Founders Status: April 2018

from StarControl Forums

Greetings!

If you go to the Star Control Founder's Vault you are in for a treat!

https://www.starcontrol.com/vault 

There's new music from Riku in there as well as this month's general status report.

Here is where I would rate us on a scale from 0 to 5 where 0 = not started, 4 is that it could ship and 5 is that it's amazing:

Category Score
Story 4
Alien Dialogs 3
Fleet Battles 4
Solar System Exploration 4
Planet Exploration 3
Hyperspace Exploration 3
Ship Upgrading 3
Adventure Studio 3

The story has had 4 years to iterate so it's in very good shape.  What is needed is more pacing testing and lots and lots of testing since we allow players to "win" through multiple paths.

The Alien dialogs are coming along but only a few of them are in final form and we're still adding new aliens.  This is an art pipeline issue (i.e. in a pinch we can farm it out).

Fleet Battles is obviously in pretty good shape.  Scavenging is being worked on and we are still working on Assault/Defend mode (due to Founders in June).  But this part of the game is pretty polished.

Solar System Exploration is also in really good shape. The camera works great and it feels good.  Only negative right now is that gas giants need...something as right now you just bounce off them (you can't land on them but we do need to have something).  

Planet Exploration.  We are still adding critters and hazards to the planet.  Right now those things appear as red blocks.  Doing that brings it to a 4.  To get to a 5 we need to get ray-traced shadows and more planet details.

Hyperspace exploration is cosmetically pretty good but it's still a work in progress from a usability point of view.  Searching for planets, getting into and out of auto pilot, zooming in and out are all kind of not ideal yet.

Ship upgrading is coming along but there's a lot of balance and pacing needed here and more variety needed. It's also not visually great yet.

Adventure Studio is..."this close" to being amazing.  But it's one of those things where just a few missing features make it unpleasant to use.  For me, there are two killer problems.  First, while it will send most text to the translation tables (to make it easier to be put into other languages) certain things, like popup text and quest labels have to be added manually which is a big pain for me.  Also, it isn't always clear whether my quest is working or whether there's a problem between hotloading my new quest and my saved game.

Not mentioned here is the engine.  The engine is in great shape.  I recently did a demo of it on my Surface Pro 4.  It wasn't super pretty but it wasn't bad either.  And we have months of optimization time so it will only get better.

Cheers!

-brad

5,247 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from StarControl Forums Top

Holy Damn...

:D
Damn Brad~ :frogboy:

The Story: Can't wait for it, it sounds like it was refined to heck, and it's almost ready to being amazing! 

The Alien Dialogue:  The part that sells the game to me! can't wait to see the aliens, their voices and new designs! 

Fleet Battles: Yeah, if it is already fun right now, imagine when it is complete!

Solar System Exploration: an idea for Gas giants would to have an Ship Add-on that would convert Gas energy into fuel or something of the like!   

Planet Exploration: and How are the Critters? 

Hyperspace Exploration: i imagine it's going to be beautiful. 

Ship Upgrading: is the team still thinking of new parts and whatnot? 

Adventure Studio: the Idea is amazing, but i see how it needs to be refined, oh well, can't wait to get my hands on it! 

Engine: well, i don't understand, but having a Engine just for an game is a lot of work and should be respected! 

 

Cheers!

~ Shade :cylon:  

 

Reply #2 from StarControl Forums Top

It's hard to even put up screenshots because a week later, they're outdated because things are moving so fast.

 

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Reply #3 from StarControl Forums Top

Reply #4 from StarControl Forums Top

Gas Giants.  You might think of a gas giant as being similar to a black hole, with a singularity and an event horizon.  In this case the singularity would be a "core" at the center of a "cloud" (event horizon).  So you collide with the "core", which you either bounce off like a planet or it could auto-kill you to hit the core of a gas giant.  Either way.  You take damage when inside the "event horizon" (cloud, or apparent planet surface), you die if you touch the core is the basic idea.

Think of it as a planet with a cloud around it, and the cloud prevents you from using it to slingshot like you do with a normal planet.  This creates a gameplay difference between gas giants and normal planets.  You can use normal planets to slingshot, but not gas giants.  You can use rings the same way as the "cloud"/atmosphere of a gas giant to create a planet than you can't use for slingshotting.

And, finally, notice than you can actually use them to slingshot, you just take damage from the gas giant atmosphere/rings when you do.

Reply #5 from StarControl Forums Top

:rofl:

Loving the tunes! Definitely going in a good direction and looking forward to getting my hands on the soundtrack!!

 

The more I see updated on the planet exploration the more interesting that looks as well, all around the planets look more and more interesting each time you give us an update on their direction 

Reply #6 from StarControl Forums Top

For solar system/planet exploration of gas giants. It's probably way too late at this stage to add it in, but would be pretty cool to instead of have a planet lander, have a gas skimmer type vehicle that flies through gas giant atmospheres and skims for stuff. So a different sort of environment and possibility of plot elements etc in the gas giants would be pretty cool IMO. 

Reply #7 from StarControl Forums Top

Wait, Arilou? How does that work with all the dogshit going around with Paul & Fred?

Reply #8 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting SabreRunner, reply 7

Wait, Arilou? How does that work

Seeing as they were almost 100% literally the aliens described as visited the Roswell New Mexico area their appearance most likely is now open domain property, as for the whole name of the race and associated lore, I believe that transferred when Atari sold the assets via auction which was purchased by Stardock.  However outside of what's said by Frogboy or comes directly from the courts it's all theory crafting.  Do note Elestan and some others are doing such at various degrees of passion in a separate thread titled "Star Control Litigation Discussion"

Reply #9 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting SabreRunner, reply 7

Wait, Arilou? How does that work with all the dogshit going around with Paul & Fred?

Star Control: Origins remains in a different universe but the Star Control aliens will begin to make appearances in the new games when it benefits the story.

Our position had been not to use the Star Control aliens in Origins but Paul and Fred have made it very clear that they have no interest in being involved in the multiverse concept. Which is their right.  But to prevent confusion, the Star Control aliens can only be in Star Control universe games. 

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