Star Control: Origins has a new expansion available called Earth Rising.

loading...

Continue the Star Control: Origins story with Earth Rising! Now that humans are a major player on the galactic scene, one question remains: how will they use their influence, and how will their interstellar neighbors feel about it?

Earth Rising is a 4-part expansion that contains new quests, ships, rewards, and story that is tied to humanity’s quest for establishing themselves as a major galactic power. Explore new stars, solve newly discovered mysteries, and form relationships with new alien races and their leaders.

What mark will you leave on the galaxy? Will it be for good, or for ill? Answer that question and much more in Earth Rising.

Features

Part 1: Aftermath | Available Now
Star Control has ordered the construction of a new base in Epsilon Trireme, but not every alien is happy about the idea of an expanding human empire and the base construction efforts have already encountered major trouble. Meanwhile, a suspiciously helpful group of aliens have returned and directed you toward the location of a potential new ally - a race of lazy aliens called the Gloosh. A new enemy has also appeared in the shadows, and it seems to have its own long and hostile history with humanity…

Part 2: Return of the Lexites | Available Now
Face your most dangerous challenge yet against a post-singularity species whose motives are a mystery! The Lexites are impeding Earth's efforts to expand into known space. But, why? As the Captain of Earth's first interstellar starship, your mission is to visit new worlds and engage in combat against strange new ships while trying to unravel the mysterious plans of the post-humans who left Earth.

Part 3: The Syndicate | Available Now
Humanity’s alliance is fraying and their plans for expanding into the galaxy are waylaid when they are faced with a new threat and a difficult choice. Two new factions have appeared on the scene: The Syndicate, a group of criminals, pirates, and other people of low moral quality, and The Liberators, an organization of idealistic freedom fighters. Both want your allegiance, and both want to destroy each other, which leaves you with a question: where do your loyalties lie?

Part 4: Earth Rises | Available Now
Humans have finally proven that they may be worthy custodians to the Spur, but they must still prove themselves to allies and enemies alike. Meanwhile, Commander Magara is missing, a faction of humanity is developing a dangerous battlecruiser, and the Mowlings’ God has reluctantly returned and asked you to help save them from destruction. Perhaps a stop at Kapteyn’s bar will give you some more information - if you can avoid getting into a brawl long enough to talk to someone, that is.

The final part of the four part Earth Rising expansion for Star Control: Origins has been announced.

Stardock announced the final installment of its 4-part expansion to Star Control®: Origins™ today. Earth Rising - Part 4: Earth Rises introduces players to exciting new adventures, including bar fights at Kapteyn's Bar, the reluctant return of a God, a search for a missing Commander, and more.

 

Star Control: Origins is set in the late 21st century. The player is the Captain of Earth's first interstellar starship with the mission to explore the galaxy, find allies to help protect Earth from hostile aliens, and find the resources necessary to help Earth expand to the stars.

 

Earth Rises is the final part in a four-part expansion pack called Earth Rising. The expansion adds a host of new aliens, ships, adventures and destinations to the already rich universe introduced in Star Control: Origins. Because Star Control is a non-linear action/RPG game, the new content does not require the player to have already completed the main story arc from the base game.

 

Highlights of Earth Rises include:

• New Missions & Quests - Search for the missing Commander Magara, keep an eye on the humans developing a deadly Terran Battlecruiser, and stop the Measured from harvesting a sun and killing an entire civilization.
• New Location - Visit Kapteyn's Bar to hear the latest gossip, triumph in a bar fight, and pick up bounty hunting quests.
• New Battles - Lead your fleet into epic battles against massive space stations.
• New Weapons - Take on enemies with an arsenal of new weapons like the Black Hole Array or the Charged Warhead.

Star Control: Origins - Earth Rising is now available for purchase for $19.99 on Steam. Currently, the first 3 parts are available to play until part 4 arrives.

Stardock has made version 1.4 of Star Control: Origins available.

The update brings significant visual improvements to the game, including updated planet visuals, adjustments to creature colors, and improvements to planet terrains.

In addition, the game's lore has been updated to include the Arilou, which were previously known only as the Observers.

The second part of Star Control: Origins expansion Earth Rising, is to become available soon.

The epic space RPG, Star Control®: Origins, is due to receive the second part of its 4 part expansion, Earth Rising, soon. Return of the Lexites presents the player with their most dangerous challenge yet -- a post-singularity species whose motives are a mystery.

The Lexites are impeding Earth's efforts to expand into known space. But why? Playing as the Captain of Earth's first interstellar starship, you will find yourself visiting new worlds, engaging in combat against strange new ships while trying to unravel the mysterious plans of the post-humans who left Earth.

"Because Star Control is a non-linear RPG, the Earth Rising expansion series doesn't require you to have completed the main story-line," said Brad Wardell, Designer of Star Control: Origins. "As we release each part to the expansion, players get to experience an ever richer sandbox to explore."

Star Control: Origins - Earth Rising is $19.99. Part 1, Aftermath, is available now. Part 2: Return of The Lexites will release this spring. Part 3 arrives this summer with the conclusion due this fall.

Star Control: Origins has been removed from Steam and GOG due to a DMCA complaint.

Star Control: Origins will be coming down

We have received news today that Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford, contractors on the classic DOS game, Star Control 2 for Accolade have issued a DMCA take down notice to Valve to take down Star Control: Origins.

https://www.screencast.com/t/mODt766t162 (this is the one sent to GOG)

As some of you may know, there is a legal dispute between Stardock and Reiche and Ford regarding the trademarks and copyrights pertaining to Star Control.

You can read the history here:
https://www.stardock.com/games/starcontrol/article/487690/qa-regarding-star-control-and-paul-and-fred

Unfortunately, rather than relying on the legal system to resolve this, they have chosen to bypass it by issuing vague DMCA take-down notices to Steam and GOG (who, btw, Reiche and Ford are suing using GoFundMe money).

Steam and GOG both have a policy of taking down content that receive DMCA notices regardless of the merits of the claims.

To my knowledge, never in the history of our industry has anyone attempted to use the DMCA system to take down a shipping game before. For example, when PubG sued Fortnite for copyright infringement, they didn't try to take Fortnite down with a DMCA notice.

For those not familiar with copyright law, you CANNOT copyright ideas, individual or short phrases, concepts, mechanics, game designs, etc.

Star Control: Origins does not contain any copyrighted work of Reiche or Ford. We spent 5 years working on it making it our own game. It very much plays like you would expect a Star Control game. But that has nothing to do with copyright.

Stardock, for the record, owns the trademark to Star Control and the copyright to Star Control 3 and Star Control: Origins has nothing to do with Reche and Ford.

Valve assures us that anyone who has already bought the game should be able to continue to play it.

Unfortunately, without the income from Star Control: Origins, Stardock will have to lay off some of the men and women who are assigned to the game.

We will do our very best to continue to support the game and hopefully Star Control: Origins will return as soon as possible.

@PC Gamer Star Control: Origins has a four-part season pass that debuts next week.

The interstellar strategy-adventure Star Control: Origins is getting a four-part season pass called Earth Rising that will add "dozens of missions, new alien races, and a variety of ships" to the game. The expansion will leave the job of starship captain essentially unchanged—advance Earth's interests in the galactic community with a deft blend of diplomacy and violence—but the state of the galaxy itself sounds a whole lot more complicated.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

Worthplaying reports that Star Control: Origins will receive free DLC called Reinforcements.

The free Reinforcements DLC adds a dozen new ships to pilot in Star Control: Origins' combat mini-game, Fleet Battles.

Star Control: Origins puts the player in command of Earth's first interstellar ship on a mission to save the earth from impending destruction at the hands of a hostile alien empire.  During the course of the game, players will encounter dozens of alien civilizations, explore hundreds of planets and attempt to find a way to prevent the malevolent Scryve Empire from finding and destroying Earth.

Star Control: Origins also includes a combat mini-game called Fleet Battles in which players assemble fleets of ships and take them into combat either against the computer or against other players online.  The free Reinforcements DLC nearly doubles the number of ships available to choose from by default.

Thanks Farflame!

@PC Gamer Star Control: Origins has a new world editor.

loading...

Ian found some things to like in arcadey space RPG Star Control: Origins, particularly in the combat, but said its galaxy felt empty and forced you to grind. Perhaps the new world editor and mod support, added this week, will let creative players bring out the best in it while getting rid off the boring bits.

[...]

Niche Gamer reviewed Star Control: Origins:

Star Control: Origins Review – A Space Odd-yssey

Stardock Entertainment is known for their ambitious space-themed games, however their latest opus, Star Control: Origins, is not another strategy game. The developer instead chose to make a story-focused, space-faring role-playing game of sorts with a heavy focus on action and adventure. Built in their new custom Cider Engine and taking place before the beloved Star Control series, Origins has quite a lot of expectation riding on it. Despite Stardock’s pedigree, does the game hold up? Read on to find out.

[...]

The Verdict: 9

The Good

• Impressive visuals that fully establish an intergalactic adventure.
• Hilarious and extremely well-written story and characters
• Fun and addicting fleet battles
• Highly rewarding experience that still allows player freedom

The Bad

• Some minor but noticeable performance issues with textures, etc
• This is a non-issue but I wish there were 4X / colonization elements
• I wish there were more quests to offset the need to strip planets of resources, for quick cash

Stardock's Star Control: Origins has been launched today from Steam and Stardock.

After 5 years of development to become Stardock's biggest release ever, we're pleased to announce Star Control®: Origins^TM, our sci-fi adventure RPG is now available. In Star Control: Origins' adventure mode, players will take control of Earth's first interstellar ship to discover dozens of unique alien races, one of which is the mysterious Scryve who apparently want to completely destroy all traces of human life. Befriend strange extraterrestrials, gather resources from thousands of planets, and engage any hostile aliens as you set out to save humanity from a number of unknown threats. Players looking to directly engage in space combat will want to check out the Fleet Battles mode. In it, players can partake in multiplayer ship-to-ship combat against opponents both online and locally as they pilot vessels featured in adventure mode and custom ships created within the Ship Crafting system. Players have total control over how a custom ship looks, as well as what weapons and defenses it'll wield.

A new trailer for Star Control: Origins called 'By Any Means Necessary'.

loading...

"Captain, you must save humanity... by any means necessary."

Here's a new preview trailer for Star Control: Origins:

Star Control: Origins May 2018 Preview Trailer

loading...

You are the Captain of Earth's very first interstellar ship. Congratulations! There's just one tiny problem. It's barely worth mentioning but a powerful alien species known as the Scryve want to exterminate humanity. We need you to go out and find allies, upgrade your ship and save us!

Star Control: Origins fleet battles beta 2 has begun.

Star Control: Origins Fleet Battles Beta 2 is here - let’s get ready to rumble!

27 April - Yarlen

Attention, pilots - to your stations!

Fleet Battles just received a massive update and we can't wait to see you online to try it out. We've added some new alien ships, a few devastating new weapons, and customization options for your matches. Buckle up - it’s time to fly!

For full details on the updates, view the changelog at the bottom of the post!

[www.stardock.com]

Top Changes in Beta 2

New Ships
Greegrox Swarm
They might look squishy, but these space jellyfish are not to be underestimated! Each ship within their swarm represents a single unit of crew that fires an individual microbolt. Did we mention that the swarm can heal itself, too? They must go through a lot of band-aids…

Mu’Kay Grasper
Don’t make them ink! It gets messy. This giant squid-ship can throw down ink blobs that both damages and sucks energy from their enemies. Unlike most other ships, the Mu'Kay don’t use any projectile weaponry - they rely on getting up close and crushing their opponent with their ship’s tentacles.

Lexite Interceptor
Be careful with these guys - they’re hardy! This fast-moving ship has “dual-shot” blasters and an extremely tough-to-penetrate shield. When the shields are engaged, the ship is pretty much invincible - but, it drains energy. You’ll have to time your attacks carefully in order to achieve victory against them.

New Weapon Components

• Heal: Restores lost crew. Does that make them zombies, or..?
• Death Ray: The name explains itself. You probably don’t want to get hit with this one.
• Dual Shot: Fires a fast double shot. Hey, two for the price of one!
• Ink Blob: Drops an inky blob that drains energy and crew. Clean-up on aisle three!
• Shield: Holding down a button makes you invincible... until you run out of energy. Suggestion? Don’t run out of energy.

Custom Matches
First things first: you can now use your own custom ships in multiplayer mode. Woo-hoo! You can also customize your battle experience with the following knobs and dials:

• Enable custom ships in multiplayer
• Create a private, password protected lobby for multiplayer
• Set the arena size
• Adjust the number of asteroids, wormholes, and ion storms
• Adjust the Fleet max size
• Choose from one of three different arena maps

Other Improvements
We’ve made a lot of other tweaks and adjustments to Fleet Battles in order to continue bringing you the best experience! Beta 2 includes things like:

• Pilot Graphics - Many ships now have custom animations for their pilots. More will be coming later!
• High-Resolution UI - Fonts and UI graphics now look better on high res displays.
• Balance Updates - Almost all of the ships and weapons have been updated for a superior experience.
• Improved Performance - Substantial improvements have been made to memory use and visual effect performance.

[...]

Henriquejr spotted a new trailer for Star Control: Origins:

Star Control: Origins April 2018 Preview Trailer

loading...

* IN DEVELOPMENT *

You are the Captain of Earth's very first interstellar ship. Congratulations! There's just one tiny problem. It's barely worth mentioning but a powerful alien species known as the Scryve want to exterminate humanity. We need you to go out and find allies, upgrade your ship and save us!

@PCGamesN Star Control: Origins will feature local multiplayer space battles.

Update, November 24: The Star Control: Origins beta has already taken flight to let you test out ship vs. ship combat, and will be getting a series of updates over the next few weeks.

The Star Control: Origins Super-Melee beta launched last week, offering a preview of the game’s combat systems.  You can compete against either AI opponents of varying difficulties or other players online, building fleets out of a point buy system. You’ll also have access to the Ship Crafter, where you can build your own vessels and share them via the Steam Workshop, taking them into battle in custom games.

 

An update will hit the beta on November 30, addressing balance issues brought up by the community and fixing bugs, lag, and connectivity issues. On December 14, another update will hit making more substantial gameplay changes brought by community feedback, as well as some new ships to play around with. This second update is also planned to feature local multiplayer, so that you can challenge friends and family to space battles over the holidays.

[...]

Star Control: Origins fleet battles beta is available now with a pre-order.

Star Control: Origins Fleet Battles Beta Begins Today

On the 25th anniversary of the release of Star Control II, the beta of a new Star Control game arrives
November 16, 2017 1:00:00 PM

Haven't pre-ordered yet? No problem!

Pre-order now and join us in the beta

loading...

[...]

@PCGamer Star Control: Origins was forecast for a November 2017 release but has been delayed with no new release date announced. A public beta will begin in a couple of weeks.

Unfortunately, with the good news comes a spot of bad. "Our original release date was going to be November 2017. That's exactly 25 years from the release of Star Control 2," Stardock said. "Some design changes we made have extended the development time (which I'll be talking more about soon) but we will be releasing the Super Melee beta in time for the anniversary."

[...]

GamingBolt has interviewed Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock, about Star Control and more:

Riding The Cutting Edge Of The Technology Wave – An Interview With Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock

Surfing the crest of the tech wave.

Stardock is a company that pushes boundaries of technology in video games. The company, known for its compelling and highly addictive PC science fiction games, has pushed the benchmarks of graphical technologies before numerous times, and is looking to do so again going forward. This is the rare company, in other words, that can deliver on style and substance, both.

So naturally, when you get the chance to talk tok someone from a company like that, you want to ask them everything that you can. And that’s what we did, when we got the chance to engage Brad Wardell of Stardock in an exclusive interview some time ago.

Okay, so to begin with, would you like to introduce yourself for our readers?

Sure, I’m Brad Wardell, I’m the President and CEO of Stardock, we’re located out here in Michigan. And we’ve been in business since the early 1990s,we’re one of the early game development studios still around. We’ve made Galactic Civilizations, Sins of a Solar Empire, Ashes of the Singularity, Offroad Trading Company, and lots of other great stuff.

[...]

Okay, so Star Control: Origins- now this one I actually don’t know much about, I know that you’ve announced it for PC and consoles, but we haven’t heard much more about the game. What can you tell us about it, and when can we expect to start hearing more about it? 

Sure, so Star Control was a really popular series back in the early 1990s. And it was one of the few action adventure games- some describe Mass Effect as a remake of Star Control, so to say, where they try to blend RPG and adventure and action all together in a single game. Some years ago, when Atari filed for bankruptcy, we were able to pick up the rights to the Star Controlfranchise, and we decided to make a new one. So a lot of the time since has been spent building up our studio in Maryland, hiring up people who can do right by this reboot. In terms of when people will start hearing more about this? I’d say probably Summer or Early Fall is when we’ll start ramping up. What we don’t want to do is show too much and then people are disappointed- so we want to see we show it in a state so people can really see where we are going.

[...]

Brad Wardell was interviewed about Star Control:Origins by PCPowerPlay.

...
The franchise was recently bought by Stardock, and a reboot is in the works. When we recently caught up with Stardock CEO Brad Wardell the first thing he wanted to impress on us was the magnitude of the production. "It's definitely our biggest project ever."

His team is currently working on the planetary exploration aspect of the game, where you can send a shuttle down to hunt for resources. As revealed in the recent teaser trailer, what was an abstract, 2D game mode in SC2 is now rendered in full 3D.

"From an engineering point of view it's an interesting challenge, because this game has many different parts to it, but it has to be seamless. No-one wants to sit there and wait for a planet to load. You need to be able to go to the spherical planet, land on it, do stuff, have interesting adventures, and then be able to leave in one swoop, and it has to work on a reasonably powerful machine."

To this end Star Control: Origins is being built with Nitrous, the powerful 64-bit engine from Oxide that made possible the spectacular action in Ashes of the Singularity. "People love Star Control, and people ask: ‘Why hasn't anyone taken that basic formula?' Well, it's because Star Control is actually several games put into one. You have the planet exploration, you have the ship battles, and you have the alien story part, you have the star system exploration... it's a lot of different what we call ‘graphical scenes.'

[...]

On top of all that content, Star Control: Origins will also come with an editor that will allow users to create and share their own space oddities on Steamworks. "So if someone wants to make a Star Control 2 or something, I suppose they could [laughs]."

One of the most memorable aspects of SC2 was the music, all of which was created in the MOD file format popular at the time. For Origins, Brad hired the Finnish composer who came up with the distinctive themes for the Thraddash and the Yehat. "We actually are working with Riku Nuottajärvi, who did most of the best-known themes from Star Control back in the day. He was actually just a kid back then. He's obviously an adult now. He's handling pretty much all the music in the new Star Control."

@Arstechnica Stardock has announced Star Control: Origins as an action adventure with rpg elements. Expect the game sometime in the second half of 2017.

"We Earthlings are the newcomers to the galactic scene," said Brad Wardell, Executive Producer. "The dozen plus space-faring species have been hatching their schemes since before we got out of trees. Now, suddenly, they have to deal with those meddling apes from Sol 3 who threaten to upset the plot."

The game starts in the year 2086 with the unaware humans receiving a distress call from an alien ship that has crashed on the moon of Triton, leading to the formation of Star Control, an international space agency dedicated to protecting the Earth. The player takes on the role of The Captain of Earth's first interstellar ship whose first mission is to investigate the distress signal.

Star Control: Origins represents a new start for the beloved franchise. Stardock acquired the rights to Star Control 1/2/3 from Atari and since then has launched a new game studio in Towson Maryland specifically to create the new Star Control title. The classic series is available for sale on Stardock's newly launched StarControl.com website with players also able to pre-order Star Control: Origins and join the Founder's Program.

"Star Control is ultimately about us Earthlings exploring the galaxy, finding and talking to strange alien civilizations, and hopefully living to tell the tale," said Wardell. "We are hopeful those who remember the original trilogy will like the direction we're taking here while at the same time introducing a whole new generation to the awesomeness of a game that combined action, adventure, and roleplaying in a sci-fi game simultaneously."

Star Control: Origins is scheduled for release on PC and consoles with the PC release scheduled for 2017.

[...]

Release dates and early access

As mentioned above, Wardell is targeting the second half of 2017 for the PC release of the game, with a console release to follow. A final price hasn't been announced, but for $35 (£30), interested gamers can join phase two of Stardock's Founder's program, which gets early access to the game's beta, along with "mod tools, private journals and more."

The first thing members of the Founder's program will have access to is the multiplayer version of Super Melee, the head-to-head space combat portion of the game. Wardell indicated that Super Melee is planned for the fall of 2016, and more early access pieces will follow after that.

"This will be, by far, the biggest game we've ever done," said Wardell. "It has been a challenge to make sure this feels like a Star Control game. If it weren't for Paul and Fred, I probably wouldn't have become a game developer in the first place," he continued. "So it means a great deal to me personally that we make something that lives up to their standards. A lot of people forget that Paul and Fred didn't just do Star Control 1/2. They also made Archon, Mail Order Monsters, and of course Skylanders. They may be the greatest game designers in history."