The logo
At last, the Founders Program is about to start and the basic website is now live!
First, read this: http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/11/19/fans-can-help-developer-stardock-determine-the-future-of-star-control?abthid=564e0e1df23fa43015000013
Take the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VCQQG7D
We are desperately trying not to spoil anything about the game but at the same time we want Star Control fans to feel reassured that we’re on the right track. It’s a delicate balance.
So let me just put out information that is now publicly available:
#1 The Team
Stardock built a new studio, from scratch, in Towson Maryland specifically for Star Control. We knew Star Control would require a veteran team to nail and for that reason decided that it was best to build the studio in Towson Maryland.
Why Towson? In one of the quirks of the game industry, Towson Maryland is ground zero of a good chunk of the PC game industry. Firaxis is here. Bethesda is here. Big Huge Games is here. Zynga was here. So much PC game history was made in this little town (Microprose and its successors).
Stardock has a single office complex to house Stardock Towson, Mohawk Games, and Oxide Games. This has had some really positive results that we didn’t consider at first. For example, Soren’s team (Soren designed Civilization IV) working on Offworld Trading Company has had readily available early testers while we’ve ramped up while Andrew’s team (Star Control) has had readily available access to art and game design input from Soren’s team. And of course, Oxide Games, the team making Ashes of the Singularity, is there to help with the engine.
#2 The Engine
So it’s using the Nitrous engine which is being developed for Ashes of the Singularity. Star Control will be 64-bit and require at least DirectX 11. This won’t be a big deal when it ships but it’s something to be aware of.
We’ve made some core design choices (Super Meelee will support up to 6 players in MP mode). While we’ve left other decisions (how many ships should be present in a Super Meelee battle) for the Founders to have input on.
The engine, of course, could support thousands of ships in a battle. That’s not the issue. The issue will be the gameplay and what makes sense.
#3 The Art Style
If you’ve seen Inside Out you have a good idea of what the general art style will be like. Mind you, we picked our art style before that movie came out, so we’re not basing ours on that movie, it just kind of worked out that way.
Here’s a screenshot of one of the new aliens:
#4 Planet exploration
When you explore the galaxy, the planets won’t look like realistic planets. They’ll look like the above. That’s because when you land on a planet, there’s no transition. You are literally landing on THAT planet and exploring (obviously super zoomed in). While it’ll be similar to what was in Star Control 2, it’s heavily expanded upon (first, because it’s 3D and you’re driving around on a sphere-ish thingy, secondly because you’ll find special items in addition to resources).
#5 The Modding
This is the piece we’ve really struggled with in terms of “spoilers”. Other parts are easy to not mention because we don’t want to give away too much. But we think this part is important to get out early on.
If you go back and play Star Control 2 the challenge has always been about replayability. Now, you can always create “sequels” that continue a story but then that means you’re waiting until a sequel which isn’t super satisfying.
How do you solve this?
The answer: A multiverse.
We toyed with this a bit with Stellar Frontier a long time ago with fantastic results. The idea being that OUR story will take place in our dimension (Earth-1, 2085). But the community will be able to create their own stories, aliens, ships, etc. with the tools we’re making. This sort of thing has helped games like Skyrim and now Fallout 4 a great deal. But what if a game was designed from the start with this in mind? Imagine loading up the game and being able to choose to go to “Earth-76” or “Spazik Universe” or whatever dimension someone comes up with?
Obviously, this is a win-win for both us and the players. I’m not going to pretend that making these tools won’t sell a lot of copies of the game. But it is also a no-brainer to do. Players aren’t in the situation where they “finish” the main campaign and wait a year or two for our next edition. Instead, they logon and there’s a bunch of things.
Obviously, for the Super Melee enthusiasts, this won’t mean much. They’ll just be playing in their 1 on 1 up to 3 on 3 (or any combination in between) and competing in a quasi-MOBA style game. Our Super Melee will be action oriented (so we might as well get that out of the way, it’s not going to be a strategy experience). But we have the advantage of being designed where we can say you need broadband to play it online.
That’s all for now!
Hey SD. Following up my original comment... What's the state of local multi-player Super Melee?
As I've said in other posts, most of my fondest memories of the game came from battling friends and family in SC1/2 melee. We'd crowd around the keyboard and play. Even to this day, I still convince people to play with me.
I sincerely hope that local multi-player will be a guaranteed feature of Stardock's iteration. 6-way 3v3 SuperMelee will be fun, but I would enjoy it more if some of those ships could be my buddies on the couch.
(I'll give bonus points if you could make the RPG portion of the game local multi-player compatible. Say, have you and your partner each control a ship/fleet during combat.)
I'm going to catch flack for this... But this is what I thought of when I saw the alien.
Haha, that's hilarious!
Lol!! I think that's hilarious, and probably EXACTLY what they were going for!
soorysThere are 14 Minor races in all of star control, that were never used.
Are some or all of these 14, going to be in the reboot as the default ships or will there be *new* additions that are unknown to anyone to this day not listed?
Here is the list of those 14
Minor Races
Algolites No information.
Burvixese The Burvixese are sentient, turtle-like aliens native to Arcturus I. When the Gg had come under attack by the Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah, the Gg shared this information with its neighbors before they were annihilated by the Kohr-Ah. The Burvixese then warned the neighboring Druuge that a Kohr-Ah fleet was heading toward Druuge space following the Druuge's powerful hyperwave transmissions advertising their location and services for sale. Not wishing to share the fate of the Gg, the Druuge secretly installed a powerful hyperwave 'caster on the Burvixese moon and activated it while shutting down their own in hopes of tricking the Kohr-Ah fleet into thinking the Burvixese were the source of the Druuge hypercasts. Unfortunately for the Burvixese, the Kohr-Ah fell for the Druuge ruse and the Burvixese were destroyed in a genocidal orbital bombardment.
Drall The Drall were a founding race of the Sentient Milieu. When the Dnyarri took control of the Milieu, the Drall were found to be inferior to the other slave races and the Dnyarri compelled the Ur-Quan and Mael-Num to destroy them.DramyaNo information. The Melnorme mention that they had a war with them but no information is known about what they looked like or much about them.
Fax The Faz were a member of the Sentient Milieu, and one of the few of those races which managed to survive the Dnyarri slave empire. They joined the Ur-Quan revolt and helped overthrow the Dnyarri, but were the first to fall victim to the Ur-Quan path of "Now and Forever". Since they refused to become Ur-Quan battle thralls, all of them were sent to their home planet and encased in a slave shield. Their eventual fate is unknown.
Gg The Gg were known only by the now-extinct Burvixese race who communicated with the Gg via long range HyperWave broadcast. It was the Gg who warned the Burvixese of the approach of the hostile Kohr-Ah, as well as the accurate conjecture that the Kohr-Ah used HyperWave transmissions to locate their prey. Since the Gg were loath to engage in visual transmissions, their appearance must remain an eternal mystery for their world was incinerated by the Kohr-Ah in 2142.
Keel-Verezy The Melnorme occasionally mention this race, citing conversations or trade dealings with them. When encountering a Melnorme ship it is possible that the Melnorme will mention that the Captain's Flagship almost hit a Keel-Verezy ship, which the Captain apparently did not see. The Melnorme say that the Keel-Verezy decline to show themselves to humans because they would "frighten them".
Mael-Num The Mael-Num were members of the Sentient Milieu, and one of the few of those races which managed to survive the Dnyarri slave empire. Afterwards the Ur-Quan then set out to destroy them. The Mael-Num's question of why the Ur-Quan were doing this and the assertion that it was wrong caused delay amongst the Ur-Quan which led to them breaking out into the first doctrinal war. In the confusion the Mael-Num made their escape and supposedly were never seen again. Several sources within the game however hint that the Melnorme are in fact the Mael-Num, a fact confirmed by the developers.[13]
Ngn The Arilou explain their presence in the Hyperspace area surrounding the unstable QuasiSpace warp point as "hunting *Nnngn*", which they capture and then let go, since the *Nnngn* do not like to be confined. The player is told that he cannot catch *Nnngn* because he is "not quite solid enough".
Precursors The Precursors are an ancient, technologically advanced race who ruled the galaxy for several thousands of years and then vanished. Various, hyper-advanced artifacts of theirs, including the Ultron and the Sa-Matra, have been pivotal in the fates of the younger races. Precursor devices have been discovered on various planets in the region of space accessible to the player, but only a single complete, intact installation has been found, the one which begets the beginning of the story of Star Control II, becoming activated by a group of Earthling scientists and assuming its role of creating a Precursor starship on the planet Unzervalt (also known as Vela II). The Precursors were big, shaggy creatures, known to the Slylandro as the Shaggy Ones.
Taalo The Taalo (pronounced Tah-ay-lo) are the only member of the Sentient Milieu known to inhabit the region of space currently occupied by the New Alliance of Free Stars. According to Melnorme, Slylandro and other alien sources, they are large, rock-like creatures. The unusual silicon-based physiology of the Taalo did not trigger the instinctual territoriality of the Ur-Quan and the two races became friends, resulting in the entrance of the Ur-Quan into the Sentient Milieu. They were highly advanced technologically, their final creation being the Taalo Shield, created in desperation for their allies as a protection against Dnyarri mind-control (the Taalo themselves were naturally immune). After the arrival and enslavement of the rest of the Milieu by the Dnyarri, they were annihilated by their former allies, the Ur-Quan. The Orz report that some Taalo escaped to another dimension, where they interact somehow with the Orz.
Yuli The Yuli are one of the seven founding member races of the Sentient Milieu. All that is known about them is that they were considered inferior by their Dnyarri slave masters, and ordered destroyed by their psychically-compelled Milieu allies, the Ur-Quan and Mael-Num.
Yuptar Like the Yuli, the Yuptar were of the Sentient Milieu and fell victim to the psychic coercive abilities of the evil Dnyarri. Unlike the Yuli, the Yuptar survived the millennia of slavery only to become the first victim of the Kohr-Ah's "Eternal Doctrine" which required the "cleansing" of all non-Ur-Quan races.
Zebranky The Zebranky preyed on the Zoq, Fot, and Pik. The three races banded together as the Zoq-Fot-Pik and annihilated the Zebranky
sorry for the long post, but I wanted to list these missing races and their history.
btw
Dramya is mixed in with the Drall race report.
my bad
there are 14
Thanks for the post.
The plan for the reboot is that it'll be all new aliens. We won't be touching the classic aliens (or minors) until if/when Paul and Fred (the original designers who are working on Skylanders these days) are able to revisit their lore.
Oh..ok Frog.
I see. Thank you.
Very cool. I can't wait for the release of information regarding the new ships/races.
I also hope the game comes out in 2016 instead of 2017 for the 25th Anniversary. I don't want to wait that long. Lol
Btw...for those planning on purchasing Star Control (reboot) for the Xbox one like myself.
The *new* Xbox one systems are now going to be Backwards compatible for the system.
So any older Xbox original and Xbox 360 games will be playable.
PS4 has not done that as of yet, to my knowledge.
I don't own an Xbox one and wont till I see star control on a shelf, the day of release. That's how bad I want this game.
dropping 300$ plus on a system, so I can have star control.
lol
I have a feeling we won't be seeing Paul and Fred doing Star Control anytime soon, since they're swimming in all that dough with Skylanders. Their success with Skylanders got Disney to do Infinity, LEGO and their new Dimensions, and even Nintendo is ripping off on the idea.
This is absolutely amazing! The art looks really Star-Controly and what you write vibes with the original feel.
Love the art style. I am really looking forward to this.
Seriously loving the art direction. If this is a glimpse into the how this game is being developed visually i'm blown away and very thankful stardock didn't go for realism can't wait to see ship art. Good jobs guys it was worth the wait to see this!!!
I categorically agree. The art is fantastic.
Yes, so far all the art I have seen is a great look for a new Star Control. SC needs to be "cartoony" and that is exactly what they are doing.
I like the overall art direction but think they could look slightly less cartoony. i know you're trying to appeal to all ages, but kids these days play realistic looking games too. also whatever you do don't give the alien races human-like themes. for example a stereotypically scottish looking alien with a scottish accent or a pirate-like alien.
Part of what makes Star Control such an addicting mystery is the realism of the planets, conceptualizing and actually creating planets that can realistically exist would be the ultimate, again yes it was mentioned that sc2 did not have "realistic" planets, however they were very much realistic enough to please the imagination as to what planets actually could be out there in our real universe. And yes planets out there can be so exotic that the more realistic planets would be extraordinary !
Everything else looks good, the space background however could be more dark with galactic dust ie blend in more naturally with realistic planets, like some planets may light up the dust surrounding them.
don't get me wrong the planets in this art looks very very interesting, but not realistic, not for a star control game, put them in another game that i might likely also play because they look good in a cartoonish way, but Not in star control.
I have no problem with this Alien, would be interesting to learn it's personality.
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