Star Control: Origins from there to here

What is Star Control?

Star Control is an action/adventure game with strong RPG elements in which you are the captain of a ship that travels across the known galaxy. Along the way, you will meet strange new aliens, explore fantastic worlds, fight starship battles, upgrade your ships with exciting new components. The galaxy is an open world sandbox but there is also a larger story to take part in as well. 

The History

In the late 80s and early 90s, the Star Control trilogy was published by Accolade. The two two in the series were developed by Toys for Bob with the third developed by Legend Entertainment.  It is considered by many to one of the best games of all time.  The closest thing it’s gotten to a modern day sequel is probably Mass Effect.  If not for Star Control, there probably wouldn’t have been a Mass Effect.

So if Star Control was such a great series, where are the sequels? Ah, there you get into unstable world of the games industry.  Accolade, the publisher, went out of business in 1999 and the Star Control rights went to Infogrames and then Atari. toys for Bob was ultimately acquired by Activison where they make Skylanders. Legend Entertainment went on to make Unreal expansions before closings its doors in 2004.

None of this would have stopped someone from making a Star Control style game.  Bioware made Mass Effect. There was also Space Rangers II. But the primary obstacle is technology and budget.  Star Control is 3 games in one – a planet exploration game, a ship combat game and a space questing game.  Each part being substantially different from the other.  There is no single game engine that is designed to handle all three elements without compromising.

Star Control: Alien dialog (1992)

Star Control combat (1992)

Star Control planet exploration (1992)

Star Control questing (1992)

Stardock’s involvement

When Atari filed for bankruptcy, Stardock the developer and/or publisher of space games like Galactic Civilizations and Sins of a Solar Empire acquired the publishing rights to the existing series and associated trademarks.  The stage was set for a new Star Control game but building such a game from scratch would take time.

Development

Stardock began by building a new studio in Towson Maryland.  Recruiting veterans from around the industry, the design required a careful balance between the old and the new.  The team wanted to avoid the game coming across as a retro game but at the same time, didn’t want to make something that didn’t capture the gameplay we loved.

The Star Control team

During the design, a lot of ideas were considered.  How should the planet be handled? How about ship combat? Internet multiplayer? How should the aliens be handled in face to face discussions? What would be the minimum hardware requirements?

We got some lucky breaks during all this.  Stardock Towson has roommates.  Namely, Mohawk Games and Oxide Games.   A large percentage of the teams were veterans of the Civilization IV and V franchises which brought unique visual and technical skills to the project.

Rather than pre-rendered aliens, the aliens would lip-sync and react in-real time in engine ala Civilization V/VI.

Early prototype of the planet lander. Planets would be relatively “small” and be designed to be quick and fun to play on.

Exploration and combat could be handled in the solar system.

Alien conversations would be in-engine, real-time animation

But many touches can only be solved with a lot of iteration.  That’s where the Founder’s Program comes in

The Founders: Precursors

When you make a high profile game, you can either listen to criticism in a controlled environment before the game ships or…you can wish you had done so after your game ships.  For Stardock, that’s where the Founder’s Program come in. 

The purpose of the Star Control Founder’s program is two-fold. 

The primary purpose is to make sure we’re on the right track.  Everything from readability of text (see screenshots above) to game pacing to story and lore handling gets feedback from the Founders.  On a game like Star Control: Origins, this is paramount.  Getting one game done right is hard.  Getting three games right simultaneously and have them work together is extremely difficult.  Moreover, Star Control is a unique franchise in that each developer has brought their own lore to the table and that can be quite delicate.

The secondary purpose is straight-out funding.  Star Control: Origins is the biggest game we’ve ever done.  Its budget is greater than Sins of a Solar Empire + Galactic Civilizations III + Ashes of the Singularity + Offworld Trading Company combined.  This isn’t the kind of game where you can just reuse code from your other games. It’s all has to be made from scratch. 

The underlying engine: Nitrous

Star Control is immensely important to us. It is very important to me personally. My game development hero is Paul Reiche. You may not know him but he may be the greatest game designer you haven’t heard of. His game designs are unique beyond comparison.  He worked on Mail Order Monsters, Archon 1 and Archon 2 and more recently Skylanders.  If it weren’t for him, I doubt I’d have gone into game development.  So Star Control has to be done just right.  So when it came to an engine for it, we needed something that was both powerful and battle tested.  That engine is Oxide’s Nitrous engine. Ashes of the Singularity used it.  Now it’s ready for Star Control.  With Nitrous, we can deliver lighting effects (see the gameplay teaser) that you’d normally see in movies but still do it on relatively modest hardware.  You won’t need a monster machine to run Star Control: Origins.

The Founders: Phase II

On October 18th, we’re opening up the Founder’s Program to the fans.  Those who join will get access to the Founder’s Vault and Founder’s forum which will outline just how big a difference the handful of Founders we started with have had already.

Where the Precursor Founders helped us with dealing with the lore conflicts between Star Control 1/2 vs. 3 vs. Origins, how Super Melee should be handled, what place the planet exploration should have in the new game the Phase II founders will be directly involved in the Origins Story, Super Melee play testing. Making sure our hardware requirements stay low (i.e. if you have a crummy machine, as long as it has at least 1GB of video memory, we want you), pacing and more pacing. 

Our target release date is in time for the 25th anniversary of Star Control 2.  But that isn’t a promise. If necessary, we will push that date out if the Founders don’t think it’s ready yet.  People will forgive delays. They won’t forgive games released before they’re ready.

So visit us at www.starcontrol.com.  Join the adventure!