May 2016 Update

Check inside the ZIP and there should be one of the race themes there which is different based on whether you're talking to them versus flying through their space.

I know there are two themes; hoping to expand the conversation to see how much more of the game this concept can potentially be applied to.

To answer your question, each race will have a theme that you will hear when you are flying through their region of space. When you are in generic space you will hear the hyperspace theme and the few variant versions we are doing for it. In fact you will hear the theme before you see or meet the aliens on your Starmap. Every race is also having a unique music theme played during their dialog.  

May updates Yeah!!!

Opinions on updates:

1. Dialog tool is nifty and shows some promise. I plan to play with this tool a lot.

2. ogg files are cool sounding and play well with VLC. Music upbeat and whimsical. Nice Job

3. Solar system exploration and encounter pic pretty cool. I like the pseudo 3d for that. 

4. Space battles are cool, I like the race pics with status rings around them. I hate pseudo 3d view for battle, but I would like the option to change it if I change my mind. Multi play should be interesting in this viewpoint.

5. Planet exploration is tight. Hot key the keybind display so it can be sent away. I hope scale wise that the lander will be a little smaller for perspective sake.

6. Achievement popup is on par and appropriate with the rest of the graphics.

7. Cargo bay is a little busy but very workable. I would like to have mouse over support for descriptions of minerals and creatures.

 Overall good progress and I stoked to see more. 

• New alien shown? The urchin portrait looks interesting.
• Dialog editor... I can create flags, but how do I set them and clear them?
• Dialog editor... The expression editor needs some UI love. Thanks for listing my options, but now let me select them. Also, shame on you for making them case sensitive.

It's bedtime, but I'll edit this post tomorrow with my thoughts. This update makes me all teary-eyed! 

 

Plz. make sure that you do not hear the alien related music BEFORE you actually encounter them... or exploration will turn into music hunting .

I will post my ideas on May update later today.

I love the May update. Great content. Great progress.

One suggestion: in system exploration mode I think the planets would benefit from an exaggerated atmosphere (to go along with their exaggerated surface features). Now I don't mean a wacky atmosphere, just a unrealistically large one relative to the size of the planet. The reason is that it would look kickass to have atmospheric effects (e.g. clouds, storms, aurora) clearly visible while in space - and secondly the oversized atmosphere would go a long way to mask (but not hide) the exaggerated planetary features - thereby making the planetary features still distinct and visible, but not glaring exaggerations.

 

The space environment is still WIP in those mockups, we will share a final screenshot of those as we get closer to them being complete.  

There hasn't been an update YET that has brought a single, twinkling tear to my eye..... before this one. I can't even communicate how much faith this update has given me. Where to even start?

I put on that music while laying in bed last night, next to my wife, and while she was incredibly confused as to why I was playing 90's chiptunes at 12:00am, I didn't care! My soul was soaring through the space nebulae, in my precursor vessel, off to meet new and interesting aliens. It brought back so many memories, that thrill of exploration, that sense of wonder when exploring the universe, the awe and nervousness that is brought by venturing into the unknown, like a space cowboy in the Wild West of the Universe. It wasn't even the actual music - it was the FEELING that music brought me, and the *knowing* that Stardock and Vaelzad are on the right track to bring back my dream that's been lingering since I was a child... what a feeling!

And what's more? The combat just LOOKS fun! I wanted to hop right in and play that shit right f-ing now! That Scryve ship shooting very definitive triple-lines of plasma shotgun blast! Hooray! It's not just an energy blob like every single space game since Star Control II! It's an actual, identifying, unique-looking weapon signature that you can get to know and love and fear when it's headed for you in a specific arc! It's the ninja star of the Kohr-Ah! The Chenjesu crystal! The Utwig full-frontal 5-point shot! The Earthling homing missile! The Supox vegetable shots! It's something new! It's something specific! This is amazing! Does everyone understand that?? One of my biggest fears is assuaged, and I couldn't be happier. This is something so small, that is actually something so huge. Unique identifiers of who you're fighting. That is what we're going for in the combat, and that one shot shows that Stardock KNOWS. More of this. A lot more. Unique weapons for every ship. That's your mission.

The angle doesn't even bother me like I thought it would. It actually looks pretty thrilling. I'm officially over the whole top-down thing. I'll still play it top-down, but there's a certain vitality to that shot that shows me the action will be awesome either way.

Now some criticism:

The planets look weird in this view, but I assume that'll be a lot different.

The weapons-fire kicks so much ass, but the ships look like indiscernible hunks of grey metal, rather than coherent, unique creations by other species. There's always a tendency to make the ships look like grey, human machines. We have to fight that the whole way. There's some splashes of color (red), but other than that, not many distinguishing features. Make one neon yellow. The other a deep indigo.

I know the interface will be streamlined, but the portraits (rectangle and circle) take up too much screen-room. With all the zooming and 3d-view, screen-room will be at a premium. Also, I don't know if I like the circle-layout, with the crew and battery lining the circle. I feel like I've seen it too much before. And also, I don't want to see 4 green blocks representing 1000 crew. I want to see 1000 tiny blocks representing 1000 crew! It gives each one a little personality, a little WORTH, and made you mourn even one block disappearing as a life snuffed out. Having 4 blocks represent 1000 crew means you could lose 200 human lives and not even see the "health" change. Try to see it that way, and don't fix what's not broke!

Now, the landing view - I can't even tell you how much I adore the way we're going to explore planets. Long, long, long before the Founders Program, I brought up an idea to Vaelzad about how I thought the planetary lander idea would be updated for the 21st century, while still keeping the essence of SCII and how fun that was. I told him, "Star Control II was perfect in this regard, and planetary exploration was at the heart of each person's adventures. It offered bite-sized planets you could fly across in moments, while still giving each solar system you enter that sense of the Unknown becoming known." And then I recommended Super Mario Galaxy planets, crossed with Spore, as the perfect mix. He replied: "I think I can confidently say we have something for the planetary exploration already planned that you are definitely going to enjoy." - AND HE WASN'T KIDDING!!!! These, of course very basic and pre-alpha shots do just that - present bite-sized planets for us to explore in their entirety in under a minute. Just like SC2!

Criticisms? They obviously need a lot of work. Of course they do, it's so early. And I can't wait to see the lightning and the fires and the earthquakes. I want to see those taken to the extreme - even destroying those rock formations as you fly through! IS that possible? Of course it is, it's 2016. The ground could open up, send an earthquake and then spit some lava from the planet's core. It'd be lovely.

As was mentioned before, the sky has a long way to go. I don't see why you shouldn't just be able to fly through some cloud cover as the transition. And once you're on the planet, I would love to see Stardock make an incredible, procedurally generated sky along the lines of... I don't know. Destiny sure has the most amazing skies of any recent game to date. It's my favorite part of that game's world. Here's an example I'd like to see if Stardock could pull it off:

Something like THAT would be amazing... with the comets falling and the tornado clouds swirling. Amazing stuff.

Also, I don't think you should catalog exact quantities of the minerals on-world. I know you could see them from space in SCII, but there was always that uncertainty that you might get ONE Tzo Crystal, or you might get FIVE. I liked that about the original. Is it worth it to spend the fuel to land? I don't want to know till I'm down there and have braved a few firestorms...

Finally, the Cargo Bay screen! You guys spelled Formaldehyde and Acetylene correctly, but somehow missed "Carbin"?!? Hahaha Jokes aside, I like how it categorizes the different minerals and bio critters you've got in the hold - but is it necessary? I mean... SCII just conglomerated them all into BIO UNITS once you slurped them up. This screen tells me there may be more uses for these creatures on an individual level? Will there be places that value Teeth Face over Ice Guy? Will the price go up for some of them at some point? What's the point of having them individually labeled and categorized if they're not going straight into Bio Units.

I don't have a problem with any of that, it just begs the question! Same with the individual mineral names - rather than just a "Radioactive" category - is there a use for Dyprosium, specifically? Will it lead to some special tech? Will there be certain, never-before-discovered minerals where it makes this list MATTER more than just a log of what you slurped up? Love to know this stuff!!

Well, that's all I got for now.

Wow, what a substantial and awesome update! Things are definitely looking and sounding very good

 

Here's my take on things in this update. Looks more promising than ever. (Still don't like combat Iso view :P)

 

HEX YES!!! Thank you!!

 

Tywom themes are sweet! I don't even mind the music hunting in hyperspace. It's gonna be a mini-game on its own.

I'll post about dialog tool later when I get to it.

Also, Hunam and I are the same person.

 

Dude, how is it that crew dots are so important to both of us? Such a seemingly small thing! 

^ I read your post and it made complete sense. Every time a dot disappears, the player should feel like a little piece of his heart just been torn out. Every time a dot disappears he/she should die a little inside.   

They don't have to be dots. They can be little hearts for all I care. You never gonna get that feeling with fat bars that represent multiple number of people.

 

HOLD THE DOOR!!

How about little humans, each with backstories and a photo of them as a baby being held by their loved ones?!

Do most people not know about this update?? It was a great one, yet I see very few comments from the normally-very-vocal group on here!!

^ Lazy 'muricans on vacation..

People must've missed it or are still elsewhere. The May update is well sexy and shows that some meaningful progress to the look and feel of the game is coming together. Now we must wait for the sexy June update!

I am in awe. As for the in-game combat ui, I think minimizing the screen-space used by the existing elements would be beneficial. This could probably apply to all of the ui elements, though I'm aware that this is still fairly early in. 

 

As for the music: believe me when I say that I started playing this, my dad came running in to see which UQM mod I was running. (Bare in mind, if you haven't read my intro, my father is a former Accolade employee, having actively done sound and some music engineering for SCNot3 and QA for 2, and it was very touching to see him acting like a kid in a candy shop). You have hit exactly where the mark should have been if it wasn't already there.

I'll likely have more to add to this, but I've had a few drinks tonight, and would prefer to be a bit more verbose.

Any update on how to set and clear flags in the dialog editor? Or is that not available yet?

I wanted to tie the no pizza branch in to the other branch.

This update was amazing!

The themes are good so far, very "spacey" and definitely Star Control!

Kinda of curious about planet exploration, i wonder if there will be bigger planets and so, and also i still think we should have a "contest" for adding more "background" critters on random planets (drawing "contest") (even tough i don't think they will want founders ideas for critters, i drew some anyway  because i love this game)

Space battles? Well, there is minor changes i saw that could have been made but   Hunam_   Said/Did it best! and the camera angle? changing to your liking it? Awesome (i just hope that bobbing your ship on another or on a asteroid don't cause it to bounce elsewhere, at least add sparks and a crash sound)

now, the editor, it's a easy and simple program, but it's fun to see how the quest/conversation program will work (more or less) on game!

i'll play with it a little more later, it seems fun! and it's the first program for us Founders~

well then, waiting for the next update! until then, i'll be here in the forums with these lovely people!

 

 

In regards to the space themed music... so I'm assuming that there won't be overlapping spheres of influence as there was in SC2 (ie Ur-Quan vs Kohr-Ah) as there would be a conflict as to what music should be playing... So we can surmise that various territories will have hard boundaries then if we're going this path of development?

Ok, here are my thoughts on the May update (I`m a bit drunk, so sry for typos, bad grammar and etc.).

More hands on deck is a good news, faster progress.

0. “Music hunting” - I think that before you actually encounter an alien race one should hear the generic exploration/hyperspace music. Music hunting simplifies the game, esp. if there is some randomity factor. + Btw. Can devs tell us how they see the aliens controlled spheres of influence? Actual circles like in SC2? Some other ideas? + it would be nice to see something like – when  aliens go to war – one sees how a small circle (representing the star-fleet of one race) leaves the the big (domain) circle and domain circle going smaller in its size or something like that. The domain circle can go up or down in size depending on the in-game developments (+ it would be nice to encounter outposts-colonies-rogue ships and etc. outside of the domain circle). I hope you get the idea.  

1. Combat: I am a big fan of top-down view. So I definitely appreciate that one can change view and make it top-down or change it in other ways.

What do you all (including devs) think about introducing some classic stuff like shield, armor, crew (health) scheme. Some ships might have more armor, others  - shield, some might have none oe each and etc.; some weapons might be a bit more effective against shield, crew or armor and etc. Or does it complicate the balance too much?

Current combat GUI: I have to agree that dots together with actual numbers next to them give a better representation than the current geometrical forms. Then I suggest changing “battery” to “power”.

The star looks amazing. I wish I could see the animated version. Maybe it might make sense to add some orbit lines to denote orbits of the planets. + I hope that during the combat planets will have different rotation speeds, there will be hazards like asteroids/comets/derelict star-ships, solar flares and etc. to spice up the combat.

I tend to agree that there must be an option to switch off certain on-screen tabs (like controls) + I think that portraits, crew/health bars should occupy not that much space and/or should be scaled down a bit. It might be a good idea to introduce icons representing each race so that when there is multiplayer combat such icons could represent teams (for teams one could use special or racial ones).

2. Planet exploration – I think that planets should be 20%-25% bigger. Current size seems a bit too small. + Will landers have shield-armor? In terms of cargo indication – does it really make sense to give such detailed explanation of what one has in the lander`s cargo? There is an alternative. Just make three bars – minerals/gases, biodata, other items (artifacts and etc.). A lander could have say 10 of whatever units capacity for each of the items. Like minerals 8/10 meaning that 8 units of minerals out of 10 that the lander can carry are in the cargo. Then one could click on the bar and it will expand to see what one actually has in the cargohold in terms of minerals. Such approach allows us to have detailed information (if needed) and minimize distraction (if needed). + there can also be like superdetailed cargo view – like the one we see on page 4 of the May presentation. There should be an option to switch off certain GUI tabs (like for combat). + Maybe there can also be some icons on the GUI indicating potential hazards of the planet – like lightning denoting that there can be thunder storms and etc. Such icons can also be of several types (indicating risk level) – like blue, green, yellow, red, purple or something like that. Different color indicates different risk.

3. Solar system exploration. I agree that orbit lines should be not that obvious, make the lines dotted and/or a bit more transparent. I still have the opinion that one should have planet approach screens like in SC2. i.e. - the closer you get to the planet – the more space "belonging" to it you see. This will allow to put more moons-stations around the planets. Even if it will be at the cost of the seamless approach.

4. Planetary exploration pictures – amazing. I have nothing else to add. Stunning. + Make sure that one can encounter robotic (artificial) planets... Cybertron type of thing? + What about gas giants.... imagine that one can still “land” on them, i.e. one will “fly” with the lander and cannot go down below certain level because of the atmospheric pressure... + there might be a new level of various hazards – like downdrafts, hurricanes or something. One might even hide some hard surface in a gas giant.......+ War/Natural disaster devastated planets (Like it used to have advanced life but it got annihilated by war/meteor strike and etc.)

No comments re dialog tool as I have had no opportunity to try it. Too much shit in real life. I hope that my feedback is of some use for all of you.

+1. I have attempted to bring this up in previous conversations but it has not been acknowledged. The crew/battery dynamic is not only very outdated but should also not apply to every single ship or race. I always thought there should be an armor value to protect crew and as armor is depleted, more crew are at risk of being lost. It would be great to see some races or ships with regenerative shielding like the Protoss in Starcraft, while biological races might have regenerative health/crew (e.g. Zerg or Mycon) while still others might just have lots of armor to prevent crew from dying. I also think similar shielding/armor upgrade options should be made available for landers.

I agree that it would be interesting to see an option to slow zoom in toward your ship as you get closer to objects of interest like planets, and slow zoom out as you get further away from them.

Btw. has anyone ever checked these links:

 

http://androidarts.com/starcontrol/star_control.htm

 

http://androidarts.com/starcontrol/scs.htm

 

http://androidarts.com/spaceconquest/gamedesign.htm

 

http://androidarts.com/starflight/starflight.htm

 

http://androidarts.com/spacegame/spacegame.htm

Question about solar system view: Will planets slowly move along orbits and/or spin on their axes, or will they be stationary? Asking because the moment I saw that blue planet with very large asymmetrically placed crystals, I imagined it wobbling on its wacky axis, and almost burst out laughing.

 

Love the music, but I agree that race specific hyperspace themes should only appear once first contact with those races is made. Wouldn't want the surprise spoiled by elaborate shifts in music while zooming through space.

Everything else is great.