KickStarter Free Stars: Children of Infinity - upcoming Star Control 2 sequel from original creator Fred Ford

[Grotesque]

To Stradock and those brothers:

Just get a room already! A court room!

 

[MRY]

WTF is this tug of war.

Alien, you have spoken the Words, and you have spoken them rightly.
We will tell you our reasons why we enslave all other sentient life....
Then we decided that we would never again be slaves.
We would follow the Path of Now and Forever.
We decided to enslave or imprison all other intelligent life in the galaxy.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

So EA is following the Eternal Doctrine?

 

[Cosmic Bane]

Just replaying SC II now. FUCKING TIME LIMIT. FUCK YOU.

 

[Makabb]

Pls make next Star Control with turn based combat like master of orion 2

 

[Makabb]

Pls make next Star Control with turn based combat like master of orion 2

uh... turn-based fleet strategy with single units in 1:1 duels? is that what you're saying?

ofcourse not, you would have your own fleet vs enemy fleet....... going around the galaxy and building up your fleet to defeat the doomstacks of urquan !


and make the galaxy alive like space rangers 2....


It would be the best game

 

[CyberWhale]

Pls make next Star Control with rtwp combat like ftl: faster than light

/fixed

 

[Zarniwoop]

That does sound cool but people might say it's not really "Star Control" if you give up melee and become too 4Xy. Space Rangers 2 didn't have TB combat or fleets either. What you're describing sounds more like Uncharted Waters.

The first Star Control WAS p. much a 4X. But it still had super mêlée combat.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Space Rangers 2 didn't have TB combat or fleets either.

Wrong.

Normal space game play where combat takes place uses 1 game day long turns.

Various militaries and space rangers attack or raid enemy systems as groups.
Richer player can also commission attacks (military or ranger followers).

 

[Cosmic Bane]

I liked SC 1 better in many ways. SC 2 is great but if you don't cheat and don't find the quasiportal early on then you are bound to run out of time exploring the galaxy which ruins it. I spent forever looking for Zex's Beast and the stupid clue was wrong - it was on a green star planet not a yellow one.

 

[Makabb]

That does sound cool but people might say it's not really "Star Control" if you give up melee and become too 4Xy. Space Rangers 2 didn't have TB combat or fleets either. What you're describing sounds more like Uncharted Waters.

Pretty much, but a proper sequel always takes what people already know about the series and then build on it with new elements.

 

[Makabb]

That does sound cool but people might say it's not really "Star Control" if you give up melee and become too 4Xy. Space Rangers 2 didn't have TB combat or fleets either. What you're describing sounds more like Uncharted Waters.

The first Star Control WAS p. much a 4X. But it still had super mêlée combat.

yea the arcade combat might've worked in 1990, but today it's not enough for a 'grand space' game like star control wants to be.

 

[Makabb]

A mix between Star Control, Space Rangers and Distant World could be the best 4x - rpg - action hybrid

 

[T. Reich]

Talk about having all the wrong ideas...

 

[LESS T_T]

The Ur-Quan Masters: https://store.steampowered.com/app/358920/

Kessari Quadrant: https://store.steampowered.com/app/358930/

Now they are back on Steam.

 

[Pyke]

Made some fan art:

 

[Infinitron]

You Mass Effect-ized it:

 

[Pyke]

Honestly one of my favorite ship designs ever.

 

[Roscoe Scaggs]

Saw that on twitter, looks great.

 

[Grotesque]

Made some fan art:

there's a tear in my left eye

 

[LESS T_T]

Oh dear: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news...rclaim_against_Stardock_over_IP_ownership.php

Star Control devs file counterclaim against Stardock over IP ownership

Paul Reiche and Fred Ford, the game development duo behind the early games in the Star Control series, have filed a countersuit against the publisher Stardock, accusing the company of both copyright infringement and unfair competition relating to its use of the Star Citizen intellectual property.

Reiche and Ford filed the suit in response to the lawsuit filed by Stardock last December against the pair in which the publisher claimed ownership of the classic Star Citizen titles.

In addition to the two previous accusations mentioned, Reiche and Ford’s counterclaim asks the court to declare them the owners of the copyrights for the first two Star Control games and to cancel the trademark owned by Stardock that they say was improperly renewed.

Both complaints seemingly stem from one core disagreement about the ownership of the Star Control IP and serve as a painful reminder of exactly how messy game development IP rights can get.

Stardock purchased Atari’s rights involving Star Control at a bankruptcy auction in 2013. The lawsuit filed by Reiche and Ford say that purchase included only the trademark rights to the Star Control name and partial copyrights for the Star Control title Star Control 3 published by Atari (then known as Accolade) in 1996.

The two parties publically butted heads last December when Ford and Reiche accused Stardock selling copies of Star Control and Star Control II on Steam, GOG, and its own website without permission. The original developers claimed Atari had lost its rights to publish classic Star Control titles or use the IP when the original 1988 license agreement expired in 2001.

That expiration, according to Ford and Reiche’s recent lawsuit, caused all rights to the classic Star Control titles to revert to the developers when Atari (then Accolade) failed to pay the creators the minimum royalty payment agreed upon in the document.

At the time of that earlier disagreement, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell explained that “many assets were transferred to us including the various publishing agreements to the Star Control franchise,” saying that, in short, “the classic IP is messy.”

Shortly following that public dispute, Stardock filed a lawsuit against Reiche and Ford, claiming ownership of the classic Star Control titles. This latest filing from Reiche and Ford is a countersuit to those claims and accuses Stardock of copyright infringement and unfair competition.

Among other things, Reiche and Ford’s counterclaim is seeking injunctions against Stardock for using their copyrights improperly, exemplary and punitive damages, and a declaratory judgment that the duo owns Star Control, Star Control II, their independently released Ur-Quan Masters title, and the Star Control characters used in Star Control 3.

They released a press release for this: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-rel...k-systems-and-ceo-brad-wardell-300603075.html

Spoiler

Creators of Popular "Star Control" Computer Games Fight Back Against Copyright Theft By Stardock Systems and CEO Brad Wardell
Star Control Creators and Copyright Owners Ask Court to Order Stardock to Stop Unlawfully Selling Their Games, and Unlawfully Using Their Creative Materials, and The Ur-Quan Masters Trademark

Widely Considered "One of the Best Computer Games Ever," Star Control II Recently Celebrated its 25th Anniversary


Computer game developers Paul Reiche and Fred Ford are defending their ownership and rights over two iconic games they designed and developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Star Control I and Star Control II, after game publisher Stardock Systems, Inc. sued Mr. Reiche and Mr. Ford in an apparent attempt to take control of the games and profit from their popularity.

Stardock and its chief executive, Brad Wardell, initiated the lawsuit against Mr. Reiche and Mr. Ford on Dec. 8, 2017.


Today, Mr. Reiche and Mr. Ford filed a counterclaim against Stardock in U.S. District Court in Oakland to take back control of their rights to the Star Control I and Star Control II computer games.

"Star Control is a pair of games we created at the start of the computer gaming revolution," said Mr. Reiche. "Now, largely as a labor of love, we are returning to the universe we created to update it with new adventures, characters, and worlds. Stardock seems to think not only are we not the creators of Star Control, but they claim to have the exclusive rights to sell our games and otherwise use our alien races, ships, narrative, and other creative materials without our permission. This is why we felt compelled to file our counterclaim today to stop Stardock's theft of our games, copyrights, and the universe we created for ourselves and our fans."

The game creators are asking the court for an injunction to stop Stardock from illegally selling their games and otherwise using their creative materials, which is infringing on their copyrights, to stop Stardock from engaging in other forms of unfair competition, and to order Stardock to pay the developers all revenues and profits the company has gained from selling the games, as well as to force Stardock and Wardell to stop using their "The Ur-Quan Masters" trademark.

Mr. Reiche and Mr. Ford created and developed the Star Control I and II games between 1988 and 1992, and they were published and sold by Accolade. The space adventure games and their unusual characters and storytelling quickly gained popularity at the time of their release. Over the years, the games have developed a cult-like status as classics and are widely considered to be among the best computer games ever made.

Computer Gaming World ranked Star Control II as the 29th best game of all time (1996), and IGN named Star Control II the 17th best game of all time (2005). A few years ago, Star Control II emerged as the consistent favorite in a crowd-sourced list of the best PC games of all time:
https://kotaku.com/the-game-that-won-our-classic-pc-games-list-if-it-ha-1349952997

In 2002, after Accolade (which later became Atari) stopped selling the games and the agreement between it and Reiche and Ford expired, Reiche and Ford released an open-source version of the source code and creative material for Star Control II to the public and encouraged other developers to rework the game with updated sound and graphics. This new version of the game was called The Ur-Quan Masters, and has been available to fans ever since.

Now, Mr. Reiche and Mr. Ford plan to make a sequel to The Ur-Quan Masters, to be called Ghosts of the Precursors. But Stardock is using its lawsuit to try to block the developers from doing so, while also using Mr. Reiche's and Mr. Ford's ideas and past successful games for Stardock's own profit.

Stardock claims that in 2013, it purchased items from Atari during that company's bankruptcy sale that allegedly included the Star Control trademark registration and partial copyrights to Star Control 3, a sequel game that Mr. Reiche and Mr. Ford did not develop, and which was not as popular as their earlier Star Control games.

Stardock claims that its purchase from Atari gave the company exclusive rights to Mr. Reiche's and Mr. Ford's Star Control games, even though Atari did not own those rights. In fact, as both Mr. Wardell and Atari repeatedly admitted in private, Mr. Reiche and Mr. Ford own the copyrights to Star Control I and II.

Now, Stardock is asking a federal court to block Mr. Reiche and Mr. Ford from working on a new Ur-Quan Masters game.

The original Star Control I and II have been available for purchase from a publishing company called Good Old Games since 2011, pursuant to agreements made separately with Mr. Reiche and Mr. Ford and Atari.

In 2013, after Atari filed for bankruptcy and allegedly sold the Star Control trademark registration and partial copyrights to Star Control 3 to Stardock, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell approached Mr. Reiche and Mr. Ford and asked if they would license the Star Control characters, ships, and other materials they created to Stardock for use in a new Star Control game Stardock wanted to develop. He also asked them to work on the game.

Mr. Reiche and Mr. Ford declined the offer, as they had always planned to develop their own continuation of The Ur-Quan Masters game. They declined similar requests from Mr. Wardell in 2015-17.

In October 2017, Mr. Reiche and Mr. Ford learned that Stardock was selling the Classic Star Control Games through Steam, a digital distribution platform, and that it was using various elements from the games in Stardock's new Star Control game without permission and in violation of the developers' copyrights. Stardock has refused to stop selling the games and collecting revenues from the sales.

Mr. Reiche and Mr. Ford are now asking the federal court to stop Stardock's conduct, and to recover Stardock's revenues and profits from the sale of the developers' games, as well as the developers' costs and attorneys' fees, among other things.

 

[LESS T_T]

Ars Techinca's extensive article on this case, favored towards Reiche and Ford:https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...suit-aims-to-invalidate-stardocks-trademarks/

 

[T. Reich]

"A plague on both your houses!"

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Dat press release.

When it isn't outright lying, it's skipping over facts that make Toys For Bob look bad.

Like the 2013 auction of Atari's assets. If TFB want their trademarks and copyrights so bad, why didn't they get them there? Did they even try? Were they even aware of the auction? Or... were they waiting to see whether there was any money left in these old titles before launching into this legal hissy fit?

 

[Infinitron]

Ars Techinca's extensive article on this case, favored towards Reiche and Ford:https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...suit-aims-to-invalidate-stardocks-trademarks/

Wardell is likely to be treated unfairly by the press here and I think we know why.

Anyway, shitshow gonna shitshow.