(Started this topic in the UQM forums, but I figured it would make sense to post here as well.)
Well, after hearing a ton of references to "Starflight", and how it was a "spiritual successor" to SCII, I finally decided to give it a try. I decided on the Sega Genesis port, since that had the most "updated" graphics and controls, and there's plenty of emulators available for PC and Android. You definitely can see the similarities, the first time you leave your home system, you are greeted with a star map containing hundreds of stars. You get that, sandbox, explore around and meet weird aliens feel. Having different crew members filling in dedicated roles, with different statistics was a cool idea; although, it becomes pointless early-on, when you can max out their training without much effort. The planetary exploration is definitely a lot more fleshed out, with the landscapes being much larger, and mining consists of using a scanner and digging, as well as pickup up bits on the surface. I don't think they did as good a job with the story progression as SCII. A lot of times, I've been aimlessly wondering space, until I stumble upon some breadcrumbs toward a new artifact or race. The dialogue trees are also a lot less exciting. You can only ask the same 5 questions to each race, or answer questions they ask you. The combat is relatively boring, compared to the unique ships and counters in SC. All and all, it's definitely worth checking out if your a UQM/SCII fan. If nothing else, to see what inspired them. Also, Stardock has mentioned in a few posts, that they want to look at Starflight as a model for their SC reboot.Anyway, I was wondering what a perfect modern hybrid of the 2 games would be like. It would be cool to flesh out the crew roles and statistics in your primary ship, or even in the captains of your escorts. Also would be neat to expand on the planetary exploration, e.g., not just picking up dots. It was also cool that the dialogues could include the races asking YOU questions, instead of you doing all the questioning. I'd keep everything else about SC the same though. Anyone else played SF recently? What would you like to see from SF in the SC reboot?
This is a good topic and I'm delighted that we're not the only ones thinking along these lines.
If you want to get an idea of a new Star Control, take Star Control 2 and add some additional Starflight features.
Dammit, that sounds amazing. Especially if some of those "features" include RPG elements. Because I've been hungry for some sci-fi RPG stuff, and that's much harder to come by than fantasy.
The crew-member aspect could definitely be fleshed out a lot more. Each member really only had one stat that effected their job, and it could easily be maxed out early on. It would be cool to add crew members from the different alien races you meet or ally with. One thing that bugged me about SCII was the alliances. They usually involved "here's the design to our ship, now leave us alone for the rest of the game". If you could incorporate the other races as crew members, or escort ships that participate in dialogue, the development of your technology, and planetary exploration, that would be awesome.
SF also annoyed me when I would run into dead ends. No leads to go on, just aimlessly wondering around systems. Don't get me wrong, that sense of freedom and exploration is key, but as long as there's not too much emptiness between the meaty parts.
The way SCII improved on this was having multiple sources for the same key information. If you didn't get the info from one race, the star-base commander, or random exploration, you probably got it from the Melnorme race (who you could buy and sell information from). You rarely got stuck, or needed to consult a strategy guide (or walk-through). Really, the Melnorme were an ingenious invention by TFB. Almost like an in-game Hint-Guide, but you actually had to EARN the tips, one by one, without breaking the feeling of immersion. I hope you guys can carry on ideas with the Melnorme.
Things that were missing from both games (and would be common in "modern" games), were instructions. I suppose they expected the player to read the "Game Manual", LOL! But, it would be nice, for instance, to get an overview of a new ship you just acquired. The game also expected you to play with a notepad, taking notes. Who does that? An in-game log of all the dialogue would solve that easily. Or a more organized log-book or the ability to make notes on the star-map would nice as well.
They are kind of mutually exclusive.
Starflight is more basic exploration simulator on PC Star Control II is more casual, having converted the simulation type game mechanics of Starflight into mini-games.
When Starflight first came out, PCs were just starting to penetrate the home market, so generally the people playing PC games on them were the "nerdy types".
You can later see a shift in target demographics of Starflight when it was introduced to the Sega Genesis, where game mechanics were transformed towards the mini-game like format of Star Control2, rather than the simulator like mechanics of Starflight.
Some things
Star Control II put emphasis on developing a totally overpowered flag ship that quickly trumped the most powerful ships in your fleet. That diminished the main appeal of Star Control 1, picking the right ship for the job.
Starflight put emphasis on developing your ship to be able to hold it's own against hostile aliens, and even then, Uhlek fleets were not remotely easy to beat (because stats were more powerful then you could get and they had one of the few ship quirks, tracking torpedos.)
Star Control 1 did something awesome that both missed out on, one off tricks that modified the battle conditions, be it a quirk of the ship in question, or a modification of the ship via precursor artifacts (in strategy mode)
eg: Vux Intruder is powerful coming in on an Earthling Cruiser already in play [starts in close proximity] but is not so awesome if the Earthling Cruiser comes into play on it [can start far away from the Vux where the Earthling Cruiser's long range missiles trump the Vux slow speed and powerful close range weapon] BUT now wait! That Vux appears to have a Speed Artifact, coming in on it with an Earthling Cruise is suddenly way more risky and unclear of the result.
I say StarControl 2 missed out on this because it had no strategy mode like SC1 did (so no artifacts modifying individual ships) and put a large emphasis on an overpowered Flagship in story mode.
I say Starflight missed out on this, because the ships are mostly homogenous except for stats (with a couple of exceptions) so you'd end up with something like, "Yay I got a Gazurtoid shield" (blocks missiles) or "Yay I got Uhlek Plasma Torpedo Launcher" (ridiculously powerful tracking "missile") which also starts to fall into the same trap as Star Control 2's flagship gameplay rut.
Yeah OK, I see that I am cranking out too much text.
The Starflight universe felt so much bigger than Star Control. The plot was a little more open, the planets didn't run out of minerals, the time seemed to last longer. You had to have regular mineral runs in SF1 to generate money. In SF2 the trading system was quite elaborate. There were also minor (non-spacefaring) races spread throughout the galaxy that you could interact with.
The SF lore was also stronger IMO, though either game has such strong lore compared to todays' games.
Meanwhile, Star Control ships and combat were so fun, the soundtrack was great, the lore was strong, beautiful universe.
Both amazing games, both top 5 all time for me.
Just wrote a long post and the page reloaded and lost it somehow.
I touched on this above, but I think a couple things made SF1&SF2 feel so much larger than Star Control 2. The huge planet surfaces were one. In SC2 the minerals were gone once they were mined, so it essentially shrunk the universe as you went. In SF you could have regular mineral runs (4 Seedlings, anyone? J )
I viewed this as a positive. You got a little bit less direction up front and accumulated clues as you explored. For example, some clues were only available at Old Empire ruins that are randomly generated on Old Empire planets.
I agree on the dialogue trees, but SC2 was too much on rails IIRC.
Agree completely with planetary exploration. I remember spending so much time on mineral rich and bio rich worlds on SF.
Some other things I would carry over:
Discoverable artifacts (to sell or equip on ships) Trading system like SF2, galaxy-wide economy Minor, non star-faring races like SF2 Interesting space exploration (nebula and other characteristics. “Hyperspace” was pretty bland in SC2 Hirable crew members – adds tons of immersion Large planet surfaces with resources that don’t expire. Multiple reasons for exploring. On top of the regular reasons (mineral, bio, just exploring), SF generated some plot tips at the Starbase and also gave you the ability to recommend planets for future colonies. Great lore
As an aside, I wish there was a way to play the Mac version of SF1 & 2. They were so superior to the PC version.
Great thread, and great idea.
Ive played through SF1 and SF2, as well as Starcontrol series...
Things that Star Flight did that were awesome:
-Vast planets that you would need you to land to explore, you couldnt tell everything about them from space;
-Some real dangers (Uh-Lek fleet would tear even the max upgraded ship to shreds on SF1);
-A sense of existing background lore, although not just thrown at your face, a big deal you needed to uncover by putting things together yourself;
-You needed to work for information, and just aquiring new information was very rewarding on itself;
-Characters that could become better at their jobs;
-Some things were there and just left you with a question, and no answer, or a very vague idea of what was going on. Like the probe, the minstrels, and the encounter with what I would guess to be the Enterprise. Or even the planet at the lower right corner of the map, apparently a colony of the ancients, full of enduriun;
-Secrecy and clues. This is something I miss too much. And without it, I believe no matter how big you make the universe, if you are always sure of where to look for and when, it will not feel as big. I feel such with games like Fallout 3, that have a huge potential for exploration and discovery, but since you always know beforehand what you will find (and even more, just knowing you will find kills the mood), the huge amount of content becomes kinda pointless, the big world only annoys you with long travel distances;
-No handholding. This is something I like on both SF and SC2. More on SF, but SC2 still kept it interesting enough. In SF1 if you did not made an effort to discover and interfere with what was going on, you could run out of time without having the slightest clue of why did the sun flare (and in fact I did so on my first play). And I felt this contributed a lot to the feeling of "openess" the game had. The story was linear, simple, not even sidequests. But simply being able to do things in whatever way you figured out without the game telling you "dude now go there and do this", felt great.
-The spemin were awesome.
Things that were not really so good:
-The mechanics of mineral harvesting, which was pretty much the only way to build resources early on, were really slow. I like the idea of searching for minerals and picking them up, and I reccon its a very good way for an early game strategy. But there should be other means to aquire resources, in special life forms, artifacts, trading, even doing side quests or picking up jobs around, I dont know. Just not spending over 10 hours harvesting minerals would be awesome ;
-Conversation with aliens, although was quite interesting, could be a little boring at times. SC2 was much better in this regard. Although I feel SC2 miss the diplomatic options;
-Battle was very monotone (over power or death);
-Ship upgrades were very straight forward and one dimensional (although the armour levels having an impact on speed was great in my opinion);
-Although the crew could be trained, they developed into full potential way too soon to have any impact on the game, and you didnt have much oportunities to grow attached to them. You would only remember them when they would screw up on their jobs (which after a while simply would not happen), or when dead on the terrain vehicle ;
-The crew was absolutely appathic to anything that happened on the universe. Finding Earth? Who cares, no comment whatsoever. Saving the Universe, been there, done that...
-The Gazurtoid could have more conversations, even if hostile.
I apologize if this seems like a bit of a hijack as it's not about Starflight, but it is still about other titles that could influence the design of Star Control. I wanted to expand the scope of the thread by seeing what others here think of another recent release: StarDrive.
It occupies a very different genre as a 4X strategy game, and while it appears to be a completely self-aware ripoff of Master of Orion 2, I'd also argue that it has nods to other classics including Star Control, and I was particularly struck with the overall presentation of the game's design.
The aliens of StarDrive had a lot of imagination and creativity put into their design, and given the relatively humble budget of the game and the lack of voice acting, their animations during a conversational dialog are remarkably well done and immediately made me think of Star Control. All of the illustrations are very painterly and don't rely specifically on 3D modeling to bring them to life, instead creating the illusion of depth in their movement by using multiple hand-drawn layers and I love that they took an old school approach to making them high quality illustrations rather than 3D models.
I think they're also noteworthy because of the variety in the types of species; looks like there's only one other species you could classify as humanoid... and they kind of strike me as a hybrid of the Syreen and the Elerian from MOO2.
Being a strategy game, the dialogs you have with other species are motivated by making deals and treaties, as opposed to the plot-driven conversations from Star Control, but I think from an artistic perspective, this is definitely a great example of how to present the aliens in Star Control. Hand drawn animation, not 3D models!
I've a huge fan of both games since I've played SF as a kid on my Genesis. The way I would combine them would be this:
I'd take the story of SF where something big is happening Coreward that is pushing new and terrifying races from the core. As these races make a run for it, they plunder and pillage along the way. Something similar to the Huns as they ran out of Asia for safer harbor and crossed into Europe.
I'd take the way SF did with a crew system, but better improved. Maybe each one you add to your ship adds a special talent to that ship. Allow them to level and grow and have their own personality.
Have Earth destroyed from a previous wave and humanity is scattered. But be able to visit Earth like in SF.
From SC, I'd say your in command of a Powerful ship. Your ship can also house smaller ships or at least form a Fleet around it.
Have the great interaction with Aliens and you can influence some aliens through negotiations or trickery.
Still have the ability to land on a planet and gather resources. I'd keep the vast amount of resource list SF had.
And Finally, I know its not SC or SF, but I would make it in the style of Mass Effect. Create your own character and with the awesome voice acting and crew interaction.
Nice video.
I agree with the idea about crew. It could improve whole concept.
- you could hire individual (named) NPCs if you persuade them or help them somehow
- you could hire crew specialists (unnamed) from some allien race if you persuade them its for their own good, or do some task for them, or just buy for these specialists.
- you could hire intelligent (named) robots if you persuade them, re-build them (this way you will become their new master) or buy them from their masters
- all named NPCs, robots and unnamed specialists can be assigned to some roles in a crew (gunman, navigator, engineer, scientist...) and can improve in that role
- named NPCs are more important to the story, at some points they can react to what is going on or give you some advice... unnamed specialists are not involved in the story, they are just workers
- named NPC can work also as translator or negotiators - they could help you communicate with some more strange alien races... I dont like if all aliens speaks perfect english. It hampers immersion.
I like the StarDrive alien graphics style alot more than 3D graphics from talk test video...
Ditto. 3D is just...meh. I love the original artwork, and the redone artwork of the HD version. 2D animation lends itself more to the "feel" of Star Control. But perhaps the 3D could be done in a 2D-style with filters. I'd have to see it to give an opinion.
^ To be honest, If you remove all the text from that StarDrive video and show it to me, I'd think WOW, is it the next Star Control dialog screens??
And if you show me the talk test vid. I'll think - this looks like some programming student's project. I don't understand why dialog screens need to be 3D and why lip sync is important?.... I really, really wish the new SC won't be like:
User: "Guys, we want, more adventures, exploration, story, fun battles gameplay etc."
Dev: "Ok. Here's lipsynced 3D dialog screens."
User: "....."
Again, DITTO. StarDrive = Star Control NexGen dialog screens. I really, *really* like the artwork. One thing about the original the I love is the artwork vibe of the 1960's SciFi.
While Stardrive has some nice artwork for it's interaction screens, it severely limits the storytelling immersion capabilities of the game. While each individual has their own personal tastes I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who prefers 1920s silent movie action flicks over any of the modern action movies.
Think of this scenario, when you are talking to someone on the forums, or over text messaging how engaged and immersed are you in the conversation compared to having a live video Skype chat or talking to them in person. When you are just reading text and looking at a static image (Stardrive's characters are the equivalent of a static image.) you lose much of the emotion that's part of the conversation. When you read the words "I didn't take the cookie." Can you tell if I am being truthful or not? Can you tell if I'm angry in my denial or hesitant? Did you see me put my hand on a cookie?
The goal is to get the player immersed in the experience and be able to make conversational choices based on what they do and do not perceive. A 3D and lip syncing conversation interface enables us to do that.
^ I can also imagine myself reading a book without any images at all and being enthralled by the epic-ness of its story AND being bored outta my mind by the imagery of the movie with the same name. 3D image can not warrant the deeper immersion than 2D just 'cause it has another visual dimension.
I get it. We can't really judge and compare the two (Stardrive finished product and a basic 3D model of a talk test vid).
Maybe it'll be like this:
And not like this:
3D
2D
Don't mean to detract from the effort being made to produce a great product, but as Hunam said above, I think it's unfair to suggest that static images detract from emotional impact, and I wouldn't consider Stardrive to really count as static; the images really come alive and are very expressive for what I'd imagine was probably a relatively insignificant level of art direction and development effort.
Debating the design direction is a moot point as it's already set in stone, but I think most fans would agree that a lot of the emotion comes from the quality of the writing and voice acting rather than the specific expression on an alien character's face. They are alien beings after all ... they don't necessarily share our methods of nonverbal communication so how can we be certain what their facial expressions signify?
I think good voice acting can go a very long way toward conveying emotion to the player. Case in point, the puppets in SC3 were a novel (if somewhat gimmicky) idea and the animation was rather hokey, but I always felt the voice actors made up for those shortcomings because the dialog was nicely performed. I think a lot of games with technical design limitations for character animation realize this and that's why the voice acting becomes so important.
I don't expect Star Control to copy StarDrive, but I think that kind of expressive art style is a good barometer for how to bring characters to life without much effort that could in turn be spent on developing other aspects of the game. Nevertheless, I will reserve judgment until there's something more to see!
With 3D they could also do a lot of different filters. Not that I'm much of a fan of cell shading, but Team Fortress 2 is "cartoonish" and even artsy at times, even though it is 3D.
Wait and see....
Debating it is healthy and it is a good thing to hear people who agree and disagree with it even if the decision is made. Knowing what people are concerned about when it goes down the media route that they wouldn't have preferred helps us make sure we don't make those mistakes.
The point that Hunam is making regarding quality of imagery, is something I 100% agree with. If the images look horrible much like that orc, there would be words with the modeler if that was the concept piece they were given to work from. While I can't share anything yet with regards to additional artwork I can assure you everything we've created is being done by top notch talent who want the game to be great all around.
I agree just adding the 3D element on its own isn't enough, it is the way you use it that makes it much more immersive. 2D images can be very powerful in terms of communication. But to use a very emotional example that everyone experienced where the quality of the images is equal to prove the point of 2D vs 3D media.
Static Image - 2D
vs
Non Static Image - 3D
The static image does convey quite a bit of emotion, but there are emotional elements left out, is some cases this is a good thing. When you see the non-static media of the same event there is much more that is being conveyed emotionally. The next level of immersion would be to have you be able to interact with the event itself (i.e. being able to control an individual that may have to run away from the event)
Another example that some of you may or may not have played was done in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 during the airport terror scene. You could have been shown an image and told of the event, you could have seen the even as a video, but the choice was made for you to be involved in it directly. This was a very powerful method of storytelling and brought a lot of emotion to people. While the scene itself was very drastic, ( I know people who stopped playing because they couldn't bring themselves to do it) it made each person ask that question of themselves. That is the level of immersion for gameplay we want players to experience when they are interacting with aliens in Star Control (to be 1,000,000% clear we are not making a Star Control FPS).
Something to keep in mind is that different aspects of the game are developed by different people. Compromising on the visual look doesn't ensure better game play or that more time is spent on the gameplay. What is important is that all the different areas support each other to provide a great immersive experience. If the game can keep you glued to your monitor and make you forget the outside world around you then the team accomplished their goal.
I appreciate the thorough response. Being able to get communicate directly with the folks in charge here is so great, and I can tell based on your examples that a lot of thought is being given to the interactive qualities of the game.
The way you talk about communicating with other races, I'm going to guess that attention is being given to more branching dialog, and this leads me to wonder how this might allow the narrative to unfold.
We're familiar with SC2 being a very linear story that's basically on rails, with conversations that always led to common outcomes on each playthrough; is there any possibility we'll experience the story in more dynamic ways now as a result of more extensive dialog trees giving us more story outcomes? While probably being more difficult to plan and execute, it would certainly add TONS of replay value.
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