Adventure Gamers - Forums

Hello everyone.
My name is Anti A. Danilevski and I’m making video games. Glad to meet you all!

I’ve been playing Star Control II more than once, and always considered it as an adventure and quest with arcade fights as a secondary gameplay. But after reading your definition, I’ve got a question: do you think same, or you think it’s something else?

I’m asking because I want to find like minded people - we are developing a game and now it’s on Kickstarter; game reminds Star Control, but it’s click-n-go and have automated combat system. I, personally, feel it as adventure (main genre), quest (second genre) and ARPG (third genre) and think our game will be intersting to the community (but I won’t give links until permission).

Thanks to good chief of this forum, I’m allowed to post a link to our game.
I’ll do it in a beautiful and informative manner: this picture is the link and also it shows our current progress; it will be updated twice per day.

If you want to send the link somewhere, here it is: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dodogames/divine-space-sci-fi-space-arpg

Hope to see you all with us!
Cheers,Anti

Hi Anti! And welcome to the Adventure Gaming Community!

I agree that Star Control II has very accomplished adventure aspects. The text, plotting, and voice acting (in the update) are amongst the best I’ve encountered in any game. I’m a big fan of sci-fi literature and it’s very evident the designers of the game were in love with Ted Sturgeon, Norman Spinrad, Alfred Bester, and quite a few other heavyweights of the genre. Having said that, I would not qualify the game as primarily an adventure outing. Resource-collecting, exploration, ship micromanagement, and battles (the only weak aspect of the game) are all as important as the adventuring side of the game. Even if you’ve played the game through a few times, you’ll still end up spending more time building up your ship and travelling through the universe than conversing with sentient being and solving puzzles. It’s undeniably a classic and brilliant game, but not heavy enough on adventuring to fit exactly into that genre. For those who aren’t familiar with the game, the updated version is free to download. It’s titled Ur-Quan Masters.

I wish you the best of luck in your game, Anti. Please keep us informed.

Whittling Willy - 17 October 2012 05:30 PM

Hi Danilevski! And greetings to the Adventure Gaming Community!

Thank you!

Why resource gathering and ship building turns the game into non-adventure? I always considered it as an additional gameplay - without it, SC2 still would be a great game to play. And even without combats it would be playable, so combats are secondary too, imho.

About updated - gladely, though still not sure if it’s okay to post the link here.
We have resource gathering and combats too, but for me, it’s primary an adventure game and everything else is secondary (I aim on creating a strong politics, social interactions and of course - scenario).

I can send you PM though, if you loved SC2 - you likely will enjoy what we are making.

I always considered Star Control 2 (or “The Ur Quan Masters” as it’s called now) an adventure game. I’ve been playing it in automatic combat mode, meaning the combat parts are played automatically by an AI so I could focus on the adventuring part. Originally, I also used the “lander bug” to have infinite resources so resource managing wouldn’t be a problem. This way, the game becomes a pure adventure game

Even with resource managing and combat thrown in, I think the adventuring (exploration, puzzle solving, dialogs) parts are the main emphasis of the game. I think 10 years ago when “The Ur Quan Masters” project started I posted a thread on this forum about it and was angry with the mods moving the thread from “Adventure” part of the forum to “General”. I think the site views of what’s considered an adventure game were a bit more strict back then.

Matan - 18 October 2012 01:12 AM

I always considered Star Control 2 (or “The Ur Quan Masters” as it’s called now) an adventure game. I’ve been playing it in automatic combat mode, meaning the combat parts are played automatically by an AI so I could focus on the adventuring part. Originally, I also used the “lander bug” to have infinite resources so resource managing wouldn’t be a problem. This way, the game becomes a pure adventure game

=)) That’s probably one of the funniest things I ever heard about SC2!

I’ll add it into my arsenal of tricks and see what can be done in our game about that. Though our fights are mostly automated, players will still have build ships of their design and to chose wisely devices and weapons - so it will be quick and deadly, or slow and heavily armored and etc.

Yes, I can’t fint SC2 in any other category myself. I’d say adventure games without combat, but just click-n-go to solve the plot and riddles are natural quests - but then, even Full Throttle is a quest but with a combat arcade elements.

Star Control is what is called a strategy game. A lot of those games have elements of adventure.

You are speaking about Star Control I. Star Control II is totally different and have nothing to do with strategy (except for global storyline tree, where you have to make a right decision… like once in the game).

I’m speaking about both. A main part of the game is to customize your ship, manage your crew and conduct battles. Collecting materials, diplomacy, and so on. What makes it strategy is that it gives you a general end-goal and an infinite number of ways to achieve it. Adventure games don’t do that.

I mean, can you name another adventure with a screen like this?

Oscar - 18 October 2012 03:36 AM

I’m speaking about both. A main part of the game is to customize your ship, manage your crew and conduct battles. Collecting materials, diplomacy, and so on. What makes it strategy is that it gives you a general end-goal and an infinite number of ways to achieve it. Adventure games don’t do that.

I mean, can you name another adventure with a screen like this?[/img]

Ship building is way way element of strategy. If so, NFS and many other racing games, where you can build your car, is a strategies too

IMO, it’s RPG elements, becuase your ship = your main character’s inventory.

I think there were other adventure games with those elements. If not, what the difference between adventure and quest then?

Oscar - 18 October 2012 03:36 AM

I’m speaking about both. A main part of the game is to customize your ship, manage your crew and conduct battles. Collecting materials, diplomacy, and so on. What makes it strategy is that it gives you a general end-goal and an infinite number of ways to achieve it. Adventure games don’t do that.

I mean, can you name another adventure with a screen like this?

I agree the game has some minor strategy elements, but I would not say they are a main part of the game. The action elements (starship battles) can be less minor if you choose them to be (by deciding to play these scenes yourself, but that’s optional).

I don’t agree it gives you infinite number of ways to achieve the end goal - ultimately there are many inventory based puzzles and interactions and you pretty much need to go through all of them to get to the end goal. There are a few optional side stories which you might miss, but that’s it.

Since we are sharing screenshots, I’ll do it too and hope you will like what you will see!

Visual (90% screnshot):

Screenshot:

Fiull 3D starmap, based on the real stars data:

Screenshot:

Docking to the base:

Screenshots:

That’s it.
If you are intersted in helping us, welcome… we really need it now.

ADD: Seems can’t resize pictures… open them in a new tab to see full picture.

Pyke - 18 October 2012 07:04 AM

Really nice stuff! My brother actually sent me a link to your Kick Starter.

I absolutely love your ship construction, of course, your bad-ass star map!

Something I feel still hasn’t really come across in PC games is the sheer SCALE of space. As Douglas Adams said, “Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

Something I loved about SC2 was that it did a pretty good job of showing the massive distances involved, (granted, through Hyperspace, so it was a little more condensed). But it still didn’t have the sense of massive scale that I’d love to get from a good scifi game. Now, I know that spending 2 hours staring at a screen of stars moving doesn’t seem like fun, but there must be a way to make space feel….BIG. How are you guys tackling it?

Thanks to you and to your brother, I hope to see your both on board of our vessel!

Our space feels VERY big, buit of course it’s simulation. Real distances and sizes current videocards can’t handle due to big numbers (it’s called floating point precision loss). In other words, videocards are going mad if you try to create real sizes.

But even with locations that we are making, it’s huge and hard to fill with objects (but we are working on it). So game will deliver sense of scale to you even if it’s a simulation.

Positions of the stars are 100% real, though - and this is our first step to create a ‘real’ universe.

Star Control 2 is clearly a cross-genre hybrid (resource gathering and ship building are definitely not adventure elements).  I haven’t played it to know whether it belongs here at AG, but from what I understand it’s certainly adventurey enough to be discussed here, at least.

Anti, you’re welcome to go ahead and post your game’s name and Kickstarter link here. If you were looking for permission, you’d have probably found it easier to just ask for it.