Introductions are in order

Welcome.

I am *expanding!* It is so much *squishy* to *smell* you!

*cough* Hmm.. That might've been awkwardly overenthusiastic.  My Orz is a bit rusty after all these years. Btw. gonna post some dubious sw development usability wisdom on the forums after this for the people who have nothing better to do or read. Anyway, good luck with the project. Have lots of *smelling* *pretty colors*!

P.s. Trying to talk Orz is so embarrassing, but can't help it. It makes me smile foolishly like I'm missing a few Indians from my canoe, every time 

Thanks for making an introduction, Andrew. It's reassuring to know that Brad isn't the only one intent on interacting with the community as development continues. Hope it isn't inevitable that we'll end up getting the game spoiled for us by learning too much ahead of time. It may be a lot to hope for, but I'd like to think there can be a happy medium between having open interaction during the development without ruining any of the experience when we actually get to play.

I don't play as many games as I used to, but I've watched a lot of stuff about Grey Goo and despite the fact that it's a totally different genre with a much more serious tone, it seems to have been fairly well received!

One of the lesser acknowledged aspects of SC2 was the fact that despite it being Paul Reiche's sandbox, there was such a variety of creative talent folded into it. You could almost sense it even without knowing based simply on the variety in the alien designs, the different music styles, and the overall personality in everything that it wasn't just the singular vision of one person, but a group of people with a close camaraderie who had a sense of humor about what they were making.

I find it completely brilliant that the framework of the game is being developed with community content creation in mind, as Brad has mentioned. It's as if you guys knew that there was no possible way to make all the fans happy! So unless I'm horribly mistaken, it sounds like rather than making it all about Stardock's vision, I get the sense that it will allow a little bit of everyone's vision to be seen. That is as remarkable as it is daunting!

I'm curious how much of your previous experience as a producer will work its way into Star Control. Would you say any of that contributed more to getting the job than simply being a Star Control fan?

It can't be easy having such big shoes to fill, but aside from wanting the game to stay true to the spirit of Star Control 2, what would you say are some of the least obvious development challenges in getting the project off the ground? Since this franchise has an emphasis on creative character interaction and levity, would you consider your role to be more creative than technical in nature?

I'm going to do my best to not spoil the game for anyone. What the exact story experience will be is something we are going to be tight lipped on. I think we all hate the feeling when we are standing in line at the movie theater and someone blurts out the ending, or a memorable scene before you get a chance to experience the movie.

We are definitely going to be providing a means of letting people create their own stories in the universe through modding. But it is important to us that all players who play Star Control are able to share their adventures with everyone. Our goal is for players to be able to tell stories of their own memorable encounters and participation in the events of the Star Control story and universe as it unfolds around them as they play the game. The Star Control universe is a very big place and there are many stories and events taking place. As the Orz said in Star Control 2 there are many *levels* in *heavy space* to *smell*.  The human race and the player is just one character in a much larger tapestry. 

There are several aspects of the game that have many hidden challenges. One of the most prolific is the modernization itself. As an example, back when the Star Control franchise was created mice were just being introduced as a method of input for the computer. Today you tell someone they can't have a mouse to interact with the computer and they look at you as if you had instantly grown new duplicate facial features and are confused if they should run away in fear or kill you.  Many of the game's mechanics are centered around that old input scheme, and while with new input methods and devices we could make some of the things we did in the game easier, the question is should we, or is the gameplay that came from those challenges something that we need to preserve and/or modernize.

My role is equal parts technical and creative, as you can't really emphasize one over the other if you want to have a great cohesive experience. The best adventure games that exist are when the player's actions (technical design) are part of the story (creative design) and you are immersed into the world. 

I actually thought about how control schemes might factor in also. I'd imagine that there will be a huge degree of control precision and high fidelity with regard to ship navigation, rather than just being able to point yourself in 12 (or even 360) degree increments and it would be a lot more intuitive and contemporary to use the mouse for that.

It's no good to go too far in a new direction like Legend Entertainment did by turning SC3 into a point and click puzzle and stripping it of its sense of adventure. You talk about the incorporation of a mouse; is it a possibility that mouse control will be incorporated into melee combat too?

Since the Nitrous engine underpins all this and it is full 3D, I would assume melee will be greatly expanded on with new play modes and styles, minigames, etc. but my big curiosity is how the same level of traditional arcade combat will be preserved without making it too much like popular "dog fighting" space combat sims which introduce a greater freedom of movement in combat. Melee was always very simple in contrast to more complex space combat sims.

The restricted field of vision and a "moebius loop" arena gave melee a much more intimate arcade feel. In the same way that turning SC3 into a point and click adventure was going too far in the wrong direction, it's a delicate balance figuring out how to modernize that gameplay dynamic without turning it into a hardcore space combat sim. I don't envy you having to make these big decisions but I'm very much looking forward to how this will be expanded on.

I'm also really intrigued about how content creation will be simplified for the more difficult aspects that players will face. Alien design in particular. Music, sound and even voice acting are fairly straightforward to produce, and with the planned ship building features it will be easy to customize starships, but how will players create their own alien species?

It's a big undertaking for content creators to animate characters. Plenty of folks can probably sketch out an alien, but bringing it to life is a lot of work. What springs to mind is something like Will Wright's Spore, where players could build any alien design they want. It wasn't exactly high fidelity and might not look great for conversational dialogs to have a primitive 3D alien model but I know you'd be lying if you said it wasn't under consideration! I don't know whether such a feature is a complete pipe dream or even feasible given your budget, but is there any possibility of something like this?

Hello, Andrew.  Thanks for taking the time to introduce yourself.  The more you guys talk to us, the better I sense that a beloved franchise is in the hands of people who really understand the weight of what they're trying to accomplish.  It's no easy task trying to follow up on one of the greatest PC games of all time.

@Vaelzad
I say impostor.

Could you get a Stardock staff badge, like Island Dog has?

Hmm... I believe I do have one.  It's shiny and located right below my Karma level. It even says Stardock. :) 

Strange I don't see it, I see Island Dog's though. Sure you are using the logo, which anyone can use. Just want to lower the confusion.

Heya, alread wrote my presentation here:

https://forums.stardock.com/451197/page/1/#3585254

But wanted anyways to give you a warm warm welcome and the very best of luck in making good decisions for the SC new game

Cheers

I'm very excited!  Since the disappointment that was "Star Control 3" I am very hopeful for this project. 

The one thing I really didn't like in Star Control was in fact the overly arcade style combat... I mean, to me personally it felt disconnected from everything else.

I kind of hope you can modernise the combat to fit better with the exploration part.. One thing in particular that I hated was having ships fight one at a time... if you have this big multi-species fleet roaming the galaxy you should be able to fight together, not 'take turns' 

Do not mention the 

(Ominous Ur-Quan Voice)

"Do not mention the game that Never Should Have Been.

There will be no further warning, only annihilation."

Is it wrong that I didn't really mind Star Control 3 that much? I mean, it wasn't as good sure I admit that.. and the story was a little odd... but I did enjoy playing it....

Quoting Wintercross, reply 14

Quoting Tovanion,

reply 13

Do not mention the 

Quoting Chustler,

reply 11

I'm very excited!  Since the disappointment that was "Star Control 3" I am very hopeful for this project. 

 

(Omnious Ur-Quan Voice)

"Do not mention the game that Never Should Have Been.

 

There will be no further warning, only annihilation."

 

 

Is it wrong that I didn't really mind Star Control 3 that much? I mean, it wasn't as good sure I admit that.. and the story was a little odd... but I did enjoy playing it....

It isn't wrong. Just unusual. Most SC1 and SC2 fans are incensed that TGTNSHB (aka SC3) botched so many aspects of the game.

Guess I was younger and more forgiving at the time. Still never liked the combat in any of them though.

I would very much hope for gamepad support.  Top down space combat is best controlled with a gamepad, in my opinion, but the keyboard does give you a different type of control that some players prefer... at least that was how it worked in Subspace.  Among the best Subspace players, most used a gamepad.  But a few used the keyboard.  There actually moves you can do with a gamepad you can't do with a keyboard, and moves you can do with the keyboard that you can't do with the gamepad making it a personal preference/playstyle choice.  In Subspace I preferred the game pad and my brother, who was one of the best Subspace players in the world (Indra) liked using the keyboard better.

 Mouse or Joystick is are terrible control choices for this kind of game and anyone attempting to use a mouse or joystick will be at a significant disadvantage to anyone using a gamepad or keyboard.  At least this has been the case in similar games.

In 2005, I had a computer class to learn to program in Direct X 9 using Visual Studio 2003.  One of the class assignment, was to make a game using the network features.  I made a melee program where two people could play against each other.  I wrote packet types to send command to the ships.  I only reproduced the Mycon and Yehat though.  No planets nor gravity whips yet.    I had programmed the inertia of ships to keep coasting heading in the directions they had coasted in.  I could control the ships with a mouse or with the keypad.

To make the blue ball of the mycon, I used images of the sun on which I reversed the colors with microsoft paint.   For the machine gun sound of the Yehat, I found a sound sample of a British Sten machine gun from WWII.

The biggest issues I had was to get the two computer screens to match.  With different resolutions on each computers and the different computer speeds made it difficult to synchronize both computers so the combat screens looked the same.  It gave me a whole new respect for people who develop network gaming.   I ran out of time to fix things, I had only two weeks to do the class work.

I did alwo a Trade Wars / SC2 inspired version of a space game also in a VB class with sector navigation that was more like Trade Wars.  I could trade stuff and use my colonies to trade on space goods.  I could conquer planets, and I had options to visualise my planets lists and what they could produce.

Not a game designer by trade, more of an occasionnal hobby but kudos to Paul and Fred on what they did all of those years ago.