Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Star Control: Origins - Star Control reboot from Stardock

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Probably unrelated:


https://www.pcgamesn.com/star-control-origins/stardock-kevin-unangst

Kevin Unangst has left Microsoft's gaming on Windows 10 project to join Stardock

Stardock have hired Kevin Unangst - who spent 30 years at Microsoft - as their new vice president, where he will head the company's global marketing and partnership group.

It’s an interesting time for Unangst to join Stardock. With Star Control: Origins coming out later this year, we’re getting our first look at the technology the company first started working on in 2011. Back then, Stardock sold digital storefront and multiplayer platform Impulse to GameStop, and took the money it made to invest in a long-term plan.

“[Stardock] created a fund to develop a series of new technologies and content for those technologies that they hoped would begin to bear fruit in 2021 - ten years later,” Unangst says in a Q&A Stardock sent out with the announcement of his new position.

The first of those technologies is Nitrous, a game engine developed by Oxide Interactive, which is a company Stardock co-founded. Nitrous allows software to scale in ability to the number of processing cores it has available. It is central to the Cider engine, the game engine in which Star Control: Origins is built.

When the new Star Control comes out next year we’ll have a good look at what Nitrous is capable of. “Cider allows us to simulate the entire game universe in real-time, which enables us to deliver players a story-driven game experience that takes place in a living universe,” Unangst tells us in an email. “Historically, such attempts at this were handled by scripts and hard-coded paths of limited entities. The new Star Control, for example, has quests that can affect other parts of the universe seamlessly. The player's actions can actually affect the evolution of the game universe in real-time.”

The coming years are likely to see hardware take advantage of two strains of development: processors with many more cores than we’ve had in previous years, and processing demands offloaded to the Cloud. According to Unangst, Nitrous is built to take advantage of both.

“Today and in the near term, we fully expect to see continual exponential growth in client multicore machines,” Unangst explains. “But by being natively core neutral, Cider doesn’t distinguish between local CPU or GPU cores or cloud cores. It’s one of the unique aspects of Cider and Stardock’s tech that makes joining them so exciting.”
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
What is it, some kind of multithreaded world simulation engine?
 
Unwanted
Joined
Dec 29, 2017
Messages
28
One thing I liked about SC is the main bad guys were truly nonhuman. So were the Ilwrath spider guys who took that predatory/evil theme to a level that I've never seen another game go to.

dill.jpg


Not to mention the amusement garnered from tricking them.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...c-tussle-at-the-heart-of-star-control-origins

The galactic tussle at the heart of Star Control: Origins
Things can only get meta.

jpg


Is there something about space games in particular that causes developers to fall out with one another to the extent that it's deemed necessary to dispatch a squadron of legal vipers to sort things out? They've darted between David Braben and his one-time Elite co-pilot Ian Bell, and were once turned on his old publisher, Gametek. Outspoken space sim creator Derek Smart had a dust-up with the same publisher, long before he made it his mission to discredit Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts and his efforts on Star Citizen.

A little less fiery but no less combustible is the stand-off between the original creators of Star Control and current IP owner Stardock, who last month were firing words like "rights", "permission" and "trademark" across one another's bow. Things have gone quiet since, but only because a couple of legal away teams are probably engaged in a bout of judicial kal-if-fee, for which universal translators are set to impenetrable.

To use contemporary presidential patois, it's all rather sad. What's particularly unfortunate in the case of Star Control is, not only is Star Control 2 up there with Elite as one of the greatest space games of all time, fans have had to endure a 25 year wait for the series to progress. That's it's doing so in two directions - a prequel from trademark holders Stardock and a Star Control 2 sequel from the series' creators - almost seems too good to be true. Sadly it might just stay that way if the relationship between the two studios doesn't improve.

jpg

'Please, can't we all just get along?'

When it comes to hearts and minds, in a fight between Star Control's creators and current IP owners, the former are likely to come out on top, if only because Stardock's CEO has over the years rubbed quite a few people up the wrong way. However, what's interesting in this case is that while Brad Wardell has cultivated an image of himself as the combative and unapologetic champion of space strategy gaming, he is deep down a massive Star Control fanboy. "It was released at the same time I was programming the original Galactic Civilizations for OS/2 back in college" he says. "It came out when I was still deciding what I would ultimately do in my career. Star Control 2 effectively made me want to make games as a career rather than a hobby."

When the Star Control brand came up for auction in 2013, Wardell not only saw an opportunity for develop something quite distinct from mainline Stardock games (despite their obvious nods to Star Control races and characters), but to oversee the realisation of a long-held dream common to all Star Control fans: "To reunite the original team from 25 years ago" which, despite the fact that Fred Ford and Paul Reiche had talked openly about returning to the series, "turned out to be a much more difficult task than we thought."

Rather than the collaboration Wardell had long dreamt about, Stardock's early meetings with Ford and Reiche only resulted in an understanding: "They asked us not to use the aliens or try to continue the Star Control 2 storyline as they hoped to one day return to [it]."

To facilitate the creators' eventual return, Stardock renamed the original games, with the much maligned Star Control 3 (developed by Legend Entertainment, which would go on to make Unreal 2) spun out to an alternative universe from the classic Star Control 2 that Ford and Reiche wanted to return to. "This let us create Star Control: Origins on the concept of Star Control being a multiverse" says Wardell, "in which players reach other universes through the Origins - giant precursor structures that allow ships to travel to other universes." - a fudge, clearly, but perhaps necessary if two new Star Control games were to co-exist independently.

Then in December Fred Ford and Paul Reiche released a statement that seemed to collapse the whole metaverse concept: "our games' universe has absolutely no connection, hyper-dimensional or otherwise, with Star Control: Origins." Thus, on the back of some prior combative statements between Wardell and his one-time development heroes over who owns and owes what, we have the basis of yet another falling-out between space game legends, one that not only jeopardises the promising future of revered series, but in seeing the old games pulled from sale, rather seems to threaten its legacy as well.

Sad.

jpg

'People love to create their own ships,' according to Wardell. 'Every kid who has ever made spaceships with LEGO can appreciate the appeal of the Ship Crafter.'

Thankfully not all the fighting currently going on around the Star Control universe is counter-productive. For a couple of months now pre-orderers of Stardock's prequel, Star Control: Origins, have had access to Fleet Battles, a stable though still early version of the game's multiplayer mode, which builds on the original game's celebrated Super Melee Mode by being functionally identical to combat in the main game, while being utterly without consequence and is thus distinctly and immediately engaging. If Star Control's traditional single-player game can be likened to a gentle open-world RPG spoof of classic-era Star Trek, Super Melee is its Kobayashi Maru battle simulator, a carefree venue that allows players to pick a few ships and face off against another player in all manner of no-win situations

The genius of Super Melee that Fleet Battles hopes to emulate, aside from being a Spacewar! For the Jilted Generation, is that rather more than a series of knife-edge duels, Super Melee gleefully revels in multiplayer asymmetry. Each player has 100 points to spend before battle, with a range of vessels currently worth between 6 and 26 points apiece. Between stats such as acceleration, turning, speed and weapon range, and primary and secondary weapons ranging from Big Long Range Lasers and Boarding Parties, to vessels that can shoot black holes and self-destruct in cataclysmic fashion, ships that may seem wildly imbalanced in one round are finely poised the next, with the cat and mouse dynamic forever shifting, not just as new ships warp in, but as they maneuver around gravity wells and asteroids.

Of course, it needs more ships and more abilities, which given the feedback from players, seems likely to be expanded. On the suggestion of fans, Wardell says future battle sites will be littered with wreckage, with a some ships able to scavenge parts for fleet-wide benefits, an example of gameplay "so obvious in hindsight that it's hard to believe we didn't think of it first."

jpg

Star Control 2's traditional 2D wraparound planets are given an appropriate 21st Century makeover for the Origins meta-prequel.

As essential as Fleet Battles/Super Melee is to Star Control's identity, multiplayer mode will always be secondary to any single-player adventure, that of exploring unknown worlds for resources and clues, upgrading ships and meeting strange B-grade alien creatures represented by hilarious characters. To that end, while Origins is disavowed from introducing Captain Fwiffo's illustrious predecessors or establishing any of Star Control's other much-loved alien races, Stardock have the benefit of being in a position to create their own, which would be a curse if not for the fact that it's created many a memorable alien during the course of it's Galactic Civilizations series. Not Star Control levels of memorable, perhaps, but close enough that Stardock should be able to step up to the plate.

Unfortunately we only have a few snippets of lore to go on at the moment, beyond the fact that the Scryve are the bad guys, the Tywom are quite cuddly and probably very nice, and there are rumours of a god-like Ancient One roaming about. What we do know is that the procedurally-generated universe will be sizable, as well we might expect, with thousands of planets to visit and explore. "We wouldn't have tried to do a new Star Control game unless we could deliver something that made the case for its creation obvious while at the same time staying true to what Star Control is," says Wardell. "For example, one thing we couldn't do back in 1992 was have a "living" universe. We all were good at using our imagination back then to imagine that the galaxy had a deep inner life, but today we can create thousands of characters doing their own thing while having a strong story focused on the player."

The most identifiable aspect of Star Control: Origins, and its most divisive, is the graphical style Stardock have employed. Wardell admits that plotting the right course in terms of the art direction has been a challenge, especially since fans remember the old games differently and thus have different expectations to how the new game should look. "I have had fans insist that the Star Control art was photorealistic for its time while others insist it was dark fantasy and others remembering it fondly as being like Hanna-Barbera." As for the new game, most liken it to Spore, favourably or not depending on whether you liked Will Wright's last game before he evolved into a higher being. Wardell hasn't been best pleased with the comparisons, but points out that Will Wright himself was heavily influenced by Star Control. "The new Star Control game is meant to be a natural continuation of the Star Control 2 look. That is, some of the aliens look cute and friendly and some are scary and horrible."

Unfortunately, the scariest things we've seen from Star Control have been between the two talented development teams fighting over its soul. Wardell revealing that Stardock have been discussing sliding the Galactic Civilizations over to Star Control's universe in some form probably won't help settle things down, but it suggests just how important Star Control is to Stardock as a publisher as much as it is to Wardell the Star Control fan. If both are able to deliver a game worthy of its predecessors, and in so doing bring their precursor creators on board as Star Control's true successor takes shape, not only can further legal entanglements can be avoided, space gaming can boast of a rare utopian meta-adventure built on compromise rather than conflict.

Make it so.
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
Patron
Joined
May 13, 2009
Messages
27,091
Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
To facilitate the creators' eventual return, Stardock renamed the original games, with the much maligned Star Control 3 (developed by Legend Entertainment, which would go on to make Unreal 2) spun out to an alternative universe from the classic Star Control 2 that Ford and Reiche wanted to return to. "This let us create Star Control: Origins on the concept of Star Control being a multiverse" says Wardell, "in which players reach other universes through the Origins - giant precursor structures that allow ships to travel to other universes." - a fudge, clearly, but perhaps necessary if two new Star Control games were to co-exist independently.

Three guesses why the Precursors themselves 'disappeared'.

e8a5w9s.gif
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
While they're going to take the fight over IP to court, development for Origins is going on: https://www.starcontrol.com/article/487303/star-control-february-2018---of-the-lexites

STAR CONTROL: FEBRUARY 2018 - OF THE LEXITES

The new Star Control is moving swiftly! We expect to release Fleet Battles Beta 2 within the next several weeks as most of our work is focused on the adventure game.

We have been listening to feedback from the fans and incorporated that feedback into the project.

For example, below is a screenshot which shows the updated home solar system:



Our home solar system


Similarly, the ships themselves have gotten the material system in early. Originally, this was going to be added later, but there was a great deal of concern that our art style was too cartoony. We just hadn’t implemented the material system into the game yet, since the game is still so far out from release. We’ve since begun to implement that and you can really see it now in game quite well.



The updated ships in-game


Fleet Battles BETA 2

During the course of the Fleet Battles beta we will be adding additional ships, arenas, and game mechanics. In particular, we are working on the concept of “scavenging”. The idea is that the arena will have things you can pick up that will help your fleet overall. In addition, some arenas have wormholes and ion storms in them, which present their own challenges. The target date for this is before the Game Developer’s Conference.


The Lexites

So we get a lot of questions from Star Control fans who want to know how Star Control: Origins fits in with the classic series from decades ago. Nothing makes that distinction more obvious than the Lexites. In the Origins universe, the Lexites were created by humans as strong-AI that chose to leave Earth. They weren’t slaves or robots. They left Earth stating to us that they could do us far more good “out there” than staying with us. Star Control was formed originally to find out where they went. However, before the program was even launched, more pressing events unfolded which found you in command of Earth’s only ship of any relevance.

Which brings us to a series of questions we get regularly asked:

Is Star Control: Origins going to have 4X elements like SC3 and 1?

No. Origins is an adventure/RPG game. You command your ship. However, because of the “living universe” element of the game, the player can have a great deal of effect on what happens in our area of space. That’s because unlike the traditional linear RPG, Star Control: Origins’s adventure is actually a “state machine”. State machines are very exciting for this style of game because it means we can create an adventure game with a strong story and a good narrative that also exists within a simulated universe. Many of us grew up on RPGs where there were scripted behaviors by NPCs that made the world feel alive. The idea of a state-machine based RPG is as old as Ultima IV. However, state machines require a lot of CPU and memory to properly implement (not “a lot” by today’s standards, but certainly by 1992/2002/2012 standards). Since we require a minimum of 4 CPU cores and a 64-bit PC, we get to have our cake and eat it, too.

Ultimately, our gameplay style will be similar to Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters, but exist within a living universe that you can choose to interact with as much (or little) as you like.


Is the universe random?

No. There is no random number generator in Star Control: Origins. Everything is determinative. What this means is that you do A, B, and C in the same order at the same time, another player will do A, B and C and get the same results. Why does this matter? Because we don’t want to “dumb down” the game, and letting players collaborate together online to solve some of the more challenging elements is part of our gameplay. The typical player will likely be able to, with some challenge, deal with the primary narrative. But, it’s a big universe out there. And we plan to also cater to those players who want extreme challenges in solving problems.

Star Control doesn’t have bread crumbs. We provide the information you’ve seen in your Captain’s Log so you don’t have to write that down. But that’s as far as it goes. We don’t have, “You must now go to this guy and talk to him in order to get the secret code.” There are many different paths available to accomplish things. And the reason we can get away with that is because we are counting on people working together, and that means every person out there is playing the exact same universe. It’s not a multiplayer game, it’s a massively single player game. If you ever played Planetfall or Zork you will understand what I am talking about.


What’s next?

So right now, we are really busy on the adventure game part. The Fleet battles is moving forward nicely. We did end up having to throw out the “bit strip” pilot stuff (we still will support them but our ships won’t use them) as, well, let’s just say, they don’t hold up super well. So back to the drawing board on that.



Fleet Battles continues to get love.


Feel free to comment and ask questions!
 

hpstg

Savant
Joined
Nov 14, 2014
Messages
485
Also the engine is the one from Ashes of the Singularity, so it should be very well optimized and run on anything on top.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Wardell on the art of storytelling in Star Control, and how Origins is up for the task: https://www.starcontrol.com/article/487769/star-controlthe-art-of-storytelling

They'll show off Adventure Studio, some kind of ambitious content authoring tool, at upcoming GDC.

STAR CONTROL - THE ART OF STORYTELLING

We live in an age where developers actually brag about creating random quests as if that’s a good thing.

In an age of gigabytes of memory the challenge isn’t in how many worlds you have, it is how to make those worlds compelling.

In Star Control: Origins, there are no random missions.

No episode of Star Trek ever ended with Captain Kirk receiving 14 Dilithium crystals for his troubles. Star Control is about telling stories in which you are the central character.

Each mission is designed to tell a story. While we don’t forbid missions from giving the player some sort of tangible reward, most of them simply alter the universe in some, subtle way. It is the journey, not the destination we care about.

Consider the popular HBO series, Westworld®. In that series, guests travel to Westworld and interact with “hosts” that are AI-driven beings with scripts. In no episode is it suggested that guests leave with some sort of monetary benefit. Instead, the world is designed for visitors to learn a little bit more about themselves.

While the central narrative (spoiler alert – not really) is that you must save the human race from certain annihilation, there is one way to accomplish that task. Far be it from us to get in the way of a voyage of self discovery. You have a goal (save all life on Earth from terrible murder aliens). How you do that is none of our business. We just hope you do it. You know, so that we don’t…well…die. Living is our favorite state of existence.

Building a rich, living universe

So you might ask yourself, if you’re not going to resort to randomly generated quests where the player does X to get Y, how are you going to have enough content to make the world feel truly alive?

The answer, my friends, is that you make it easy for creators to tell stories.

Consider for a moment the user interface presented in Westworld:



Now, to be fair, this system is far too complex for the authors we are seeking out to use. Our answer is Adventure Studo, a new major application we are working on. This app alone is as big as one of our major software projects. Its purpose is to make it possible for us to recruit Sci-Fi authors to easily create their own stories in Star Control.

Like many of you, we love to tell stories. Stories that don’t necessarily end with the protagonist gaining 5 quadroons of space-gold. And the way you make that happen is to make it easy for creators to do their thing.

At GDC, we’ll be showing off Adventure Studio. To my knowledge, no one has ever tried to do something like this (though I want to give props to the Never Winter Nights team for doing a lot of pioneering in this area).

Feel free to ask questions in the comments.

Bonus: random and not-so-random Wardell tweets:







 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Yes, the time is coming...:



Captain Wardell's log: https://www.stardock.com/games/article/487813/star-control-origins---my-trip-to-jupiter

Captain's Log: March 2, 2086…

There are 69 known moons of Jupiter.

Jupiter is the first planet we’re sending Star Control’s prototype ship to visit. Powered by the Darius Robotics Emdrive MK I, the prototype can get from Star Control command to Jupiter in a matter of days, rather than months. It is ironic that the prototype is powered by a drive made by Darius Robotics, given that Darius Erdmann is now gone, lost to the Lexites.



The prototype closes in on Jupiter, March 2086.

Some people have speculated that Jupiter was meant to be Sol’s twin in a binary star system. In reality, Jupiter is not even close to having enough mass to be a star. You would need at least 80 Jupiters to have a chance. Jupiter was chosen as our first test because of the various types of moons that will allow for a good measure of the lander’s capabilities.


Adrastea

The first moon we are visiting is Adrastea. It’s very small. It’s a Plutonic class world and was only discovered in 1979 by Voyager 2. Why this tiny world? For one thing, Plutonic class worlds are worlds that have not cleared out their orbit yet. That means that things tend to bang into them, which frequently results in some valuable minerals to be readily accessible. Secondly, it’s a very safe world.



Francium and Actinium are right on the surface.

Actinium is a very strange chemical element. It’s radioactive and reacts quickly with oxygen. Its presence means that there is no oxygen on the surface. Resources like Actinium are so rare on Earth that we don’t really use them. But any radioactive source can be extremely valuable for space exploration when found.

Now to find a landing zone and set down one of the three landers we keep aboard.



From the Adrastea, the sun isn’t strong enough to light the day



We pick up our valuable cargo and return to the orbit of Jupiter.

Io



Io is the most volcanically active body in our solar system.

Io will be the first real test of the new lander. Can it withstand the dangers of a world spitting out lava and other unpleasant things? Volcanic worlds such as this are very dangerous, but also are likely to have exotic chemicals near the surface.

The answer comes quickly: the destruction of our lander! Luckily, it was not a manned lander, but one controlled by an AI. Perhaps a human could have made it, but our first test indicates these worlds are probably too dangerous to visit.



Volcanic worlds are perilous



The return home

It took just over four days to return back to Earth. The loss of the lander was not completely unexpected and the data provided will allow the Star Control science team to develop new ways to make the landers deal with hostile environments.



While the desire to make use of the Emdrive is great and the mystery of the Lexites inviting, there is no current hurry to get out into our solar system. It’s not like there’s an impending alien invasion or something…
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Making of a planet: https://www.stardock.com/games/article/488103/star-control-so-you-want-to-build-a-planet

Star Control: So you want to build a planet?

In preparation for the Game Developer's Conference we wanted to put a polish pass on the planets in Star Control: Origins.

There's about 3,000 unique planets that are split into roughly 75 different classes. Each class of planet has its own challenges as well as its own mineral deposits that you might want to collect (along with ruins, cities, smugglers, creatures, etc.).

Today, I'm going to walk you through how we create our planet classes.

Unique, Procedural and Hand-Crafted

You can't hand craft 3,500 planets. And it would not be a good thing for every plan class to be the same. So how do we solve this? Through a mixture of procedural generation and designer balance. And this gets me up to "Programmer art" level.

The Primordial world

One of the planet classes is known as a Primordial world. These are worlds that are still simmering with active volcanoes and have a variety of minerals and occasionally have life.

A humble beginning

GJHyrUd7DNIVsi6FHs7--yTAL6-A4zB2aQuRqWr-wzP7eLllcmPJVZhsJvpSO4tXfjLBEHr1Qi5cljUlJfqWPBxAIsBOd_4Inh0vysSrUENqB9Apm2ZfoedNfIk-VSZNagGA43YE


Yea...not so pretty



But that's ok. We can fix all that.



We start with our planet template which is called...wait for it...Primordial. This file refers to materials (what thinks look like) and stamps (what things are shaped like).

In the game they're located here:

  1. In assets\PlanetTemplate are the types for every planet

  2. In assets\Terrain is the default.terrainmaterial set.

  3. In assets\Stamplists are the stamplists available

  4. In assets\Stamps are the stamps the stamplists use.
Setting it up

From my Primoridal planet template I set up the stats and choose my stamp list. The stamp list is a series of stamps with weighting on them that helps determine the odds of a given stamp being chosen for a particular planet at a particular time. This way, every planet looks different.

Choose our stamps and weights

Now that I've set up my stats (the weather, what minerals are likely to show up, odds of life, temperature, gravity, etc.) I now choose what stamps will be on there. Now the fun starts.

Code: xml
  1. <stamplist>
  2. <stamp asset="Mountain01_Basev05" weight="1" />
  3. <stamp asset="TextureVariation_Grass" weight="1" />
  4. <stamp asset="TextureVariation_Flowersv1" weight="1" />
  5. <stamp asset="ForestA_v1" weight="1" />
  6. <stamp asset="Volcano01_Basev01" weight="1" />
  7. <stamp asset="Hill01_WispyRockv01v02" weight="1" />
  8. </stamplist>

That's just me picking 6 stamps and putting them up. Just curious what that will do. I hit F5 on the planet and...

Q-taB4Es-JzVcaWqF3qQiMAn-h8y6H4C_XD1lrSypebUkP5gSyFsBk7xhL5vXD4mZHB4RfK-QOTYob00C7UkqKLUlsFcrLNlLiS_2WpwtiBDPp0CVEWU7Gkztr04nsIim0KQcPch


Mmmm. Bumpy.



Trial and Error

Over the next several minutes I pick various other stamps and end up with this:


Code: xml
  1. <stamp asset="ForestA_v1" weight="1" />
  2. <stamp asset="ForestA_v2" weight="1" />
  3. <stamp asset="CanyonCap01_Basev01" weight="1" />
  4. <stamp asset="CanyonOpen01_Basev01" weight="1" />
  5. <stamp asset="CanyonStraight01_Basev01" weight="1" />

gDy_SjA_2Dzr74DAf8li4qE6yV9kjOzJ0FK98HUhOxIR_ucE6djTS1R5BMnFOklFyPkvDYm--30-1LhNKfMOifmOf_Y67BjkjXG3uZFbwar8TG07FNVDrHOeFuVzlhKwd7XOqmpY


Time for some atmosphere

Back in the planet template file I can set up my atmosphere. Basically it's what color is it, how transparent it is, and how thick is it.



Final Result

pnPUx4wGnMlo69b0Plv8vmiay1tK_f6OwiHZG349edPHBgHKYaXSy2-suGQwE_6Tz3Y4UbMzNaTIyhtnJLPoJAllSdQqa_IicnX-6hPDml313luKuHDDrDK9ml7gRH41zskeb7UC


My Primordial planet



Now it's ready to leave the designer's "programmer art" state and move to the artists for further polishing and iteration over the months.

Now this is just one class of planet. Each planet of this class will be different. But you can also create specific, individual planets if you'd like that look like anything you want.

I suspect there will be a big library of planet classes made by fans (As well as specific planets) that will easily blow away my quick work here or even the final effort based on what I've seen people do in other games.

Feel free to ask any questions.


And about the universe (or multiverse) that contains all those planets: https://forums.starcontrol.com/488067/star-control-the-multiverse-thread

Get ready for official Stargate or Babylon 5 expansion, I guess?

Star Control: The Multiverse thread

In the prime Star Control universe (Origins) the Star Control project was formed to find out what happened to the post-singularity species, the Lexites after they left Earth.

Star Control: Origins represents the third universe that players have been able to adventure in.

Let's recap:

Star Control 1/2:
Year: 2120s and on:

Earth is fighting a losing war with its allies, the Alliance of Free Stars against the Ur-Quan Hierarchy. In Star Control 2, the player is the captain of a Precursor vessel that must find a way to bring the defeated allies together and stop the Kohr-Ah, the Ur-Quan's sibling species, from annihilation all life in this area of space.

Star Control 3:
Year: 2120s and on:
In this alternative universe, the Alliance of Free Stars won the war against the Hierarchy but at the cost of destroying Hyperspace as we know it. Now, a new enemy arises who thrives on a universe without Hyperspace and you must save the day. This is our retcon so that we can make clear that Star Control I/II and III are in different universes. Thus, if the story from Star Control II is continued in the future, it can be done so while easily ignoring the events of III.

Star Control: Origins
Year: 2088:
Earth's radio signals have been detected by the malevolent Scryve Empire who dominate our area of space. They see the potential in humanity and wish to obliterate the humans before they reach their potential. You must find a way to stop the Scryve before they discover the location of Earth. Good luck though as the humans of 2086 are about as ready to handle this as...well, what you'd expect the humans of 2088.


---

Each of the 3 universes have important differences.

Star Control I/II is the beloved classic released by Accolade 25 years ago.

Star Control III is...less beloved (also released by Accolade) around 20 years ago.

Most people (90%) won't be familiar with the classic games which is another reason why Star Control: Origins has a clean start.

Here is one fact we can reveal:

In Star Control: Origins there was no Sentient Milieu like there was in the backstory for Star Control 2. Thus, all the species evolved very differently than they might have done so.

In Origins, a powerful empire known as the Scryve grew to dominate our area of space around 8,000 years ago after overthrowing the "Faction of Eight" who are no longer in this area of space. We don't know who the faction of 8 are or what role the Origins (the multi-dimensional gateways) had in helping the Scryve against the Faction of Eight.

Feel free to comment or ask questions in this thread.

---

Our position on what species we will include has changed for obvious reasons.

Because of the differing histories of each universe, the Ur-Quan, Spathi, etc. of the Origins universe will have have a very different set of experiences.

The initial release of Origins takes place in 2088 so you are not going to be running into those particular aliens. But by 2110s as the player's map expands beyond the initial 40x40 parsec area, you can expect to run aliens associated with the earlier Star Control games.

No Sentient Millieu means a lot of things have changed. The Star Control: Origins map is based on the Prime universe (i.e. "the real world") positions of stars. So the locations of various aliens remains to be seen.

Re universes vs. the Prime universe

There is no single universe. It's a multiverse. The prime universe (Origins) is the one that contains the Precursor Origins gates which allow travel to other universes as well.

Our area of space, for the base game, is a 40x40 parsec block. To put that number into perspective, the Milky Way galaxy alone has a diameter of 30,000 parsecs.

We refer to the Origins universe as the prime universe because it is the only one, that we know of, that you can travel to other universes from.

This allows us to tell a lot more stories and allows players to create and their their own alternative fan universes with each other.

How Universes work with the game:

At the start of the game, you initially have just 1 universe: Origins. But there's an "Add Universe" button on the screen where you can add additional universes created either by us or fans.

From a lore point of view, you are able to take YOUR ship to these other universes via the multi-dimensional gateway known as an Origin. Origins were built by the Precursors long ago before they disappeared.

Officially, Star Control has hosted 3 universes:
  1. The Ur-Quan universe (Star Control 1/2)
  2. The Kessari universe (Star Control 3)
  3. The Prime universe (Star Control: Origins)
Each universe has its own history.

Stardock doesn't own the universe we call the Ur-Quan Universe. That's presumably owned by Paul and Fred who developed the first two games for Accolade. Stardock does own the Kessari universe but...we're not planning to extend it but rather release the source code at some point to the fan community.

Now, for the Prime universe, let's use a TV analogy:

Season 1: The Scryve Conflict (this is what we will ship this year)

Season 2: Tentatively called "Inquisition". This will ship post-release as an expansion. It expands the 40x40 (160) parsec map to 50x50 (250) and players can expect to begin running into other aliens associated with Star Control (fans can probably guess).

Each season will introduce the player to new aliens, new characters, and new adventures as the map gets bigger and bigger.

These seasons all exist within the Prime universe.

However, we also are planning to license other universes. Obviously, we had hoped to license the universe Paul and Fred say they own and that's not looking promising right now. But other universes that could be licensed are like the ones you mentioned (B5, Stargate, etc.).
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
But by 2110s as the player's map expands beyond the initial 40x40 parsec area, you can expect to run aliens associated with the earlier Star Control games.

Good luck with that!
 

Frogboy

Stardock
Developer
Joined
Jun 10, 2009
Messages
86
Location
Michigan
BTW, I'm still lurking.

I've been on the planet creation stuff like crazy.

So as mentioned, you can create your own unique planet.

But there are bunch of planet classes as well.

03.20.2018-23.07.png


This is just up to S (sorry, lame screenshot).

I suspect players will end up creating some interesting stuff.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Can't embed it here: https://www.pcgamer.com/see-two-min...origins-gameplay-in-an-exclusive-new-trailer/

See two minutes of Star Control: Origins gameplay in an exclusive new trailer
The video showcases interstellar travel and alien weirdos.

The original Star Control, developed by Toys for Bob and published by Accolade, was released in 1990, followed by Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters in 1992 and the largely forgettable Star Control 3, by Legend Entertainment, in 1996. And that was the end of it until 2013, when Stardock announced that a reboot was in the works, officially revealed in 2016 as Star Control: Origins.

Origins is a prequel, set long before the events of the first games, when humanity was just beginning its journey to the stars. At that point in its history the human race only has one interplanetary exploration vessel, and it doesn't even have FTL capabilities when the game begins. That situation will presumably change fairly early on, however, as you'll be traveling to other star systems to explore alien worlds and meet the weirdos who live on them—not the sort of thing you can do with conventional engines.

The "the heart of the game" is the stories it tells in both the overall arc and "one-off adventures," Stardock said. "You aren’t exploring for the sake of exploring. You have a purpose and your actions will have profound consequences across the known galaxy."

A Fleet Battles beta demonstrating the game's outer space combat has been available to people who preorder the game for a while now, and Stardock expects to have a second beta ready to go by the end of April. But the new trailer makes it clear that there's a lot more to the game than simply blowing up bad guys—exploration, discovery, and character interactions are what made the originals so great, and Origins appears to be following the same path.

During the development of Origins, Stardock has been involved in a legal disputewith Star Control creators Fred Ford and Paul Reiche. Ford and Reiche assert that they hold the rights to Star Control and are marketing their new game, Ghosts of the Precursors, as a direct sequel to Star Control 2; Stardock says that it acquired the rights and assets to the series from Atari in 2013 (Atari acquired Accolade in 1999) and that the Toys for Bob campaign is causing confusion with Star Control: Origins.

So far, neither side has shown a public inclination to settle; in March, Reiche and Ford went public with the terms of its settlement offer to Stardock, which was rejected, at dogarandkazon.com. Stardock maintains its own lawsuit Q&A on the Star Control forums. Both games are still in development.

Star Control: Origins doesn't currently have a release date, but it's available for prepurchase on Steam and expected to be out later this year. More info is available at starcontrol.com.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
https://www.stardock.com/games/article/488324/star-control-april-2018

Star Control: April 2018



Check out a brand new Star Control preview trailer


We’ve got less than half a year left before Star Control: Origins is set to release. So much is happening!

Before I get into this month’s updates, here’s a bunch of answers to questions:

What is Star Control?

Star Control is a space adventure game where you are the captain of a starship exploring the cosmos, meeting aliens, landing on planets, engaging in battles in space and on land, and frequently saving the universe from all manner of threats in the course of your adventures.

What is the setting of Star Control: Origins?

We start in the year 2088 with you as the captain of Earth’s first and only interplanetary exploration ship. We humans don’t yet have FTL technology, but as the plot of Origins begins, things start getting very interesting very fast.

What’s been happening here at Stardock this month?

This month we are getting pretty close to BETA 2 of the Fleet Battles beta that you can currently get on Steam (pre-ordering Star Control: Origins let’s you try out the Fleet Battles feature).



BETA 2 introduces new ships, animated pilots

How is Star Control different from GalCiv or Sins?

Most of you reading this are probably coming from the Galactic Civilizations or Sins of a Solar Empire groups. In those games, you are controlling an entire civilization. In Star Control, you are responsible for a single fleet traveling throughout our region of space.



Our home solar system

So your ship does travel to other star systems.



Hyperspace



Investigating a crashed ship on a planet

The heart of the game is in the stories. To stretch an analogy to its limits, if Star Control were a TV show, you’d have your overall story arc plus lots and lots of one-off adventures. You aren’t exploring for the sake of exploring. You have a purpose and your actions will have profound consequences across the known galaxy.



Meeting aliens

Thus when you meet a new species, your actions will help shape how things go for you and your crew.

So where GalCiv and Sins are strategy games, Star Control most definitely is not. What specific genre it is in…is challenging. It is a role playing game – you are pretty free to act out however you want. You can be the good guy or a villain or somewhere in between.
Next up

By the end of this month, we should have BETA 2 of Fleet Battles up. In the meantime, here are additional places you can interact with us:

Stay tuned and ask any questions you’d like here!
 
Joined
Feb 20, 2018
Messages
999
I'm actually interested in this. Probably won't be as good as SC II and the writing is in danger of entering the cringe zone though. But the core loop is there. Shame about the art style though.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom