Star Control®

Origins

By

Brad Wardell
Executive Producer

July 2016

[NON-DISCLOSURE]

Introduction
Hold on tight, this is going to be a long one…

Star Control: Multiverse

What is canon? What isn’t canon? This has been a topic we’ve struggled with since the start of
development. How do we reconcile Star Control 2/3? How do we make a new Star Control that doesn’t
take place after Star Control 2 but doesn’t re-write history? How do respect the work that the creators
of Star Control 1 and 2 (but not 3)? How do we make a new Star Control that doesn’t use the Star
Control 2 aliens?

The Founders have been debating this issue on the forums for a long time. We have been debating it
internally as well.

The answer: Star Control 1 and 2 take place in the Ur-Quan universe (see the Ur-Quan masters). Star
Control 3 takes place in the Hegemonic Crux universe. There are two other universes as well, the ones
that the Orz came from and one the Arilu came from. Connecting all the universes together is
QuasiSpace.
 Figure 1: Star Control universe that contains the Ur-Quan, Hegemonic Crux, Origins and other universes.

An alien race may exist in multiple universes. Or they may not. Thus far, the Precursors were in all the
known universes. Why? We don’t know.
Some of the aliens players will see

Figure 2: Not nice

Figure 3: Jeff. You should workship Jeff. Because..why not worship Jeff?
 Figure 4: The Trandals. The meat part only exists to carry the actual sentient being around.

Figure 5: The Pinthi

Figure 6: The Measured. Please dont' touch anything.
The universe is getting big
By launch, we only expect to have a handful of different creatures living on planets. Over the following
4 years, we expect to frequently be adding more life forms to planets.

Below are some examples:

Now, this begs the question, how do we introduce these creatures? For example, just adding creatures
to existing planets would be kind of punishing to early adopters. How would you like to see this
handled?
Ship Design

A major part of the new Star Control is ship design. Every player’s ship will be unique due to the
components they find, buy, salvage, etc. during their voyages.

Figure 7: Example of some components you would add to your ship.

Figure 8: More components
Figure 9: Still more components
Figure 10: Example of different customized Earthling ships.

Figure 11: While we have finite environments (art) each planet is procedurally generated so that there are a LOT of planets.
Tentative roadmap update
We’ve been asked when will Star Control ship? The easy answer is, when it is done. So the follow-up is,
when would you like to ship Star Control? The answer: October 2017, nearly 25 years after Star Control
2.

Date Milestone Description

1Q2016 Internal Planetary Engine Phase 2 Land on planets, explore
2Q2016 Toolset Update Phase 2 Provide founders with editor
3Q2016 Super Melee Engine Phase 2 Provide founders with pre-alpha Super
Melee for feedback / network test
4Q2016 Story-Alpha Test 1 Provide founders with first 15 minutes of
gameplay for eval
1Q2017 Founders ALPHA Phase Mini-version of the game for testing/eval
2Q2017 Founders BETA 1
3Q2017 Founders BETA 2
4Q2017 !!RELEASE!!
The First Fifteen Minute challenge

A big emphasis around here right now is nailing the first 15 minutes of gameplay. The game has 15
minutes to hook them in.

The current story right now goes something like this:

With much fanfare, you, the captain are taking command of Earth’s first hyperspace capable ship..such
as it is. No aliens are known to humans and the ship’s only armament is designed for breaking up
asteroids and other obstructions.

It won’t take long for humans to start encountering other aliens as the galaxy has been a lively place for
a long time. It’s just no one really noticed or cared about the strange hairless apes of Sol 3 and no one
expected them to have a Hyperspace drive for eons.

Marketing trailer
As a Star Control fan, what would you imaging a 60 second teaser trailer for Star Control: Origins looking
like? Post on the forums in the Founders Starbase we’ll compare notes. 