Star Control

May 2016 Update

Staff build up
Last month Offworld Trading Company shipped and so did Ashes of the Singularity. OTC was developed
by Soren Johnson (Civilization IV) and Mohawk Games while Ashes of the Singularity was developed by
Oxide (Civilization V lead devs).

This month, some of their leads have joined the Star Control team and things are starting to move quite
a bit faster.

This Month’s Feedback

The first thing to know is that you can control how the camera works.

In Star Control 2, you had to look top down. In the Star Control reboot, you can do that too or you can
with your gamepad (or mouse/keyboard) change the angle.
When you get multiple players in there, we put up the player’s portrait. The idea is to keep it fairly
minimalistic. Once the private alpha begins, you guys will be able to play around and let us know what
needs to be on the screen and what does not need to be on the screen.

Similarly, when you land on a planet, we don’t want to overwhelm the player with data but at the same
time, there are numerous things that the player does need to know.
One interesting thing to note that most people won’t realize: Because players seamlessly land on
planets (it’s not a separately screen, you literally send down your lander from space) we had to spend a
lot of time creating atmospheres so that the sky isn’t black when you land on them.

Example of an achievement being unlocked.

For our UI style, we’ve tried to do a blend of old school with modern high DPI user interface tech.

So that we’re clear, these aren’t mockups. The final game will look a lot better than this but when you
go to a p articular planet and send down your lander, it’s not a separate screen.
Another feature of the Nitrous engine is that it has “real” lighting. That’s why, even with really basic art
assets in, it doesn’t look like a normal game.

Exploration

Ultimately, people are going to ask how the new Star Control is different than say Star Control 2. If we
just took Star Control 2 and updated the graphics players would rightly say they could just have gotten
Ur-Quan masters.

What innovation is Stardock bringing to the franchise? The answer for us is bringing the universe to life.

Star Control touched on this a little bit but the tech of the day prevented Paul and Fred from being able
to do much with it. One planet was basically the same as another with some stat differences.

In the new Star Control, it’s a big universe out there and much of the game will be about going to these
strange new worlds and seeing what’s there. What cool precursor techs might you find? What new
aliens might be there? What outposts might be lurking? What sorts of rare minerals or precious ores
might be there that you could use or trade?

The galaxy itself is going to be mind bogglingly huge. But everyone will be playing the exact same
universe in the base game allowing people to share coordinates of different planets online and what
they might have found.
The Dialog Tool

This is the tool we’re using to create quests. We’re going to go ahead and include it in this month’s
update so you can play around with it.

Without the game, there’s not much you can do. But you can start to see how powerful the quest
system is in the game.