Star Control®

Origins

By

Brad Wardell
Executive Producer

November 2016

[NON-DISCLOSURE IN EFFECT]

Bees from space

My spine hurts.

I keep telling Bucholz that I need it removed. Worf had his removed. It worked out.

This month is the 24th anniversary since the release of Star Control 2. I remember playing it vividly to this
day. If you played it as an adult like I did, I bet your spine hurts too. Sometimes.

The team got a lot done on important systems of the game. My time was divided between getting
Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation and working on Galactic Civilizations III. Thus, I don’t have a lot of
first hand news this month on gameplay.

But I can tell you a lot of other stuff.

Tools
A major part of our effort on Star Control is to make sure we get modder tools together. We added two
new people to the project this month to help in that area. The reason why modding is important is
because we want people to be able to create their own parallel universes.

When you load up the game and click on “New Game” one of the setup options is the Universe you are
going to. When the game ships, there will only be two.

1. Origins (the main game)

2. Microverse (a tiny little universe that we will use to test with)

But we want the tools to let people create their own universes which means:

a. Setting up aliens
b. Setting up the quests (the quest editor is already in your hands)
c. Setting up the map
d. Setting up the ships (And getting your ships into the game)

Soon after release (or even before) we hope to see mods show up in Steamworks where people will be
able to play stories that players come up with.

Last month we added an engineer to the tools team and with two more this month, we now have a
pretty serious effort going.
Particles
A lot of the effort this month also went into getting new particle effects in. What good is Super Melee if
the weapons look lame? It’s a lengthy process but it has to be done.

Alien Fonts
You want to have an effect on the project? Submit on the forum your font proposals for the different
aliens. Link us to fonts you think we should use and we’ll check them out.

3D Backgrounds

First off, this Commander is going away soon. We have a new one in the works.

Second, the background here is drawn. We’re in the process of replacing them with true 3D scenes. I
had hoped to show you one but they’re not ready to be shown yet. Hopefully next month.

Polish passing

The planets themselves have gotten a lot more detailed. Here we have Earth and the moon.
Feedback of the month
In this month’s journal we have an animatic of the intro cutscene to the game. Please post your
thoughts in the founder’s area.

Nap time
This is shorter than usual. Sorry about that. It’s been a very long, hard month. I look forward to showing
a lot more next month!

Upcoming Schedule
Feature Status Target External Test Date
Super Melee Alpha Jan-17
Spherical Planet Exploration Pre-Alpha Mar-17
Solar System Exploration Alpha Mar-17
Alien Conversations Alpha Mar-17
Galaxy Exploration Prototype May-17