March Founder's Preview

"So there will be around 1,000 different planet maps instead of "infinite" but it also vastly decreases the chance of getting worlds that are just, well, broken due to being procedural generated."

So, you're saying I will travel through the same canyon on different planets and will know exactly when to turn?..

"The internal test prior to shipping is: Can a moderately technical person create the Enterprise and have it fight Slave 1? 

The game won't ship until that test is passed."

"The test for shipping the game is whether someone reasonably technical could re-create Ur-Quan Masters in this engine.  We won't be shipping the game until that test is passed."

Great! 100% on board with that.

I'd like you to talk about your vision for SM, ship design and definition of SM fun.

I don't know.  There's only 1 copy of Earth and I constantly miss my turns.

it'd be quite the challenge to re-create the Enterprise, model and all (on that note, which version; NCC-1701 pre-refit, refit, 1701-A, 1701-B, 1701-C, 1701-D (D would be the most interestering with the two sections being the same ship but being able to separate and fight), or 1701-E

Can't wait really, it does look like i do not add much... but i'm REALLY exited for the next Vault Update!

also... what next?

...CAN WE SEE SOME MORE ALIENS/CRITTERS?   THEY ARE SO FUN TO DRAW!!!

I support giving Shade some new subject matter for his drawings.  Please. 

As long as they aren't horses.

Discuss the designated roles or design intentions of each of the ships in SuperMelee.

Did you go into the design with the idea that each ship had a hard counter? Or did you just create a bunch of ships with cool powers on paper?

Also, address why there are few defensive abilities like shields.

See, the thing is - I have now played/seen/felt all the different parts of Star Control: Super Melee, Solar System Exploration, Planetary Exploration, alien conversations and even dallied in ship customization. And I can honestly say, all the pieces are there, right where they need to be. All the basic fundamentals are in place. I don't need any other "reveals" or broad topics of discussion, because I truly feel all the major design decisions have been made, and have been made correctly.

For example, if you say there's going to be 1000 planet skins, it sounds good to me. If there's even one chasm or mountain or lake, that's more chasms/mountains/lakes than there were in Star Control II. I'm happy.

So, really it's just more of the minute details and SPECIFICS that I'm wondering about. Will the crew be represented as dots? Will you discover ways to unlock/purchase new technology? Will the villains be just plain evil, or have more complex motives? Will there be a ton of unsolvable mysteries? Will the questlines PLEASE not guide you like all modern games to, with perfectly accurate waypoints - here's a snippet from Rock, Paper, Shotgun's pre-review of Mass Effect Andromeda: "Side quests feel like... Just complete nothingness, running from map icon to map icon, scanning objects with your scanner when told to". Modern games these days, I guess it's more modern gamers - they just need their hand held all the time. So what's the plan to be different, in a world full of Fallouts and WoW and Mass Effect, where you just have to go from map icon to map icon...

These are the things that concern me now. 

Also, will you clarify what you meant about critters in the most recent Vault update? It sounds ambiguous, but maybe like only 5 critter models will be in the game. Which is ludicrous based on the amount of critter art you've put out...

Also, Brad, for the love of God - Please don't make the minerals doom-like or candy-crush-like floating, spinning icons, or I will be very upset. Can you please respond to that?

Also (that's 3x "also", added after the fact!), can we have more GUN-guns in the game? Shouldn't there be a main gun, and a special ability? Could be defensive, could be offensive, but there should be at least one offensive gun per ship. 

Also:

THIS. So much this. I hate the idea of starbases, I do. And Quasi-space was the perfect solution to avoid Skyrim/Fallout fast travel nonsense, but since it's in the game, can we at least ALSO have Quasi-space? I just don't ever want to CLICK and have my ship move somewhere. It creates a disconnect. A big one. You should have direct control of your ship AT ALL TIMES. All the time. Forever. The whole game.

Things I'd like to see in the next update:

1. An explanation of why certain ships were given certain abilities. I guess this falls into the category of "explain the design philosophy behind each ship", but I'm more interested in the weapons specifically.

2. Maybe some input from the composers in regards to the process of writing the music. Are there specific pieces that are their favorites so far? What were they using for inspiration? Things like that.

3. I'd like a bit more input on how hyperspace will function, even if the answer is just "Just like it did in SC2." Along the same lines, since we're getting fast travel points with the Starbases, does this mean that quasispace travel as we knew it in SC2 is gone?

4. Since your litmus test for the world building tools is if someone can reasonably recreate SC2 in the SC:O variation of Nitrous, does that mean that you want those of us (the Founders) with technical skills to actually attempt this as a group?

I would  really like a basis for the design intent of each ship.  It will be a big help for us providing feedback on their function.   Hyperspace needs to stay the same.  Red hue and all.  Make it a little prettier sure but the overall idea needs to be the same.  It's a huge part of the star control feel.  I'm giving Starbases a chance but feel that having safe ports all over will subtract from the "us  against the universe" feel.  Space felt dangerous in sc2 partly because you only had one place that was safe.

Space feeling dangerous is the best way to describe that feeling. Even with a full fleet, I never REALLY felt like I was 100% safe, even near home.

Oh! another thing that i remembered, Voices and Sounds, talk more about the music/voice side of the project, i'm very interested to hear and read more (and while i LOVE the tracks included on the updates, we need more than the songs)

Brad, really the main thing I'd like to hear your philosophy on, I posted in a different thread, but I'm adding here because it matters to me more than anything else that's still outstanding (since you've already nailed the basic foundations):

It's what I'm always referring to - whether it be asking about "mysteries" or "hand-holding" or the "quest system" or "map markers" or whatever - I finally have a good example:

The Quasi-space discovery is the best one I can think of. They never put a marker on the map. You didn't follow waypoints to it. They didn't even specifically identify its location, just kinda said "somewhere between X and Y". There were no quests to go find it. You weren't forced to check it out. There wasn't even any concrete evidence or information about where it came from or why it's there or what you'd find on the other side! Hell, I STILL don't know too much about it. 

There were just casual mentions of it within the dialog, and it was up to YOU to take up that mission - a mission of your own design - to go see what the heck that was all about. 

It was a beautiful feeling. And one that I hope is preserved in the new Star Control. What's your philosophy about THOSE KINDS OF THINGS, Brad? Can you please expound upon that in the next Vault update? 

Things should be filled with *WONDER*.

The problem with "wonder" is that we live in time of internet. Any mystery would be solved on day one.

 

That is why I'm more for mysteries that are randomized for each playthrough, similar to how 4X games are always different each time, due to random map and opponent setup.

So something wondrous could happen in early game, or maybe in late game or not happen at all. And mystery is preserved.

 

Nothing worse then having exploration game with static map and everything preplaced at exact same spot for each playthrough.

 

Well, good - then Brad, if you answer, please include ideas about how you plan on adding wonder and mysteries and love in the time of cholera... I mean, Internet.

 

The issue with this is that it leads to insincere sounding writing. It's not like in older Elder Scrolls where you can have an NPC go "Yeah, we need you to gather 6 bear pelts, but they have to specifically be bears from The Golden Forest. It's just past the Ancient Sundial, East of the Town of Shotharath." That feels more compelling and authentic than "Go kill 6 bears. *map marker appears*."

So very true - dude, is that an actual quest form an Elder Scrolls game? It sounds so legit, lol. But Elder Scrolls is exactly what I'm talking about - especially Morrowind. They would just tell you the general area, and you'd have to hunt that stuff down yourself. WoW used to be the exact same way. They would give you a quest, and you'd have to go find it yourself based on the description. But then they changed it to rope in a wider audience, and it told you EXACTLY where to go at all times. You stop paying attention, and start just hitting map markers. Shame.

Actually that quest text sounds a lot like Vanilla World of Warcraft.

 

I'll be one of the first to admit, I love those oddball quests that you can find in obscure flavor text or random map(s) upon walls.  Unfortunately I rarely follow through on them these days.

 

This is just matter of implementation.

For example, have dozen different descriptors, like

in <cluster> there is <color> star

at the <stardate> every <interval> <something happens>

near <alien race> territory

etc...

And then use them to point to places on randomized map for specific quests.

What will you do if there's voice involved? (btw, voice is already confirmed). It's going to sound clunky, and immersion is broken if you have only some quests having voiced lines.

Well, it could be always something written in data files for you to read.

I haven't been active on these forums, but I ended up spending my coding freetime to read SC:origin forums (an hour in the morning before family wakes up and I end up going to work .

I like the idea off good support for modding and I think Brad is right on that. The only thing that it requires to be successful though, is enough SC:origin fans to create the mods. If you feel like there is strong enough community for star control, then even just making awesome modding tools and not really succeeding with the main game, could be enough.

By the way, I don't consider adventure games are dead only because of that, some genres just that had their golden years early on (adventure wasn't the only one), because the bulk of gamers were seriously different than nowadays. Also RPGs are not dead, quite the contrary? World of warcraft and MMORPGs are RPGs even more than the earlier ones were, they just changed shape! The biggest reason for old style RPGs and adventure games, are nostalgy and older gamers, as far as I see it. Though that is something you have to balance on too .

Here are some personal points that just dynamically came to my mind, after reading things here:
- I rather like hand-holding and easy storyline, versus something hard and overly devious and complex (though i do appreaciate a good plot a lot, but it has nothing to do with making a game difficult). I get my kicks on following a good plot and the actual actions parts of SC. I never play games with story more than once, for the story, but for the game mechanics. So in this I would see being cautious could be good. There are gamers, that don't care about super puzzles and devious adventures (I hated some parts of the original SC too, like syreens and their stupid ships, if I recall right). Adventure is only one part of star control and thus it shouldn't dictate the whole game.
- I don't care about ship modding "at all" (didn't like it in galciv either). I loved the concept of original star control. the diversive ships and races they had, that was enough for me. Though for moddability, the modding of ships will of course be important too.
- I appreciate time-saving in games. So even though I did lke the quasi-space idea of discovering the coordinates yourself, with features like that it's also imperative in todays games, to add automatic markers, after you have gone through them once. What I mean is that, you don't want players to map everything with pen-and-paper, like in the "good old times", in the sense that "coordinates: 553, 667 => 1023, 2005... 450, 559 => 300, 600". And I rather love skipping all the scenes i've seen once already. I'm an EA hater (for many things), with one thing related to this: They at least used to force you to look through some company logo presentation at the start of game and such.
- I actually enjoy the technical and game design parts of the progress reports, having something to do with being a coder and hobby game designer .
- Will the game have community moddable planets? I mean 1,000 planets are enough I think, but they won't definitely run out, if the community gets to mod more of them (and DLCs of course can add more). I think even less would be fine?  

Hey there

 

The 1000 planets thing sounds great, I think this much variety will add to the unique feeling of each star. 

- would it be possible for modders to edit planets, in order to add to those 1000 already pre-defined?

 

I can't comment on super melee until I played it for a bit but I am sure if you stick to the original SC2 idea will be great after balancing all the ships (or un-balancing)

 

I would like to see in future updates:

- how the earth starbase is being handled (purchasing ships / upgrading modules, etc)

- how the hyperspace looks - the actual travelling between stars

- maybe show us some custom events on the planets (as was the starbase on the moon / androsynth destroyed cities in SC2)

 

Thanks for the update! Keep up the good work!

 

You gotta realize that some cut scenes are there to hide loading screens.

Well the experiences I mostly remember at this moment are from strategy games and there I believe that it is not true (and some EA games as I mentioned, where you actually are forced to always look at the introductions of company logos or such). Since they have a separate loading screen normally and cut scenes for loading purposes would not make sense? (for instance ashes of singularity has loading screen, though the player can jump over cutscenes decently). Also if a game is loading content, why not mention it anyway? First time you get cut scene it makes sense, that the player doesn't even need to know about the loading, but retries of the same level and being forced to watch a cutscene don't make sense to me as as user experience.