Greetings!

We now have an official release day: September 20, 2018!  Almost five years since we began our adventure with Star Control. 

For this occasion we have begun to number these journal entries to count up to week 13, which is when the game gets released!

13 weeks...Not much time.  So even though it's a Sunday as I write this, and my birthday, I'm pleased to share this blog to let you know where we are.

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"Designer" is a rather vague term; it's my role on Star Control: Origins but it doesn't communicate particularly well what I do on the project. So how do I explain when someone asks me what it is that I do? Professional modder, is what I tell them. I create ships, but I'm not an artist. I create quests, weapons, and transform stars, but I'm not a coder. I work with the in-game ship editor and Adventure Studio, our powerful modding suite for Star Control: Origins. I'm creating content for the campaign in the same way modders later will, our entire single-player campaign is built using the tools that will be available to everyone when the game launches. My title is designer, but practically I'm a modder getting paid to make stuff for the campaign in synergy with the rest of the talented design team. So why does this matter?

With Star Control: Origins, we're allowing everyone to be their own designer of their own universe; modders can create and shape their own galaxy, making it as rich and vast as the one we're working on. Have a story you'd like to tell, or a race of aliens you like to draw? You can bring them to life now in a matter of hours. Create a planet or entire star system for your aliens, assemble ships and scatter their colonies amongst the stars, write some dialog and scripts with our visualized conversation tree, import your drawings and assign some behavior. You now have your new aliens, ready for befriending or conquering. 

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Greetings!

Lots of exciting things happening!

Star Control at E3

Stardock had a big presence at E3 this year where it announced the release date for Star Control: Origins - September 20.  The last day of Summer!

Stardock's Patrick Shaw on stage at E3 presenting Star Control: Origins!

You can watch the trailer here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-EnCjcxsJE 

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It’s here: the brand new trailer for Star Control: Origins
just debuted during the PC Gaming Show at E3!

Star Control: Origins will release on September 20th, 2018, and we can’t wait! Pre-order today so that you’re ready to go when the game launches! When you order, you’ll get immediate access to our Fleet Battles beta, where you can face off against other players in epic space combat.

Pre-Order Star Control: Origins today

Celebrate 25 years with us with awesome deals on our All-Star RTS games! From June 7-20, you can get the Gold Editions for 3 of our top RTS titles for just $19.99 each! Each game's Gold Edition contains all DLC and expansions for that title. Learn more here.

Hey, everybody! Kristy here, and I’m going to be Stardock’s “feet on the ground” at E3 this year. We’re super excited to be participating in the PC Gaming Show on June 11th and can’t wait for you to see what we’ve got in store!

At the show and on the livestream, we’ll debut our brand new trailer for Star Control: Origins and reveal some exciting news! Director of Game Production, Patrick Shaw, will take the stage to showcase our progress on the highly anticipated game. Make sure to set your alerts for 6:00pm ET on Monday, June 11th, because you don’t want to miss all of this!

If you’re lucky enough to attend the show in person in Los Angeles, be sure to stop by our booth #2554 in South Hall! We’ll have Star Control: Origins adventure mode playable for you to try - also, I’ll be on the floor to say hello and answer questions.

To see the E3 action and keep up with all of our announcements, make sure you follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Follow this post to keep up with any updates - we can’t wait!

Experiential unit design is the realm of making units and other game components feel different from each other, players have to think completely differently about Siege Tanks and Zerglings because of good experiential unit design. It may sound like a simple topic, but many RTS games have failed due to not executing it properly, resulting in a bland game where unit control is unsatisfying. Today I'll be exploring examples of superb experiential unit design from a few of my favorite RTS franchises, including Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation. 

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