November 2015 Founder’s Vault Edition

Information Covered by NDA

Introductions
If you’ve ever been part of a Stardock Founder’s Program, the first thing you’ve noticed is that we’re
putting this stuff into a single ZIP file with an actual document explaining it. So yes, we can be taught!

Over the next year we hope to get to know you guys well. We’re doing everything we can to keep the
number of founders low so that we can spend time with you.

So first off, here are some introduction to the team leads and where we come from.

Executive Producer: Brad Wardell

I’m the one writing this first Vault Edition. I am on the forum as “FrogBoy”, a handle I deeply regret
choosing. I was the designer of Galactic Civilizations and more recently Ashes of the Singularity. I’ve
been making games over 20 years. I founded Stardock in 1991 in my dorm room in college and over the
years have built it into a 100+ software company that I still own.

Lead Designer: Andrew Zoboki

He was the lead designer on Grey Goo and worked at Relic for some years. He knows Star Control inside
and out. I mean, he literally knows the original lore to a level that I think Paul and Fred (the original
creators) would be alarmed by.

Lead Developer: Eric Undersander

A veteran of Big Huge Games, Eric leads the engineering effort on the new Star Control. He’s been
instrumental in the call to make sure we have a really strong toolset so that we (and eventually
modders) can endlessly extend the game over the years.

We’ll be introducing you to the rest of the team in bits as we go forward. Here’s a sampling as we’ll be
doing more to help introduce you to the team that is bringing this game to life:

Nitrous Team:

The initial core engine was developed by Oxide Games which was a start-up founded by Firaxis lead devs
on Civilization V Dan Baker (engine lead), Tim Kipp (Systems lead), Brian Wade (lead dev), and Marc
Meyer (UI lead).

Star Control Starting Team:

We also have an amazing art team with Ryan Murray (Senior character artist on Civ V, Civ IV, Civ III and
Pirates!), Tom Symonds (lead artist on Civilization V along with 9 additional years at Firaxis working on
their titles). Stephen Egrie (environmental artists on Civilization V along with 7 years of other games at
Firaxis).

We also have Tony Basch (who joins us from Turbine), Adrian Luff (who helped architect Battle.net for
Blizzard over the past 20 years), Matt Heuston (amazing concept artist), Dann Beeson (amazing
animation).

Anyway, I’ve already spoiled enough but you’ll be learning more about us over time. We want to share
with you what is involved in making a major game these days.
What you may have noticed is not just the talent and experience of the team but that the team is made
up of people who stay with their studios for many years, something uncommon in our industry. We are
dedicated to making this the best game we can.
Topic: Our story so far…
Way back in October 1988, Accolade and Paul Reiche agreed to make a new game called Star Control.
Paul Reiche is, in my opinion, one of the greatest game designers in history. Let me sing his praises
here:

 Archon. Yes, THE Archon. That was him. Also Archon II which I think was even better.
 Mail Order Monsters
 Star Control (of course)
 Skylanders. The game that made Activision into a successful toy company as well.

He was also involved on games like Pandemonium, Crush, Crumble and Chomp, Starflight 1 and 2.

Paul Reiche and his friend Fred Ford eventually formed Toys for Bob in 1989. That date is important for
the history of Star Control: 1989 is after the agreement with Accolade. This is good news for Star Control
fans because it means that any intellectual property rights are retained by him personally. When
Activision later acquired Toys for Bob, it didn’t inherent any rights to Star Control.

Figure 1: Part of the original agreement form 1988

Just as Stardock is the publisher of Sins of a Solar Empire, Accolade was the publisher of Star Control.
The only difference is that Accolade owned franchise rights and trademark rights to Star Control. This
isn’t something Stardock would normally do (we don’t own the franchise rights to Sins of a Solar Empire
or the trademark rights, we see it as wholly owned by our partner and friends and Ironclad).

Eventually, Atari acquired Accolade and in 2013, Stardock acquired Atari’s rights to Star Control which
include the franchise rights and the trademark.

While the whole thing could be a legal mess (if you follow the Marvel vs. Sony stuff on who owns what)
we decided to eliminate that issue from the outset by getting together with Paul and making it clear that
our legal position is that he personally owns the copyright to the Star Control lore and aliens and that we
would not use any of that without his explicit consent and only under his direction.

Paul asked us not to disturb the Ur-Quan continuity as he has publicly and private expressed a desire to
someday return to his creation.

When we acquired the rights to Star Control we received everything Accolade had. Source code, art and
audio assets, lots of documentation, etc. We don’t plan to make use of this other than as a means to
support the original, classic series.
The Star Control classic aliens and the reboot
When we started thinking about what we would do with Star Control we had a number of directions we
could go. Hopefully fans will agree we made the right decision.

Option 1: Call it Star Control 4.

While we do sell Star Control 1, 2 and 3 there are lots of problems with this. If we called it Star Control 4
then we have to treat Star Control 3 as canon which was made without Paul and Fred. This would not
satisfy fans and was not commercially viable. Moreover, if we tried to use the original aliens it would
be, at best, ethical theft of Paul Reiche and Fred Ford’s work and there is no way we could expect any
support from them.

Option 2: Reboot it with at the rise of the Alliance of Free Stars

This has even more problems than option 1. First, if you just retold the same story it would be just Star
Control 2 HD and there’s already Ur-Quan masters for that. If you tried to change the story then you’d
have outraged fans and we’d be breaking our promise to Paul not to mess with the continuity.

Figure 2: Idiot.

Option 3: Reboot it and leave the original aliens untouched

This is the direction we’ve chosen. It’ll begin in 2085. Humans have just had their synthetic creations
leave the Earth via FTL means opening the pathway for humans to go out there. But they won’t
encounter the Ur-Quan or the Spathi? Why not? Instead, there’s a different collection of aliens. Things
are similar, yet different. Why? It’ll become clear over time. It turns out, there’s a way to make everyone
happy.
Figure 3: Are you friendly?
The Road Map
Below is a tentative road map of what you can expect from us. It’s subject to change based on schedule
requirements and your feedback.

I. Pre-Production
a. Founder’s Vault Opens (November 2015)
b. Alien Introductions (December 2015)
c. Music and Story Discussion (January 2016)
d. Tools Introduction (February 2016)
e. Vertical Slice Preview (March 2016)
II. Prototype Phase [Code Releases]
a. Adventure Creation Tool (April 2016)
b. Planet Exploration Prototype (May 2016)
c. Alien Conversation Prototype (June 2016)
d. Micro-Adventure Test (July 2016)
e. Super Melee Test (August 2016)
III. Alpha Phase [Code Releases]
a. Alpha 1: Micro Adventure with Super Melee (September 2016)
b. Alpha 2: Ship Design Test (October 2016)
IV. Early Access [Code Releases)
a. Alpha 3: Early Access Build. (November 2016)
We need your help
Think of all the ways we could screw this up…

Figure 4: What? I’m a spathi right?

Figure 5: No. this is a Spathi

We need your brain.

We need its ideas and its criticisms. You have been chosen because you know what a Star Control game
is like. Now, obviously if a Star Control game means rehashing the Ur-Quan and Spathi story we’ll never
satisfy those people. If it means trying to redo what Star Control 3 should have been done, we can’t
satisfy them either. Star Control 3 had the original aliens…

Hopefully most of you are on the same page as us as to what makes Star Control unique.

The Ground Rules

1. Star Control is an action/adventure game. It is NOT a 4X. It is NOT a strategy game.
2. Star Control’s art design should not attempt to be “realistic”. It should be gorgeous but have a
unique style unto itself.
3. The writing of Star Control is important. It should be funny and irrelevant. Not forced. Not too
serious but not slapstick.
4. Star Control melds these sub-games together:
a. An open sandbox like galaxy exploration game
b. The player only controls 1 ship
c. A fun, relatively straight forward combat game
d. A unique ship design component
 e. A fun, planetary exploration experience
f. Unique aliens with their own deep lore existing within a living galaxy
5. This is NOT a remake. We are not looking to make Star Control HD. So much of the effort will be
to deliver the essence of Star Control while making sure it is a modern game.

What this means is that we won’t be turning this game into a strategy game. There is no resource
management. You control your flag ship and associated fleet (ala Star Control 2).
Additional concepts

This isn’t that exciting except to say that when you explore planets, understand that all of them are
unique. There will be thousands of planets throughout the galaxy and they’re all being procedurally
generated.

The fact that we can procedurally generate our galaxy has a lot of design implications that we’ll be
looking for your feedback on.
Not all our concepts will work out. For example, this was rejected for being too realistic and for being
humanoid. No humanoid aliens.

The Thrasher is still a fun idea. We haven’t decided if it’ll make it in yet or not.

More to come!!