Awkbird

Reply to Today's Story: The Brains on the table, The Master Race, and The Keyword Usability in Star Control StarControl Forums

As much as I'd like to admit I got the full gist of this, I can't. That said, I enjoyed this stream of consciousness and it reminded me of both Douglas Adams and Star Control. Seems you're imploring the development team to remember what the end users want, and judging from your funny perspective, I take it you've had equal parts fun and horror in the unrelenting realm of software development. Would you consider this an advice column or something else entirely,

Reply to Playing Through "Starflight" / How would you combine SF with a Star Control adventure game? in Star Control StarControl Forums

I apologize if this seems like a bit of a hijack as it's not about Starflight, but it is still about other titles that could influence the design of Star Control. I wanted to expand the scope of the thread by seeing what others here think of another recent release: StarDrive. It occupies a very different genre as a 4X strategy game, and while it appears to be a completely self-aware ripoff of Master of Orion 2, I'd also argue that it has nods to other classics including Star C

Reply to Star Control: Spring 2015 update in Star Control News StarControl Forums

I really like HuffiMuffiGuffi's idea of being able to choose between voice acting and reading text. I'm pretty sure both SC2 and SC3 had the option to choose between voice and text, so it would seem like a step backward to not take the same approach. I also personally like the idea of hearing the aliens in their native tongue and reading the text, but at the same time I'd also miss having the voice acting, which was probably the one thing SC3 did well. I think that being a

Reply to Star Control FAQ in Star Control StarControl Forums

I am definitely looking forward to seeing this Precursor Workshop. I'm imagining it's not a stretch to draw a parallel between this and what Valve has done with the Steam Workshop or the Source Film Maker. It's still early in development, obviously, but what sort of creative ceiling would fans be looking at in terms of developing their own content for clusters? I know you stated that no programming would be required, but seeing as how we're getting all the same tools y

Reply to Star Control at GDC 2015 in Star Control News StarControl Forums

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="6" id="3529212"]I have no doubt that there will be people who insist that it's not Star Control without the Ur-Quan in them. I suppose those people could just sit on their hands for another 25 years while the rest of us play the new Star Control. [/quote] Hear hear. Spoken far more diplomatically than I would have done. [e digicons]:thumbsup:[/e] I find this trend of dismissing the idea of a new path for the story to be ti

My Star Control Music Tribute Page in Star Control StarControl Forums

Wow, quiet in here lately. Figured I would share a side project I've been working on in honor of the revitalization of the Star Control franchise. I am the author of the Hyperspace 2014 Update video on Youtube (it's the only piece I have on there) Enjoy! [e digicons]:grin:[/e]

Reply to August 2014 quick status report in Star Control News StarControl Forums

[quote who="Quanfinigon" reply="9" id="3508769"]Seeing the clock tick by as you move through hyperspace and not having the whole universe wait for you before moving on like so many modern RPGs do is one of the key factors that made this game great (like Majora's Mask).[/quote] Agreed, however one of my grievances with SC2 was that the game clock was not made entirely obvious to the player. You eventually get the hint about when the game will end by the Melnorme who mention they pl

Reply to New Star Control Alien wishlist in Star Control Ideas/Wishes Stardock Forums

I love where this is going. The idea of this franchise entering the era of DLC expansions is amazing. It's going to be so hard to dial back my patience. As much as I love the old lore and would love to see it incorporated, I trust those responsible to be competent enough to readapt it in a whole new direction. And yet I feel like I'm in the minority to be excited by the idea that this will be a new experience with unknown things to discover. It's more interesting (at least

Reply to What I liked about Star Control 3 in Star Control StarControl Forums

I also agree with pretty much all your points. We all take umbrage with SC3 for obvious reasons, but my favorite part of it was definitely the voice acting. The voices in the enhanced 3DO version of SC2 were primarily the development team at Toys For Bob! And while they were a creative group, they definitely weren't professional voice actors, but I have a feeling that was due largely to Accolade's budgetary constraints rather than a lack of creativity on their behalf. All of the SC3 v

Reply to Hyperspace Theme Remastered in Star Control Stardock Forums

Wanted to post an update for the those on the forum interested in original music inspired by Star Control. I've added a section devoted to this on my personal webpage to share with others. Not all are complete, but I have about half a dozen music concepts on there, including the Hyperspace theme originally posted above, an orchestral version of the Quasispace theme, an orchestral "introduction" concept, a new take on the famous Melee theme, and two alien race concepts. I know the

Reply to What would you like the combat to be like? in Star Control Ideas/Wishes StarControl Forums

@DMRawlings: I love these ideas. Especially love the notion of adapting a tower defense and territory control gameplay mode into it. I think 360-degree rotation on the ships is a foregone conclusion today, but I would absolutely love to see Stardock turn Melee into a much more comprehensive and diversified experience that extends far beyond two teams of ships going at each other one at a time. So many games these days have different modes to play and there are limitless variations on the Mele

Reply to New Star Control Alien wishlist in Star Control Ideas/Wishes StarControl Forums

Nice work. Those are very creative race attributes. This immediately reminded me of Master of Orion and sounds like a great application for a 4X game. Perhaps something like this could even be applied to a sort of "Rand-O-Melee" mode where ship and race stats get scrambled with random attributes each time you play so you never know exactly how your ships will perform in combat!

Reply to What is Star Control? in Star Control StarControl Forums

As others have said, Star Control 2 doesn't really restrict itself to a single genre, instead borrowing from several. It is definitely not 4X, although Star Control 1 had some memorable strategic elements. The sequel was an open world action adventure borrowing elements of RPG (searching for artifacts and lengthy dialog-driven conversation to advance the plot), shoot-em-ups (ship-to-ship combat and collecting resources on planets), puzzle solving (navigating a vast interstellar map with l

Reply to Mac Users... in Star Control Stardock Forums

I understand the overall lack of support for OSX gaming but are people really still taking sides on this issue? These days you can run practically any major OS on any Intel machine you want. I have five operating system installs on an i7 Macbook Air, which is decent but hardly a powerhouse, and it runs many Windows games just fine, including GalCiv. Even in Parallels with only half memory allocation, I can still run recent releases well enough. Bootcamp runs even better, of course. A

Reply to Star Control - Introduce yourself in Galactic Community Stardock Forums

Heh, for a second there I was afraid I'd somehow missed an ancient 8" floppy version of SC1 with text-based character codes instead of graphics, like a MUD. My mom actually used to use those giant floppies back in the 1970's on an old IBM mainframe. As a kid they seemed like the size of vinyl record sleeves to me. I remember trips with dad to all those stores too. Sure miss those days. Still have all my old boxes too.

Reply to Star Control - Introduce yourself in Galactic Community Stardock Forums

Wait, 8" floppies? I thought the oldest platform was the C64 and it had a 5" floppies. What system did you play SC1 on? And hopefully you mean *dancing* in HyperMelee. [e digicons]:thumbsup:[/e]

Reply to First Person Shooter in Star Control StarControl Forums

I was trying to be kind with my cartoon response, but in all honesty this suggestion makes me facepalm violently. Rather than elaborating, I'll simply say +1 to what TiLT said in post #8 and call it a night.

Reply to Star Control - Introduce yourself in Galactic Community Stardock Forums

I've been lurking in the Star Control forums for awhile and may have been one of the first few to encounter the news that Stardock acquired the rights to the franchise from Atari, because I've got Star Control in all my news alert feeds and had also read about it from Anthony Suarez's Star Controller blog. I've patiently painfully waited for a worthy followup since playing SC2 back in 1993. It seems impossible that it's been more tha

Reply to voice acting in Star Control Ideas/Wishes Stardock Forums

Ha ha, totally agree. Not sure Stephen is in Stardock's budget but a million times yes. Please please please hire professional actors. The only good thing about SC3 was the voice acting and this should be no exception either. I actually didn't care for several of the voices in the 3DO version of SC2; half of them were the development team at Toys For Bob and I'm afraid that as talented as they are, they aren't professional voice actors. It was all done on the cheap, but I don&

Reply to Should a new Star Control contain strategy elements? in Star Control Stardock Forums

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="29" id="3431262"]I agree. The world has plenty of strategy games. It only has one Star Control.[/quote] Agreed. My initial inclination about strategy elements is a conditional maybe. If we're talking very basic limited strategy like building an outpost or a mining facility to get resources and then guarding it with a fortification like in SC1, the answer is yes. If we're talking 4X GalCiv strategy, of course not. Like Frogboy says, the world h

Reply to Write your envisioned new Star Control Idea here in Star Control Ideas/Wishes StarControl Forums

I apologize in advance for this being so long. Many years ago after SC3, I had developed an idea that was actually somewhat similar in concept to what Stardock is doing, in terms of "altering" the timeline. I envisioned a game that would essentially explore the ancient history of the Sentient Milieu and in the process, intervene to help prevent their enslavement by the Dnyarri which lasted thousands of years and in turn prevent the Hierarchy Wars and the subse

Reply to New Star Control Alien wishlist in Star Control Ideas/Wishes StarControl Forums

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="67" id="3431236"] I'm anxious to get some of the WebDev's team's time in the coming months so we can re-design this site. I'd like to create a library for people to submit Star Control related artwork (for the classic Ur-Quan timeline as well as when we start giving details on the new aliens and timeline). [/quote] This is an awesome idea, however there are many people out there who probably don't even know about t

Reply to Hyperspace Theme Remastered in Star Control StarControl Forums

[quote who="Precursors_TiLT" reply="5" id="3431202"] Little known fact: The MOD files are available from our Precursors remix site. Each MOD can be downloaded from its respective remix page, but we've also got a "secret" folder listing available here. [/quote] Haha, that is a pretty good secret. You actually have the melee victory ditties too. I think I lost those somewhere in the sands of time. I love what you Precursor guys did to reinterpret all the old th

Reply to Hyperspace Theme Remastered in Star Control StarControl Forums

I assume you mean to say all the music is in those assets ... I have kept those original mods from SC2 for years and years, knowing that eventually they would become hard to find one day, and they sure are. The software that I used to make this Hyperspace theme update isn't always able to import the old data accurately either, so some of the old mods don't play back properly and require a lot of "restoration", so to speak, in order to play back on modern trackers. I've oft