Greetings!
First thing, I talked to Paul and Fred and they suggested I talk to Riku Nuottajärvi about doing music for the new game (he worked on Star Control 2's music) but I don't know how to contact him. So if any of you could do me the favor of letting him know we are looking to talk to him I'd appreciate it.
Second, with Galactic Civilizations III nearly done, the dev team and art team will be moving on to new projects one of which is Star Control. So the staff up continues. The core team is already in place and development has been ongoing for awhile (though very little art yet).
Third, the basic plot of the new game has been finalized. We think people will like it. Chris Bucholz (cracked.com columnist) is leading the writing effort. You'll be hearing a lot from him in the coming months.
Fourth, from talking to Paul about what sorts of things really matter to him about Star Control we've expanded on the community element of the game. So in essence, the game will ship with all the tools necessary for modders to create their own "galaxies" (which we refer to as cluster groups until we come up with a better name) that has their own ships, aliens, etc. where users can download and add it to their in-game universe from within the game.
Fifth, the player's flagship will be very very customizeable both in terms of weapons, crew, etc. as well visually. When players explore planets, they'll find lots and lots of cool stuff including ship parts. These ship parts (think of them like lego pieces of various shapes) will let players make their flag ships look however they want. So in terms of multiplayer battles as well as visiting other people's galaxies, we have no doubt we'll see people flying around in Serenity or the Millenium falcon as well as endlessly unique player creations.
Sixth, while we will be creating (and supporting) alien ship designs via Maya and 3D studio, the plan is to allow players to also use a GalCiv III-like ship designer so that when they create their own galaxies to share with the community, they can easily give each race their own unique ships along with their own stories, aliens, etc.
Seventh, more controversially, the current plan is to have the aliens be pre-rendered. We are still debating this. There are pros and cons. The Civilization V team that created the leaders (which speak in real-time) now work here believe we can support real-time. My issue with that is that it's very very expensive to do it well and I'm not personally keen on aliens speaking English (I realize they did this on some versions of SC2). I personally prefer the aliens speaking their own language with subtitles. This is an issue we'll be debating internally and with the community I'm sure for a long time.
Eighth, most of the races aren't humanoids. In fact, off the top of my head, only the Earthlings and one other are humanoid right now.
Ninth, there won't be any official announcements in 2015. We're not sure if we'll have a public beta but we are sure that we will be offering beta access to the Ur-Quan community and related communities.
Tenth, The game will be using the same engine as Ashes of the Singularity (www.ashesgame.com).
Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks!
-brad
