It is...FRIDAY!

New screenshots!

The further you get from Earth, the stranger the planets.

The Codex is designed to help provide background on the lore of Star Control: Origins as well as a "how to play" guide wrapped into one.

Don't want to do any spoilers so I can't really show off some of the other pages. But over the course of your adventure, you'll start picking up a lot of...stuff.

Your ship from orbit.

Just little bits of polish.

Destinations on planets are now fully handled by things you can build in the building crafter.

Cheers!

Being involved in gaming communities means dealing with a lot of drama.  The most common problem I observe are people who have no capacity for empathy.  It never occurs to them what someone might do back at them.

Here are a few truths I've come to recognize:

1. If you attack someone's livelihood, don't be surprised if someone returns the favor.
2. You have no right to anonymity. People should respect your privacy but don't confuse respect with rights.
3. Do not assume that you can attack the "Bigger person" with impunity. There is no rule that states that your target won't punch down in response.
4. If you dance around a dumpster fire along enough, you will get burned.
5. Don't apply rules to others that you do not keep yourself.

For me, these 5 rules have been a survival guide over the past three decades I've been online.  As I once explained to a colleague, you cannot infinitely absorb abuse from people and stay balanced.  You have to either redirect it harmlessly or failing that, make sure the perpetrator is given a figurative knock with a rolled up newspaper.

The counter-response, the one I've heard decade after decade usually involves "you have to ignore them".  That sort of response only comes from people who have never been the subject of social media mob justice or someone dedicated to your personal, real-life, destruction. 

One example of someone who got a harsh lesson was a friend of my wife who heard me complain about the review bombing of my book.  Mind you, this book was released in 2010, long before there was any awareness of the concept of "Social Justice Warriors".  In brief, a handful of people from a particular political forum wanted to make sure my "vile" (i.e. libertarian-like) political opinions resulted in me paying a price in real life.  Sound familiar?

Now, back in those days, I was still firmly in the "don't dignify with response, ignore it" camp that our PR people always insisted on.  So I just took it and complained to my wife and her friend.  She insisted that I just had to grow a thicker skin and proceeded to write a glowingly positive review that quickly resulted in the dogpilers to turn on her.  She became incredibly upset and raged "My family can see these comments about me!" and proceeded to delete her review.  Doing so, incidentally, resulted in a long-running myth that my wife reviews our stuff. 

But the point was made: It's easy give advice that amounts to "ignore the haters" but it's another thing to actually be on the receiving end of it. Which is why I live by those 5 rules. 

In one of our other dev journals, we showed the pipeline of how aliens came to be in Star Control: Origins.  The process started with the artists and the writers working in parallel.  The artists would sketch up lots and lots of alien shapes, and the writers would design the history and lore and roles of the aliens. From there, the process would begin to merge to ensure that the final alien visual expression matched up with the lore for them.

Today we're going to begin walking you through how the Star Control aliens that appear in Star Control: Origins were developed.

Do you have enough Jeff in your life?

We first have to separate the difference between a character and a species.  In the classic Star Control series, there was Fwiffo, the character and Spathi, the species.  For the most part, Star Control: Origins focuses on species but there are also a few characters and one of our favorites is Jeff.

Ironically, as far as I know, Jeff's species is not revealed in Star Control: Origins.  I won't spoil Jeff's personality but you can get an idea of what he looks like and how he evolved.

First, you have the inkblots:

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We are in balance mode for Star Control: Origins and part of this process involves placing hand crafted planets to help with late game pacing.

Since we are hand placing them, we're hand naming them too.

If you have a planet you would like to name, feel free to suggest them here.  No promises but if they are fitting, we will do our best.

Not all ships are created equally.  This is particularly true for the ships of Star Control itself.  In the year 2088, the United Earth Advanced Space Vehicle Program (UEASV) had done its best given the politics involved.  But ultimately, what Star Control starts out with is a ship with very much the capabilities that a ship in 2088 would have, which is to say: it can... turtle around the solar system.

The first long-range ship program - the Vindicator program - was designed to allow the ship to be frequently updated with new modules.  Because the ship was designed to handle technology from different nations such as the United States, China, Russia, Japan, Germany, France, Brazil, etc. the interfaces are remarkably flexible.

Ironically, this need for flexibility has also made the Vindicator class well suited for plugging into alien technology that arrives...

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Every day, more and more people are becoming aware of intellectual property. As a software developer, this is great!

When I started my career, I routinely ran into people who couldn't understand how someone could justify $100 for a piece of software when it only "cost" $5 to produce it because they didn't understand the concept of intellectual property.

Unfortunately, enough people know just enough to get themselves into trouble.  So in this article I will try to walk lay people through two of the three major types of intellectual property (the third being patents). 

Note, I am not a lawyer.  This article is not providing legal advice and if you have specific legal conclusions you want researched, you should speak to a qualified intellectual property lawyer. 

What is "IP"?

IP can refer to trademarks, copyrights, patents and other forms of intellectual property.  A trademark is IP.  A copyright is IP.  A  patent is IP.

Copyrights

Copyrights protect original works of authorship from being copied.  It's pretty straight forward.  Original. Works. Of Authorship.  Is that that thing a copy of that other thing?

Songs, poetry, movies, computer software and even architecture are protected by copyright.   Copyright does not protect names, facts, ideas, systems, recipes or methods of operation.

A copyright comes into existence the moment you create something that could potentially be protected. You don't have to file something to have a copyright.

You can't copyright an idea. You can copyright an expression.

Here's a simple example:

You can't copyright a cake recipe.  If I make a cake following a recipe and you make a cake following the same recipe these are two different cakes because they are both unique expressions of that recipe.  On the other hand, if we had a machine that could duplicate your cake then those cakes would be copies.

At the end of the day, a juror is ultimately asked "is this a copy of that?"  That means thing A and thing B are put next to each other and if thing B is substantially similar, then it's a copy.  Substantially similar doesn't mean just "similar".  It means that one is pretty obviously a copy of the other.

More reading:

https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf 

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/187385/clone_wars_the_five_most_.php 

A good rule of thumb to follow on whether something is copyright infringement is to simply ask yourself: Is this a copy of this other thing?  Not similar. Not inspired by. Copied.

Famous Copyright Lawsuits

The question usually asked of jurors: Would a typical person recognize A and being B?

Sims Social vs. The Ville (EA vs. Zynga)

Rogers vs. Koons (Photography)

Star Wars vs. Battlestar Galactica (Too similar?)

My take

• The Sims Social vs. The Ville are too close to call for me.
• Rogers vs. Koons was pretty obvious copyright infringement to me
• Fox would have lost the case handedly, BSG isn't a copy of Star Wars.

Trademarks

A trademark is a word and/or symbol to identify goods and services from one seller from another to prevent consumer confusion over the source of those goods and services.

Trademarks exist protect consumers and to contain the good will and reputation of the seller of goods and services.  "X: The name you trust!"

If the question is whether something is associated with something else or if people will "believe" something is actually something else, you are in the land of trademarks.

More reading:

https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/BasicFacts.pdf

Famous cases

Adidas vs. Forever 21 (the case of confusing shirts)

Starbucks vs. Freddoccino (the case of stealing good will)

Superhero (Marvel and DC have trademarked the word Superhero)

My take

It's pretty rare for a trademark case (within the US) to involve someone actually using someone else's trademark to associate their new product and service with it...so most cases involve third parties trying to pawn off on what they believe is the good will and reputation of their mark.

• In both the Starbucks and Adidas cases, the argument seemed to be that people associate the stripes or the name+design of the drink with their mark and thus are benefiting from the good will and reputation of the former.
• Superhero is way above my head. No idea.

Conclusions

On the Internet, everyone thinks they're a lawyer.  And sometimes, even general practice lawyers will opine on IP without really knowing much on it. 

I'm obviously not a lawyer but I have been through millions of dollars of IP litigation over the past 20 (mostly those patent trolls you hear about but multiple trademark and copyright suits as well).  

The very first IP lawsuit I was involved in was with Entrepreneur Magazine.  We had a video game called Entrepreneur and they argued that people would be likely confused into thinking our game was related to their magazine.  We settled and hence The Corporate Machine was born.  Would we have won if we had gone to court? Even today, I have no idea. You tell me.  It wasn't worth spending millions of dollars on though.

Anyone who tries to tell you they know the outcome is only showing they have no idea what they're talking about.  A better analogy would be to think of it as weighted dice.  When you're dealing with the courts, you are dealing with human beings and while different cases have better odds of success (No, you can't call your OS "Lindows") or failure ("No, Battlestar Galactica is not a copy of Star Wars") there's no sure thing.

Which is why a layperson's guide like this will get you 75% of the way because the last 25% of the way is largely dice rolling:

Copyright: Is X a copy of Y? Put them next to each other or describe in detail the two or list the source code of both, are they substantially similar? (i.e. a copy?)

Trademark: Would the average person familiar with the subject matter be likely confused into believing that X and Y are connected?

In the age of procedurally generated maps and universes, saying you have thousands of planets in your game no longer carries the same punch.  Stardock's upcoming space RPG, Star Control: Origins indeed boasts thousands of worlds but what Stardock is hoping players to notice is how different different worlds are.

The Realism battle

Early in the game's development it was decided that fun would always outrank realism when it came to planets. While the home solar system of the human race is fairly well known, who is to say that there aren't Topaz planets out there? (scientists, that's who!)

Dreaming of an alien dawn

The first question Stardock designers asked themselves was, what should the surface of a planet look like? How do you make traveling to thousands of worlds interesting and not repetitive? The answer was largely to throw out any thought of "realism" and come up with as many exotic world types as possible.

The next question they asked was what should they look like from above?

Beauty vs. Fun

Making a planet exotic looking is one thing. The question then becomes, how do you make sure it's fun to explore them?

For example, cliffs and mountains are all fun until the player gets stuck.

Procedurally generation:

A habitable planet:

a plain boring sphere.

From this sphere a planet class is given a list of variables to work with.  What types of materials will be on it? What types of geographical features might be on it? What types of minerals, life forms, etc. might be on it?

The engine then looks at how far away from the sun it is, how big the planet is, how big the star is, etc. and fills out the planet.

Final Procedurally generated planet:

But this isn't the end of the story.  As cool as this planet looks, and it is unique, it is, as a practical matter, basically the same as another planet of the same class with similar stats:

These two planets are different but it's a difference without meaning.  So if a planet has significance to the story, it will often get an additional pass by a designer:

and then buildings placed in just the right spot:

Now the writer can say "Seek the temple located in the glaciers of Palon III. There you will find the answers you seek."

This also makes the entire process much more accessible.  As wonderful as procedural generation is as a time-savings tool, it greatly reduces the number of people who can collaborate on the creative side.  By contrast, if the creation tools are made not just easy but fun to use, it opens things up for many talented people to bring their own imaginations into play.

Thus when the player lands on the planet and begins to seek out the ruins, they know that that planet is unique even though it is the result of procedural generation and human intervention.

It seems like every game now wants to brag about having a procedurally generated world, galaxy or universe as if this is a selling point.  Procedural generation has become the game industry's equivalent of CGI where what started out as a useful tool in the hand of designers has become increasingly used as a replacement for design.

Stardock's upcoming space RPG, Star Control: Origins has plenty of procedurally generated worlds.  With thousands of planets to explore, there's no way to hand-craft every single one.  But procedural generation in the game exists to serve the story and writers.  Because when it comes to the story and the adventures and the quests, each one is hand-crafted by professional Science Fiction writers.

Part 1: A living universe that is also hand-crafted

Step 1: Use a real star map. 

We humans know what stars are near by and what they are called.  For stars that are further away and start having number designations, Stardock gave them colorful names for players to remember.  Other than certain exoplanets, we don't really know what's around them.

Step 2: Deciding how solar systems should be depicted

Stardock has to decide early on how realistic to make its solar systems for Star Control.  The classic Star Control series was limited to single stars with limited numbers of planets and moons.  Star Control: Origins, supports binary star systems, brown dwarfs and no practical limit on the number of planets in a system.  Thus, the question really came down to game-play.  What was fun?

Step 3: Procedurally generate the solar systems.

The Star Control team then took from their Galactic Civilizations experience and built an app that would generate the planets around the stars using lots of different rules for gameplay.  Red stars tended to have more of certain classes of planets while blue stars have a different set of rules. 

A procedurally generated star would do a fine job creating a decent, if otherwise unremarkable solar system.  This is when the writers get involved.

Step 3: Coming up with a story

While the main story-arc of Star Control: Origins is handled by the lead writer at Stardock, the rest of the map is divided up and handed out to writers who begin crafting their own stories.

So for example, in this solar system, there are two advanced and competing civilizations who are fighting over a planet to colonize in that system.  They don't have fast-than-light travel so the entire drama takes place in just this one star system.

Step 4: The writer modifies the solar system

Right from in-game, the writer can bring up the Stellar Cartography tools and begin editing the solar system.

Now the writer can make this solar system have its own story.

The end result is a solar system with 3 stars in it.  The main primary star and two dwarf stars.  The purpose here is to set up the conflict.  There are now four habitable planets and a "Jewel" class planet (rich).  The two inner habitable planets are our conflicting planets and the other planets are the ones they're competing with. 

Step 5: The Story

In Star Control, every story is hand-crafted.

When Stardock is asked why they went this path, their answer is that the problem with randomly generated quests and missions is that they assume players are playing the game to simply "get stuff" and the story and the lore is just filler.  But Stardock believes that the story is the reward and that look exists to allow players to access new stories.

However, making it easy for writers to create stories involved a great deal of effort.  For example, Stardock's business software unit was employed to develop "Adventure Studio" whose task was to allow science fiction writers to be able to craft stories with a minimum of effort that could also take advantage of Stardock's powerful scripting abilities.  This way, different authors could write their own stories that others could pick up on since any author can create a "variable" on the fly and those variables become accessible to every other author to make use of allowing them to tie together stories in unexpected ways.

Procedural Generation is a tool, not a goal

Procedural generation helped cut down the grunt work in developing the Star Control: Origins universe.  But it wasn't intended to substitute for story-telling.  Exploration is a means to an end, not the ends unto itself.  Every crashed ship, every enemy pirate every refugee and every hero you encounter was placed there as part of an intertwined story.  Procedural generation ensured that the writers had time to focus on their stories. The technology is designed to serve the writers not the other way around.

Next up: Thousands of unique planets

(every planet is procedurally generated to start with but the writers can then flesh out planets for story-telling purposes)

For most people, Star Control: Origins will be the first Star Control game they've ever heard of.  But long ago, back in the DOS days, there was a trilogy of Star Control games.

The first Star Control game was essentially a Space Wars style game with a strategy layer. There wasn't really any "lore" with it.  The second one, my favorite, was Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters. This game was filled with an epic lore that dated back over a quarter million years. The third one, Star Control III: The Kesari Quadrant, took its own direction, which many fans have since come to not care for.

When we began working on Star Control: Origins we had the challenge of deciding what was and wasn't canon in the Star Control universe.  Ultimately, what we decided was to make Star Control a multiverse.  Thus, Star Control II took place in what we call the Ur-Quan universe.  Star Control III takes place in the Kessari universe, and Origins takes place in the Origins universe.

Early concept of the Xraki

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Star Control: Origins is a space action adventure game.  You are the Captain of a ship with a mission to protect Earth and explore the galaxy. 

From a technical perspective, Star Control is a story engine.  We don't generate new quests.  Instead, we are looking to populate a deep and rich world with hand-crafted Sci-Fi stories.  But we won't be doing it alone.  Much of our effort has been to create consumer (i.e. user friendly) apps like Adventure Studio, the City Crafter, and the Ship Designer, so that people can create compelling stories to share.

Of course, our job is to tell the first story: Star Control: Origins itself, starting in 2088. Over the past four years, we've written a lot of stories.  And while the main mission might "only" take 20 hours to complete, that is not the end of the story.  It's a big galaxy out there.  And mind you, this is just our universe.  People will be able to travel to completely different universes as well with their own stories and characters.  But it is also our hope that fans will want to help flesh out this universe with us over the coming years.

To understand how big our playing field is, let's talk about our setting: Orion's Spur.

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