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Krulle
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New Star Control - how to stay within the universe when making a new story
« on: November 08, 2017, 12:56:40 pm »

Hey guys, now that two new Star Control games are coming up, one within the storyline of SC2 (Ghosts of the Precursors), and one completely different ("Origins"), does anyone of you have ideas of how yu could fit a new story into the universe?


Project 6014 did it by shiftig the map. Luckily Earth was not the centre of the SC2 map, so this was easy to do.
But you can do this only so few times....

The way I would solve quite a few inconsistencies when adding new races which are (in the new story) close to Sol, but have not been shown earlier, is by introducing know-how, that the HyperSpace map is a simplification of 3D-space (already done in SC2). Now improved technology allows for changing the "angle" of the plane of HyperSpace, thus allowing to travel in a different HyperSpace planes, which gives access to other star systems, but also means loss off access to some star systems accessible in the known HyperSpace plane.


(Big image inside spoiler tag. It was the result of a quick image search)
(click to show/hide)
Like flying along the red plane is known HyperSpace.
Improved tech now allows to fly along the yellow HS plane, or along the blue HS plane.
Some stars (depending on physical location and mass of star/star system) may project into several planes, thus being accessible to yellow and red HS planes....

This way you could easily explain new story lines with differend star maps without including all previously known races.


If you ever feel like creating a new fan project based on the UQM, feel free to use this idea when you want to explain a new map.
Heck, even comercial projects are welcome to use it.
I want MORE Star Control games. And I do not have the time to create one myself.  Sad
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Zelnik
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Re: New Star Control - how to stay within the universe when making a new story
« Reply #1 on: November 09, 2017, 03:36:21 am »

It depends on a number of things... Amusingly, another game from this era did something very clever. X-com to be specific. When it went from X-com 1 to X-Com 2:TFTD, they inverted the map and used oceans as the play area far less than land.

In regards to GOTP...So long as you have good reason, you don't have to change your map MUCH. Ultimately, I think the best option is to expand the map, either "Zooming out" or shifting the map, possibly adding the concept of a 'subspace' that is the 'below' to quasispace's 'above'  and make sure that things maintain a high level of consistency. It depends on where the adventure points and the setup is flexible enough that you could literally make SC2 GOTP from the same exact interface and map with changes to spheres of influence, some star changes, and not much more.

SC:O? It's a little like communism. The only way to win is not to play.
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Re: New Star Control - how to stay within the universe when making a new story
« Reply #2 on: November 10, 2017, 12:22:15 am »

(Big image inside spoiler tag. It was the result of a quick image search)
(click to show/hide)
Like flying along the red plane is known HyperSpace.
Improved tech now allows to fly along the yellow HS plane, or along the blue HS plane.
Some stars (depending on physical location and mass of star/star system) may project into several planes, thus being accessible to yellow and red HS planes....

This way you could easily explain new story lines with differend star maps without including all previously known races.

What would Quasispace and Orz Space be then?
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Krulle
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Re: New Star Control - how to stay within the universe when making a new story
« Reply #3 on: November 10, 2017, 12:09:20 pm »

Above and beyond.... They're out of the realm of 5 dimensions....
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Frogboy
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Re: New Star Control - how to stay within the universe when making a new story
« Reply #4 on: November 10, 2017, 04:32:00 pm »

It's a difficult challenge made all the more difficult by Star Control III.

When we discussed this with Paul and Fred back in the day, we both agreed that Star Control: Space Cows shouldn't be considered canon to the events of Star Control II.

So when making Star Control: Origins the fan community (including many people from UQM) came up with the idea of a multiverse.

So with a multiverse, the events of Star Control I/II happen in universe 6014 (as a nod to the Project 6014 team) and we presume (and I have no special inside knowledge on this) that Paul and Fred's continuation of the Ur-Quan Masters story will occur inside that universe as it's their universe.

That way, Star Control III occurred in a different universe.

And then, Star Control: Origins exists in yet another universe.

And then, people can keep creating their own alternative universes that one visits from one of the Precursor Origins that they find.

Like Krulle mentions, the challenge with trying to do new stories in a single universe is that you end up with Mass Effect: Andromeda where you might as well just do a different game entirely.
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Krulle
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Re: New Star Control - how to stay within the universe when making a new story
« Reply #5 on: November 10, 2017, 10:15:33 pm »

I liked the idea of the Space Cows. It came rather unxpected, bt fitted the story of SC3 rather well.
I did not like the premise of the Eternal1s at all, and I felt the Precursors should've stayed unsolved.

I am making some side pot to get Origins once it's done, as the current discussions and critics rather made me curious.
But finding time to playw ill be much harder....

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Death 999
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Re: New Star Control - how to stay within the universe when making a new story
« Reply #6 on: November 10, 2017, 10:20:49 pm »

Actually, I felt that the Eternal Ones was a pretty good answer to the weird situation of the Precursors. They arose practically yesterday in terms of the history of the galaxy. Humans had discovered fire and domesticated the dog when they were flying around.

So it seems like they probably aren't the oldest critters. OR, they caused all the others to rise up, monolith-style, OR… something periodically sweeps the place clean.

And the Eternal Ones are that last answer.

It was just everything else about the story that was awful.
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Re: New Star Control - how to stay within the universe when making a new story
« Reply #7 on: November 12, 2017, 09:25:04 am »

Actually, I felt that the Eternal Ones was a pretty good answer to the weird situation of the Precursors. They arose practically yesterday in terms of the history of the galaxy. Humans had discovered fire and domesticated the dog when they were flying around.

So it seems like they probably aren't the oldest critters. OR, they caused all the others to rise up, monolith-style, OR… something periodically sweeps the place clean.

And the Eternal Ones are that last answer.

It was just everything else about the story that was awful.
It's a theme that I've seen used elsewhere, too. The examples I've seen post-date Space Cows 3, but there may be older iterations I'm not aware of. It does make for an effective means of resolving Fermi's Paradox while still having enough starfaring races around at comparable tech levels to make things interesting.

The claim that the start of their name translated to "Eternal One" in every language, though, was... questionable to say the least.
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Re: New Star Control - how to stay within the universe when making a new story
« Reply #8 on: November 13, 2017, 10:58:38 am »

one thing I really hope is that we're not stuck with the star map and star types of SC2. It was created in the 90's when science was not as far as it is now. I would like the new star control to be more scientifically accurate and have moving planets, binary/trinary stars, black holes etc etc Smiley.
Also, green stars are up for debate. Do they really exist? There are some stars which emanate the most in the green wavelengths, but human eyes will perceive these as yellow.
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Re: New Star Control - how to stay within the universe when making a new story
« Reply #9 on: November 13, 2017, 09:03:40 pm »

In SCO, the starmap is the actual star map based on what we know today.

In doing the map, we learned that we actually don't even know about most of the stars, even local ones, because they're brown dwarfs that we can't see. 
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Re: New Star Control - how to stay within the universe when making a new story
« Reply #10 on: November 13, 2017, 11:35:25 pm »

From memory, the ones that emit mostly in the green are white to our eyes. For something to appear green, there needs to be something absorbing the red and blue ends of the spectrum (which chlorophyll does).

I'd question how much a 'brown dwarf' counts as a star... but yeah, for game purposes, you probably would want to count them. They can have a planetary system that might be mineable for resources, after all. Wouldn't expect them to be biologically rich, though!
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Re: New Star Control - how to stay within the universe when making a new story
« Reply #11 on: November 19, 2017, 12:18:36 am »

Also, green stars are up for debate. Do they really exist? There are some stars which emanate the most in the green wavelengths, but human eyes will perceive these as yellow.

The globalists made the stars green! Or the Mmrnmhrm fine tuned some yellow ones so they are visibly green and perfect for organic development ... or something.
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Re: New Star Control - how to stay within the universe when making a new story
« Reply #12 on: November 19, 2017, 12:29:33 am »

Also, green stars are up for debate. Do they really exist? There are some stars which emanate the most in the green wavelengths, but human eyes will perceive these as yellow.

The globalists made the stars green! Or the Mmrnmhrm fine tuned some yellow ones so they are visibly green and perfect for organic development ... or something.

I would love it if the sun was green.... Yellow is actually one of the colors I like least. Orange is however a nice color. My favorite colors are orange, green, cyan and violet.
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