A small update on how things are going.....

Well, I tried to touch upon scale in my recent post about gameplay inspirations from other titles...

One of the inspirations I'd like to see from other contemporary space titles is a very big universe, large enough that the limit is not an artificial boundary as it was in SC2, but rather to be limited by the range of our ships. I think it would be particularly intriguing for there to be regions of space so far away beckoning to players, but which are unreachable due to the limits of our tech.

As an example from SC2, say you had 300 units of fuel. You could probably reach the furthest boundaries of the Hyperspace map, at which you would be artificially restricted from going any further. Let's say the new visible map were traversible with 1,000 units of fuel, but without an outer limit. If you had perhaps 10,000 units of fuel (or a faster and/or more efficient propulsion system) you could get beyond that. Perhaps in an expansion or with technology that is particularly hard to find or build.

Like I said in the previous post, the adventure is in the journey and not the destination. That is what I meant by gameplay inspirations; not referring to specific game mechanics from other titles but rather the feelings of exploration while you basically get lost traveling through the stars.

Building upon that, I don't think it would be out of line to tease players with other galaxies that are so far out (according to in-game readouts) that you would need millions of units of fuel to reach it, and possibly hundreds of years. Basically treat it as something that could be breached in say, an expansion or DLC.

Vaelzad,

A Star Control galaxy of the size proposed sounds pretty good to me.

I think an area is 'too big' when there's no reason or reward for continued exploration. I mean, if everything beyond a certain point looks like everywhere else, there's nothing new to do, and I start feeling like I'm exploring for the sake of it, that's probably when I'd hang up the space boots.

1) 3-4 larger than original SC2 would be awesome. Esp. as 95% of people are going to play it in single-player. 10x times larger is even better.

2) 2-3 layers of additional space like ultra-quasi-hyper-whatever space  is also nice - good way to add more exploration-regions and etc..

3) introduce some randomity factor - some planet conditions might change, some locations for artifacts-points of interest might slightly change - even if they are withing the same sphere so to say but slightly different star, or planet or moon.

But frankly speaking - the bigger - the better, especially if there is a reason to explore - like finding beautiful planets, interesting encounters, ester eggs, ultra rare aliens (like a green nanobot cloud that is one for the whole universe and one has to really spend some time and have luck in order to find it) and etc.

I like @quadrant@ map of original SC2 with borders or like HOMM2 maps and etc.

+ Btw. can we have some similar weekly news-updates like this one? So that we just do not wait for one day in a month, then discuss things within 3-5 days and then nothing happens. Give us some meat once per week and even more meat at the end of each month.

Love this idea. 

As for the size of the map, I don't think a firm number is important.  As long as there's a point to it and engaging things to do, then the size won't matter.  If I had to draw out of a hat, 5x the original but still full of rare finds, fun encounters, and varied creatures and resources would be nice.  I never felt like I had explored all of the SC2 map by any means, though I was certainly very familiar with it by the end of the game.  A larger map would make it harder to memorize places, making the whole deal more mysterious.  :) 

My only caution is not to make it big simply for the sake of big.  SoaSE has 1-10 stars, and is amazing. GalCivIII can have a hundred or two stars easily, and they all have a point. SC2 had hundreds of stars, and most of them were interesting.  The thing that made the hundreds of stars doable in SC2 was the constellations and the paper map included with the game.  It made me want to explore a constellation or two during my play session.  Complete randomness would still be interesting, but not in the same way that seeing the farthest constellation, and then REACHING IT was in SC2.  Man, I loved that map!

Thanks for the update.

Here's my take on the map size:

*The stars only represents the in-game density on a galaxy map and not the quantity.

**The map is round, border-less.

Main points:

1. A few thousands of stars is more than enough. Their locations are randomly generated, but tied into fixed configuration constellations (apart from singular stars that don't belong to any). I'd even placed Sol randomly (but within a certain region) every game start. It will make every play-through's unique. All and possibly some story related star systems & planets are randomly generated.

2. The game storyline and action happens inside the Inner Rim with possible occasional side-story travel into Outer Rim.

3. The space between Outer Rim and Habitable Zone has very few and far inbetween space stations. Be it mining, refueling or research etc. Most of them are abandoned or non-functional. They are remains of the golden age of old extinct civilizations. There is no business of any kind being conducted there, apart from occasional unobtanium freighter haul and supply delivery.

4. There are records of space travel beyond Habitable Zone, but they all are told as tales and legends. The distances are greater than great there and no modern technology makes it possible to travel there and back without running out of fuel.

5. There is no data on any kind of space travel beyond Outer Limit and return back to Habitable Zone. The farthest "reachable" galaxy region has fewer stars than anyone coins in their pocket (not like anyone uses coins anymore). The most advanced spaceship would barely have enough fuel to travel from star to star out there. But of course people traveled there. Explorers and pioneers they called themselves. One way ticket, generations ships. They knew what they were doing and where they were going. They radio'ed back on their findings: "Out of food...", "Out of water..." Poor souls. This is where Anomalies exist. Vast regions of space emitting indescribable signals. Scientists theorize that those anomalies might be some sort of inter-dimensional rips and the laws of physics are inapplicable there.

6. Void, the oldest region in the galaxy is black as night and deprived of any matter. No one was there and no one will be. Ever.

In this case you have tons of design space to go "Beyond the Habitable Zone"™, "Outer Limit"™ and even "Into the Void"™ with your expansions and DLCs.

How great of an effect does Quasispace have?  I would think the more it shortens the trip the bigger the map can be without players being overwhelmed.

Quasispace can be thought of as a magnifying glass in this regard.

The size of the galaxy doesn't inherently matter that much: provided it is clear and easy to steer to story-pertinent locations, then all other stars/places form a quasi "random encounter" type of adventure for exploration and boldly going where none have gone before.

Perhaps the question is "how addictive/rewarding is galaxy size when set against the propensity of the average player to OCD explore every single star system that they can reach?"

How many planetary visits does it take to max out your resources? Use that as a baseline for the galaxy size and scale it up from there.

Don't make the galaxy so big that the ratio of boring planets/stars to interesting planets/stars is too large.

When I was talking about quasi-whatever space - I meant that (like in games  Age of Wonders, Heroes of might and Magic 2, 3 and etc.) there could be several @layers@ of space, so to say (like the mentioned games had underground level or shadow level and etc. on the same map). So @whatever space@ could  in terms of its size be the same as @normal space@ but has different color, different properties (higher fuel consumption), anomalies-wormholes to normal layer of space or to some other layer and etc.

The main idea - ,please, make such an option a. In plain vanilla game Quasi space could be used just as a navigational shortcut but with DLCs there can be its own solar systems introduced and etc. I Just beg devs to INTRODUCE this option.

Like normal space with 4-10x whatever size of original SC map and 2 levels (layers) up (+) and 2 levels (layers) down (-) of the same size that can be empty at this moment.

And so that one could make "teleporters-portals" from, say, -2 to +1. If one could introduce some modifiers (that can be switched off and on) to the layers. Like if you are on -1 - time goes faster, if you are on +2 - fuel gets consumed faster or you cannot be w/o there module x and etc.

Some generic stuff - actual ideas will come later on. Plain vanilla game does not have to actually use these levels/layers, I just beg for this option to be implemented as in future it will give TONS of ideas.

+2 - same as 0; + some on/off properties

+1 - same as 0; + some on/off properties

0 - normal space 4-10x bigger than original SC2

-1 - same as 0; + some on/off properties

-2 - same as 0; + some on/off properties

As computers get more powerful, game develops, mods get created - one of such layers, say, -2 might even turn into ORIGINAL SC2 universe but within the same game .

I hope you all manage to get what I want to say.

If you look at my map design thread, you mostly seem to be saying mostly the same thing as I was there about there being, in my example anyway, 4 layers of maps 2 of which have a second "navigational" variant.  So the structure looks something like this...

Quasispace transit map & Quasispace navigational map

Hyperspace transit map & Hyperspace navigational map

Solar System transit map

Planet transit map

What you appear to be saying is that within this structure (which is Star Control II and not anything of my creation) you would like to see the individual transit maps also have "mini-level" within themsleves.

I am pretty sure this is what you are trying to say.  If so, that's pretty impressive of you.  In my top down space combat game I called them "hyperspace rifts"

EDIT:  And to add a little more of that pseudo scientific technobabble... Since Star Control already has "hyperspace", it could instead call them "subspace rifts" which at the same time serves as a reference to the game Subspace to the many people who played it.  You might even have one where your ship becomes a recognizable ship from Subspace while inside the rift, Subpace players would love it!).

EDIT AGAIN:  I just had to point out that we also both got the idea from the same place, Utwig... Heroes of Might & Magic

I agree with the points made on other dimensions of travel. If the new galaxy is indeed as large as we hope and imagine, there would inevitably come a point at which travelling through it would become tiresome, even with very fast engines.

One thing that I never really got the hang of in SC2 were the Quasispace portal locations; they did not directly correspond to an analog location within the Hyperspace map. They were laid out rather scattershot and went to disjointed locations within Hyperspace. Unless you had a paper map and the patience to "connect the dots" between the entry and exit portals, you could easily get disoriented or pick the wrong one. I would be surprised if I was the only one who could relate to that experience.

It would be nice if that game mechanic worked a little more directly and didn't require players to have to refer to other sources to cross-reference where they are versus where they want to end up. I always thought it would be way cool to have "accelerated travel" within Hyperspace be more like conventional sci-fi; you engage a special "dimensional warp drive" and your ship kicks in afterburners, the screen turns a different color and you start flying across the map at a ×10 speed factor or what have you. This would of course cost more fuel and perhaps maybe open you up to a new set of vulnerabilities, maybe interdimensional storms or rifts that you have to dodge and maneuver around at high speed.

I also find the idea of multiple dimensions intriguing; more than just Hyperspace and Quasispace. Perhaps certain tech artifacts could open up access to such rifts that are *above* and *below* the realms of Quasispace. That was, after all, the only time in the context of the story that humanity got to travel to such dimensions; we did not have time even within the context of the SC2 story to explore it further. So who's to say there are not several other such dimensions with their own mysteries?

I think everyone noticed that the Quasispace map had no relation to the Hyperspace map, and like you and most others I would guess, thought that it should.  And I agree with you that it should in the new game, it is just a lot easier for everyone to understand that way.

The way the Quasispace map worked in SCII actually inspired me to come up with my own personal new term within game design many years ago.  There is a thing computer game devs call "programmer art" which is the stand-in art programmers throw in to use until they get the real thing from the artists.  Long ago the Quasispace map had inspired me to come up with a similar term... "programmer game design".

To me in means exactly what you see in the quasispace map in SCII.  It bears no relation to the hyperspace map because the design of it is based entirely on how long it will take you to fly to each rift from the starting point location in the center of the map.  It is all actually irrelevant, it's just how programmers think.

I think the question of "How big is too big?" is answered when it stops being a personal experience, hand-designed by the creators of the game. I don't really want a million planets to land on with procedurally generated weapon/ship-part pickups. I don't want to land on planet 340 and get a Starshot Laser which does 40dmg, which is awesome and new and unique... only to then land on planet 1070 and get a Starshot Laser +1 that does 50dmg. That's not enthralling to me. I don't want to extend out the number of planets for the buzzword or marketing or mass appeal - I'll be perfectly happy with however many planets there's a reason for.

The Star Control II universe was hand-designed by their creators - each planet lovingly crafted and filled with resources, bio, etc, but also filled with special locations/energy signatures for people to find. So I would say - when those run out, there's no real reason to keep making planets.

Fill the universe with interesting things/races/energy signatures and stop when you're done with those things.

Actually, iirc, the entirety of the galaxy, with the exception of plot-intensive planets, were procedurally seeded ONCE at generation. So really, out of several thousand planets in SC2, only less than a hundred were hand-crafted.

I don't mean resource placing. I mean the interesting planets were hand-made. Destroyed cities, items to pick up, aliens to meet, mysteries to find out. 

I don't want Stardock to keep making new worlds/systems to find a weapon +1, shield +3, just for the sake of having more planets to explore. 

If it's curated content, with a purpose, then keep it! Once that's exhausted, though, it's time to stop. 

It's a hard type of concept for me to explain, but hopefully you get what I mean! 

^ I completely agree. Story related stuff should be "composed" by artists. The rest could be generated, 'cause I wanna see things that nobody else seen. Obviously the generation algorithms should be sophisticated enough to not make everything look like everything else.

Hyperspace and quasispace is all cool, but I urge developers to move away from "sandbox" type of a map where there's "physical" borders you can't go beyond... I mean it's 2016... Doesn't it distract from immersion? "Oh look, I'm at the edge of the universe. There's nothing behind this limit... Or is there?..." Why not let the player fly away and run out of fuel and get a Game Over screen. I haven't seen "Game Over" screen literally since Contra and Mario. No tangible borders will only add sense of vastness of the game's galaxy which will add to the sense of immersion.

What do people here think of the idea of an alternate adventure mode that isn't part of the main story, or even story driven at all? I've probably brought it up before when thinking about FTL. Something that perhaps blends the strategic macro elements of SC1's strategy mode with the randomization of a 4X game and the quick-play mechanic of a roguelike?

It could allow players to play a quick game with points based on how far you can get in the galaxy, how much you can mine and upgrade, and how long you can survive out on your own. Probably wouldn't have any dialog or alliances as it wouldn't be an adventure mode. You could either play the standard galaxy map or a randomized starmap that's new every time. I think I would enjoy coming back to play a mode like that again and again for a long time.

From what I have read here they seem to be planning something along those lines, a way to keep playing the game past the storyline that will still be interesting in some way.  Some of these ideas in the last few posts seem more appropriate for that phase of the game than during the storyline phase of the game.  Assuming my understanding about what little what they said about that is at least in the ballpark.

While I agree to a degree, I feel like there's a place for exploring for exploring's sake outside of the narrative as well. Emergent narrative and emergent gameplay can only exist within the unknown.

Well, scientists DO say that the universe never ends, but is more... ROUND. So that when you go to what would be the "end", you're actually just following it AROUND. Which would be a sweetass way for Stardock to do it - if it was a concept humans could actually wrap their minds around...

Well, that's the thing - obviously not every system is going to have points of interest! They ought to establish a ratio - maybe 25-30 empty (but resource-filled) solar systems per important one. 

And you're 100% right - the emergent game play really DID come from the "unimportant", non-curated systems! Great point, Volusanius! 

There's so many factors in that question....

Here's a few questions I'll answer back to illustrate that point.

1. How many times will I be just twiddling my thumbs in traveling from one end of the star map to the other just to accomplish a mission?  If you have jump points that allow short-cuts, then will those be too easy to use, or will there be a certain amount of risk in using them? (Maybe have a chance to damage your ship each time you use them....just an idea?)

2. Will traveling far distances offer any entertainment value...(ie, its not the destination, but the journey?)   

3. Will access to far distance star systems change much? Faster engines, better fuel limits, etc. And how will that change the game mechanics of the story line?

4. What rewards (information, storyline, backstory, ministories, missions, artifacts, etc) will there be to give you incentive to explore?   If your ship is maxed out, and you still have 50% of the map to explore, why explore?  What will be the point?

Exploring extremely distant star systems from Earth need to have FIRST entertainment value and SECONDLY rewards, as the risk goes up.  Just having a massive map to explore for the sake of it doesn't make sense.  All of these questions need to be answered in the development phase of the story and game mechanics (I'm sure you already have...)

We have DLCs and expansions coming + tools to create our own stories. Why not have the design space in place already?... It's not like you need to fill it with myriad of meaningful things right off the bat. You don't need to go out there and do stuff with it just like you don't need to visit Antarctica IRL. It's just there and I don't see anyone complaining about its existence. SD expressed the desire to make SC last a long long while. Who knows what may come up later down the road? What if somebody wants to write a 300hr Farscape or LEXX adventure and you only have a 4x4' map?.. Ya feel me?