Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters will make its way to Steam on February 19th. It's a version of 1992 strategy classic Star Control 2 that takes advantage of updates from its long-running open source project, and it'll be completely free.
]]>Bees have intervened to amicably settle the legal dispute over rights to the Star Control series of sci-fi explore-o-RPGs. After finding common ground in a love of bees, Star Control creators Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III have hashed out a deal with Star Control: Origins developers Stardock that all parties say is nice and good and fine. Stardock will get to name their games Star Control but not claim vintage designs, Ford and Reiche will not get to name their games Star Control but will get to say they created the series, and they'll all split royalties from sales of the old games. And now they'll stop lawfighting.
]]>Stardock's Star Control: Origins has been pulled from sale on Steam and GOG following a copyright claim from the lead developers of the first two games in the spacefaring RPG series. Stardock did file a preliminary injunction to preemptively block any such attempts from Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III, but a judge denied that. By releasing Star Control: Origins despite knowing that the copyright was contested, the judge ruled last week, "the harm [Stardock] complains of is indeed of its own making." Stardock claim they'll need to lay off some staff now that income's halted.
Update: Stardock are now selling Star Control: Origins direct through their own store.
]]>Fred Ford and Paul Reiche, the lead developers of the first two Star Control games from the 90s, have launched a crowdfunding campaign to help pay legal fees in their battle with Stardock. Both sides are claiming to hold varying rights to the sci-fi RPG-o-adventure series, and scrapping to secure rights the other believes they hold. Ford and Reiche are currently making Ghosts Of The Precursors, a sequel (but not in name) to their Star Control 2, while Stardock are making alternate-universe prequel Star Control: Origins. Ford and Reiche say their defence fees will cost an estimated $2,000,000 (£1.5m) and would very much like the public's help to pay them.
]]>Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III, the lead developers of the original Star Control games, have sent their lawyers into the fight Stardock started over the series and filed a counterclaim of their own. Stardock are currently making a reboot-o-prequel to the sci-fi RPG-o-adventure, named Star Control: Origins, after buying Star Control assets from Atari in 2013 and want to make quite clear who's in charge of the series and rights. Ford and Reiche, who are currently making a Star Control sequel in all but name, contest that Atari couldn't have sold certain rights to Stardock because they had reverted to Ford and Reiche long before then.
]]>Up until this month, it was easy to get excited about the future of Star Control. After 20 years of false starts, we were getting not one but two successors to the classic space romp. The original designers, Fred Ford and Paul Reiche, were working on a direct sequel to Star Control 2, Ghosts of the Precursors, while Stardock was working on a prequel, Star Control: Origins, set in a different universe. Now the two games are lamentably part of an increasingly public dispute between Ford, Reiche and Stardock CEO Brad Wardell. It’s getting ugly.
]]>The two lead fellas behind Star Control have announced that, after 25 years, they are now working on a direct sequel to Star Control 2 named Ghosts of the Precursors. Rather than make a mess by ignorantly saying e.g. "Star Control 2 is a science-fiction RPG-a-spaceshoot-o-adventure-y-thingamy-ish game, and many people love it dearly," I'll point you towards Cobbo's Star Control 2 retrospective and leave it at that.
No, ignore the Star Control 3 made by a different studio - this will pretend that didn't happen and simply follow on from 2. And yup, it's a different game to Star Control: Origins, the prequel being made by current rights owners Stardock.
]]>This week, something a little different. I'm going to talk about something I'm working on myself. Obviously, this brings with it certain complications. I'm won't pretend not to be biased, though I don't mean this to be an advert. I just thought it would be interesting to share some of what I've been working on as the writer and co-quest designer of Daedalic Studio West's The Long Journey Home [official site], and to dig in to the difficulties and decisions that underpin the making of RPG quests.
Got the disclaimer? Cool. Filter accordingly as we blast off. Next week, back to other games and/or long rants about where my bloody Witcher 3 action figures are.
]]>Today, a little bit of heresy. I'm going to talk about adventure games. Specifically, about a thing I've always loved in them, when they offer the chance - that sense of being given a ship and a universe to explore. I get a shiver when I look at the star-map. I feel proud of my usually low-resolution, 256-colour VGA vessel. And yet, jump genres to something like RPG or strategy and the moment is just gone. Why does No Man's Sky, a game that actually supports that wanderlust, not give me anything close to the same thrill that something like Space Quest V still does, even knowing that Space Quest V is a) limited to a handful of worlds, each only a few screens in size, and b) makes your cool ship a garbage scow full of people who pretty much hate you?
I don't know, but I love this screen. This, more than any Galaxy Map, is a screen that whispers "You can go anywhere. Do anything. The universe is yours..."
]]>There aren't enough SF RPGs, and of those, there aren't enough that prioritise what I want from them - the feel of being in an impossible universe full of infinite possibilities, not simply being in a futuristic showroom with a lot of tech manuals. It's why I loved Mass Effect so much, why I got on so well with Anachronox despite hating basically every actual mechanic it merely thought it understood from JRPGs, and why the likes of Eve and Elite Dangerous just aren't my mug of Romulan Ale.
And then of course, there's Star Control II. I've been playing it for a couple of reasons of late, partly for work and partly because it's one of the few games that will run on the Macbook Air I've been travelling with over the last week, and...
...it really is a wonderful game universe, isn't it?
]]>The times change, and we change with the times. Or in the case of RPGs, not. I've always felt this a bit of a shame, especially in games like World of Warcraft, where your character is officially hanging around long enough to see the leaves fall off the trees and the snow to cover up the capital cities. That's why I was quite keen on both Fallout 4 taking the time to redecorate Diamond City a little for at least Halloween and Christmas, and last week, to see a mod take the next step and give the Commonwealth a makeover for all seasons in a way that nobody's really tried since Lords of Midnight 3 way back in the 90s. Whole minutes of fun with the system clock there!
But then as now, it's hard not to start wondering how time could be given its due as more than the fire in which bad movies turn out to be even worse than they initially seemed. Maybe it could be our friend too, and in so many interesting ways.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
And yes, I'm calling it that, because as wonderful as the modern version is, 'The Ur-Quan Masters' [official site] is the worst name imaginable this side of Poopy McPoop's Wacky Space Hijinx.
]]>If you're going to revive an old game series in spaceyear 2014, it may as well be a space game. That's what everyone else is doing, including Brad Wardell's Stardock with the Star Control series.
In an interview with Ars Technica, Wardell confirmed some of the details, including that the game is a prequel and that it'll have multiplayer.
]]>Star Control, and particularly its embiggened sequel, is one of those classics of the 1990s that, while it perhaps doesn't inspire quite as much mass veneration as some of its early-PC peers, has remained beloved and deathless in the long years since release. Ur-Quan Masters was an ambitious and well-received fan-made (and free) remake of its galactic exploration and roleplaying, interspecies chat and spaceship-based shooty bang-bang, and it now adds the mandatory 'HD' designation and associated heightened graphcisability.
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