Founder’s Journal

Brad Wardell
Executive Producer & Designer

May 2018
1
Page
 TOPICS

1. Status Report
2. Star Control: Origins – Chapter 1 Beta
3. Scheduling
2
Page
 STATUS REPORT
Greetings! Counting this entry, I expect there to only be five more of these before release.

Please make sure you visit us at the exclusive Founder’s Starbase:

https://forums.starcontrol.com/forum/1145

Also we have started the Facebook group:

https://www.facebook.com/officialstarcontrol/

So let’s walk through the entire game…

A gazillion years ago we discussed that for us, Star Control is a space RPG made up of the following features:

1. Solar System exploration

2. Planetary exploration
3. Hyperspace navigation
4. Ship upgrading
5. Alien Communication
6. Ship Combat
7. An over-arching deep story

What makes Star Control so tough to do is that if you fail at any of those 6 things, the entire game fails. And many of these features are so different
than the others that it’s like making multiple games in one.

So ow we doing?
3
Page
 SOLAR SYSTEM

The Solar System exploration has come a long way. We’re pretty happy where it is now and would say it’s now “release level”. There’s still more
polish and iteration to come but it’s ready to go.
4
Page
 PLANET EXPLORATION

We are getting very close on this part. We have our hazards in now. We have critters in. There are something like 70 different planet classes (with
more being added). The planets are reasonably balanced.
5
Page
 Planet exploration is fun but it isn’t done yet. For one thing, objects on the planets don’t cast shadows.
6
Page
 You really notice that there’s no shadows when you have trees or other tall things that are in the day light.
7
Page
 Shadows are our next big effort.

We also are building up on “props” (things on planets) as fast as we can. It’s tricky though because we have dozens of different planet environments
and even though we have a very powerful custom engine for Star Control, it’s not magic. We have a simple trade off: Keep planets reasonably
uncluttered or have a lengthy loading screen for every planet.
8
Page
 And since players can expect to visit lots of planets quickly:
9
Page
 As in, within seconds of each other, loading screens are bad news.
10
Page
Page
11
Page
12
 Another part of planet exploration is how long should it take. How big should these planets be?
13
Page
 If you zoom out, you can see that the planets are abstracted to not be “true size”. We started out with much, much bigger planets and slowly came
down to the size we have now because it would take 15 minutes to get the resources and try doing that for hours.
14
Page
 Given that a decent chunk of your time is spent on planets, we opted to focus on making them as interesting and rewarding as we could even if it
meant bending realism a bit (we have planets made of emeralds).
15
Page
 HYPERSPACE NAVIGATION

This part of the game is ready to go. The speed in which your ships travel, the distance of stars, the presentation are all going really well.
16
Page
 Moreover, you can type in a star and auto pilot to it. You can zoom in and out (I’m zoomed in to prevent spoilers). Territorial lines change and
move based on galactic events and you can even see other ships on the map if your sensors are strong enough.
17
Page
 SHIP UPGRADING
In Star Control, your ship is your character.
18

Your ship has cargo of course but it also has inventory.

Page
 You can also upgrade your ship in lots of various ways and you can recruit a command crew. We’re not quite done with this (we need more art and
more modules) but it’s basically done.

The Captain’s Log is something we think you’ll like (I’m not going to show it for spoiler reasons). There is no list of “quests”. When things happen, it
19

gets noted in your log. We do want to make it so that you can add your own notes but I can’t promise that will make it in before release given how
open ended that sort of feature can get (and in practice, it hasn’t really come up as something that would be as useful as it sounds on paper).
Page
 You do most of your upgrading at the Precursor starbases. But they’re not the only places you can upgrade. They’re just the only permanent
hyperspace locations.
20
Page
 When acquire minerals on planets, you can sell them for resource units (RUs). RUs are the standard currency of the universe and let you acquire all
kinds of things from mercenary services to fuel.
21
Page
 Different locations sell different things. Originally, we had it where only certain starbases had a given piece of equipment and if you wanted that
equipment, you needed to go back to that specific one.

So for example, if you ran into a Melnorme trader, he might have a special part for your lander but only he would have it. As we’ve been playing,
22

we’ve slowly migrated to the thinking that meeting a given trader or starbase or what have you unlocks that item for sale and that you can buy it
Page
 from wherever. It isn’t “realistic” but the it can take a very long time to travel around and not entirely fun to have to travel 20 minutes (in real
minutes) just to find that one guy who sells the lander filter you want.

The last thing you do at these starbases are Hypergate. Now, only the Precursor starbases have Hypergates and there’s only a handful of them
23

(seriously, like 8 or 9). They will teleport you to any other one but since there’s only a few in entire sector, you will still be traveling the good old
fashioned way a lot.
Page
 ALIEN COMMUNICATION
We have quite a cast of characters for Star Control: Origins. However, this part of the game is not yet quite done.

Without getting into spoiler territory here is our cast of major species in Star Control: Origins

Character Status
Commander Hayes (Human) Complete
Wymdoo (Tywom) Complete
Grist (Drakend) Complete
Drakend Troooper Complete
Pinthi (species) Complete
Bloa (Mukay) Complete
Mukay (species) Complete
Mowlings (species) Almost…done..
Dr. Varroa (Pinthi) Complete
Phamyst (species) Almost done…
Menkmack (species) Complete
Engineer Slyder (Menkmack) In progress
Trandals (species) In progress
Scryve (species) Almost…done…
Xraki (species) In progress
Tywom Scout (generic Tywom guy) Complete
Tywom Councilman Complete
Jeff In progress
24

Precursor AI Complete
Page

At this stage, it’s mostly art and presentation.

 Here’s a few of them. The presentation is being updated. We have a lot of font work to do (right now, they all use one font) and the UX is being
updated to be more of a view screen.
25

MINOR CHARACTERS
Page

Then there is the case of the minor characters.

 Since we wanted to fill the universe up with lots of ships and aliens, we had to come up with a way to have conversations that weren’t full-on leader
scenes given the time it takes to create those. Minor characters are presented just via their thumbnail.

This alien is part of a species known as the Norast. One nice benefit of this system is that it allows players to create their own universes much more
easily since they could, if they want, have all conversations use this system where they only need to supply the character thumbnail.
26
Page
 SHIP COMBAT
We are pretty happy with how the ship combat has come out. While we are continuously improving it, we are hopeful that you will like it as much as
we do.

Besides the fact you can design your own ships and play them in multiplayer, we have a lot of new elements in Fleet Battles that extend the Space
Wars formula from the classic Star Control games in ways we think you’ll like.

• Scavenging. The battle arenas are littered with scavengable parts that when collected give your entire fleet an advantage for the rest of the
battle.
• Wormholes. Entering one will teleport you to the other. Very useful when trying to escale.
• Magnetic Storms. Fly through one and you quickly lose all your energy.
27
Page
 There is still more work to be done here on polish, portraits, crafting but the combat is fun and in the adventure, you will run into lots and lots of
different ships with interesting abilities. Each species is no longer represented by a single ship. Instead, they have a full complement of ship classes
from scout to capital ships out there that you may come across.
28
Page
 THE STORY

This is a partial map of the milky way galaxy. The yellow circle are all the stars that you are capable of seeing with your naked eye. The tiny red box
is the Scryve sector which is where the entire of our initial story gets told. Despite there being several hundred stars and being 140 light years
across, the Scryve sector is just a small piece of a much larger story.
29

THE BACKGROUND LORE

Page
 We won’t discuss the overall, story other than to say that while Star Control: Origins is a self-contained, 20+ hour game, it also exists within a much
wider universe that we’ve been working on for a very long time. The prequel book, Dawn of the Singularity, takes place in the near future and helps
give clues to the rise of the Lexites.

THE BASIC PLOT

Star Control was formed in the 2080s after the strong-AI species that formed on earth, the Lexites, gave a warning that something very dangerous is
coming. When the government’s of the world failed to heed this warning the Lexites took matters into their own hands and left Earth entirely. This
move finally motivated the squabbling powers to pool their resources and form Star Control to find out what happened to the Lexites and find out
more about this threat.

We live in what is called the Scryve sector and as mentioned, there are several hundred stars in just this sector. The sector itself falls within the “Mid
Spur” region of Orion’s Spur which justs out of the Sagittarius arm in our galaxy.

Figure 1: Orion's Spur with the blue area being the Scryve Sector and related areas.

Now, on the far left of that chart is an area called W51. It is 17,000 light years away. It will matter a lot later. There is a lot of activity in our part of
the Spur right now and you will encounter a whole range of species passing through, mostly from the Inner Spur to the Outer Spur.
30

THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE STAR CONTROL GAMES

Page
 Star Control is a multiverse. This gives us a lot more freedom to tell stories (because we can potentially visit other universes) and lets us not touch
the lore and canon of Star Control 1 and 2 (which we refer to as the Ur-Quan universe or Universe 6014) and lets us put Star Control 3 in yet a
different universe.

Being in our own universe means we are not bound by anything that has come before. This matters because most people buying Star Control:
Origins will not have played the classic games from 25 years ago.

Now, originally, our position was that not only was the Origins universe separate but that aliens from the classic games (SC 1,2,3) wouldn’t even exist
in this universe. However, a combination of circumstances and popular demand has motivated us to change our position on that and so you can
assume that there is nothing preventing some version of any alien that has been in a given Star Control game from being present somewhere in the
Origins universe. What form they will take given the divergent histories remains to be seen.

So which aliens from the classic games might you encounter?

Right now:

1. Arilou. They are an ancient species that has been watching us for a long time. They are the quintessential “little green men” as their
observations have not always gone unnoticed.
2. Melnorme. They are a trader species that can be found throughout Orion’s Spur.

Here are some other species that you may run into as well:
31
Page
 What other aliens you may encounter in the future remains to be seen as the Origins timeline is very different from that of Star Control 1, 2 or 3. We
want Star Control: Origins to succeed on its own merits and not rehash any plot lines that have been done before.

Thus, the story will drive who and what shows up. In the case of Origins, we quickly realized we needed a traveling trader species lest we end up
littering the galaxy with Precursor starbases. While we could have brought in the Korx (from GalCiv) or created something entirely new, there is a
difference between not using the classic species as a crutch and purposely avoiding using a Star Control race. Thus, the Melnorme are in.

Similarly, without going into spoilers, there’s some Precursor equipment that the player encounters and we need a good explanation as to why
humans are able to use them but no one else can without going into the “chosen one” trope. Thus, the Arilou made a perfect choice here.

Over the next several years, the story will guide the case when a Star Control alien comes into play versus when a wholly new alien comes up.
32
Page
 THE CHAPTER 1 BETA

Over the coming weeks, we will be opening up the Chapter 1 Beta to all Founders who want to test out the first chapter of the game. We have
already started the roll-out of this as we nail down the logistics.

We will be sending this out via EMAIL with a big warning that this will fall into SPOILER territory (at least of the first chapter).

Those who want to get into it early can join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/2wchz7m and make sure you are part of the Founder’s group there.
33
Page
 THE SCHEDULE

Below is our current tentative schedule for you to know what to expect!

Month Milestone Status

March GDC On schedule
April Fleet Battles Beta 2 On schedule
May Open Universe for Founders / Chapter 1 On schedule
June E3
July Fleet Battles Beta 3
August Finish Polish and testing
September RELEASE
34
Page