STAR CONTROL®

Origins

By

Brad Wardell
Executive Producer

February 2017

[NON-DISCLOSURE IN EFFECT]

I’M LATE! I’M LATE!

For many of you, this is the newsletter you’ve been waiting for. It’s going to talk about the game itself. A
lot.

I just got back from the Game Developer’s Conference. That’s why this issue is late. It was a great time
and reaffirmed much of the design decisions in Star Control we’ve made. So without further delay, let’s talk about
that.

WHAT IS STAR CONTROL?

There is going to be a lot of arguing about this because there are plenty of fans who believe that Star
Control is the story about the humans and their involvement in the Ur-Quan conflict which includes such amazing
characters like the Spathi, the Vux, the Orz and so forth.

What I would tell you is that Star Control is an infinite action adventure game that is set in a multiverse
that is a gateway to infinite stories which includes the Ur-Quan Conflict.

In fact, I will tell you that the Ur-Quan conflict (Star Control 1 and 2), Hegemonic conflict (Star Control 3)
and Origins all exist within 3 different universes within Star Control. Why is this important?

For Star Control: Origins to be successful it has to become a portal to endless numbers of adventures
created by us and fans. This is because traditional adventure games and, to a lesser extent, RPGs, suffer from
finite player engagement. That isn’t to say we don’t love RPGs and adventure games. What I am saying is that
those games are very popular when they first come out and then people finish the game and put it away.

Our goal for Star Control: Origins is for it to be one of the most-played games every day indefinitely. That
means we still have to have a compelling, killer story but it also means we have to set the stage for infinite other
stories to be created.
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 MOST PLAYED STEAM GA MES RIGHT NOW
1. Counterstrike
2. Dota 2
3. ARK
4. Team Fortress
5. Grand Theft Auto
6. Civilization V
7. Civilization VI
8. Terraria
9. Garry’s Mod
10. Rust

What do they all have in common? Infinite replayability.

HOW WOULD WE HAVE MADE STAR CLASSIC TODAY?

If we had a time machine and were reintroducing the original Star Control today it
would have gone something like this:

Your menu would be:

But when you hit New Game you would have seen this:

Multiverse Gateway: Choose Universe

 Ur-Quan Masters

With a button that says: Add Universes.

Clicking on “Add Universes” would open a dialog that would display additional universes:

 Favorite Sci-Fi Universe

 Sins of a Solar Empire Universe
 GalCiv Universe
 Favorite Sci-Fi Universe 2
 Space Cow Universe
 You shouldn’t have eaten that Universe
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Now, when we first designed Star Control: Origins, the popular TV show, Rick & Morty didn’t exist. But needless to
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say, the general awesomeness of that show and it’s popularity have only validated that this approach makes sense.
 Figure 1: There's an infinite number of universes, Morty!

Thus, when Star Control: Origins ships, picking a new game will still list the Origins story as its default. But you will
be able to add other universes via Steam or GOG that were created by us or others.

BACK TO THE QUESTION : THEN WHAT IS STAR CONTROL?

Star Control is an infinite action adventure game that is made up of 4 distinct elements:

1. The adventure game

2. The space exploration game
3. The super melee combat game
4. The planet exploration game.

Thus, our job isn’t to just make a compelling game with awesome story to bring millions of gamers to Star
Control. It also includes providing features that makes it super fun to create new universes to share.
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 SUPER MELEE

This past month we began to hand out a few copies of the Super Melee game to Founders. Mainly we
wanted to find out if it even worked outside our testing environment. Right now, Stardock’s main QA lab is
focused on Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade and an unannounced new game coming out later this year. Since Star
Control won’t be coming out until after those games, we don’t get a lot of QA resources.

Now, to be sure, I don’t find Super Melee fun yet. We have a lot of balance work. The next set will be
going out to a few more Founders shortly to help test the multiplayer. We are biased in favor of founders who are
technical enough to mod the game so that they can provide more actionable feedback on the balance (i.e. by
messing with the ships themselves).

Here’s what it looks like when building a fleet:

And below is how a battle goes.

Right now, it still needs a lot of work including:

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1. You can’t currently pick your next ship after the current one dies.
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2. Many of the ship features suuuuuccckkkk (but were awesome on paper)

 3. The camera can be funky.
4. The sound effects are still…pretty basic.
5. I really don’t like the solid green bar for crew.

The next step is to get about 30 keys out to select Founders and then once they give the ok hand it out to
around 75 active founders (i.e. active on the forums, people who can provide useful, meaningful, feedback). We
will be moving to a chat area for more rapid discussion. We have a general Skype channel right now.
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 THE GAME

There has been some discussion on how the story will play out. We don’t want to give away too much but
since so much focus will be put on nailing the first hour, it is our intent to get the first hour of gameplay out to you
as soon as possible.

THE STORY

The year is 2090. Tuesday. You’re having a great day until Mars explodes eliminating the Martian colony
with over 25,000 inhabitants. The humans on earth scramble to create an exploratory vessel to find out what
happened. You are The Captain assigned to discover what has happened.

Shortly after launch, a signal is detected emanating from Triton, a moon of Neptune. Could they be the
ones responsible? The human ship, equipped with nuclear weapons, is ready to fight if necessary, orbits Triton and
sends down a lander only to find a strange but very friendly alien whose ship was shot down while trying to reach
Earth to warn them.

This alien, a member of a species called the Tywom, was assigned to watch over the Earthlings ever since
their radio broadcasts were picked up. Another alien race, called the Scryve, had determined that the humans
were too dangerous and asked the Tywom which planet the Earthlings were located on. The Tywom told them the
4th planet from the sun in the hopes of saving the humans. The Scryve then dispatched a planet killer to the Sol
system to destroy the humans on the 4th planet (which was Mars).

The Tywom, inform The Captain that it won’t take long for the Scryve to realize their mistake and send
another planet killer, this time for Earth. The tell the humans to be on the lookout for a Scryve probe that will
soon arrive to follow-up. The player must destroy this probe before it finds Earth. Also, the Tywom agree to help
The Captain if they can find and bring back the missing parts of the Tywom’s ship that were scattered across the
solar system.

Upon leaving the surface of the planet, the player sees a Scryve probe ship slowly moving from planet the
planet. The player must engage it and destroy it before it reaches Earth (if it reaches Earth, the game goes to cut
scene showing the Earth being destroyed ending the game). In addition, the player must land on the various
moons in Earth’s solar system to find the missing pieces, gather up some resources and get them back to the
Tywom.

Upon destroying the Scryve probe and returning the missing pieces, the grateful Tywom share one of their
Hyperdrive pods with The Captain. Upon returning to the Earth’s starbase, the player learns how to connect the
ungainly Hyperdrive module to the Earthling prototype ship. The ship looks ridiculous but can now leave the solar
system.

From here, the player must go out and begin finding allies to help bring down the Scryve before they
destroy earth.

Little do the humans know is that the Scryve, who are quite evil, are driven by something far far worse.
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 THE CREATURES

The Star Control: Origins universe contains a variety of aliens.

When we generate a galaxy, we spawn planets and those planets have a life frequency. If the life frequency is >0
we then go through the list of creatures and which creatures will be on the planet based on the rarity of the
creature and whether that creature can be placed on that world.

In base Origins we have 5 creature types:

1. Wandering Therapods
2. Wandering Snugglers
3. Wandering Larat Beetles that charge when disturbed
4. Wandering Yirams that spit at nearby targets
5. Stationary Huthims that come out of their holes and spit at their targets.

Figure 2: The Therapod family: Wanders

Figure 3: Snugglers: Wanderers

Figure 4: Wanders, Charges

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Figure 5: Wanders, Spits

 Figure 6: Trap Family

Over time, we will be adding more and more creatures. It’s basically a matter of how much we can put into the
game without it slowing things down.
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 THE PLANETS

Star Control: Origins features 9 classes of planets each of various rarity and each affected by the star type.

The ones we are absolutely committed to having in the shipping game are:

1. Volcanic
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2. Crystaline
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3. Barren
 4. Gaia
5. Desert
6. Ice
7. Rainbow

Treasure and Toxic remain to be seen.

THE ADVENTURE EDITOR

You already have this.

But it will become more important when you can use it with the other tools to create your own adventures.
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 PLANET EXPLORATION

The planet will select a default drop location when the player enters orbit. However, should the planet surface
appear to have storms or other dangers at that location, the player can move the drop zone to a different location.

Once the drop zone is chosen, the player can then launch their lander which, as guided by the player, will attempt
to land at the drop zone. The higher the gravity, the faster the ship will drop. The worse the storms, the more the
lander will get blown in a random direction off course if the player isn’t careful.

Upon setting down, the UI elements sweep away to reveal slightly different view.

1. The player info window sweeps out and a lander info window sweeps in.
2. The planet data window sweeps out and the planet resource table sweeps in.
3. The launch button remains.
4. A surface radar sweeps in from the right.

LANDER INFO
The Lander info displays the following items:

1. Lander HP (100 default)

2. Boost
3. Cargo Space

LANDER GAMEPLAY
The lander zips across the surface of the planet trying to acquire resources, artifacts (ship bonuses) and quest
locations. The gameplay should feel like an arcade game similar to Super Mario Galaxy.
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If the planet encounters a question location, the alien dialog view comes up.
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 OBSTACLES
There are 3 types of obstacles on a given planet:

1. Volcanos
2. Storms
3. Biologicals

Volcanos can be active or inactive. If they are inactive, the player is safe provided they don’t actually ride on top of
one. If it is active, blobs of lava will shoot out the top which, if it lands on the lander does 50 points of damage.

Storms come in various levels of severity. Lightning can strike doing up to 25 points of damage to the lander.

Biologicals are the various creatures that live on the planet. One of the appendices goes into more detail on the
creatures but there are 4 basic types that come with the game:

1. Wanderers
2. Chargers
3. Spitters
4. Trappers

Wanderers are simply creatures walking across the world who do no damage unless you literally run into them.

Chargers are wanderers that will chase after the lander if the player gets too near it.

Spitters are wanderers that will spit acid at the lander if it gets too near it.

Trappers are stationary and only attack, suddenly and violently, if the player goes over its subtle surface.

RESOURCES
Across planets there are up to 8 different types of resources. One of the appendices goes into greater detail but
they include:

1. Common elements
2. Exotic elements
3. Precious metals
4. Radioactive elements
5. Rare Earth elements
6. Corrosive Gases
7. Noble Gasses
8. Biologicals

The last one is a tiny, cute, wandering creature that can be picked up by intersecting with it.

These resources should be fun to get with a cool sound effect for each class and a little Nintendo-like feeling when
you grab one.
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 STARBASES

One big difference from Star Control 2 is that there are starbases you can visit to outfit your ship. Starbases also
allow for fast-travel between them (once you know the existence of one, you can instantly travel to any other you
know of).

The Starbases are run by Precursor Droids.

BUY/SELL/EQUIP
On the left side there are 3 tabs: Buy, Sell, Equip which defaults to “Buy”. Selected items display basic info in the
Selected Part Info window at the bottom of the screen.

BUY
A given item will display what it costs to buy it. If the player does not have the purchase price, the item is grayed
out and the RU (money) number required of that resource set to red text.

If the player buys the target item, it goes into the player’s inventory.

SELL
When the player selects the Sell tab, the player’s inventory is displayed. Players may only sell items in their
inventory (not resources) and receive 50% of the item’s value in resources. The item then goes into the Starbases’s
inventory.

EQUIP
If the Equip tab is displayed, the inventory is displayed minus the items already equipped.

When the player selects an item, any free hardpoints applicable to that item on Flag Ship Diagram are highlighted
and a caption is displayed on screen (click on the hard-point you want to attach the component to). If the player
then selected a highlighted hard point, the item is equipped and the player info updated.

SELECTED PART INFO WINDOW

At the bottom is the selected part info. This window displays the following:

1. Name of the part

2. Brief description of part
3. Icon representing what the part does with a number on top of it to indicate the amount or level it adds.

FLAG SHIP DIAGRAM

On the right side of the screen is the flag-ship diagram.

At the beginning of the game, the player’s ship should look very primitive and have only two components:

1. Nuclear Missile System

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2. Point Defense System

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 A ship may only have two weapon components.

Other component types include:

1. Weapons [Limited to 2]
2. Crew Modules (increase crew count)
3. Energy Modules (increases energy)
4. Thrusters (increases Super Melee speed)
5. Inertial Dampeners (slows the ship down in super melee)
6. Fuel Storage (increases max fuel)
7. Lander Bay (increases the max number of Landers you can store)
8. Equipment Storage (increases the max number of bonuses you can carry) [Default: 3,
9. Extender (Adds more hard points to the ship, let’s player customize ship)
10. Superior Hyperdrive [Limited to 1] (replaces Base Hyperdrive the player starts with, increases Hyperspace
Speed by 20%.

Bonuses that players can purchase include:

1. Lander Thermal Protection (Reduces heat damage from planets by 1)

2. Lander Air Filtration (Reduces Toxic damage from planets by 1)
3. Lander Weapon Guidance (lander’s primary weapon gains +1 guidance)
4. Lander Booster (increase lander’s jump by +1)
5. Noise Dampener (reduces lander’s threat radius by 1)
6. Lander Armor (increases lander HP by 5)
7. Reactor Upgrade (increases weapon damage by 10%)

STARBASE INVENTORY LIMITATIONS

We will have 1 Starbase for every 100 stars in our galaxy. In Origins, that means there will be 9.

We will control what items a merchant has and how many of them they have in order to keep the game balanced.
In addition, we will sprinkle other items across the various planets.
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 UNIVERSE MAKER

So much of our effort has been put into the underlying technology to build Star Control. This has taken a lot longer
than I had originally expected. A big part of this has been having to make tools to make tools to make other tools
that wasn’t originally scheduled for.

The Universe Maker has to provide the means to handle all 5 elements below.

Super Melee Planet Explorer

Adventure Mode

Starbase Commander Alien Dialog

1. Adventure Maker (you already have that)

2. Shipyard (a tool that lets you design and share your own ships that you will be able to play with in Super
Melee)
3. Planet Explorer (The Planet Builder let’s us create maps that are then shaped around spheres).
4. Alien Dialog. Now for this, you’ll be able to use PNG or video files for your aliens. We won’t have a tool at
ship that lets you create our procedurally generated aliens.
5. The Stellar Cartography tool is what lets you design up your own galactic maps and share them.
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 EXPECTATIONS AND SCHEDULES

The specifications for Star Control: Origins have a lot of conflicting goals. For example, we want the game to run a
1 GB video card but we also want it to support Vulkan and DirectX 12 for future proofing. That is really, really hard.

We are also building a lot of tools that haven’t really been done before which, again, is really really hard.

So let’s walk through what our schedule is and set some expectations on what we are looking to get out of the
Founder’s program and hope that you are looking for the same:

March 2017
Super Melee given out to more Founders

April 2017
Super Melee given out to Active Founders who are technical.

May 2017
Solar System exploration given out to select Founders who are technical.

June 2017
Solar System exploration given out to active Founders who are technical.

By this point, we only expect around 100 founders to have it in any form. You’re not missing out on “fun” unless
you consider debugging, tweaking XML, and bugginess to be fun (which I do but I’m crazy).

Summer 2017
This is where we start handing out tools. We want people to be able to create their own universe with their own
aliens and ships. Our favorite adventures will be the ones that go out to the larger Founder group this Fall (i.e.
1000 founders).
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 CONCEPT ART FOR YOUR ENJOYMENT
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