Star Control: Origins is a sci-fi action/adventure game with many RPG elements set in the future where the player is the captain of Earth’s first interstellar starship that explores a procedurally created galaxy, makes contact with various alien races, explores unique worlds, and engages in action packed battles, all while trying to unravel the complex intrigue that has the galaxy on the brink of chaos.
"We Earthlings are the newcomers to the galactic scene," said Brad Wardell, Executive Producer. "The dozen plus space-faring species have been hatching their schemes since before we got out of trees. Now, suddenly, they have to deal with those meddling apes from Sol 3 who threaten to upset the plot."
The game starts in the year 2086 with the unaware humans receiving a distress call from an alien ship that has crashed on the moon of Triton, leading to the formation of Star Control, an international space agency dedicated to protecting the Earth. The player takes on the role of The Captain of Earth’s first interstellar ship whose first mission is to investigate the distress signal.
Star Control: Origins represents a new start for the beloved franchise. Stardock acquired the rights to Star Control 1/2/3 from Atari and since then has launched a new game studio in Towson Maryland specifically to create the new Star Control title. The classic series is available for sale on Stardock's newly launched [url]StarControl.com[/url] website with players also able to pre-order Star Control: Origins and join the Founder’s Program.
"Star Control is ultimately about us Earthlings exploring the galaxy, finding and talking to strange alien civilizations, and hopefully living to tell the tale," said Wardell. "We are hopeful those who remember the original trilogy will like the direction we’re taking here while at the same time introducing a whole new generation to the awesomeness of a game that combined action, adventure, and roleplaying in a sci-fi game simultaneously."
Star Control: Origins is scheduled for release on PC and consoles with the PC release scheduled for 2017.
Players interested in joining the Founder's program for $35 will gain access to the upcoming beta program as well as access to the Founder’s Vault, mod tools, private journals and more.
Created by Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III, and published by Accolade in 1992, Star Control II is a high watermark in the history of PC gaming. Combining space exploration, gripping starship combat, and first contact with a galaxy full of oddball aliens, it is fondly remembered by a generation of PC gamers.
The franchise was recently bought by Stardock, and a reboot is in the works. When we recently caught up with Stardock CEO Brad Wardell the first thing he wanted to impress on us was the magnitude of the production. “It’s definitely our biggest project ever.”
His team is currently working on the planetary exploration aspect of the game, where you can send a shuttle down to hunt for resources. As revealed in the recent teaser trailer, what was an abstract, 2D game mode in SC2 is now rendered in full 3D.
“From an engineering point of view it’s an interesting challenge, because this game has many different parts to it, but it has to be seamless. No-one wants to sit there and wait for a planet to load. You need to be able to go to the spherical planet, land on it, do stuff, have interesting adventures, and then be able to leave in one swoop, and it has to work on a reasonably powerful machine.”
To this end Star Control: Origins is being built with Nitrous, the powerful 64-bit engine from Oxide that made possible the spectacular action in Ashes of the Singularity. “People love Star Control, and people ask: ‘Why hasn’t anyone taken that basic formula?’ Well, it’s because Star Control is actually several games put into one. You have the planet exploration, you have the ship battles, and you have the alien story part, you have the star system exploration... it’s a lot of different what we call ‘graphical scenes.’
“Most engines today are designed with one scene, altogether. A typical Unreal game is a single scene. Civilization: a single scene. Even Ashes of the Singularity is only a single scene. So when you’re switching between these very different views, you’re bouncing between lots of hardware resources, because you can almost accomplish anything if you throw enough hardware at it, versus what Nitrous brings to the table.”
Specifically, a mass amount of multi-threaded support. “For example, if you have at least a four-core machine, we can do all kinds of stuff to all the different scenes simultaneously, while the player’s playing, without it slowing down the main game. That allows you to seamlessly transition to a planet, or back to a battle, or to another completely different scene. From a technical point of view, that’s what makes Nitrous exciting for us.”
The ship combat in the early Star Control games was a riff on Spacewar – one-on-one battles on a 2D plane with a gravity well. Early in production, Brad’s team decided they wanted to try something a tad more ambitious for Origins. “We wanted to be able to show fleet combat. So your ship was one of several ships in a fleet battling it out almost like a MOBA. Visually, it was very satisfying. But from a gameplay point of view we ended up throwing it out. It might make for a good game; it did not make for a good Star Control game. Because what happened was, in single-player, if the AI was dumb, which it was at the start of this, the player was just super-frustrated, because they could end up losing a battle because their team-mates flying the other ships were stupid.” They persisted with this paradigm for a while, working under the belief that once they got the AI working it would all fall into place. But it didn’t work out that way.
“What happened was that once the AI got smart, the player ended up being relatively irrelevant to the outcome of the battle [laughs]. Because the AI could just take care of most of the battle for them. So we ultimately have come back to the one-on-one ship design that’s much more like the original Star Control. Except with updated graphics.” This isn’t a bad thing. SC2 wasn’t just a solo space RPG; the stand alone multi-player mode was immensely satisfying, a knife-edge duel. “At the end of the day what makes Super Melee fun is that it is battle of very decisive skill.”
In SC2 the ships of each race had unique abilities, like fighter squadrons, or space marines that could board enemy ships. The Nitrous engine makes far more exotic weapons possible. “We can have weapons that do interesting things gravitationally, on the fly. Star Control II had gravity wells, but they were pre-canned. But now we can have weapons that can greatly increase the gravitational pull at a particular point, and you can start to set traps and stuff for your opponents.
“Another thing that’s really fun is having weapons that can basically, reproduce. So you’ve got to kill the guy, your opponent, or he will eventually overwhelm you with this junk. We really couldn’t have done that back in ‘92 without the entire simulation coming apart.”
As for the story, Star Control: Origins will be a complete reboot, with all-new aliens and an all-new adventure. “It would not be realistic to do a sequel 25 years later. Not to mention Star Control II kinda tied things up.” Another factor is that part of the appeal of the franchise is the first contact experience. “If you already know Star Control, and you’re meeting the Ur-Quan, it doesn’t matter what they say. You know they’re the bad guys.”
When designing these new aliens Brad’s team wanted to stay as far away as possible from your cliché Star Trek-style humanoid aliens, and make them genuinely peculiar beings to interact with. “For example, we have an alien that is purely aquatic. It’s water-based. Because we thought, statistically if there’s intelligent life there’s probably a decent chance it’s aquatic.
“Then we also have ones that survive off of the energy provided by stars. It’s literally a space creature that lives in space and has evolved through that, over the aeons.” In the space combat mode this race is its own ship, rendered and behaving as an intricate swarm, like a school of space-fish.
“Then we got some that are a little bit more traditional, that are slug-based. That look like slugs [laughs]. Or other strange types. But we’ve tried not to have humanoids.”
As in SC2, the player’s mothership will be modular, upgradeable, and customisable, but this time it won’t be an exotic Precursor vessel – it will be late 21st Century human tech. “At the beginning of the game you really need to rely on your alien allies and friends that you meet to help because your ship is just so... embarrassing. And by the end your ship is just a butt-kicker.”
The conversation system is being built with some of the same technology behind the diplomacy in Sid Meier’s Civilization V. “We knew that we were going to end up with a lot of writing, so we decided to make it so that the aliens are procedurally generated, and their mouths will move based on what the voice actor says. Rather than some poor animator having to manipulate the whole thing.”
Cracked.com writer Chris Bucholz has been working on the story full time for three years now, and Brad can’t even estimate how long it would take to finish every last side-quest. “If someone just wants to beeline through the main thing, that’s probably like 40 hours. But to find everything? No-one actually knows.
“I can tell you who doesn’t love this game: the people in QA.”
On top of all that content, Star Control: Origins will also come with an editor that will allow users to create and share their own space oddities on Steamworks. “So if someone wants to make a Star Control 2 or something, I suppose they could [laughs].”
One of the most memorable aspects of SC2 was the music, all of which was created in the MOD file format popular at the time. For Origins, Brad hired the Finnish composer who came up with the distinctive themes for the Thraddash and the Yehat. “We actually are working with Riku Nuottajärvi, who did most of the best-known themes from Star Control back in the day. He was actually just a kid back then. He’s obviously an adult now. He’s handling pretty much all the music in the new Star Control.”
All the component parts that make Star Control work seem to be in place, but in parting Brad wanted to stress on us that Origins is still quite a ways off. “I don’t want anyone getting their hopes up that this is coming out in a couple months. We’re still targeting probably some time this fall, but we’ll have to see. We’re not in any hurry. I mean, it’s Star Control. It needs to be done right.”
looking forward to this and hope they nail this game. Good to see that combat MOBA idea failed and its looking like an updated reboot of SC2, also good to see they are spending some budget and focus no the music even rehiring one of the previous composers.
Star Control II Direct Sequel Ghosts of the Precursors Announced
Quote:
25 years after its original release, Star Control II is officially getting a sequel — and it's coming from the game's creators.
Fred Ford and Paul Reiche announced on their blog that a direct sequel to Star Control II — The Ur-Quan Masters is in the works, and it will be called Ghosts of the Precursors.
"Pretty much ever since [Star Controll II], fans have been politely asking us to create a sequel, sometimes begging for a sequel, even threatening us if we don’t make a sequel. Our answer was always, “We really want to do this, we just need to wait until the time is right” ... Well, the stars have finally aligned," the announcement post reads.
The announcement stresses that the sequel is "early, early in development," but that it will include a host of familiar aliens, ships, and characters, as well as new alien races to discover, befriend, and even annihilate. "This is a passion project for us and we have committed to dedicating some of our own time to creating a true sequel."
This is a surprising development because the rights for the Star Control series have passed from one company to another until Sins of a Solar Empire developer Stardock acquired them in 2013. Wardell has come out to reveal that Ford and Reiche will have full access to the Star Control II creative galaxy and lore despite it not being a Stardock project.
Now that is fucking awesome, they said they were not going to use the story / races from SC2 in the event the original dev's wanted to make a direct sequel. So looks like they are giving the original dev's full rights to make their game and continue the story despite them working for a rival company (Activision).
Must be a game studio first, make a new game without destroying the original IP or original dev's vision. Allow the original creators after 25 years the freedom to create the game they've envisioned for years.
Edit further info:
Quote:
October 9, 2017 7:15:47 PMfrom Star Control ForumsStar Control Forums
Four years ago Stardock acquired Atari's rights to Star Control. I soon got to meet my hero, Paul Reiche. He was, more than anyone else, the person who inspired me to become a game developer over 20 years ago.
Over the past 4 years, we have communicated regarding the progress of Star Control: Origins. He asked us not to try to make a sequel to Star Control 2 and said that he hoped one day to be able to return to the universe he and Fred Ford created.
Recently, Paul told me the good news: Activision was going to let him do a true sequel to Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters (i.e. Star Control III is not canon for that universe).
I like grittier games, so this kiddy stuff doesn't interest me. Looks too clean and the game doesn't take itself very seriously. This art style is a dime a dozen.
Brad Wardell is an asshole though, his lawsuit claims Paul and Fred didn't create StarControl 1&2 and he's desperately trying to secure rights to all the IP now. The game is 25 years old, and in terms of IP at this time worthless, I just dont get why he's so desperate to secure character/lore instead of focussing on his own game.
well looks like Brad Wardells's constant online bullshitting has equated to buying an old trademark to owning all IP/Assets of this franchise despite fine print explicitly saying they do not.
Goddamn that would suck creating one of the greatest PC games of the early 90's, followed by open-sourcing, supporting and releasing Ur-Quan masters for modern systems to only have Stardock fuck all over your legacy. I don't understand why Brad wants all the original races, lore etc.. no one but die-hard fans and the creators care about it, creating his own aliens / ships was out of the question, why?
Well im figuring those legal costs will crush Paul & Fred, result in them being muscled into a shit settlement and no passion project sequel
Brad on stardock forum start of procedings.
Quote:
"I also want to correct something I saw: Again, disclaimer, I am not a lawyer. But my position is that Stardock doesn't have the legal rights to the original lore either. Or, if we did, we have long since refuted those rights. The Star Control classic lore are the copyright of Paul Reiche and Fred Ford.
I post that sort of thing publicly partially because while I own Stardock today, if something happened to me and someone else took over Stardock I don't want anyone to even be tempted. "
Brad on twitter now posting all the copyrighted IP they are using in the new game
Quote:
We have spent over four years making a new Star Control game. We acquired the IP from Atari. The trademarks and copyrights are federally registered and have been for decades. I believe gamers would like to see a state-of-the-art, space RPG game with amazing writing and gameplay.
Wouldn't that still have to be covered by Stardock if the original creators have a solid contract and can prove this thing? Well I admit I don't know too well how these legal fees work and I suppose going by e.g Bleem! which did win legally but was brought down by the costs this might not be quite that straightforward.
And that's a fucking hefty sum too, what the hell would cost that much?
Damn, the drama surrounding Star Control truly is reaching stellar levels these days. We're at Chapter XII of the saga, some sort of Who Owns What: The Unexpected Crowfunding.
The bottom line is that no sequel will ever live up to the legend and hype around 2, so both games are an exercise in futility.
Make something new that doesn't have all this baggage associated with it.
Honestly, Star Control 2 isn't even that great in terms of the game itself. It's fondly remembered mostly because of the music, and neither one of these games will probably capture lightning in a bottle music like 2 anyway.
Signature/Avatar nuking: none (can be changed in your profile)
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
well looks like Brad Wardells's constant online bullshitting has equated to buying an old trademark to owning all IP/Assets of this franchise despite fine print explicitly saying they do not.
We're at Chapter XII of the saga, some sort of Who Owns What: The Unexpected Crowfunding.
