Star Control: Origins - Star Control reboot from Stardock

[MRY]

One thing those games have in common is emergent game play.

It's hard to come up with counter examples because most indie games that sell well these days have emergent gameplay, whether the graphics are high fidelity or low. I also just don't play many games any more, or follow the industry that closely, so I don't have a ton of great examples at my fingertips. I suppose all of the faddish visual novels, like maybe. It seems like To the Moon would be a good one. Oxenfree maybe. Braid, Cave Story, VVVVV, Grimrock. I dunno, though, some of these might be on the older end, during the period it was easier for indie games to hit it big.

Ultimately, good games comes down to having good people involved.

Hear, hear.

Anyway, I'll stop running this argument into the ground.

 

[Zombra]

What are The Measured? They are the bureaucrats of the Scryve Empire. What does their ship do? Primary weapon are paperwork canisters. Secondary weapon is the demotivator (which is supposed to say things like "Yea, going to need you to come in.." and "Hmmm. Going to need you to fill this out..." (right now it's just a generic sound effect).

Wow, this goes way beyond "thought-out alien cultures with a humorous slant" to downright clownish. I realize you guys aren't Reiche and Ford and you have your own sense of humor - I support that in theory - but this is really, really heavy-handed.

 

[Frogboy]

What are The Measured? They are the bureaucrats of the Scryve Empire. What does their ship do? Primary weapon are paperwork canisters. Secondary weapon is the demotivator (which is supposed to say things like "Yea, going to need you to come in.." and "Hmmm. Going to need you to fill this out..." (right now it's just a generic sound effect).

Wow, this goes way beyond "thought-out alien cultures with a humorous slant" to downright clownish. I realize you guys aren't Reiche and Ford and you have your own sense of humor - I support that in theory - but this is really, really heavy-handed.

The Pkunk are ok but the measured aren’t? Secondary literally calls you a moron and randomly res pawns with a “Hallelujah!” music trope. (And I love it).

The Measured disrupt your ship by bogging down its systems (primary weapon) which slows the ship down. And demotivate you (suck the life out of you) with its secondary which is how they are able to coerce other species Into compliance.

We can debate in the best way to convey their nature but the humor in SC2 isn’t subtle.

It does beg the question: how would the aliens from SC2 be greeted if they were being introduced for the first time now.

 

[Cosmic Bane]

It seems really hard to mess up Star Control but it is stardock. I don't care if they make a million DLC just make the core gameplay good for goodness sake.

 

[Zombra]

The Pkunk are ok but the measured aren’t? Secondary literally calls you a moron and randomly res pawns with a “Hallelujah!” music trope. (And I love it).

The Pkunk are certainly zany, but they are at one extreme end of the zany scale, not the baseline. By their own (silly) standards, they take themselves seriously and therefore I can take them seriously. (As you may recall, they take a pretty dim view of it if you make fun of their goofiness.) All of the SC2 races had a point of view that they stuck to and took seriously (even the Pkunk and, as another example, the Umgah, who were dedicated to mean-spirited jokes). A race of bureaucrats who took themselves seriously wouldn't fire a wacky paperwork gun; they'd use something boring and utilitarian. The Yehat don't fire birdseed and the Ilwrath don't throw heavy metal albums at you. I mean, again, you guys have your own comedic voice, which is to be encouraged and it gives me no pleasure to step on that, but if the Measured are any example, you're kidding yourself if your intent was to stick to SC2's tone.

 

[Frogboy]

The Pkunk are ok but the measured aren’t? Secondary literally calls you a moron and randomly res pawns with a “Hallelujah!” music trope. (And I love it).

The Pkunk are certainly zany, but they are at one extreme end of the zany scale, not the baseline. By their own (silly) standards, they take themselves seriously and therefore I can take them seriously. (As you may recall, they take a pretty dim view of it if you make fun of their goofiness.) All of the SC2 races had a point of view that they stuck to and took seriously (even the Pkunk and, as another example, the Umgah, who were dedicated to mean-spirited jokes). A race of bureaucrats who took themselves seriously wouldn't fire a wacky paperwork gun; they'd use something boring and utilitarian. The Yehat don't fire birdseed and the Ilwrath don't throw heavy metal albums at you. I mean, again, you guys have your own comedic voice, which is to be encouraged and it gives me no pleasure to step on that, but if the Measured are any example, you're kidding yourself if your intent was to stick to SC2's tone.

I think only time will tell. I think the tone will be dependent more on the story. I think the combat part will be judged based on how fun it is.

The gameplay of the measured boils down to the primary weapon being a projectile that lingers on the map that slows down the enemy and the secondary being an area effect (ala Syreen) that sucks the life force out of the enemy.

They’re already in the beta and people seem to like their gameplay.

Few people are likely to agree on the tone. Lots of our founders believe sc2 was a grim, dark game with very little humor. Others think it was Hitchikers guide to the galaxy.

 

[Zombra]

The gameplay of the measured boils down to the primary weapon being a projectile that lingers on the map that slows down the enemy and the secondary being an area effect (ala Syreen) that sucks the life force out of the enemy.

Sounds cool! One of the crazy things about Star Control is how mixing and matching just a few elements (movement, damage, fuel) creates such involved and diverse gameplay.

Few people are likely to agree on the tone. Lots of our founders believe sc2 was a grim, dark game with very little humor. Others think it was Hitchikers guide to the galaxy.

I think if we see that kind of tonal diversity represented in the writing and lore you will have a wonderfully rich and textured setting, perhaps even worthy of its name.

 

[Cosmic Bane]

The Pkunk are ok but the measured aren’t? Secondary literally calls you a moron and randomly res pawns with a “Hallelujah!” music trope. (And I love it).

The Pkunk are certainly zany, but they are at one extreme end of the zany scale, not the baseline. By their own (silly) standards, they take themselves seriously and therefore I can take them seriously. (As you may recall, they take a pretty dim view of it if you make fun of their goofiness.) All of the SC2 races had a point of view that they stuck to and took seriously (even the Pkunk and, as another example, the Umgah, who were dedicated to mean-spirited jokes). A race of bureaucrats who took themselves seriously wouldn't fire a wacky paperwork gun; they'd use something boring and utilitarian. The Yehat don't fire birdseed and the Ilwrath don't throw heavy metal albums at you. I mean, again, you guys have your own comedic voice, which is to be encouraged and it gives me no pleasure to step on that, but if the Measured are any example, you're kidding yourself if your intent was to stick to SC2's tone.

Yes the Ur Quan are totally serious and not an over the top cartoonish villain at all. Not to mention the shofixti and the humans themselves.

The pkunk are more 'zany' humor and therefore more obvious. That is the easiest humor to create or for others to recognize. Not in my wildest dreams do I dare hope that anyone can replicate what the original guys did with the game, but that doesn't mean they should not try.

 

[Frogboy]

When we get done I’d love to show you guys some of the rejected concepts.

Even among fans, there’s so much debate about what makes a Star Control game...well...Star Control.

Some fans insist that the aliens were photorealistic by 1992 standards. Others think the style is 1960s pulp sci fi style. Others say it was cartoony.

My view is that it was all of those things and more and that was why it was so wonderful.

Some of the aliens were created by a famous artists of 1960s and 1970s scI fi book Covers. Some were made by the guy who went on to design Darth Maul for Lucasfilm. And of course there were many other artists as well.

On the ships, so much variance. I loved the Yehat even if they were pretty straight forward. The Mycon might have had the most strategic depth.

Nowadays, we have the advantage of processing power. So we can have a black hole gun that warps space in real time or a ship that is a sentient virus who will slowly consume the arena if you leave it alone long enough.

But there is no substitute for creativity which the classic series had in spades.

 

[MRY]

What are The Measured? They are the bureaucrats of the Scryve Empire. What does their ship do? Primary weapon are paperwork canisters. Secondary weapon is the demotivator (which is supposed to say things like "Yea, going to need you to come in.." and "Hmmm. Going to need you to fill this out..." (right now it's just a generic sound effect).

Wow, this goes way beyond "thought-out alien cultures with a humorous slant" to downright clownish. I realize you guys aren't Reiche and Ford and you have your own sense of humor - I support that in theory - but this is really, really heavy-handed.

I'm just going to throw this out there, but it seems to like the really should use a red-tape weapon. More iconic. Something like the limpets in SC2.

 

[Beastro]

The lander sequences look extremely goofy, but -- as I've mentioned before -- no game has really managed to crack this nut. Perhaps Starflight had the best,

If by "Starflight" you mean Starflight on the Genesis, then yes, and yes it was very good and left room for the player to fiddle skillwise: You could play it cautiously and make it a drawn out process or let your ship drop rapidly before hitting thrusters to cut down on time, but if you fucked up your ship bounced hard off the surface and was fucking annoying to do, even if it might not damage your ship that severely.

The landing on Starflight the comp version was neat to look at, but the lack of an interactive angle and how drawn out it was makes it a tedious POS.

I'm delighted Stardock is breaking canon and making their own story. Better that than waste effort trying to recreate the voice of writers who came before.

StarCon 3's only crime was that it didn't expand or improve on the worldbuilding in StarCon 2. Its writing was perfectly good on its own and it had plenty of cool ideas whenever the original races weren't around. It was a bad "StarCon 2 part 2" but quite a good "StarCon 2-like".

Of course Stardock's game may still be bad, but adherence to canon isn't what's going to make or break it.

Ow about if you can't do something worthy of the original games, focus on the spiritual successor without that won't come with all the baggage of what people expect and shout you down for it.

All the charm that 3 had came from the near-campy of the puppets and dialogue and the cheap voice acting.

The whole game reminded me of that staple of Canadian dead air on TV: The Littlest Hobo. It's a garbage show, but in it's own way it's so bad it's good that it's endearing even if it's in its own way dead air and Star Control 3 is the same.

They chose the latter option, which is better for us Star Control fans, but leaves Stardock and the SC: Origins game in a bit of a pickle.

Wut?

They should have realized they were going to lose more in a sunken cost fallacy by continuing when it became apparent TfB were doing their own thing. WTF would anyone now want to buy and play this game is a SC game from the original people is being made expect as a final recourse when all other alternative games are played the hell out.

This game screams to me as a game that would only sell when a Steam sale is going and as a last resort.

Star Control's melee is based upon one of the oldest computer games ever made, Spacewar! from 1962. Toys for Bob decided to make a 'modern' take on that game back in 1990 with the very first Star Control, and some of their decisions are quiter clever and sensible: They feature very colorful ships, with very recognizable shapes, on a black background that would zoom in and out as needed, depending on player proximity. In addition they made the 'thruster trail' a simple red dotted line, making it both noticeable and distinct from the ship itself. This gives both players near-instant battefield awareness, both of themselves and their opponent. This is a key point to the success of Star Control.

Supermelee is like potatochip game play. Fast and enjoyable while at the same time very simple, but not too simple. At the very least it's a good thing to dick around doing over and over in a game you don't intend on making a playthrough of, like how people would dick with the minigames in FFVII.

With all that in mind, I can see why SC1 was pretty bare and focused mostly on it.

Wait a moment,game companies spend millions to make animated leader scenes?
And not to mention the art style doesn't even look memorable or impressive for most of these games.

That's how far they've got their heads up their asses that that is what they owrry about instead of something like improving the AI.

For modern games to sell well, they have to have to meet a certain threshold of visual fidelity.

This is the dog chasing its tail MRY described.

High fidelity aliens talking and such. They represent the biggest single line item in these games. They add zilch to gameplay. But you have to have them to get mainstream coverage. They're basically marketing.

It's shit like this that makes me install 20 year old games when I want to play a 4X.

I actually disagree on these points. First, cutscenes can and do add a lot to a game, even to a non-narrative game. For instance, the intro cutscene to Master of Orion 2 shaped my relationship to the game, lending it a mystique, gravitas, and excitement that I'm not sure it would've had without the cutscene.

Even a game that had an air of cheapness integrated promotional pictures of races from the Trek shows well in that the UI variations the play used were modeled after each factions aesthetics. It gave the feeling that you were using a computer in universe overseeing the planning and movements of your faction.

I'm just going to throw this out there, but it seems to like the really should use a red-tape weapon. More iconic. Something like the limpets in SC2.

Something like the Tholian Web comes to mind with that.

 

[Zombra]

Yes the Ur Quan are totally serious and not an over the top cartoonish villain at all. Not to mention the shofixti and the humans themselves.

I didn't say SC2 was grimdark and humorless. I said the characters take themselves seriously. Think about that even if it makes your head hurt. It's incredibly important in good writing, even (perhaps especially) comedy writing.

That doesn't mean they should not try.

Of course not, and I applaud the effort (if not necessarily the result). Does that mean I shouldn't give my opinion?

I'm just going to throw this out there, but it seems to like the really should use a red-tape weapon. More iconic. Something like the limpets in SC2.

Honestly not sure what you're trying to say here. Rephrase?

 

[Frogboy]

I think fundamentally many people are looking for a fun, deep, space exploration game. Preferably, one with a cast of characters that have a great deal of range. That is, to me, what Star Control is.

The main reason I like lurking (I rarely am this active) on RPGCodex is that I get to hear concrete, actionable feedback. Not just in this thread but in games in general.

Thus, when building something complex like a new Star Control game, it’s a lot better to hear ideas and criticisms long before the game ships than after, when it’s too late.

 

[Frogboy]

What are The Measured? They are the bureaucrats of the Scryve Empire. What does their ship do? Primary weapon are paperwork canisters. Secondary weapon is the demotivator (which is supposed to say things like "Yea, going to need you to come in.." and "Hmmm. Going to need you to fill this out..." (right now it's just a generic sound effect).

Wow, this goes way beyond "thought-out alien cultures with a humorous slant" to downright clownish. I realize you guys aren't Reiche and Ford and you have your own sense of humor - I support that in theory - but this is really, really heavy-handed.

I'm just going to throw this out there, but it seems to like the really should use a red-tape weapon. More iconic. Something like the limpets in SC2.

That is exactly what it is and how it works. They clog onto your ship and slow it down similar to the limpets. Then you catch up to them and suck the life out of them.

Arguably, the most realistic weapon in the game...

 

[Frogboy]

I think fundamentally many people are looking for a fun, deep, space exploration game. Preferably, one with a cast of characters that have a great deal of range. That is, to me, what Star Control is.

Brad, I'd like to hear your thoughts on i) what the core of SC2 is and how that is being applied to SCO, ii) what went wrong with SC3, and iii) what you think of or learned from more recent attempts in the genre, like The Long Journey Home.

That's a great question. Here's a brief synopsis of my thoughts on the topic:

Star Control, at its core, is a space adventure game in which you, the player, are the main character and your ship its manifestation. What made it special is it combined a living universe within a well constructed narrative.

What made SC2 successful, however, are the details. And this really is the biggest challenge that SCO has to face. As I've mentioned elsewhere, there's a lot of mythology on how SC2 was made. The aliens, the art, the writing, the animation was created by what would, in hindsight, the dream team. The animator went on to do Monsters Inc. and is the director of the Minions movies. The artists went on to become famous in their own right as well as many of those who helped write it. I've designed many games in my career and the most important predictor of success is the team I have gotten to work with. One little mistake can undermine the entire game. SC2 had one of the greatest teams assembled ever.

Now, SC3 wasn't a bad game. If it hadn't been called Star Control III it probably wouldn't be disliked like it is. But it didn't feel like a Star Control game. Star Control games make exploration FUN. This is a crucial part of the game: SC2 was really good at making exploration fun and sidelining parts of the game that were less fun (like planet exploration) later in the game.

The problem LJH had, imo, is that it seemed like it wanted to punish you for enjoying the game. I think it's a good game overall. But it, like many recent games, seem to fall in love with a big procedurally generated universe. But exploration without purpose can wring hollow. And if you punish players for exploring (fuel being so important). And the story mode wasn't intregral to the game. Fundamentally, a game has to decide what it is and make sure that part of the game is as fun as possible.

Game developers, particularly today, very much like the idea of replayability. That is, a game that you would play over and over. I know some people played Star Control II multiple times but I don't think it was intended for infinite replayability. This is a decision we embraced as a core part of Star Control. A Star Control adventure is about the story first and replayability second.

Early in Star Control: Origins we had this very debate. How do you avoid the situation where people play the game for a few months and then leave and it's forgotten? Many recent entries into the genre have focused on massive, procedurally generated universes with lots of randomly generated quests in the hope that players will stay playing them. This was back when I was just the executive producer on Star Control: Origins (I didn't take over design until earlier this year). I mandated that Star Control: Origins would NOT go this path. Instead, it would focus on its story, its characters and its plot and we would gain replayability by making it fun for the players to create their own stories.

That's why our focus has been on creating in-game crafting tools to let people design their own universes, aliens, ships, worlds, etc. to share with others. Instead of trying to have a randomly generated universe, we embraced that Star Control games about your adventures and that your character will grow and evolve over time as you travel to new universes to go on new adventures with you being the hero of the story and your ship evolving, improving, adapting as you go from adventure to adventure.

 

[Alienman]

That's why our focus has been on creating in-game crafting tools to let people design their own universes, aliens, ships, worlds, etc. to share with others. Instead of trying to have a randomly generated universe, we embraced that Star Control games about your adventures and that your character will grow and evolve over time as you travel to new universes to go on new adventures with you being the hero of the story and your ship evolving, improving, adapting as you go from adventure to adventure.

Not be a killjoy but the game SPORE tried this and well... it was real messy. Never seen so many penis creatures and missions revolving said penis creatures.

 

[Zombra]

A Star Control adventure is about the story first and replayability second.

Game developers, particularly today, very much like the idea of replayability. How do you avoid the situation where people play the game for a few months and then leave and it's forgotten? That's why our focus has been on creating in-game crafting tools to let people design their own universes, aliens, ships, worlds, etc. to share with others.

A little disheartening to see you're essentially "focused" on making two different games.

As an avid gamer, "replayability" is very low on my list of desired features. In fact it is not on the list at all. With a thousand new games coming out every week, I don't particularly want a game that demands 400 hours of my time, and procedural or UGC is certainly not what I'm looking for in a Star Control 2 successor. Honestly, I don't understand why devs "very much like" replayability. You gonna charge a subscription fee? Is it good to have "People played my game for a million hours" on your resume? Or is it just creatively satisfying to think that players are grinding your repetitive content year after year? What's the motivation here? What's so bad about telling one great story and letting it end?

 

[Frogboy]

A Star Control adventure is about the story first and replayability second.

Game developers, particularly today, very much like the idea of replayability. How do you avoid the situation where people play the game for a few months and then leave and it's forgotten? That's why our focus has been on creating in-game crafting tools to let people design their own universes, aliens, ships, worlds, etc. to share with others.

A little disheartening to see you're essentially "focused" on making two different games.

As an avid gamer, "replayability" is very low on my list of desired features. In fact it is not on the list at all. With a thousand new games coming out every week, I don't particularly want a game that demands 400 hours of my time, and procedural or UGC is certainly not what I'm looking for in a Star Control 2 successor. Honestly, I don't understand why devs "very much like" replayability. You gonna charge a subscription fee? Is it good to have "People played my game for a million hours" on your resume? Or is it just creatively satisfying to think that players are grinding your repetitive content year after year? What's the motivation here? What's so bad about telling one great story and letting it end?

I think you misunderstood what I was getting at. I am in total agreement with what you just wrote. I am saying that game developers, in general, are focused on the thing that you and I *don't* want.

Star Control: Origins is a game with a beginning. a middle. and an end.

The budget that might have been used so that you could just create a random universe with endless mini-quests has gone into crafting tools.

 

[Frogboy]

That's why our focus has been on creating in-game crafting tools to let people design their own universes, aliens, ships, worlds, etc. to share with others. Instead of trying to have a randomly generated universe, we embraced that Star Control games about your adventures and that your character will grow and evolve over time as you travel to new universes to go on new adventures with you being the hero of the story and your ship evolving, improving, adapting as you go from adventure to adventure.

Not be a killjoy but the game SPORE tried this and well... it was real messy. Never seen so many penis creatures and missions revolving said penis creatures.

Any system that allows players to create and share things will have a ton of crap. Heck, look at Steam these days.

Star Control: Origins, the game itself, will play in a similar vein to Star Control II. The question is what happens after? I personally prefer well constructed stories to play within and so we are trying to create very user friendly crafting tools that exist in game) that will ideally let people craft their own stories to share.

Now, if the user created stories result only in garbage, we don't really lose anything. I prefer having the base game (Star Control: Origins) having a well written, well defined story, characters and discovery rather than a giant procedurally generated universe where I'm expected to find my own meaning.

 

[Frogboy]

Oasis (since that's a long post):

To define terms for our conversation:

An open universe IMO is one in which there is no over-arching story. The player must find their own meaning. Star Citizen sounds like it's going for this. Your story is up to your imagination to create.

What we are going for is a living universe (so lots of things are happening out there that don't concern you) but exists in a well defined story. YOU are the hero. Destiny has plans for you. There is a story written by human beings.

RE Punishing exploration

Star Control would let you run out of fuel. That was largely a mechanic to keep you within the narrative. But what I mean by punishing is that I was having fun while exploring. In some games, the controls or interface make it tedious to actually go out and explore.

Re modding or crafting:

You may be totally right in that we may not see the kinds of adventures and universes and such created that the player base fans compelling. However, the worst case scenario then is that you end up with just a Star Control II style game as opposed to a Star Control II style game with players able to download additional adventures.

Part of what made Star Control III a bitter pill is that it basically killed the franchise for 20 years. However, if you make creating new Star Control adventures relatively easy, even for the devs, it helps decrease the odds that Star Control: Origins will go out and that'll be it.

 

[MRY]

I'm just going to throw this out there, but it seems to like the really should use a red-tape weapon. More iconic. Something like the limpets in SC2.

Honestly not sure what you're trying to say here. Rephrase?

Stupid phone's autocorrect messed it up. Was trying to say that I thought "red tape" would be a more iconic version of a paperwork canister.

 

[Zombra]

I thought "red tape" would be a more iconic version of a paperwork canister.

That would fit the SC1&2 comedic tone about right! Something that left red ribbons in the air that ships got tangled in.

They still wouldn't call it a Red Tape Gun though - same way the Syreen don't call their ship the Giant Dildo and no one in-universe talks about the Spathi Turd Launcher despite the jokes being obvious to us. The Syreen were just trying to make a good, aerodynamic ship, and the Spathi made a missile launcher consistent with their evasive fighting style. (The acronym for the Backwards Utilizing Tracking Torpedo is a coincidence.) The red tape would be called something straightforward like "Immobilization Streamers" on the spec sheet. We the audience would see that it is red tape and a reference to bureaucrats (and players would doubtless call it the Red Tape Gun), but the Measured wouldn't get the joke and there would be no reference to it from other races either.

 

[MRY]

I would probably call the red tape something with "Regulatory" or "Administrative" in it, like like "regulatory interdiction strips" or something.

 

[Frogboy]

I do like redtape. Internally, I've renamed it to that.

 

[Cosmic Bane]

How about The Crimson Tape?

You should definitely play Superhero League of Hoboken to get inspired not to mention simply because it's so enjoyable. The humor and wit is very similar and in some ways even more clever than SC.

I think a lot of why SC succeeded was it took a lot of the humor and charm of the comedic adventure games of the time and brought it to the previously dry and boring strategy genre. So aside from this particular game that sort of think like Space Quest, Leather Goddess of Phobos, Leisure Suit Larry etc. are probably good things to research to get into the spirit.

It's probably not so easy to just turn up the humor and charm to 11 and make an instant classic game but I wish you guys all the luck in the world trying and I will buy the game just because you dared to make the attempt.