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Topic: Kohr-Ah Ur-Quan Homeworld? (Read 83921 times)
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Deus Siddis
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"By my recollection, things were darker, but not that much darker. I mean, the Spemin were pretty ridiculous, the races were all pretty stereotyped and somewhat less interesting than SC2's (with less backstory, too), and the fuel issue, though somewhat mindblowing, didn't seem to have the same tragic arc as the Ur-Quan subjugation."
That's true, SF's light side was in it's communication dialogs. I guess what I meant was the overall feel of exploring space (this is the mac/amiga/pc versions, now, not the genesis). There wasn't as much music, no comical voice acting, battles were not quite as arcade like, creatures on planets did not look humorous, it took longer to do most tasks, and the art in general was less colorful (literally). That's just what I think space exploration would be like for the most part, dark, empty, somewhat lonely, and very mysterious. Of course, without the comical aliens, it might have been too dark. You've got to have some contrast, or else the player losses interest, I think.
Basically, I think SF and SC are two different ways of doing the same thing, each one appealing slightly more to a certain crowd.
"The problem with this design, which ultimately was one of the death knells of the game, is that it made battles enormously complex. This would be good if all the game were was a scifi ship-to-ship combat simulator. (Maybe.) But the problem is that combat is simply a regular but not sole element of SF/SC2 style games. If every battle involved this much maneuvering, the player would never get anywhere!"
That's true, and people would probably have expected that same kind of complexity in the other aspects of the game (making it even more of a task to complete). Still, it sounds like something that would be interesting for a game like Homeworld or Nexus.
Now that I think about it, I believe that was the story behind Nexus. It started out as Imperium Galactica 3, but they spent so much time on the combat engine, that they couldn't really work on the other parts of the game, and had to make it an entirely space combat oriented game, under a new name.
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Frank
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There wasn't as much music, no comical voice acting, battles were not quite as arcade like, creatures on planets did not look humorous, it took longer to do most tasks, and the art in general was less colorful (literally).
That's a good point, and definitely the bias that story-writers have is to view the game through the lens of its writing, not the gameplay. You're right to ground the discussion in the way the game plays. But since it's been so long since I played it, and I played it on the more colorful systems (Genesis and Mac), I'm not sure whether I can add much.  I would query whether it makes sense to think of this as a deliberate design goal or as simply a byproduct of the limitations of the system they used. The Ultima series used lots and lots of black pixels early on and slowly phased them out as monitors, video cards, and pixel art developed, but that wasn't because the games were meant to be lighter or less serious.
[P]eople would probably have expected that same kind of complexity in the other aspects of the game . . . .
Yeah, maybe, although I'm not totally sure on that score. For example, X-Com (one of my all-time favorites) had a very complicated tactical combat engine, a less complicated base design system, a very simple supply system, an even simpler research system, and a ludicrously simplistic aircraft interception engine. I don't think this was too problematic, although I'll confess that because I played the game on easier modes, I never fought in my own base so I never really fully grasped how the design system was supposed to work.
(SC2, for its part, clearly has a more complicated dogfight engine than any other engine; in a lot of ways, the whole thing is dressed up around that engine, which is weird, because you spend vastly more time mining and flying around than you do fighting.)
The hardest thing, I think, when designing a game that you haven't played a thousand times (i.e., something that's at least somewhat novel in a genre) is answering the questions, "What will the player be doing now to play the game? How does this gameplay support the game's concept, how does the storyline complement the gameplay? What will the player's goals be at a given moment, and is the gameplay helping him achieve his goals or getting in the way?"
IMHO, a classic modern example of a failure to ask these questions occurs in Sid Meier's Pirates remake (which otherwise demonstrates great design vision) -- the fact the wind always blows from the east. The player has many goals in Pirates, but learning how to sail into the wind really is never one of them; nor is spending long voyages on the open sea. And when the player is sailing from Mexico to Cuba, he often literally is completely inactive, except for minor adjustments to sail cross-wise rather than into the wind. You just sit there and watch your ship on the blue sea.
Our hyper-complex combat engine did not accord with the goals the game was setting for the player. The player's goals were almost always exploration, communication, travel, and so forth. Combat is meant to be a hazard, but hazards should not occupy all of the player's time unless the player conceives of his goal as overcoming hazards, which I don't think he does in an SC/SF style game.
I actually think SC2 itself somewhat fell prey to a similar problem. Its combat engine is the heart of the game and the most fun aspect of gameplay, but the game seldom if ever gives the player combat-related goals and doesn't really reward the player for fighting. At the point when combat becomes cost/time effective, RUs really don't matter very much any more. And the time the player spends in combat zones is fairly minimal, if he knows what he's doing. If he doesn't, combat becomes an overly consuming hazard -- blindly exploring enemy space can be very combat heavy, which is either silly when you're powered up (which can happen very early if you mine a lot) or frustrating if you're not. My last play through of UQM was probably something like 30% mining, 30% watching my ship fly back and forth from the starbase, 30% conversation with aliens, and 10% combat. Of those, the only part that felt like it was really engaging me as a player, rather than as an observer, was combat.
UQM is a very fun game, though, which suggests that with enough polish, these problems aren't crippling. But I think that's because no given task in UQM takes very long to do, whereas the strategic battles we were planning would've been very time-consuming indeed.
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Deus Siddis
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"But since it's been so long since I played it, and I played it on the more colorful systems (Genesis and Mac), I'm not sure whether I can add much."
I only seriously played on the mac, too. To me, the PC version had a super dark interface.
"I would query whether it makes sense to think of this as a deliberate design goal or as simply a byproduct of the limitations of the system they used. The Ultima series used lots and lots of black pixels early on and slowly phased them out as monitors, video cards, and pixel art developed, but that wasn't because the games were meant to be lighter or less serious."
That's true for DOS games, but I don't think that was how it had to be for the mac version, which came out 5 years after ('90) the PC version ('85). The mac version actually had a white and light blue interface, but the game still seems generally more stark to me than starcontrol 2.
"(SC2, for its part, clearly has a more complicated dogfight engine than any other engine; in a lot of ways, the whole thing is dressed up around that engine, which is weird, because you spend vastly more time mining and flying around than you do fighting.)"
I think there are a few ways to patch this that would have made SC2 more rounded like its predecessor:
1) Make planets giant, less active, more complicated places with limitless resources (seriously, how could you ever mine everything on a whole planet, in a few days and pack it all into a ship). Also give the lander some more abilities, make it slower, and give it some physics. Have more alien encounters (sometimes hostile) on planets (like storming a UQ base for real).
2) Make fuel much less expensive so that exploration is not so severely punished.
3) No end of game, unless you fail. Make it so the player can fly around after the destruction of the Sa-Matra. I always love it when games like starflight or myst, let you explore after the main hurdle is complete.
4) Make Hyperspace black and don't have particles zooming and exploding everywhere, and save these effects for the more exotic quasispace. (This is a minor thing, but my eyes just get tired of the red after a while and I think space should be black with stars, no matter how many dimensions you are using.)
Now, some of those suggestions might have been in the plans, but SC2 completed past the deadline. There could have been more to it, if only more funding was allotted.
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Burb
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1) Make planets giant, less active, more complicated places with limitless resources (seriously, how could you ever mine everything on a whole planet, in a few days and pack it all into a ship). Also give the lander some more abilities, make it slower, and give it some physics. Have more alien encounters (sometimes hostile) on planets (like storming a UQ base for real).
Don't be silly, a lander is neither a extremely efficient and sophisticated piece of mining equpiment OR an actual battle vehicle. I'm rather sure that the lander is an all purpose tool (contains equipment to investigate cities etc, contains a stunner, allows for mining) so all you can do is pick up the most accesible loads of minerals from a planet: to really "mine" the entire thing out would take years and years, which the New Alliance does not have. So you have to quickly and inefficiently go around scrounging as many resources as you can. I hope you didn't think that you are completely draining a planet's resources when you mine it, the space station only needs 7~ or so radioactives at minimum, at most it needs a supply ship every year (or w/e it is). You don't exactly have a fleet either, a maximum of 8 ships at a time does not appear to be that many in actuality. And yeah, because it's equipped to go mining and scanning stuffage it would be hardly able to storm UQ bases. A spathi ship's automatic defenses hurts a lander pretty bad, and spathi ships are not known for their firepower. Making a lander being able to do ALL of this stuff is just... again, I use this word, it's silly.
If we sort of limited this idea it would pretty cool though. Expensive upgrades from Melnorme allows your lander to have improved firepower (not just faster stunning stuff) or able to set up mining bases (go around every month or so to pick up resources, at the cost of leaving the lander and a crew there) or even smashing a modified lander into an enemy ship like space marines  .
None of it seems actually worthwhile (it's easy to get minerals, your flagship is already pimp, and it would be hard to code a UQ base to give it justice with the limited lander game engine), but who knows, these are possible incorporations for a sc2 expanded patch.
2) Make fuel much less expensive so that exploration is not so severely punished.
Not much point to this... I think it adds a cool feel to the game that you can't explore all of the map practically, it makes it feel more real and that there's so much space besides the little section you fly around in. There are other games where you CAN go everywhere and kill every baddy and get every *insert unit of value*. I'm glad that sc2 doesn't have that and is more focused on the story.
Besides, I think it is possible (if you're munchkinesh like that) to go everywhere using quasispace and melnorme, and also pointless as there's nothing there. Late game you get tons of credits with nothing to use it on besides fuel, I myself never felt "limited" except early on with few options and crap modules. But that's one of the parts of the game, upgrading your ship until it's super duper. It would defeat the point if your ship started out being able to go to almost all of the SoI's early on in the game.
3) No end of game, unless you fail. Make it so the player can fly around after the destruction of the Sa-Matra. I always love it when games like starflight or myst, let you explore after the main hurdle is complete.
Sure, why not. It would be great to see the race's responses to you after the ur-quan are defeated, differing depending on which other races got exterminated  . Might sort of screw up the ending sequence and movie, but whatever.
4) Make Hyperspace black and don't have particles zooming and exploding everywhere, and save these effects for the more exotic quasispace. (This is a minor thing, but my eyes just get tired of the red after a while and I think space should be black with stars, no matter how many dimensions you are using.)
I love the effects and coloring. A simple toggle option would suffice in this case though.
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Deus Siddis
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"Don't be silly, a lander is neither a extremely efficient and sophisticated piece of mining equpiment OR an actual battle vehicle."
Then maybe you could have different types of landers for different missions and you already have those space marines for ground warfare. After all, I only ever used one lander slot for my one type of lander (if it got destroyed I'd load a previous save game), so why not put some other toys in those empty slots? Anyway, my point was that the planetary exploration aspect of SC2 was very limited, and I think it would have been much cooler with a '90s version of the starflight planetary system (giant worlds, ecosystems, infinite resouces, realistic weather hazards, etc.)
"Not much point to this... I think it adds a cool feel to the game that you can't explore all of the map practically, it makes it feel more real and that there's so much space besides the little section you fly around in."
Well, if you don't want to explore or go off the beaten path, then I have the perfect game for you:
"Besides, I think it is possible (if you're munchkinesh like that) to go everywhere using quasispace and melnorme, and also pointless as there's nothing there."
That's why you need more diverse and complicated planets.
"Might sort of screw up the ending sequence and movie, but whatever."
Not at all, you'd watch the movies and then still be able to explore (the MK 1 just wouldn't get torched or maybe you'd get another capital ship of somekind.) You could watch, in game, the Chmmr fleet emerge and fight/chase off the UQ into a small circle of influence, off in a corner someplace.
"I love the effects and coloring. A simple toggle option would suffice in this case though."
Well, they do go well with the 3DO hyperspace theme, but I still think space should be quieter. I guess there's still truespace that's nice and tranquil.
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« Last Edit: August 31, 2005, 11:39:29 pm by Deus_Siddis »
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Burb
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Then maybe you could have different types of landers for different missions and you already have those space marines for ground warfare. After all, I only ever used one lander slot for my one type of lander (if it got destroyed I'd load a previous save game), so why not put some other toys in those empty slots?
Limit lander space to only 3~ or so and put in all these different types, make you have to choose what kind of landers you want. Perhaps melnorme upgrades would not affect all landers, so you would have to choose which kinds (go to super hot star systems and bring along the fire resistant one, maybe energy/earthquake too). Or generalize the weather upgrades into one big lump, that would work.
-enviroment resistant
-hunting lander with monster resist and fast stunner
-basic miner with fast move speed and increased equipment (maybe have this require less fuel and put on fast move to hunter)
-a battle lander for storming those UQ bases 
-an exploratory type lander, the only one equipped to analyze those energy stuff (moon base, ruined cities, crashed ships, etc).
You have to think about what kind of landers to use depending on where you're going to go. Might be a bit too annoying, perhaps just keep the amount of possible landers as is but you need to upgrade from melnorme to get the specialized type.
Well, if you don't want to explore or go off the beaten path, then I have the perfect game for you:
... I'm going to ignore your insult for now. Don't push it.
Exploring is more fun if you can't just do it in a single round trip. I usually explore every significant place I can, but making it easier doesn't help gameplay experience (unless you want a beginners option, where people have trouble learning how to farm planets efficiently). Making these places easy to get to rather defeats the point of getting off the beaten path.
Oh well, I concede there is no real harm in dropping fuel prices just a bit, altho you don't have anything to spend it on besides fuel late game >_<.
That's why you need more diverse and complicated planets.
Unless you are talking about more sidequestesque things, it still won't be that interesting. Making planets more complicated will make things interesting when just mining, but doesn't add any reason to go explore (one planet is just like another after you've seen 30-40~ systems).
Not at all, you'd watch the movies and then still be able to explore (the MK 1 just wouldn't get torched or maybe you'd get another capital ship of somekind.) You could watch, in game, the Chmmr fleet emerge and fight/chase off the UQ into a small circle of influence, off in a corner someplace.
Well umm, it wouldn't quite be the same thing since you don't have your good old vindicator, but ssssssssshyeah, why not. I can see it now: minigame Talana & zelnick's honeymoon, touring the universe . Get a caster that lets you call upon the new alliance for support (infinite) so you don't have to worry about being destroyed.
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Deus Siddis
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"-enviroment resistant
-hunting lander with monster resist and fast stunner
-basic miner with fast move speed and increased equipment (maybe have this require less fuel and put on fast move to hunter)
-a battle lander for storming those UQ bases
-an exploratory type lander, the only one equipped to analyze those energy stuff (moon base, ruined cities, crashed ships, etc)."
You could just have three types:
1) Explorer: Good for lifeform hunting and building investigation.
2) Miner: Extra cargo space and resistance to hazardous environments.
3) Warrior: Kicks ass.
"... I'm going to ignore your insult for now. Don't push it."
Oh come on, you've got to find that somewhat amusing? If you find that degrading somehow, just imagine how the guy who designed that game must feel. I'd like to see the design docs for that one (probably just a couple pages).
"Unless you are talking about more sidequestesque things, it still won't be that interesting. Making planets more complicated will make things interesting when just mining, but doesn't add any reason to go explore (one planet is just like another after you've seen 30-40~ systems)."
So then you would only explore space, if you had quests to complete there? What if you explored just to see the ruins and bones (if they had bones) of the taalo homeworld? Or could see dozens of species of lifeforms with many unusual adaptions that they'd use to hunt each other or you? I mean we all live day in and day out on one planet, earth, and yet we do not get too bored.
"Get a caster that lets you call upon the new alliance for support (infinite) so you don't have to worry about being destroyed."
Sure, if you've beat the game and conquered the universe, you should be able to unleash eternal death onto your enemies. They lost, you won, life's a bitch (for them). 
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Burb
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You could just have three types:
1) Explorer: Good for lifeform hunting and building investigation.
2) Miner: Extra cargo space and resistance to hazardous environments.
3) Warrior: Kicks ass.
I suppose if you don't feel like making people have to choose which types of landers to take, that's decent. My idea was to force people to switch landers depending on where they are going (general mining stuff, get miner for "safe" worlds, get enviroment resistant one for hot systems, get hunter for bio data, OR if you want to do quest stuff grab explorer, battle lander, maybe a miner for anything you might see along the way, etc.) Otherwise though, I feel there isn't much point in having specialized landers as there is no "damage" system in place for landers (they just refill with crew). You'll just have to go down a place twice or three times with the differing landers :\.
Sure, if you've beat the game and conquered the universe, you should be able to unleash eternal death onto your enemies. They lost, you won, life's a bitch (for them).
ofc
So then you would only explore space, if you had quests to complete there?
You need to put SOMETHING there to make it interesting. Like getting some backstory by landing on the taalo homeworld etc etc, that would be cool. If not, then no, I would not want to go there.
I mean we all live day in and day out on one planet, earth, and yet we do not get too bored.
Define "too bored". Plenty of people get bored and tired of their lives; have you ever heard the term "mid-life crisis"? And please, do not compare video games to real life. Touring the world is more interesting than touring the universe of a video game. No video game can be nearly as complex and intricate as real life.
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Megagun
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Hmm.. Something just kicked into my mind...
If the Orz really are non-physical beings, it would make PERFECT SENSE for them to "take over and trasnform" other sentient races! When they do that, they can alter their surroundings, and actually get something done!
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Deus Siddis
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"My idea was to force people to switch landers depending on where they are going (general mining stuff, get miner for "safe" worlds, get enviroment resistant one for hot systems, get hunter for bio data, OR if you want to do quest stuff grab explorer, battle lander, maybe a miner for anything you might see along the way, etc.)"
Same here, only I'd go with less landers to prevent micromanaging.
"You need to put SOMETHING there to make it interesting. Like getting some backstory by landing on the taalo homeworld etc etc, that would be cool."
Agreed.
"No video game can be nearly as complex and intricate as real life."
Right, but you can have things in games that you'd never get to see in real life, so there's a counter balance to that. It would be beyond words to stand on the face of another planet, with thousands and thousands of miles of cold space between you and everything you knew. But the chances are you'll never see mars in person. Nor will you fight in an epic battle of deep space, I don't think.
"If the Orz really are non-physical beings, it would make PERFECT SENSE for them to "take over and trasnform" other sentient races! When they do that, they can alter their surroundings, and actually get something done!"
But why do they need to affect their surroundings, if their surroundings cannot affect them? Do they just do it for fun. Maybe the Orz just need us hosts, so they can *germinate*.
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Burb
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The arilou are still one dimension above the orz, so umm no.
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Megagun
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Umm.. They've got access to Hyperspace.. So if they go to the natural portal, they should be able to, actually...
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Art
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Burb is my brother, by the way. He's been taking over with the gameplay analysis while I've been busy with schoolwork and fuming about dinosaurs.
A few more storyish things:
Right, but you can have things in games that you'd never get to see in real life, so there's a counter balance to that. It would be beyond words to stand on the face of another planet, with thousands and thousands of miles of cold space between you and everything you knew. But the chances are you'll never see mars in person. Nor will you fight in an epic battle of deep space, I don't think.
Yeah, sure, but even so it'd be a million times cooler to go to the Great Wall of China, or Macchu Picchu, or even a local nature walk to see the sunset than to play through a scene in a game that takes place on Mars. The only way games can come close to competing with real life is through actual simulation, which tends to require a really powerful graphics engine being used by really talented artists, or through gameplay -- whose power is totally situational. That is, you can make me feel I'm stranded all alone on a distant planet, but only by making things happen in a certain order and having them react in a certain way to my actions. Going through space feels scary and disorienting because, unlike real life, I know I may "die" if I don't husband my resources extremely carefully.
Thing is, you take that away -- you give me infinite fuel to go through HyperSpace, for example -- and it feels a lot less exciting and dangerous, and soon it starts to feel like doing nothing but watching pixels on a screen. I feel this way about most games that include a "god" mode or anything else that gives you the power to explore indefinitely without risk. It can be fun, but it's never all *that* fun for me.
But why do they need to affect their surroundings, if their surroundings cannot affect them? Do they just do it for fun. Maybe the Orz just need us hosts, so they can *germinate*.
Either works. They do seem to enjoy *parties* with *dancing* in *heavy space*. There seems to be something inherently more enjoyable about *heavy space* -- that here it's easier for the Orz to *hold together*, whatever that means. Almost as though they experience life more vividly in our space than in theirs, which draws them here -- hence their desire for vivid experience like combat and explosions.
Based on various interpretations of Orz space as somehow being less coherent or dense than our universe -- just as HyperSpace and QuasiSpace seem *more* full of energy and packed close together in TrueSpace -- it may be that the Orz-entity finds life in a floating gray haze unpleasant, and becomes more conscious and more real if it has bodies. I dunno, though.
Maybe because this way, they can start an offense against the Arilou? They're physical beings too, you know.. And since the Arilou probably have a wrong *smell*... Now that they've got a physical form, they can attack them?
Doubt it. I doubt that the Arilou are *entirely* physical, anyway. The way they use terms like "discorporation" and the whole theme of their being super-evolved and aware of space and time on a different level and whatnot gives me the sense that the Arilou's bodies are only a sort of vestigial thing that is less important than their spiritual selves.
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