There might not be a lot of melee games, but there are tons of 'astroids' style space games, tons of twin stick shooters. There isn't a huge demand for one on one space battles, and I think not a lot of people have considered the modes you're mentioning. I think if done well they could be a lot of fun, but my ideal situation would be couch co-op or something like that to play it and it seems like it would be a niche thing until it somehow became popular. There would need to be some breakout community for it to gain steam. 

 

You've mentioned a lot that adventure games 'last two weeks and then are forgotten' but the fact that a star control 2 (and games like the classic lucasarts point and clicks, or even mass effect or dragon age) is still so important to many of us seems to indicate that they may not be forgotten at all. 

Wasn't it said this game will provide awesome modding potential? That alone should provide some major longevity.

Anyway, I know SC2 grew around the framework that was Super Melee, so fun and engaging combat is very important, but Fred and Paul's game is still remembered today primarily for the grand adventure it provided. The writing, the aliens, the interactive world, and the incredible soundtrack made it into a cult classic. Combat should get its fair share of focus, but I wouldn't want it to eclipse the rest of the game.

Maybe single player, but online there hasn't been a good top down space combat game since Subspace and that was 20 years ago.  This genre could be very successful in multiplayer but nobody has ever tried.  I think It's better than first person shooters, a lot more fun.  It won't work as a mod, because there are no similar games online I think it needs to be part of the initial release to have any real chance of taking off.  You need to capture the initial star control audience to get it going.  Supermelee won't be enough to attract enough of an audience for modders to ever make the alternate zones.

Obviously star control is most remembered as an adventure game, that's no reason to not have good multiplayer in the reboot.  In fact, star control is also remembered as one of the first good head-to-head games, so it would actually be appropriate that it have a good multiplayer side.  And its so simple to do, supermelee is most of the work needed to make these zones.  I doubt there is anywhere else in the game where you could get as big a bang for the buck, you get sooooo much for soooo little work.

But nothing surprises me anymore, so I'm not counting on it, even though it makes no sense at all to not do it.

 

 

To better help you understand why I liked Star Control SuperMelee (and what I want out of any additional modes), let me explain the house rules that I use.

• A player can only have one ship of a given type in their fleet.
• Try to keep the point values equal, and consider using one of the balanced teams. (Though, I often drop the ZFP Stinger and replace it with the Transformer.)
• Switch teams often so that players are not playing the same set of ships.
• The ship chosen for the first fight has to be random (or be a blind choice not visible to the opponent).

This means that I'm always playing a different ship. To me, that was what made Star Control SuperMelee so fun. If the system was set up so that I always felt I needed to use the "optimal" ship type, the game wouldn't be as fun.

Actually... I didn't care much for the RPG or story element in SC2. And... I liked some of the SC3 aliens (Daktaklakpak) better than anything in SC2. I know I'm a dirty heathen. Yet, I often finding myself reinstalling UQM to play SuperMelee with friends. Many were enamored with the combat, but few got excited when I told them it was an RPG. It takes a certain kind of player, I guess.

I love Planescape: Torment. It is the pinnacle of RPG storylines. It made me laugh. It made me cry. It made me angry. But... I've only played it through once. Why play through it again when I already know what is going to happen? I haven't forgotten the game, but it is sitting on my shelf still.

 

I think PS:T is one of the best games ever, but I've installed UQM multiple times just to play SuperMelee. 

 

Why?

 

THERE. IS. NO. OTHER. GAME. LIKE. SUPERMELEE. 

 

That's why I pushed to be a founder. I want to help Stardock create a SuperMelee clone that is just as good as Melee/SuperMelee.

We are getting supermelee, and I will enjoy playing that a lot.  More than most.  I am a top down space combat junkie.  A nearly limitless well of useless information:-)

I'd just also like to have the other classics of the genre, it's been a long time since anyone made a game like this and it would be a shame in my mind if it didn't include at least the classic, most fun scenarios of the genre.

I've actually been thinking about the idea of using the supermelee "BPV" structure in base defense, capture the flag, and hockey and it really seems to work well for all 3 scenarios in addition to making them more star control like.  It basically creates a situation where you have "lives" and if you run out of lives you are out of the game until one side wins and it resets.  If you choose a larger, more expensive ship you will have less lives.  In hockey, it makes adds the dimension of "bashing" players out of the game to get a man up.  It seems to work really, really well for all three scenarios as long as you design them around the fact that the players will run out of lives.

I can agree with everything you said there except the part about a player only being able to pick one of each ship.  They should always be able to pick any lineup they want, limited by the points available too them.  Oh, and they always get to pick what ship to use... that is a big part of what balances supermelee.

But these scenarios could be made to work just like supermelee, which actually seems like a great idea in all 3 scenarios.

Oh, I've played PS:T like 5 times and bought it at least twice physically haha

It's really interesting, I think, that both "single player only" and "multiplayer focused" players are both represented so enthusiastically here. I think that it really says something for the game that completely different aspects have such ardent support.

I'm not sure I said it in the thread here, but I liked a lot of what went on in SC3 also (I know, also a heathen) with a lot of the aliens/voice acting (I like the Orz voices from SC3 more, much more how I remember them when I replay SC2 without voice acting.)

I agree there really isn't anything out there like Supermelee. I'm pumped for it coming back.

I don't know if it's actually true that it's comparatively little work to make good multiplayer - think about how long it took for TF2 to come out - it wasn't the graphics, not really, it was the balancing. It's such a tricky thing. 

In terms of Supermelee, I feel like a lot of the house rules could be implemented (and I wouldn't be surprised if this is how stardock is already approaching it) similarly to how you pick an array of options when starting a 4x game (like civ) and then set your house rules that way. I remember having similar house rules at times. 

As for more complicated multiplayer scenarios and game modes, I do think that approaching it by robust modding toolset may still be the best approach, considering the amount of work that goes into producing a balanced and enjoyable single player game. They've already talked about being able to create your own ships/races/plots/etc using the toolset, so it seems like you could make a tweaked version of the ships designed specifically for the modes you are talking about - if the toolset is good enough, all that should be required is the amount of enthusiasm demonstrated here, I think. 

That's the thing.  These scenarios are very simple.  Supermelee dueling is already most of what you need to make them.  A single programmer could have a rudimentary hockey going in less than a day.  A puck.  Player can pass/shoot puck with button 1 (loses primary weapon while holding puck).  A goal on each side of the map.  Map boundary bounces ships/pucks instead of the disengagement zone in supermelee.  A score on top of the screen.  The other zones are about the same.  Once the structure is build (supermelee), simple versions these extra scenarios are very little work.  Even simple versions like this would be worth doing, to attract a large enough multiplayer audience to care enough to do more mods.

Personally, though, I think they should do a very nice hockey.  Comedic "space hockey on a pinball machine table" is just so perfect for Star Control, they really could do an amazing hockey in this game.  But if not, I would really hope to see at least primitive versions of base defense, capture the flag, and hockey.  Simple versions of these are just minor changes to the existing supermelee.

The problem is that supermelee alone is not going to be enough to become popular enough to attract modders to begin with.  Dueling gets boring fast.  SFB is the only such game where dueling is a long term draw, and that is only the case in SFB because of the complexity of 1,000 pages of rules governing the duel.  With the basic popular scenarios players have something to hold their interest for more than 2 weeks, and then the modders can make even more scenarios like Circle of Death:-)

 

 

I also agree that there really isn't something like supermelee out there. I haven't played Subspace so I really can't say how good that space combat is. But in my search for the old feel of Star Control 2, the galaxy, the adventure, and the fights, I came across an MMO that is strikingly similar to SC2 and I am sure that it was greatly inspired by SC2. Have any of you guys played "Star Sonata"?

Wow.  I am at work, but I will be playing Star Sonata this week...

I really am hoplessly addicted to top down space combat.  It's a sickness, really.  Literally over 35 years of intense study of the subject... Damn you Steve Cole!!!

 

Darn:-(  After watching some YouTube videos it seems to be more of an RTS.  Everything moves very slowly.  Its hard to tell for certain, but I am pretty sure it is point and click mouse control, which is a completely different thing.  Its really an RTS and not a tactical space combat game.  Still looks interesting, I will still mess with it a little this week just to get a better idea of what it is.  it's just a different kind of game than SFB/Star Control/Subspace.

RTS works really, really badly for space combat.  You just wind up with clumps of ships parked nose to nose trading shots.  I've never liked any of the RTS space games, from my perspective they don't even work.  Lots of people seem to like them, they just aren't for me.

Regarding PS:T Have you seen this?  http://discogenie.dyndns.org/planescape/ It's one reason why I don't feel I have to play the game. It has EVERYTHING, including the character backstory quests. 

And you are exactly right. I'm not trying to knock the single player RPG aspects. I'm here to make sure that combat is up to snuff, which benefits the SP game as well.

Same. Disappointed. And while I did like some of the RPGish space sims like Star Wolves and SPAZ, they weren't SC.

for a game with such disappointing lack of aliens, I enjoyed SPAZ more than I thought I would. 

I first began playing Star Control when a friend gave me his copy of SC1.  That game was primarily just SuperMelee in different strategic scenarios (e.g. 3 Arilou skiffs in a fleet that fights 5 different battles against Ur-Quan Dreadnoughts - lots of hiding next to planets).

So when SC2 came out, I spent hours/weeks/months playing the SuperMelee before I ever even gave the RPG a try, since that's what I was already familiar with from the first game.  That said, once I began playing the RPG, I was forever hooked.  So I think both the RPG and the SuperMelee are equally important.  Each is essentially a gateway drug to the other.

I would largely agree with this, although I think the combat may have been slightly less and the exploration slightly more for me.  In fact, I would break down the exploration to 10% pure exploration and 30%+ flying to every damn planet & moon, auto-scanning, and hoping it had at least noble gasses to collect (anything less just wasn't worth it) and manageable weather & tectonics (category 3 or lower, please).  That resource collection took up so much time that I'd be happy to trade out some of that for more space combat (although I'll admit there's nothing quite like finding a Ruby World littered with Tzo Crystals).

 

i think the thing i'm feeling slightly wary of is over emphasizing how cool the combat felt at the time - there was a lot less competition for action and video games were a lot less evolved. In general, there has been a lot more built since SC in the action areas but not much has really hooked the space exploration adventure game - there's only a handful of titles that ever really built in that direction. Mass Effect is kind of like an updated SC with SuperMelee replaced with a shooter aspect (and is heavily inspired by SC plot-wise, I think). Then there are lots of games that took the mechanics but lost the story (SPAZ, etc.) 

So I feel like it would need to really blow people away to have the combat be a gateway to the story this time around. when SC2 came out those of us who remembered SC1 were down to get into it (and when SC1 came out there really WASNT a lot of competition - I remember one kid who only had that game and Oregon Trail and that was IT - so while we loved the space combat honestly we were nowhere near as discerning as today's consumers.)

That's a valid concern. On the upside, I've introduced SC2 SuperMelee to people who weren't even born when SC2 was released, and the local multiplayer aspect stood up against many of the other current local multiplayer games.

Take Nidhogg, for example... http://www.nidhogggame.com/

 

I don't think that's a major issue.  This type of game is timeless and inherently fun.  The only reason it never became a major genre like FPS games did was because the game industry was more interested in showing off their programming and artistic abilties in 3D and had no interest in making 2D games with tiny little ships that would not have a lot of detail.  I know... I spent almost 10 years banging my head against the wall trying to make a top down space combat MMO.  I was in the industry at the time, and had it explained too me many times.  "It's 2D, we only want to make 3D games".  "Everything on the screen is too small for any artistic detail."  Etc, etc. This genre didn't die because it wasn't fun or popular, it only died because programmers and artists could not show off their skills within this genre.

 

Now SC2 looks retro-cool, and all those 3D games of the era are ugly eyesores.