Okay. I (ed note: I refers to Greenish9. All these emails are from him.) admit it - some of the e-mails Fred Ford and I have passed between one another are complete nonsense. Like this one. But hey, who cares! This snippet was extracted from an e-mail about SC sites in general (I think, it's an old e-mail). >> BTW I think you may be on to something about the Queen's being a pkunk. Has anyone checked the crown jewels for a clear spindle? Heh, heh. To get this you'd have to have read the 'You know you've been playing too much Star Control when...' page in the humour area. If you haven't, do so now! ---------------------------------------------- I won't even try to explain this one. Just read it: > Say, have you still got that flat, dead lizard on a stick? If you have it must REALLY smell...
Actually, I no longer have it. I gave it to someone (my memory fails me); however, you don't have to worry about the smell, because it was a DRIED, flat, dead lizard on a stick. It was some sort of Chinese
something-or-other that reminded some girl I knew of me (or so she said when she presented it to me). Didn't know I was such a lady's man, did you? Fred What light this throws on Fred's love affairs, I don't know. If he feels that being compared to a flat, dead lizard on a stick in public is offensive, then I will happily remove this - but I think that he must be the only man in the universe EVER to have entered someone's mind via a flat, dead lizard on a stick, which only serves to highlight his individuality. HAR. HAR. ---------------------------------------------- Again, just read it. Yet more nonsensical banter, wot? > PS. You haven't unpacked your box, have you? And please say you REALLY don't breath through your eye... ;) I'm afraid it's all true. Although my box remains packed, I do sometimes delve into it but like Indiana Jones I am always careful to swap quickly whatever I take with something of equal weight. And, yes, I really can breathe out of my eye, but for the most part I choose not to. Perhaps if he unpacked that box at Accolade's headquarters...no, that's a fate too terrible even for them! ;) ---------------------------------------------- A more serious and interesting letter, here... > Do you still have any beta versions of SC2 available? I'm very interested...just want to see what it was like before release! (just... heh heh heh ;) )
I'm afraid not being the overly sentimental type has led to many ruthless purges which have finished the job hard-drive failures started. I will divulge, however, that our original plans for planetside included creating a landing party of crewmen from the various races you had as your allies. There were going to be much more involved interactions on the surface with indigenous populations and the makeup of your away team would influence the outcome. A couple of months of development along these lines was thrown out as the resulting interface just slowed down gameplay. Similarly we also threw out stuff which allowed you to create task forces from your accompanying ships in interplanetary travel and send them out with tasks to perform. Again, it was just too much book-keeping. Some of this stuff sounds like the ground bits in Starflight (although I never understood those games...). Cool, though - maybe something we might see in Star Control 4 : Return of the Ceartors? ---------------------------------------------- *INTERVIEW* WITH THE CREATORS!!
Har. Har. Knew that would get you all down here. Well, this IS an interview of sorts, conducted over e-mail. And let me say no more: Hi Shaun,
Here are some answers to some of your questions. These are solely my responses and Paul may certainly have some additions. I'll try to get to the rest of them at some point, but here's a first pass. If you have any questions or would like clarification, don't hesitate to ask.
Fred
> Let’s start from the beginning, when all those years ago, Toys for Bob released Star Control : Great Battles of the Ur-Quan Conflict on an unsuspecting market. It was a runaway success. But how did you come up with Star Control, why do you think it was so successful, and above all - why volume IV??
One of Paul's favorite designs is allowing two people to hit each other over
the head with sticks and then layering stuff on top of that. The design for
Star Control actually predates slightly our relationship. The act of
realizing that design is what enabled "Toys for Bob" to be born. As for
volume IV, well, it worked for Star Wars so why not for us. Actually we
never actively pursue a game that we expect to sequel. Frankly immediate
(and I stress the word immediate) sequels, unless completely different in
genre (i.e. Action-Strategy versus Action-Adventure), don't hold much
interest. > So what triggered the creation of the Ur-Quan? how did you come up with such a hideously misled and brutal alien race?
Much as we came up with all the alien races. We needed a bad guy, but we really made a conscious effort to stay away from stereotypes and give every alien race a history that justified their behavior. That is, if you view the universe from any race's perspective then what they are doing is consistent. In the Ur-Quan's case, they were under cruel, psychic control themselves for millennia and when they finally broke free the desire never to be in that position again coupled with the means to achieve that goal overpowered any other mitigating factors. Thus the warrior caste, Kohr-Ah, turned to extermination while the scientist Kzer-Za "mercifully" resorted to imprisonment (shielding) and battle thralls. > We know there are several things missed out of Star Control 2 that you wanted to add. Was the same true of Star Control 1? Were you forced to drop anything then?
Star Control 1 was our first undertaking and as such was kind of a get acquainted process for the two of us (i.e. neither of us had a good handle on the limits of the other). While we achieved what we set out to do in Star Control 1, it probably would have been more fully formed if our working relationship had been as well. > And was there anything you haven’t told us about Star Control 2? Any major changes in focus from the original design proposal? Any other goodies we missed out on?
Our design proposals are famous (or perhaps infamous if you are our producer) for being terse and intentionally vague. Part of the journey, for us, is feeling our way to the "fun." Obviously some types of games have such instant accessibility (e.g. football, racing, etc.) that a design is pretty straightforward. The games we tend to develop, however, are much more mushy and out of focus. So we try to give ourselves broad goals which narrow as we play-test various parts of our games. We always tell our
producer that we will be able to provide him with an accurate schedule as soon as the game is finished. Put another way: we never let a design document or schedule stand in our way if the assumptions expressed in it prove to be wrong or inaccurate. Interestingly enough some of the discussions we've seen about updated clones have included the desire to have fleet actions rather than controlling just a single flagship. This was part of Star Control 2 and was even functional -- when you entered a system you could create task forces to perform various actions in and around the planets, but it just was too cumbersome and actually detracted from the flow of the game. Likewise, we had an away team interface for lander missions which allowed you to compose your lander crew of different races for a better chance for success in planetside missions that were going to be much more complex. Again -- too much book-keeping. > You’ve mentioned before that the original Star Control actually met a better reception than it’s sequel - although Star Control 2 was voted the second best game ever by one online game’s site. Any idea why this was (not the award, the success of the first game over the second!)?
This was certainly true at the outset; however, the "legs" of Star Control 2 have allowed it to catch up with Star Control 1. Initially, though, Star Control 2 sales were abysmal. There were a number of factors which contributed to its poor performance against Star Control 1 and in general. Star Control 1 was a much more directed game than Star Control 2. Many people were put out by the perceived immensity of Star Control 2 and the lack of someone constantly hitting you over the head with your next assignment. Star Control 1 was much easier to port to the consoles at that time. The Genesis version of Star Control 1 as well as all the imperfect, inspection ports (Amstrad, Spectrum, Commodore) gave the first installment extra life. The genre mix of Star Control 1 had a stronger intersection of gamers than Star Control 2. Action-Strategy was not nearly as exotic a taste for some as Action-Adventure was at that time. Then, to top it all off, Wing Commander came out at almost exactly the same time. Although these two games are not at all alike, Wing Commander's technical advance coupled with its much more inspired marketing campaign stole whatever thunder Star Control 2 might have had. > One thing I’ve always wondered is why there are so few games similar to Star Control around. I remember Microprose’s okayish Hyperspeed, the ancient Starflight series, and Epic Megagame’s Solar Winds, but beyond that...nothing. Why?
They are a lot of work. When you think of the production quality that is now demanded by game buyers, you realize that in order to create a Star Control 2 today you would start to require the resources that, for example, the movie "A Bug's Life" required. That starts to rise into the several millions of dollars for production. That is a risk that just isn't too popular with the guys who control the purse strings at game companies, because if the game isn't successful you have not only lost that money but the opportunity cost for having a team do that game instead of one that had a much lower risk to reward ratio. > What do you think of Star Control’s online following? Even today, it’s growing - and no new Star Control games of any note have been released in many years. Are you flattered by the scores of websites, and the excellent and diverse work by fans?
It's definitely flattering, but at the same time the absorption of the praise is slowed by some amount of sheepishness. Because for us there never was any mystery to our game, it's difficult to understand the flattery at a basic level. We never suspected that what we were crafting would have as lasting an impression as it appears to have had -- we were just trying to create a fun experience that built on the works of many diverse artists (e.g. Niven, Card, Vance, Star Flight, etc.) and allowed us to add our own
small legacy in that vein. So if we ever seem a little guilty or self-effacing, it's because we are too close to our own work to judge it. > I've heard it said that Babylon 5, the popular sci-fi TV show, actually stole from Star Control in some ways. Could you shed any light on this?
Here are some excerpts from a newsgroup thread titled: Has JMS been playing too much Star Control 2? I just saw Thirdspace, and it seems to me like JMS played too much Star Control 2 (I think it's published by Accolade). Quzispace seems like the thirdspace (#C0C0C0). Not to mention that in SC2, hyperspace is also red. And that alien race seems much like the Orz (in their purpose I mean) JMS - stop playing computer games - and start writing more stuff ;) I reckon that B5 has also been at least influenced by this game. One of the cargo tugs looks suspiciously like the game's Earthling cruiser. The Vree ships looks like the Arilou skiff, although that proves nothing because they are both just standard flying saucers. However, the Vorlon's history of messing with our minds as part of their fight against the Shadows is a bit reminiscent of the Arilou's similar activity as part of their struggle against the Orz. Hyperspace is red and cloudy in both SC2 and B5. I'm just waiting to see if Thirdspace is #C0C0C0 like SC2's Quasispace... (Before the episode "Z'Ha'Dum", I thought the Vorlons and Shadows might be similar to the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah - one seeking to enslave everyone, the other seeking to destroy everyone. Anyway, they're two ancient races engaged in a doctrinal conflict, and one of them is using the Younger Races as its pawns. :-) Absolutely! Remember, we've already seen the Ariloulile (sp?) on B5 getting sued for kidnapping someones grandfather...> Those are the Vree in the B5 storyline, though both are obviously based on the same stories of UFO abductions :) *Heck, both of em are basically mentioned in the same way too...visiting Earth in its early days and doing...alien type things :)* I thought the aliens were oddly reminiscent of the Ur-Quan Khor-Ah. Big black ships (looking much like the gate) with writing scribbled all over the ship (as on the gate) wanting to kill all intelligent beings (much like the 3rdspacers) and being predatory catepillars when the 3rdspacers looked like some kind of weird bug. He he. I love this thread and I loved Star Control 2.
More like: what do you get when you cross a ancient warlord from the asian steppes with a ten-thousand terawatt laser? and the answer is.... kahn-fusion. har. har. And some more fun comparing a great game to the best TV show...
Utwig bomb to destroy the Space Station=Nuke to blow up the portal
Ur-Quan (#C0C0C0) and Kor-ah (Black) locked in a never ending ritualbattle=Vorlon (#C0C0C0) and Shadows (black) locked in a 1000 year battle cycle
The Ur-Quan were part of the Sentient Milieu (a club of 6 races) 10,000 years ago=The Vorlons and Shadows being part of the First Ones, millions of yearsago.
All the first ones are gone now, but the servants of the shadows remain=All the races of the Sentient Milieu are gone now, but their battle
thralls remain.
The Mycon crack open planets=planet killers.
The Precursors went to the galactic core= Lorien went beyond the rim
The Orz talk in untranslatable english- but make sense *enjoy the sauce* *now we happy campers dance*=The VorlonsPkunk telepaths=everyone's telepaths (yes I know some of these are really stretching, but hey, this was fun!) Obviously a lot of the ideas and characters in Star Control 2 were not original in concept either. So we can't be too hard on Babylon 5, but at least we borrowed widely. > How do you manage to create such a wealth of detail when it comes to creating alien races? There are at least twenty-five intelligent races featuring in the Star Control games (excluding Legend’s SC3), yet they are all utterly individual due to their history, personality and ambient music. How do you manage this?
This is serendipity in action. We realized, rather belatedly, that we would never be able to write the dialog for all the races that we had already included in code. So we put out a distress call to all of our friends who were interested in writing. We basically gave these people the knowledge boundaries, the possessed relics, and some direction on the general demeanor of the various races they had to write for and pretty much let them have free reign from there. The music was even less structured. We just got MOD artists to submit music to us through various devious means, listened to them, and then allocated them as we saw fit to the various aliens. Once we had convinced Dan Nicholson to stay along for the ride, we were able to ask him for specific pieces (e.g. the shipyard music). > A lot of developers these days seem to think a game’s graphics are more important than anything else, perhaps understandably with today’s attitude of ‘good looks equals good game’. Which aspects of a game are most important to you?
We are bad at the fluffy stuff (in fact we resorted to hiring an outside development team to do the menu interface in our latest game "The Unholy War"). We always concentrate on the game-play and we tend to make games that "reward" thoughtful players -- yes, there probably is an action component in our game, but if you consider your environs, for example, you can gain a subtle advantage. Unfortunately, this kind of subtlety usually eludes (or at best pales in comparison to the flashy graphics) the short-attention-spanners which make up a large portion of the game buyers. > Related to the previous question: how important do you think music is in a game?
Like any media sound is important when you notice it. For instance, we probably could have put just about any old tune in melee combat and people wouldn't have been too put out, because the hand-eye interactions overwhelm the perception of the ambient background music. In the conversations, however, you are either reading, considering your response, or just plain enjoying the music (i.e. because there is nothing time critical about your interactions you have the luxury to listen to the music). Also the graphic reinforcement of the music signal output serves to make you pay a little more attention to the music as well. Additionally, since you were going to be talking to the buggers over and over again if the music was lousy, that would have been unacceptable. Obviously you would love to have great music everywhere, but you need it at least in the places where people will notice. > I believe I’m correct in saying that Star Control 2 is the most impressive piece of work you’ve ever done. The recent Unholy Wars also seems extremely impressive, although in not owning a Playstation I’ve never personally had the pleasure of playing it. Which of your other games do you hold in notably high regard, and are there any of your games which you particularly dislike?
We would never rank our children in order of love; so let's just say that we are proud of every game we have done and each has achieved, to some extent, whatever we were experimenting with in the development of that particular game. We always try to learn something new or try something hard so that our work never becomes stale to us or the confused reviewers who can never quite classify what kind of development team we are. > What work by other developers do you admire, and why?
Even though most of our work is done on the console these days, our gaming heart is usually still with the PC. We have always enjoyed multi-player games which are hard to do on the console -- not technically but just because the console gamer is considered to be first a single-player enthusiast and therefore the game has to cater significantly to the single-player experience (perhaps diluting the multi-player experience). One might infer from this that Quake is our favorite game. This is not so. Although Quake is an awesome "twitch" game, we prefer games that require more thought and if it's a cooperative game that's even better. Currently we are playing Commandos by Eidos over our LAN -- it's great fun. We loved the first XCOM (it's not multi-player, but was a fun back-seat-driver game during the terror attacks and alien intercepts). The ancient game M.U.L.E. is still dusted off every now and then. Empire enjoys a revival during lulls in our development cycle. Our game playing unfortunately occurs in widely separated time slices. When we are deep in development we don't care to follow long hours working in front of a computer with long hours playing in front of one -- our families would disown us! So between projects when we're brain-storming for ideas and decompressing from the last crunch, we'll cast about for what we've been missing and goof around for relaxation and potential inspiration. > Were there ever any Toys for Bob projects that never saw the light of day? I’ve not heard of any of your projects being canned, but they might never have reached the magasine previews...
So far (knock on wood), Toys for Bob remains unsullied. Paul has had a game or two canceled in the past, but not as a part of Toys for Bob. > And finally...who’s the brains of the outfit at Toys for Bob? Huh? ;)
It should be clear from the name that Bob pulls the strings around here. ---------------------------------------------- Hello Captain, Do you know which one actually has the copyright of Star Control 2 code, Accolade or Mr. Ford? This information will be critical for the disassembler project later, because we don't want to end up to jail. I think Fred doesn't mind even if we decompile whole star control, but being strict it might be forbidden in licence agreement. Especially Kalle Niemitalo is worried about the issue. He had alone decompiled a huge amount of melee.exe and has *very* detailed information about the internal structures of melee. -- Mikko Hi Mikko, As far as I'm concerned -- go for it! As far as I know, I own the code -- since we were outside developers and Accolade didn't care at the time. In fact, Accolade, never received a full set of source code anyway. But does this mean Accolade won't cause you any trouble? It seems unlikely, but I'm not a lawyer and lawyers seem to be able to sue people for the weirdest things. You would think that after eight years, they just wouldn't care anymore. I can't say that with 100% certainty though. -- Fred ----------------------------------------------
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