Well, well, well... I leave for 3 or 4 days and come back to find this! Nice move, Stardock! Middle-of-the-month, right on time

Well, without further ado, let's jump right in.

There's no way this is a trailer for... the MASS public, right? RIGHT? I mean, it's cool and juicy for us all, specifically, but I feel it would probably be a little underwhelming for the general populace. No real WOW moments included. Maybe if you frame it as a pre-alpha, VERY EARLY video, it could turn some heads. But I think that's probably all it's ready for. Oh! Or a LEAKED gameplay video! That's what this should be. Right?! Want me to "leak" it (with your express written permission?)

Okay, now the video -

• The Stardock Logo - haven't you guys seen, in other games, where the standard Company logo is CHANGED specifically for certain games? I have a small tweak here - y'all should do that for Star Control! It's special enough. I can't think of any examples at this moment, but it's really cool when the logo is morphed specifically for the game it presents. I think maybe Blizzard did that, and maybe Rockstar for Red Dead? We all know, of course, that space is NOT blue in Star Control Hyperspace like most games, so the Stardock logo for THIS game should have the reds and oranges of SC's Hyperspace concept. Just change the hue! I'd love it!
• I support a few people on here expressing qualms about seeing the Magellan (Is that what Hunam named the ship? Or is it the actual name? I don't even know!) ship "warping in" every time. It's unnecessary. But I DON'T want it to give away anything by having that animation play only when there's something special in this system - I want to discover that myself. That's the intrigue.
• Let's get one thing out of the way about the HUD right now: Glowing and gradients are NOT the current design language culture. That's super "out" right now. The current design language all over tech these days is CLEAN. That's the key word. Clean and sleek and uncluttered. Stardock really needs to change the look of the HUD, that's my biggest gripe. It looks dated, scattered and cluttered. And not in a cool pixelly retro way, it looks dated like someone who didn't catch the train to the modern era, and I'm very distressed about this in particular.
• I like how the earth-like, innermost planet is actually fairly round, but I still need to express discomfort about the planet we actually land upon in the movie. It looks nothing like a planet, but an asteroid. A big clump of oddly-shaped dirt that is rotating, yet somehow-not-centrifugally-forced into a sphere. IS there any way we could possibly change that still? It makes everything seem smaller and less epic. It's gotta go. If I could get an answer on that one thing - if it's even in the cards to possibly change - I'd be happy. It's not a game-killer, of course, I'll get over it, but I'm strongly for making the planets round until you touch down. Like I said before, the planets in SCII were, graphically, the most advanced and realistic part of an overly whimsical rest of the game. I'm sad to see them so wonky.
• I can't believe there's such a strong tutorial-like message, front and center. Come on, Stardock there's exactly THREE PLANETS (and a moon) in this system. Do you really need to tell me which one to land on? The planets take 30 seconds to cross! I'm gonna land on all of them!!! You're taking away my discovery here, people!! I WANT to be the one discovering that there's something there for me to find. Not a quest marker. Not an AI help message. I want to do it. I want to do it myself. I want to hear in a conversation that the desert-like Urea world in Alpha Centauri houses something awesome. And then I want to go there. And I want to organically discover what's there, myself. Stop it! I guess we haven't talked much about quest-marking systems - and we SHOULD.
• How many crew is currently manning my ship, Stardock? HUH?! Tell me! Why can't I know? A bar tells me nothing about the souls I stand to lose in this encounter with a Scryve ship. Fuel gauge as a bar, I can live with. I've come to terms with it, and made peace. But why wouldn't you take something so recognizable and so interesting that SCII did, against the grain, and bring it to SCO? NO other space game has crew as a health meter, and NO other space game shows you dots for how many crew you have! It's so simple and brilliant! There's zero reason to leave it out, other than to make it like every other "health bar" in existence, for literally no reason.
• The transitions, on the other hand, are exquisite. System to planet to surface? Goddamn, you guys killed it. But you lose it at the end when the lander takes off and the screen goes black. No fade to black! Transition back up! I'm with Hunam. In fact, I'll hashtag that: #ImWithHunam - show me my lander taking off and fly up to the ship! Complete the circle you ALMOST completed anyway! It just needs that one last transition! You're so close!!!!!
• I've got a problem with the temperature/weather/gravity gauges - there's only 5 states. This seems very rigid and leads me to believe there's only 5 states of temperature of the planets, and nothing in between. Cold. Chilly. Warm. Hot. Nuclear. Does that mean there's only 5 templates of planet temperature? Think about SCII - you could much better weigh the risks and rewards based on what they told you - 0 degree to 4000 degrees. And everything in between. At 900 degrees, you're worried but if the resources called for it, you landed anyway. At 1500 degrees, you're reallllll worried. 2500 degrees you're only landing for Tzo Crystals. Higher than that, you're insane. This doesn't give you that kind of information. It's basically either hot or cold - but HOW hot is it? If I could suggest something - make the bars much thinner and a LOT more of them if you don't want to give a temperature reading. Make 50 temperature states. Unless you're building the planets like it's flipping a switch - there's either fire, or not. Which would make me sad.
• My least favorite part of the video is what happens when you slorp up a resource. They are FLOATING. It reminds me of Doom pickups, from a bygone era. Spinning health icons waiting to be picked up. And not in the good way. So cheesy and arcadey. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume these are SPECIAL floating crystals that naturally float above the surface of the planet. But I swear to God, if a clump of iron is FLOATING above the surface of the planet in a neat little package, ready for my lander, I will QUIT. But like I said, benefit of the doubt. These must be Tzo Crystals which have a natural predilection to defy gravity... but even still? What kind of crystal bursts into 20 pieces, spins around in a vortex and whirpools down magically through your lander's hull, neatly into its compartment on board? How about an arm that swipes it? Or a tractor beam that pulls it through a hole on the ship's side. PLEASE. I can't take it. It looks like Raiden, with its RIDICULOUS floating powerups. It has NO BUSINESS being in this game. Organic, Stardock. Part of the planet. 
•  
• If I see a ship-part floating like those f****ng crystals, waiting to be picked up, I'm gonna lose my f****ng mind. Ship parts should be harvested from crashed ships on the surface ONLY. They should be awesome to find. Wrecks. Abandoned cities. Research labs. Whatever. There was only ONE thing I hated about Spore: The little floating, spinning gold icons you ran around picking up as your creature. I HATE them. Hate. HATE. Please! Someone back me up here!!
• 
• On the other hand - THAT PLANET LOOKS SOLID. Like, actually, physically solid in real life. Like, so incredibly well-rendered that I CAN FEEL its surface. Like if I was in VR, I would expect to physically stretch my hand out and feel it beneath my fingers. It looks amazing. And beautiful. And so well-done that I can hardly believe it. Some games have it. I remember playing the first Halo, and going up to a rock and seeing the individual crevices and pock-marks on its surface, and bringing all my friends over to practically FEEL a rendered 3d object in a game for the first time. This has the same effect. Nailed it. Seriously. The surface is glorious and looks actually, ACTUALLY real (which, I think is why those floating crystals and swirling whirlpool on pickup is so jarring). I couldn't even imagine a better looking surface. Kudos. Seriously.
• Shadows are perfect, as-is. I can't actually see why this is even an issue. You're moving too fast to even notice!!
• What's the point of the "Planet Type" icons in the top left of the scan screen? Looks like the right one is "food"... does that have any impact on... anything? Also, why would food be growing on a scorchingly hot Urea world?
• It looks like the lander might have visible modules like the main ship! That'd be a cool addition! More cargo space, faster speed, greater boost? Also! Boost! I like it, and that's a nice addition!
• I'd like to see the backgrounds, when you enter a new system, look a LOT better. It's expected these days to have the background be gorgeous, filled with nebula and galaxies and novas and shooting stars and any number of gorgeous vistas. The vaguely purple-black background with some white dots just isn't cutting it. A la:
• 
• My second-to-last comment has to do with the Scryve. I'm having a hard time forming any emotional attachment to them. And I know where it comes from. Please tell me I'm wrong, however - aside from those big, meaty hands, the Scryve looks like a Robot. The head and moving headdress and metal face and metallic voice and glowing robot-eyes. I can't get myself to care, one way or the other, about robots, in any way. There's no human element. There's no connection. There's no risk, no sadness when they're destroyed. When I KILL something, I want it to HURT. Robots don't hurt. I can't identify with robots, there's no loss if they die - and more importantly - it doesn't even hurt the enemy when you destroy them if they're robots - they just make more. They didn't care for their babies through infancy, foster them as they mature, bring them up right or wrong, huge their children and eventually have those children destroyed by a thermonuclear explosion. They just manufactured them. They don't feel pain you inflict, they don't feel loss when you kill their loved ones, they don't have any real reason to hate you, they also can't be swayed in any way... there's no emotional attachment, no fiery emotion. And I'd like to talk about something a little close-to-home for Stardock: Ashes of the Singularity. I've been looking for an RTS for a long, long time. Ashes of the Singularity really looked like it could be fun for me... and then I figured out it's all about robots with the Substrate and that killed it for me. Like Total Annihilation and Planetary Annihilation before it, and Z wayyyyy before that. I just CAN'T get into it, in any way. Even when the robot is fun, cigar-smoking smartmouth. Playing against an AI-controlled array of machines has Zero thrill for me. When I destroy their stuff, it's no consolation and not even really a problem for them. They don't even care. I think that's a big reason why the Star Wars eps 1-3 failed, too - the main enemies were robots *yawn*. Storm Troopers are much better, because at least they're HUMAN. There's a sense of loss. With robots, that's missing entirely. I'm even having that problem with Westworld - awesome show, but I can't seem to bring myself to care about any of the androids, or feel any emotional tension because... they're just machines. It's hard to care about machines. The Urquan, on the other hand... oh man... did you guys notice, though? Star Control II had ZERO robots. Sure there's the Mrrnmhrm, but you never talk to them, and they fuse themselves with organic, sentient crystals to give them LIFE. Even still, they were arguably the most dull race in the game. I'm feeling that from the Scryve. That big, robotic head. Devs, please tell me I'm wrong, or there's something to give them LIFE that we don't know about yet. I'd like that question answered.
• PS - #ImWithIBNobody - hopefully there's some backstory to the floating orbs. Are their ancestors viciously imprisoned inside, trapped from reaching the afterlife, and they converse with their descendants and have arguments amongst themselves and the orbs?!? I'd like that. A lot.
• Lastly......... Where's the STARMAP?!?!? I wanna see the STARMAP, Stardock!! I want to see the interface, the vastness, the scope and awe it fills me with! I want to know how you'll get to navigate through it, will it zoom or be static? All on one plane, or 3d? Hopefully not 3d. I want it to be amazing. And I want it now! I can't wait!

Holy shit. We're approaching Kavikal Mass. There's a lot to address, but your comments on the Skryve especially stood out to me. I've mentioned my disdain for SCNot3 before, but do you remember the K'Tang reveal? That was one of my favorite plot moments in it. It was cliche and silly, and fairly predictable, but I loved it, because it felt genuinely Star Control-like, and I have the feeling the Skryve are similar in nature. Or maybe I'm completely wrong, but I'm not going to discount them entirely. Also, their resemblance to the Cyth from Deadlock (both physically and in terms of their voice) makes me feel really warm and fuzzy, due to my dad's work while he was at Accolade during my formative years.

It's a gameplay teaser. It's not a trailer.

Just like you name alien ships based on words you know, you also design your computer/HUD interfaces on things you know.  So the human head and shoulders to represent "number of crew" works for aliens, too.  The interface is for the humans to use, not the aliens.  So it really does make perfect sense.  It just seems like you are losing something for no reason to change the little dots into a meter.  Like other people were saying, the little dots gave you much more of a sense of having that number of "people" on the ship.  A meter doesn't convey that, it's just another stat.

Ah, the prototype crew meter wasn't a bunch of little squares like some of the other meters were? Ahh, I misremembered.

I am okay with little squares. I am not okay with people symbols.

Oh, what?? Who wants little people symbols? Lol, that would look a little silly. The crew dots were perfect.

Dots would be fine, too.  I just don't like a bar meter for it.

Okay. Started the download. It'll only be another 7 hours according to the estimate.

But you know you should use a decent codec and give us a reasonably sized file - it wouldn't be hard to achieve a tenth of the file size with no perceivable difference in quality. (@non-stardock: yea - don't give me that pixelation complaint blabla; you know full well what we should be able to expect from screenshots/images and videos).

No, I'm on your side in this. Pictures need to be high quality PNGs, but videos can be compressed with something like H264 or whatever.

In the end it only took 3 hours to download; excellent result.

The video itself is lovely.

1. I fully support cuorebrave's suggestion for a customized Stardock logo. Not necessarily a change in hue; but something that is playful and personalizes the logo to the StarControl universe. Perhaps start with the original as it is currently, then instead of the tech-fadeout that is used, morph it to something remniscent of the StarControl universe.

2. I like the shadows and the way they make the environment more real.

3. I quite like the return-from-planet animation; so I'm not feeling strongly about cuorebrave's suggestion to change the fly-out to mirror the fly-in. Perhaps keep the current fly-out, but add a small background "docking" animation or similar back at the planet view that follows the fly-out.

4. I'm perfectly happy with the alien menace we get shown at the end.

5. During system exploration I'm in favor of upscaling everything by 50% - give us more of a chance to enjoy the structural details on craft for example.

6. Unlike some comments, I'm okay with the UI. I'd want the glow reduced (but not eliminated).

7. Planet Type "Urea"; I think that should be the same size font as the other text around it.

8. If crew size stays within manageable amounts (say up to 50?) then I think the dot-per-crew approach would be better; if crew numbers in SCO can be larger then I think the plain bar is probably better.

9. I disagree with cuorebrave's desire for more states. 5-step graphs are fine for me. I do not care if a planet is 426 Kelvin or 417 Kelvin. However, for the sake of depth I would not have an issue with a text description that morphs into view instead of the bar graph when you hover over it with a mouse. So a Temperature **** will morph to Temperature 1800 K; and Gravity morph to "Absent / Minimal / Very Low / Low / Normal / Elevated / High / Very High / Extreme / ..?" and so forth

10. The planet shapes are perfectly fine for me. I like the dune-covered spheroidal shape we see from orbit - it provides a ton of more information of what I can expect on the planet than a fully spherical shape.

Right?! Maybe a Scryve torso fades in from the black background at the end, laughing menacingly and clasping his weird thumb-hands. 

THUMB HANDS! WHAT WILL THEY THINK OF NEXT? TALKING RELIGIOUS SPIDER FANATICS?

What you did there. I see it.

I don't really feel like it's useful to offer my critique of the trailer as a cut video / etc, and i'm not sure the customization of the logo is a priority for me, but I did also have the "crew" bar pop out at me as being weird from an information standpoint.

Do I have one crew and their health is at 100%? Is all my crew's health at 100%? Is my life support functioning "green"? Do I have a "full" crew? 

If it's going to be crew, I also want to see it representational in a more direct manner. At least cut it up so each slice of it represents one crew member for whatever ship it is representing at the time.  

So I just watched the final teaser ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6ntg47q_cM ) and one thing bothered me... the planet was so small, it's curvature so exaggerated, that I felt a little dizzy just watching that. It would possibly make me feel physically ill were I playing.

I'd strongly suggest making the planets bigger so that traveling around on them isn't so trippy and disorienting.

^ Us founders have all pretty much been universally rallying behind this for a few months now.

^ Us? I didn't sign up for that shizz...

@veraxus

Vaelzad mentioned that he has motion sickness and the game doesn't trigger it, so I don't know. I don't have a problem with planet size. But I feel like lander's speed could be a bit slower, considering there's a boost mechanic.

What I can tell you is that I wish SCO had even smaller land'able bodies like asteroids, comets, ship remnants etc.

+1 to Hunam_ - I too am keen for alternate/exotic/"special" lander locations.

A few points (partially to reiterate):

1. The planet size during star-system exploration I'd prefer a bit bigger

2. The on-planet size might be fine - we've not had an indication if differently sized planets actually "feel" differently sized when sending a lander down. The sample planet from the teazer looks like it might be an average-to-small planet - so perhaps bigger planets will also feel bigger during lander exploration. I'm none-committal about changing the on-planet size; but I'll add that the rate of exploration shown in the video feels about right for perhaps the smallest moon that I'd be able to land on

3. What we haven't seen at all yet is the interaction on planet with critters. Things seem very fast in the video - but I wouldn't really want my lander-vs-critter gameplay to be too twitch and reflex based

^ Exactly. SC2 was never a fast paced adventure. Except for melee and super dangerous planets. Which struck a perfect balance to scratch any kinda itches.

I bet we will have a lot larger planets than the teaser planet and a bit smaller ones too. This is highly expected by me.

What I don't want to happen is that different size planets to look the same size on the planet scan screen. But with this landing mini-game nonsense I bet we'll be forced to see gas giants the same size as our moon on that screen. That would suck donkey balls. If I to choose between those two I'd pick "actual" planet size over landing mini-game. Who's with me?

Calm down their champ. I can tell you that the size of the planets are not the same in the planet scan screen. You do see the size difference for each planet. Now pay out on your bets or the rest of the forums are going to send Vinnie after you. 

^ LOL. So far 50% of my bets are actually paying off.

P.S. Smiles/emotes button in reply is broken.

Gut feeling: this trailer has me excited for the direction Stardock is taking things. It also grabbed my cash as a new Founder and life-long Star Control fan.

As someone with background in engineering and visual design, there is one picky little thing that throws me off every time I watch it: when the ship enters orbit of the planet, it becomes very small (thanks, perspective) and goes behind the planet moving right-to-left. So far, so good. When the ship re-emerges for departure, however, it's huge and heading the opposite direction of its orbit.

I'd suggest having it continue its trajectory and perspective when resuming flight by emerging from the left side of the planet.

Again, liking what I see. *thumbs aloft*

The thread's a few weeks old, but I thought I'd post this stock footage animation I came across since it's something that has been brought up in the conversation about planet aesthetics:

http://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-12661208-stock-footage-flight-over-the-morning-earth.html

This immediately reminded me of what Stardock is trying to do with the planet designs, and having this level of atmospheric detail in the game would be killer. SC2's orbit graphics of a faux-3D texture mapped sphere for a planet may not seem like much today, but they really pushed the visual envelope in 1993 and it would be great if the new game had some clever design details like this that could make it really stand out as something different and unconventional.

There are actually a bunch of animations like this on Shutterstock if you browse around.

I like how clouds transform in that one.

I also like this one a lot.

http://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-12587363-stock-footage-flight-over-the-metropolis-at-sunrise.html?src=rel/12661208:0/3p

@Awkbird: it's gorgeous. Yes. Make it so StarDock!