Star Control - making a modern classic

from StarControl Forums

Greetings!

So recently we asked you what makes Star Control....well...Star Control?

If you have never played the classic series before, fear not as Star Control: Origins starts at the very beginning in a fresh new universe that we will all explore and learn about together.

Star Control is unique.  The closest thing to it is probably Mass Effect which some argue was a remake of the classic series.

So what is special about Star Control? Why do we think it's going to be such a major game-changer for role playing games?

Here's why?

Story-Driven Open Universe

The Star Control universe is rich in lore, history and depth.  But it is an open universe. You are not on rails. You can go out and explore the galaxy and affect how things go.  

You are the captain of a single ship.  It's not like Sins of a Solar Empire or Galactic Civilizations where you can simply order the construction of fleets and colonization of planets.  In fact, in the year 2088, humans are so far behind the curve that they don't start with FTL technology.  Your mission is to save the Earth and Earth is willing to...ahem...look the other way and let you decide how to do that.

Why other games don't do this now? A big part of the reason has to do with the tech.  The original Star Control series was actually pretty linear.  Star Control: Origins works on a state machine basis.  This is only possible because we do require 4 CPU cores (which you all probably have easily now adays but most games are written assuming a single CPU core).  We are, in effect, an RPG riding on top of a simulation.

I want to give credit where credit is due:  Classic games tried to touch on this. Notably, Ultima IV and Ultima V for starters.  Even the original Baldur's Gate touched on this.  In Star Control: Origins, we're doing thousands of planets with thousands of unique characters all controlled by AI.

Gameplay

As deep as it is, it wouldn't matter if playing wasn't fun.  And Star Control's big challenge has always boiled down to mixing 4 very different game designs together: Planet Exploration, Ship Combat, Space Exploration and role playing.

Think about your favorite recent RPG.  The combat and exploration and the role playing all are pretty much part of the same "scene".  That's not how it is in Star Control.  The planet exploration is a completely different experience from the space exploration which in turn is different from the combat.  This is why we had to develop a new game engine just for this game.   Imagine the challenge of having a first person mode + a strategy mode + a 4X leader scene mode and you get the idea.

When combined together with a lot of time for iteration (4 years +) you and up with something pretty awesome.

Consequences

This is similar to the idea of a story-driven open universe but it also means that we don't tell you how to play.  There is no tutorial.  If you want to go around murderin' that's your business.  You gotta do what you gotta do.  We don't punish players for doing "the wrong" thing because there is no "wrong" thing.  There are simply things that will have logical consequences.  

Writing

We've had over four years to weave together and edit terrific prose in this game that is then superbly voice acted.  Near the end of this Summer, we think you will find a game that makes you feel a wide range of emotions.  The universe is simultaneously ludicrous, tragic and horrible.

Atmosphere

Whether we're talking about a music sound track that would be worth the price alone (there's a lot of music in this game, more so than most games you get) or the small touches to the thousands of unique planets that you occasionally find a spot where someone has carefully crafted a moment for you, Star Control makes it obvious that its creators care about it and that each moment has been thought of. 

You won't see the Stardock team brag about "procedural generation".   This is a massively single-player game.  Some of the side-quests will be too difficult for 95% of players.  And that's ok.  You can all play together to try to figure out the depths of the universe.  There are no random encounters.  No random events.  No random anything.   Everything in this universe is for you.  You are the star.

Soon...

End of Summer is when we expect to make this available to everyone.  You can play the Fleet Battles (the combat game) now though if you want to pre-order at a discount and help support our development. :)

 

62,807 views 18 replies
Reply #1 from StarControl Forums Top


  Some of the side-quests will be too difficult for 95% of players.  And that's ok. 

 

 

I'm so on board with this statement...   however I hope you are prepared for the onslaught of people who say X thing is impossible so it must be a bug!!   and then give terrible steam reviews simply because they cannot beat X thing....

Reply #2 from LittleTinyFrogs Forums Top

Quoting Taslios, reply 1


Quoting ,
quoting post

  Some of the side-quests will be too difficult for 95% of players.  And that's ok. 

 



 

I'm so on board with this statement...   however I hope you are prepared for the onslaught of people who say X thing is impossible so it must be a bug!!   and then give terrible steam reviews simply because they cannot beat X thing....


We don't plan for the action portion to be unbeatable but rather require a lot of problem solving.  

Players can always spend more time building up their fleet or upgrading their ship on that end. But in terms of figuring out how to solve a challenging problem, if they can't do it, they will need to appeal to the community. :)

 

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Reply #3 from StarControl Forums Top

When you say it's massively single-player, what does that mean exactly? Do other players playing the game impact the universe you're playing in? Or are there specific events that are unique to the community at large and are impacted by the community's contribution to that effort?

Super excited to see what we get end of summer! I'm slowly trying to burn through my massive backlog of games (working on Banner Saga 1 right now...) and it's slow going. I keep getting distracted by "old faithful" games with lots of replayability.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Starkillr, reply 3

When you say it's massively single-player, what does that mean exactly? Do other players playing the game impact the universe you're playing in? Or are there specific events that are unique to the community at large and are impacted by the community's contribution to that effort?

Super excited to see what we get end of summer! I'm slowly trying to burn through my massive backlog of games (working on Banner Saga 1 right now...) and it's slow going. I keep getting distracted by "old faithful" games with lots of replayability.

What I mean is that many of the deep crevices of the game will likely require some out-of-game teamwork to figure out things.  The main story lines and even most side stories are pretty reasonable.  But we also want to have stories that require a great deal of subtle thinking.   This isn't a game for people who want bread crumbs.

Reply #5 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 4

What I mean is that many of the deep crevices of the game will likely require some out-of-game teamwork to figure out things.  The main story lines and even most side stories are pretty reasonable.  But we also want to have stories that require a great deal of subtle thinking.   This isn't a game for people who want bread crumbs.

Ohhh I gotcha, cool. I can't remember having to deal with stuff like that since I played games as a kid. Also +1 to your post in the "What Makes SC, SC" thread. I love having a lot of lore, history and story embedded into the universe I'm playing in. I hate making up "head canon" as you aptly put it. Not that that isn't fun sometimes, but I think that the beauty of doing a space game is that the universe is massive and can have as much lore and story as you can think of. Seems like something to take advantage of.

 

Reply #6 from StarControl Forums Top

The discussion about fostering community involvement to cooperatively figure out things is nice to hear. Back in the day, all we had were dialup boards, usenet threads, and the very beginnings of online discussion threads to talk about gaming strategies and secrets.

One of the really memorable things about SC2 was that Paul and Fred wrote their own hint book, which was really just a collection of clues to the biggest mysteries rather than an outright walkthrough. If you really wanted to, you could flip to a spoiler section in the back filled with answers to those clues, but the point was they really tried to maintain the mystery as much as possible and just give you some general guidance.

We also had the printed starmap, and of course there was also Professor Zorg's copy protection code wheel, which is just another part of a bygone era, but what I'm curious about how this line of thinking could extend to ideas for physical items outside of the digital world of the game. Today, these sorts of things are seen as anachronistic and sooner associated with something like an ARG than a typical game, and are very rare to see.

I'd be curious to hear about whether embracing these old ideas is still something Stardock would entertain. I'm sure I'm not alone as someone who'd love to have a printed paper starmap simply for the nostalgic value and I would totally pay for other tangible non-DLC merchandise like that even as a Lifetime Founder.

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Rather than a DLC...   a PME  (Physical Mailed Enhancement)

I would totally buy a cloth map and a lore book should Stardock sell such.  not sure if enough people would buy those these days however...

Reply #8 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting Taslios, reply 7

I would totally buy a cloth map and a lore book should Stardock sell such.  not sure if enough people would buy those these days however...

That's what POD (Print on Demand) services are for.

Reply #9 from StarControl Forums Top

I would love to have a nicely laminated star map to go with the game (i.e. something that won't fray or tear like the original SC2 map). Useful physical items like that and lore books were some of the coolest things from back in the day. I still have my Pools of Radiance copyright translation wheel (which was really cool if you were a D&D nerd) and when I got them from GOG I printed out the manuals because they were just chock full of lore, little sketches, and other awesome little tidbits. The digital SC2 starmap has nothing on the real thing!

Reply #10 from LittleTinyFrogs Forums Top

Quoting Starkillr, reply 9

I would love to have a nicely laminated star map to go with the game (i.e. something that won't fray or tear like the original SC2 map). Useful physical items like that and lore books were some of the coolest things from back in the day. I still have my Pools of Radiance copyright translation wheel (which was really cool if you were a D&D nerd) and when I got them from GOG I printed out the manuals because they were just chock full of lore, little sketches, and other awesome little tidbits. The digital SC2 starmap has nothing on the real thing!

But would that map container spoilers? I.e. do you want to know where everything is at the start?

Reply #11 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 10



But would that map container spoilers? I.e. do you want to know where everything is at the start?

 

I'm not sure how big the actual map would be if you were to print it out in say... Font 12.....


But if you did something like say Pandemic Legacy where the map starts bare with nothing more than the star names and simply laminated and comes with stickers or things that we can stick on the map....     I'd totally pay for that... and enjoy pretending I was in kindergarten again while using it... ;)

Reply #12 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 10


Quoting Starkillr,
reply 9

I would love to have a nicely laminated star map to go with the game (i.e. something that won't fray or tear like the original SC2 map). Useful physical items like that and lore books were some of the coolest things from back in the day. I still have my Pools of Radiance copyright translation wheel (which was really cool if you were a D&D nerd) and when I got them from GOG I printed out the manuals because they were just chock full of lore, little sketches, and other awesome little tidbits. The digital SC2 starmap has nothing on the real thing!



But would that map container spoilers? I.e. do you want to know where everything is at the start?

As in where the stars are? If you are a star-faring species, I think you know where the stars are and have your own names for them like we do currently. If you're talking about circles showing where certain species are, that would depend on what knowledge you have at the start of the game. I think the star map in SC 2 was basically whatever was known by humans at the end of the "great war" and they'd get hints from others that would then populate on the in-game star map. So I guess what I'm saying is that no, there shouldn't be any spoilers, but it also shouldn't be devoid of things that one would reasonably expect them to know. I would think NASA or some organization would keep star charts.

Reply #13 from StarControl Forums Top

There were several versions of a large format physical printed folding map for SC2. I would not say that any of them contained outright spoilers, however the one that came with the "Role Playing Resource Guide" (hint book) was a black and white line drawing map with subtle clues about star systems of significance which were highlighted only as places of interest that you knew about from the start, but it did not tell you what secrets they contained. It did contain the coordinates of Quasispace exit portals though.

The original folding map that came with the game was a more basic colored map, just showing all the constellations and star types.

There are several versions of the map out on the internet that people have archived and even recreated over the years, all easily accessible with a quick image search.

Reply #14 from StarControl Forums Top

We do actually have that map.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AuBwidOf1nOuioMwILwi_Tjlf2pfig 

 

 

Reply #15 from StarControl Forums Top

Nice! Clearly no accident that it could almost be mistaken for the original.

:dur:

Reply #16 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting Awkbird, reply 15

Nice! Clearly no accident that it could almost be mistaken for the original.

:dur:

No accident at all. We want the Star Control map presentations to be consistent.

Reply #17 from StarControl Forums Top

I doubt it so much, but...I wonder whether I still have my SC2 map somewhere.
I know I had it for a very long time...but a lot of stuff got lost the last time I moved.

 

Now I have to go look.

Reply #18 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 14

We do actually have that map.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AuBwidOf1nOuioMwILwi_Tjlf2pfig 

 

 

 

This is awesome....I suspect in this day and age there won't be a physical copy, but perhaps there is and we'll find out at E3. Have to say I'm feeling the excitement build as I read about the progress with the game as a whole. It's hard for me to dedicate time to playing games these days (gone are the college and earlier days of large swaths of time I could dedicate to gaming), but when awesome games like this come out, I drop everything and play! Really looking forward to that Star Control feel again. I miss it.