StarControl Forums
Good day!
I downloaded it but can't see what the file type is, so I have no clue what program to open it with. It is a single 128MB file for me.
I'll give it a try. Thank you!!
The file type was "file" which was strange. 
Got it to work! Thanks!!!
Here's my idea for the teaser, and for the first 15 minutes of gameplay.
SC – Origin announcement/advertisement video script proposal
Text, V/O, or both, spoken slowly while montage plays:
“For thousands of years, mankind has reached for the stars.”
(12-15 seconds: Montage of tribals around a fire, pan up to sky filled with stars. Then zoom out from stars, revealing them to be reflected on the lens of a renaissance telescope, pan to blue prints on a desk, one is a rocket. Flesh out the rocket, blasting into space – the SC-O ship)
(SC-O ship flying through an obviously different star system to Sol – peacefully, beautiful)
Overlay text, V/O or both:
“In the year 2XXX, the stars reach back…”
(Sudden disruption per your sketch video, very brief action scene unique to SC-O.)
Fade to/text overlay:
“Star Control – Origin”
Fade out, then back in with:
“Coming 4Q2017”
First 15 minutes of gameplay:
Start w/ship in peril – first view of bridge is with red lights and alarms going off everywhere. Fuel is low, systems are in disrepair, electronics are not responsive. 1st mate says we’re near a star system that may contain the components we need to repair, but they’re on a nearby planet.
Brief player controlled fly-in to a planet (very minimal tutorial or aide steps! That was one of the great things about SC2 – you get hung out to dry right from the start!)
Planet lander sequence along with urgent instruction that we need to land safely and find “X” resource to repair, and “Y” resource to refuel. (Possibly plant a ship part on the planet that can be very quickly installed/upgraded, or make “X” a ship part that was scanned from orbit and looked compatible for repairs once the player returns to the ship.)
Planet landing should be scaled to take 3-5 minutes to complete at most, have some mild but guaranteed-to-occur perils, then launch back to the ship (successfully).
Back on the ship the light and power are back on, but smoke is still in the background on the bridge cutscene. 1st mate congratulates on a job well done, says some systems are usable, but player needs to return to Earth/Starbase to repair and refit.
On the journey to Earth nearby, a small combat/melee occurs, and any number of plot points can be introduced at this point, and this would be the end of the first 15 minutes of play.
Reasoning: Immediate peril is engaging. The main enemy of the first 12 minutes of play will be your own ship [low power/oxygen/fuel] and the environment [the landing itself, whatever the rover encounters, space, time]. A moderate sense of both urgency and helplessness would be reminiscent of SC2. (Have partial systems/UI available for this introductory portion, coming back online as the brief steps are concluded???) Only in the last 3 minutes or so with the first melee combat will an alien ship be an enemy. That’s where it can link up to the main story, or whatever you want it to do.
Please consider something like that for the first 15 minutes of the campaign gameplay. I think it would be instantly engaging, build sympathy and comradery with your ship, and be a natural way to introduce the major features of the game in a short span of time.
OOOH! I just had an epiphany – The intro/commercial that I suggested with the brief action sequence, that could be what damages the ship! That could be the lead-in to the first 15 minutes of game-play! It’s all related [Makes spooky noise]!!!
I'm really excited at all the progress. I think this is shaping up to be not only a great tribute to the original games but a really good game in its own respect.
Regarding Canon, alien races, and the multiverse: you could have some new races as distant offshoots of originals (with Paul and Fred's permission of course). A colony ship of an original race accidentally gets sucks into a Hyperspace/Quasispace wormhole and ends up in the new StarControl universe. Separated for aeons, they evolve into their own race, but with some similarities to the original race (as tribute/compromise for hardcore fans). Such as the Pkunk splitting from the Yehat in SC2 as an example.
I do like the initial alien pictures, except for the Trandals. I like the idea of a symbiote/slave type arrangement, and the sentient part being the smart phone like device is okay, but the meat part just looks terrible. There are too many flaccid looking appendages that don't seem to have any purpose and the arm that carries the device looks like it belongs to a different creature. Personally, I would prefer to see this type of alien portrayed something along the lines of the Futurama Brain Slug
Just another thing on alien creation: Please refer to SC2 for fun and witty dialogue, bright and colourful design, interesting alien concepts (like the Mycon or the Slylandro) and enjoyable characters. If any of your designs start to look or sound like the aliens from SC3, please, please, please rethink the design. The aliens in SC3 sounded stupid and irritating and I skipped the dialogue so I didn't have to listen to them. The aliens were just whiney and irritating and I had no desire to help them/follow story missions. And they just looked plain awful.
Introducing new lifeforms to planets after release could appear as a text notification on the ships HUD. 'New Lifeforms Detected!' or similar and unobtrusive. If the player decides to click on the alert, it could then expand out to show which planets have had new life forms added (somehow tied up the update log to make life easier?)
Ship design was one of my favourite aspects of SC2 and I am really excited by these preliminary images. I thought the component/modular configuration on the ring-shaped structures looked very cool. I see there are different front weapon modules, but will there be a secondary weapon module as well? (I always had at least one point laser defence module for enemy fighters in SC2). And will your flagship be limited to just two component rings, or will you be able to add more?
Just an idea: if there was a docking screen/stage, see the rings and the actual component loadout rotate (to create artificial gravity or something), that would be cool.
The First Fifteen Minute Challenge: I think during the first asteroid mining mission, the player should find an ancient alien artefact (Precusors or other storyline) with clues that it is part of a much larger more powerful device (instantly terraforms a planet? Creates a black hole?). Suddenly another alien space arrives and steals the artefact (this could either be a hostile race, or a benign race not wanting the human to 'open something they shouldn't', or a chance for multiple story threads).
Marketing Trailer: I think the teaser trailer should highlight all of the things that make StarControl unique and enjoying. The trailer should mention the adventure storyline, the funny interactions with aliens, the ship design, the arcade battles, and exploration. I think it is important to highlight these features but these will make StarControl stand out from the other games on the market. You don't want people to think this is just another space exploration/simulation game. It is so much more.
Also: I like the music samples that have been provided, but perhaps the melody/theme could be a bit more distinguishable? On some tracks, it all seem to blend in together. For example, the original Hyperspace theme versus the new - I used the hum the original melody all the way to school, but in the new theme it was hard to distinguish. I hope there will be new victory dittys for the melee battle as well, these added alot to the gameplay.
Best of luck with the rest of development, I'm really excited with the way things are progressing
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