Hi guys,

As many of you know, June is the first month I'm on Star Control full time.  This has been a very fun and interesting project that has some twisty turns.

Now that things are starting to really heat up (there are now 3X as many engineers on the project as there were 30 days ago) I'm going to try to have both the monthly newsletter and the follow-up with a mid-month talk/voice chat.

So in no particular order.

Voice Chat: Discord

I am going to be asking one of my Drengin team to help me promote more users to Campers.  Once we have a sufficient number of Campers I'd like to start some voice chats with you guys.

A big part of this process will be to understand the unique nature of doing a new Star Control game.  As such, we have certain parts of the game that are axioms (won't change) and some parts that are very open to feedback and change (like Hyperspace).

Designer Change

So for most of this process, my friend Andrew has been the lead designer on Star Control.  In January, we moved development leadership from the Towson Maryland studio to the Plymouth Michigan studio (and unfortunately, Andrew wasn't able to relocate).  So while much of the art is still being made in Maryland, most of the engineering is handled now in Plymouth where I am.  As a result, I'm now both the executive producer and the Designer.

That change has some ramifications.  Each of us has a slightly different vision of what Star Control should be.  Now, the central story and aliens and ships remain the same (our lead writer, Chris Bucholz, who is in Canada or some other made up country is still writing is blasphemy).  But the game design itself will change, at least some. 

Below I am going to outline some general design philosophies I have on Star Control.

#1 Living Galaxy.  A lot of the design of Star Control 2 was predicated by the limitations of the time.  For example, I suspect we all agree that if Paul and Fred could have, the galaxy would have been a lot more alive than it was. 

A living galaxy means that a lot of things are going on throughout the galaxy. That means the borders of different empires are being patroled, there are ships traveling back and forth between star systems on various missions, patrols, etc.  You, the captain, are just one ship in this very big universe.

#2 Scale. The scale of ships was due to them being sprites.  The Ur-Quan ship was roughly the same size as the Earthling vessel because they were both sprites.  I have no problem exploring a Super Melee in which one ship is drastically bigger than another.  Anyone who ever watched DS9 with the Defiant wreaking havoc on a Klingon flagship can appreciate the different fun ways that scale can be handled in Super Melee if done right. 

Similarly, you will see, very very quickly (as in, this week probably) some new screenshots of the solar system with a lot more scale.  The lines are back, The sun will be much bigger, the size of planets much bigger, planets will have a lot more moons, etc.  I think exploring a solar system should be really fun and interesting.

Now, I'm not married to this.  But it is relatively easy for us to play with it and if it just doesn't work out, we'll dial it back.  But I'd rather try something new and fail than to not even try.

#3 Ship Design. I have officially made it a requirement that Super Melee, including multiplayer, support user designed ships.  I don't mean just feature-wise.  I mean cosmetically as well.

How will this work?

In Super Melee, you build your fleet where each ship costs a certain number of points (this is known).

How many points will depend on the cost of the ship you design where hull size, HP, weapons, etc. all come into play.

So yes, specifically, the requirement is long before we ship, before we even hit beta, you guys can play with the Origins canon ships OR you can design your own, submit them to the Steam workshop to share them and add them to your fleet.

You can browse through the ones people have made in GalCiv III. Don't judge them based on the crummy Steam workshop thumbnail. Click on some to see the quality.

That will be part of the Super Melee betas.

Next Build

We've been updating our internal builds fairly frequently.  I expect us to have a new Founder's alpha this week.

Hyperspace and One Scene

Based on your feedback and some technical progress we've recently made, we believe we can have a single, fluid, view of the entire galaxy all the way down to a specific crater on a particular planet.  

This means that we are looking at Hyperspace being like traveling in a solar system a bit but at the galactic scale.  You leave a star system, the map zooms out and you are now traveling to other star systems.  If you click on a star system you can auto pilot to it (if you know of it) and set the pacing in which time passes.

That's all for tonight!

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