almost entirely covered in superscrapers and other technology.

I think there will be a lot of opportunity for special unique planets where the visual representation already gives valuable cues and sets the mood for their exploration.

But, and this is where I am willing to depart a bit from the StarControl 2 designs, I appreciate a certain artistic unity. Different aliens and planets should of course be very different from each other and evoke different emotions purely on their representation - but they should also share some common artistic ground. I think there StarControl 2 was sometimes a bit too extreme varying from cartoony to abstract to chillingly realistic.

I hope it won't be too cartoony. The planet designs look too far gone on the cartoony scale and should be dialed back a bit. I wouldn't exactly call SC2 cartoony, in fact is was pretty scary to play at times when I was a kid and first discovered it. The Ilwrath, Umgah, Kzer-Za and Kor-Ah were pretty creepy aliens to me then and still are. Hopefully some genocidal maniacs like the Kor-Ah will make an apperance in the new game.

I quite like the new planet designs. Immediately knowing if a planet is a volcanic mess or a lush paradise just by looking at it is nice and imo looks good but if the intent is to let people know which planet to visit, it's missing the point.

Visiting every planet in a system can be tedious but it makes the unexpected discoveries more exciting when they occur. The trick is balancing the amount of discoveries versus the time invested exploring. For example, if I fly into a system and see a planet with space elevators sticking out of it or something, sure I'll probably head there first but I'm still going to explore every barren rock in the hopes of finding a race of silicon rock munchers or a crashed space ship or something anyway.

I appreciate Vaelzad clarifying the intentions of the concept art and making a case for why this is the design direction to portray planets. The planet concept art is adorable and a really great direction to go in, but I also feel it needs to be scaled back slightly. I like that it adds to the gameplay and gives planets distinct appearances, but I agree with several others that the geographic features should probably be dialed down at least when viewing from orbit.

A point was made about how planets always appear round and indistinct; granted this may be boring and uninvolving with regard to gameplay when it comes to making decisions about which planet to visit, but I think it flies too much in the face of physics and this is why, for better or for worse, people are immediately using the adjective "cartoony" to describe them regardless of how they feel about them.

There are many things about a game like this that require a suspension of disbelief, but basic planetary physics are a universal concept: once an object becomes large enough to create its own gravity, it ends up becoming uniformly round and this is what prevents geographic features from being hundreds of miles tall.

This is why small planetoids like meteors and asteroids (and even small moons) are misshapen and not perfect spheres. Unless these concept art planets are very small minor planets or even dwarf planets (both are real astronomical terms; even Pluto is an example of a dwarf planet now) then these enormous geographic features strain plausibility even for a fantasy game like this.

I would love to see this art style when visiting the planet with a lander, but I'm not sure how I feel about them appearing this comically exaggerated from orbit. If we could see them in the distance as traditional planetoids and then see these kinds of really artistic geographic features more distinctly as we approach them and descend into the atmosphere from orbit, I think it would be a lot cooler and give players a more natural and intuitive sense of discovery.

Vaelzad, do these design decisions ultimately come down to an issue of scale? Planets in SC2 were not "huge" as we could traverse them in a lander very quickly, and from the initial appearance of these planets they appear very small as well. I'm not sure how others feel, but I had the impression that we'd have a lot more ground available to cover on planets and that we wouldn't be able to circumnavigate them quite as quickly as we did in SC2.

Looking at the picture in the first post, I see a striking difference between the rightmost planet and the other two. The right most one has polar ice caps, clouds, water, green islands. It's a cartoony exaggerated representation of a planet, but it's an exaggerated representation of a planet I could very much imagine existing in real life. In fact you could call it a cartoony representation of our own Earth, it's a bit too much water but otherwise it's home sweet home. 

The other two I find implausible. I'm no expert on planet formation, but I can't imagine what would make those rock formations. It looks more like a clod of dirt than a planet. Now if instead of having lumps it had craters it could resemble a cartoony representation of our moon while still preserving the visual distinction between it and the Earth like planet on the right. 

So all in all that's my suggestion. Keep the visual style, but try and keep each planet a recognisable exaggeration of a realistic planet or moon. 

^In response to the above:

A barren rock world doesn't seem implausible at all. Nor does a strangely colored world with alien vegetation (and perhaps a methane based atmosphere). For science in general - and particularly in a game such as StarControl - we need to accept that a "living" planet need not closely adhere to the example set by Terra.

You've already accepted crystaline and fungus-based sentient lifeforms as a reality within the context of StarControl. That the same narrative applies to planets is only a logical step.

I like the design

I think giving the worlds odd unique things won't harm the game as it gives the gamers fresh looks from in space, "hmm this world looks way different to the last, I wander what the exploration be like ?" its great way to keep the game fresh looking and hopefully encourage the gamer to explore more.

I would have to say I'm not a fan of the cartoony look of the planets.  I appreciate the level of creativity, but I'd like the game to feel I'm exploring a more believable universe.  Otherwise, to me, it would be like i'm exploring cartoon land at Disney. Without seeing more, I'd have to say I like the looks of the planets in the 2nd 4x4 photo. Even though they LOOK similar, i'm sure artists could come up with different looking ones for baren, frozen, rocky, lava, toxic, lush, water, earth, crystalline, etc.   The 3rd is just...hmm...too exaggerated and cartoonish IMO.  Great style, but I'm not a fan for it belonging in the Star Control universe.

I like the look of the moderately exaggerated 4x4...which, IMO (i'm going to be saying "in my opinion a lot!), fits the Star Control universe.  Moderately exaggerated, over all.

That last thing I want to have the game feel like is Spore. On a scale, where Mass Effect would be more realistic, and Spore be cartoon, here's my idea "balance"

1-------------------------4------------------------------------------10

Mass Effect------------Star Control--__--------------------------Spore

Anyways, great artwork!  This by no means a criticism of the talent and work gone into producing concept art!

I'm also voting against 'cartoony' planets, but not the color palettes, just the Spore-like exaggerations that Precursors_TiLT mentions.  Visiting the planet in order to scan it was part of the SC experience, albeit monotonous after a while but this can be mitigated by different technologies to aid/speed up the process that a player may obtain as the game evolves. 

You should not be able to glean any information from a planet by its appearance other than size and atmosphere.  The larger the planet/object the more spherical it should be.  But until you enter orbit, or have some distant scanning technology, you should know nothing about its weather/tectonics/biology/anomalies.  That's what sensor technology is for.

I actually like the cartoony look and think it is perfectly appropriate for Star Control.  I didn't like Spore and only played if for a few minutes before I put on the shelf, so I don't really know what the graphics in that game looked like.  I would say it shouldn't look too much like Spore, or any other game, and the fact that everyone seems to compare it to Spore might mean that it does look too much like Spore.  My opinion is that I want to see a cartoony look, but a unique cartoony look that will make people in the future say "oh, that's the Star Control look" when they see it much as you are all saying "Oh, that's the Spore look" now.

But I like all the art I have seen for Star Control so far and think it is a great look for a Star Control game.  Too me Star Control is pure fun, zero seriousness.  I wouldn't want it to look like Star Trek or Babylon 5.

This is what Spore's planet design looked like, for comparison:

I think that you are right, but, he has a point... 

It should be cartoonish styled but a more mature one (and not a Spore-like designs).
Cartoonish style is very good as long as it feels like I'm looking at a "serious" thing and not a kids game...

I really hope it will be like this at the end.