Star Control: Origins - Star Control reboot from Stardock

[Cael]

I love the Fury, and fully agree with the 20 point cost of the thing, even though it looked so fragile and undergunned. With it, I took out the Sa-Matra's defences without a single loss after the mothership cleared the defending ships for it. It was lethal in the right hands, and so was the Torch :D

Yeah. Best thing about the Torch is how much fun it was to fly.

At least until that Mauler snipes you at top speed from across the screen.

*hums innocently*

Best thing I ever did with a Mauler was to hit a Marauder trying to slingshot and slowed it down enough that it crashed into the planet. Hilarity and plenty of swearing ensued.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

tl;dw - game writer praises game for writing, mehs and jokes about the rest.

 

[Incendax]

tl;dw - game writer praises game for writing, mehs and jokes about the rest.

I enjoy Zero Punctuation quite a bit. He gives praise so sparingly that it really counts when he does - like everything ranked from a scale of Negatve 10 to 0.

 

[Frogboy]

When I saw that ZP had reviewed it I get that anxiety feeling...you know the feeling right? But I can't remember the last game he liked so that was quite a nice surprise.

Right now, most of the focus is on what will end up being called "earth rising" (the marketing people at Stardock have NO idea I hang out here so please don't repeat this outside this forum). About 1/3 the content will show up early in the main story. 1/3 will be later. and 1/3 after.

However, as you guys know, it's all non-linear so even if you've totally finished, you'll see it all since I'm just referring to what the pre-requisites are to start seeing it.

I think the next big challenge will be making planet visiting more interesting. We have some ideas on that (think, landing parties ala Star Trek) but that will be awhile.

This Thursday SHOULD be the Multiverse free DLC and v1.1 which takes a month's worse of feedback and implements it.

You know what the biggest slow down is though? Translation. Takes 10X longer to get anything in when everything has to be translated. Personally, I plan to release a lot of my content as mods. No requirement for translation.

 

[Incendax]

Planet Landing could definitely use some work. The big thing for me is... in SC2 it was a small arcade game. You had to dodge elemental attacks to Pac-Man the dots, and nothing slowed you down. In SCO, you almost never have to dodge anything but droids and volcanoes. Tornadoes and Hurricanes are slow. Toxic fumes and ground lightning don’t move. Lightning literally doesn’t hurt. Critters only attack if you get up in their face.

Similarly, trees and rocks make you stop, and hills make you flop around like a fish. So, there are almost no threats and many things that slow you down, so it feels like a time tax instead of something fun.

I don’t know what would make it more fun. Maybe make the planet hazards faster, but let you fly around so it’s really fast and more exciting?

 

[Zombra]

I haven't played SCO yet, but any game where you stop dead every time your vehicle hits a curb or a flower needs work. I'm reminded of Arkham Knight, they did a great job of making you feel cool and powerful driving around. Lamppost? Building corner? No problem, keep going.

 

[Frogboy]

Most things won't slow you down but a big enough tree will certainly do it. I've already asked that even that be toned down.

The planet stuff is an interesting conundrum. When I took over the project last year, the planet mini game was definitely the hardest thing to wrap my head around. It's really powerful "tech" (imagine if our RTS games could load maps that fast!). But I generally feel that the planets should be something that are reduced in the time you spend on them in their current form (I shrunk the planets down when I took over).

In the upcoming v1.1, the planets have been modified somewhat so that most planets are pretty much not worth bothering with while others are very high value so that at leasst going down to the planets is pretty rewarding without getting into the grind.

 

[Frogboy]

Looking forward to the patch, but wasn't this always the case? Or is it just more obvious now?

Before it was much more...I dunno, muddled? When the game first came out, we found players literally going and spending several minutes on planets collecting silicon (sand). Needless to say, that's pretty boring. We thought (wrongly) that people would quickly realize that planets filled with silicon, hydrogen, etc. were useless. That was a big mistake on our part because what players saw instead were planets filled with little sparkly dots to collect (even if every dot was only worth 1 RU).

So in v1.1, those planets are basically empty so that they're not tempted to land on them. By contrast, the planets that do have worthwhile things on them (gold, radioactives, etc.) now have a LOT more on them so that they're much more special when you run into them.

 

[MRY]

I've been dreaming about making a Starflight/Star Control-like for at least 24 years, and every time I've seriously rolled up my sleeves for designing, the resource gathering has stumped me. The early games benefited tremendously from the fact that the tech and game style of the era meant that you could abstract resource collection to a simple arcade game without obliterating mimesis. In other words, resource gathering in those games could be a dumb, simple arcade game, but it felt at least somewhat simulationist and serious (or at least consistent with the game's overall mood).

As Mass Effect showed, however, you can't really do that today. Letting you drive around planets will inevitably make those planets feel tiny, empty, and boring. If you somehow achieved No Man's Sky level simulation, then driving around planets would still feel boring. And once you've poured that much into planet exploration from a development standpoint, you want it to take on heightened importance, etc., etc. Mass Effect 2's probe system was dumb, but IMO was much better than ME1's soulless-Starflight-on-steroids.

But when you go the Star Control III approach and move to more of a colony-building model, which is arguably more logical from a resource extraction standpoint, you break the theme of exploration, which may inflict an even greater wound.

For Star Captain, I had planned to basically follow the Weird Worlds model (later used by FTL): each system has a single text-adventure event. The problem with this is that it demands a lot of hand-crafted content to do right, and ultimately I'm not sure text adventures are as much fun as dumb arcade sequences.

Tis a cruel bind.

We thought (wrongly) that people would quickly realize that planets filled with silicon, hydrogen, etc. were useless. That was a big mistake on our part because what players saw instead were planets filled with little sparkly dots to collect (even if every dot was only worth 1 RU).

This is true in every genre. I remember hauling bags of flour back to towns in Exile just to make a few gold, even though I wasted hours of my time doing that. Players have a strong min-max impulse, so if you give them any reward for degenerate play, a huge portion will play degenerately and then get angry with you. IMO, the best solution would be simply not to let the players land there at all. If there is no worthwhile gameplay and no worthwhile resource to be had, just cinch the knots tighter on Odysseus.

Hopefully player ratings turn around. It seems like the trolls are out in force on Steam, where the rating is now "Mixed" despite game improvements since launch (at which point it had a 90% positive rating).

 

[Incendax]

Before it was much more...I dunno, muddled? When the game first came out, we found players literally going and spending several minutes on planets collecting silicon (sand). Needless to say, that's pretty boring. We thought (wrongly) that people would quickly realize that planets filled with silicon, hydrogen, etc. were useless. That was a big mistake on our part because what players saw instead were planets filled with little sparkly dots to collect (even if every dot was only worth 1 RU).

I was definitely one of those players. My feelings evolved as I played the game, but it basically came down to:

Phase 1) I need resources. Gotta collect everything that sparkles.
Phase 2) These grey things are almost worthless. But I spent 10 fuel to get down here, so I might as well.
Phase 3) Okay. Only going to clean out systems that have quests related to them.

And Phase 3 is where I am at right now.

 

[Zombra]

Phase 1) I need resources. Gotta collect everything that sparkles.
Phase 2) These grey things are almost worthless. But I spent 10 fuel to get down here, so I might as well.
Phase 3) Okay. Only going to clean out systems that have quests related to them.

Welcome to the next level of gaming enlightenment. "I 'have to' do it (no matter how boring or unprofitable it is) because it's there" is a slave mentality. Break your bonds, brother!

 

[Unkillable Cat]

In the upcoming v1.1, the planets have been modified somewhat so that most planets are pretty much not worth bothering with while others are very high value so that at leasst going down to the planets is pretty rewarding without getting into the grind.

I'm torn about this.

On one hand I'm opposed to why you're changing this, as it suggests that gamers in general have grown dumber over the course of the past 25 years. Why do I say this? Because while Star Control: Origins has the same resource-gathering gameplay mechanics as its forefather, Star Control 2 did have the following piece of text when talking to Commander Hayes:

If you have the patience, I would recommend you spend several months or even a year gathering mineral resources.
You can find such minerals on almost any planet surface,
but the quality and density will vary depending on the type of planet you're on.
Base metals are probably the most common minerals you'll find, but they aren't particularly valuable.
You can find rarer precious and radioactive elements on metal-rich worlds such as Mercury.
An old miner once told me you could tell the relative quality of a planet's minerals
based on the planet's color as seen from space. To remember the color sequence from good to bad
the miner had a mnemonic that went something like
Very Young Orangutans Could Grow Bananas, Perhaps Rather Well.
It is also the case that mineral yields will be better at hotter stars.
Temperature is related to the size and color of a star.
Red stars are coolest, then orange, yellow, green, blue, and the hottest stars are white.

(Sadly I don't recall Commander Skylar having such helpful information for the player, though she did say something on the topic.)

This doesn't just tell the player what he needs to do to make money, it also points out that most resources are rarely worth the effort, then takes it a step further by giving two gradients of quality for planets and their resources, to guide players towards knowing how they're supposed to play the resource collecting game, but without leading them by the hand. Your upcoming change is leading players by the hand in the resource collecting game, and I can't say I'm OK with that.

On the other hand I agree with MRY saying that a SC2-esque resource collecting game just doesn't work in modern gaming... because it turns out gamers in general have grown dumber over the course of the past 25 years.

So if I can offer my suggestion on this... make the change, but don't make the two 'ends' of the spectrum so radical. Reduce low-value resources on low-value planets and increase high-value resources on high-value planets, but maybe tone it down a notch or so.

And on the subject of 'How best to implement a resource-collecting game in the Current Year", MRY's suggestion of ripping off Strange Adventures in Infinite Space is a good one, but I'd take it one step back towards SC2 by having the resource collecting be mostly automatic: Player arrives at planet, scan results are thrown up for the player to review, game calculates chances of a successfull lander mission while elements such as lander and planet quality, planet weather and the presence of biologicals all serve as modifiers to what basically amounts to a roll of the dice, leaving the player to decide whether he rolls them. The player is then informed of the results of the 'roll' and how valuable the lander's cargo is... the player himself never flies the lander. Remember, the player is the Captain of the ship, who has crew to handle the 'little things' such as these.

 

[Cael]

So I understand why you made the change to a starker binary choice, because even if I don't agree with it, it doesn't really affect me since I wouldn't have landed on those planets anyway. Though something is lost in having that freedom of making a bad choice taken away from me, because I want to make that assessment about whether it is a bad decision myself.

One of the things that was so appealing about SC2 was the fact that there is no hand holding. The map was just presented to you as is. The rest is up to you. You made the decision whether you wanted to go down to the planet or not, which planets you want to explore, etc. If you want to be OCD and hoover up 1 RU minerals for 30 RU worth fo fuel, that is up to you.

To block you from doing so with the excuse that "you shouldn't be doing something so pointless" is just sheer arrogance, which is not surprising at all, looking at the source.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Bbbbut Star Control: SPORE-igins takes all that grindy "exploration", "risk" and "choices with consequences" crap out of the game, letting you focus on what the series has always been about but was limited by the technology of the time: the 3 whole hours of FUN, AKSHUN and REALLY WILD THINGS!

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

This removal of low value resources seems to be an attempt to pander for game journos and retards, but I repeat myself.

 

[Incendax]

This removal of low value resources seems to be an attempt to pander for game journos and retards, but I repeat myself.

Anything we don’t like is pandering to journos and retards.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Looking forward to the patch, but wasn't this always the case? Or is it just more obvious now?

Before it was much more...I dunno, muddled? When the game first came out, we found players literally going and spending several minutes on planets collecting silicon (sand). Needless to say, that's pretty boring. We thought (wrongly) that people would quickly realize that planets filled with silicon, hydrogen, etc. were useless. That was a big mistake on our part because what players saw instead were planets filled with little sparkly dots to collect (even if every dot was only worth 1 RU).

So in v1.1, those planets are basically empty so that they're not tempted to land on them. By contrast, the planets that do have worthwhile things on them (gold, radioactives, etc.) now have a LOT more on them so that they're much more special when you run into them.

I learned pretty early it wasn't worth it to pick up anything less than at least a 5 RU metal, or usually only green or better resources.

OTOH, in the original SC2 the space station guy tells you "hey go scour every planet nearby for resources, chop chop" so it's traditional I guess.

Other issue: I suck at the combat and the Scryve juggernaut kicked my ass.

I've been dreaming about making a Starflight/Star Control-like for at least 24 years, and every time I've seriously rolled up my sleeves for designing, the resource gathering has stumped me. The early games benefited tremendously from the fact that the tech and game style of the era meant that you could abstract resource collection to a simple arcade game without obliterating mimesis. In other words, resource gathering in those games could be a dumb, simple arcade game, but it felt at least somewhat simulationist and serious (or at least consistent with the game's overall mood).

Maybe something like you mark the planet for collection and then receive the RUs over time as other people mine it for you. So you can still explore and get stuff but don't have to do the mundane collection process. Although that wouldn't work with SC's concept of hyperdrives being ultra scarce.

Then again I wish the game had tactical turn based combat with level ups and actual fleets rather than 1v1 so never mind me, I've never been an SC superfan.................

 

[Zarniwoop]

Hyperdrives ultra scarce??

Every ship has them. Its as scarce as an internal combustion engine is today.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Hyperdrives ultra scarce??

Every ship has them. Its as scarce as an internal combustion engine is today.

They're hard to get in-game. You can only find 4 or 5. Capturing enemy ships and removing them doesn't seem to be an option.

 

[Zarniwoop]

They're hard to get in-game. You can only find 4 or 5. Capturing enemy ships and removing them doesn't seem to be an option.

In the REAL sc universe every ship has hyperdrive capability. It's only the Portal Spawner that's rare. Normal hyperspace is accessible to all.

The hackfrauds probably got confused by SC3's concept where all ships except the player's are prevented from travelling by some interdimensional bullshit.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

They're hard to get in-game. You can only find 4 or 5. Capturing enemy ships and removing them doesn't seem to be an option.

In the REAL sc universe every ship has hyperdrive capability. It's only the Portal Spawner that's rare. Normal hyperspace is accessible to all.

The hackfrauds probably got confused by SC3's concept where all ships except the player's are prevented from travelling by some interdimensional bullshit.

Well, in SC origins Humans specifically lack the tech to build hyperdrives, and no one else seems keen to share them. They make a big deal about handing it out to "lower" races. So it's a story choice.

In SC2 you had the whole slave shield thing, so there clearly isn't an Earth Mining Corps to help you out.

 

[MRY]

Maybe something like you mark the planet for collection and then receive the RUs over time as other people mine it for you. So you can still explore and get stuff but don't have to do the mundane collection process. Although that wouldn't work with SC's concept of hyperdrives being ultra scarce.

I thought about it -- it's a bit like what ME2 does, right? But I think it just shifts the tedious scraping from scraping minerals off the planets to scraping planets out of solar systems. Maybe less boring because there's less of it to do, but even less fun.

One thing you have to grapple with in these games is why it is that your ship is the (only) one doing this work -- if it's just a matter of tagging planets, why haven't they all been tagged already?

In Star Captain, my idea was that there was a cluster of stars that had been inhabited, then got cut off for several hundred years, so you're basically one part archaeologist, one part surveyor. It's harder when you're in a "living" galaxy like in Star Control.

 

[Zarniwoop]

In SC2 you had the whole slave shield thing, so there clearly isn't an Earth Mining Corps to help you out.

There's plenty of other races that could do the mining for you.

Especially the MRHNRMHRMHRHHRMRMMRMHRM which are just mining and building robots.[/QUOTE)

Or the Mycon that can get into planet cores.

One thing you have to grapple with in these games is why it is that your ship is the (only) one doing this work -- if it's just a matter of tagging planets, why haven't they all been tagged already?

In Star Captain, my idea was that there was a cluster of stars that had been inhabited, then got cut off for several hundred years, so you're basically one part archaeologist, one part surveyor. It's harder when you're in a "living" galaxy like in Star Control.

That's pretty much exactly the story in SC2.

Doesn't explain why the other races that will no doubt have scanned neighbouring stars and planets can't just transfer the info to your ship computer though. Except the Melnorme which can transfer information for the low low price of 50 000 000 credits :infinitron:

 

[MRY]

That's pretty much exactly the story in SC2.

Well, Star Captain was definitely "inspired" by SC2, but the plot was pretty different in this regard. Humans and another mid-tier race had a war, the mid-tier race obliterated humanity (driving it back to just Earth and, inter alia, blowing up the moon). Before this catastrophe, the humans had various interstellar colonies, including in a cluster of stars called the Orion Cluster, which was linked to Earth via a wormhole (another wormhole into the cluster was closer to the enemy aliens' territory). Late in the war, the wormholes in and out of the cluster destabilized, so in the hundreds of years since, no one has occupied it. Now the wormhole on the human side is mostly stable, so they send you in to reconnoiter.

There wasn't really any grand plot (it was meant to be a Weird Worlds plus text adventures deal, if I hadn't been so lazy I would've beaten FTL to the punch!) but the scenario was that there were no other significant alien civilizations in the cluster.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Or the Mycon that can get into planet cores

Not sure having the Mycon Juffo-wupping all over a bunch of planets is a good long-term plan.

In Origins you could absolutely make the Mowlings do it, but they might not be very good at it.

As an aside, I'm guessing the Mowlings are intended to setup a long-form joke where in the future games they'd become super-intelligent and then evolve into pure energy within a few decades.