New Starflight 3 game in the making

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Blake00
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New Starflight 3 game in the making

Post by Blake00 » Tue, 11. Sep 18, 12:02

Showing my age here but are there any 80s/90s Starflight fans here?

It's quite possible I wouldn't be the X series addict I am today without Starflight as it was the first ever space exploration, action, sell stuff and upgrade your ship kind of game I ever played and owned.

I came across the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) Starflight as a kid and eventually managed to own a copy that I played for years when I was around 13-14yrs old. I used to love getting out the galaxy map and working out where I'd explore wondering what aliens I'd meet and what sort of planets I'd find to land on and explore.

Didn't find out until years later (when they invented this little thing called the internet haha) that I had been actually playing a remake of an old 80s PC & Amiga game and that there was a Starflight 2 sequel out there too. Like so many great old game series it's been dead for like 30years now and then suddenly out of the blue a crowdfunding campaign has been announced now in 2018 headed by the original SF1&2 lead designer Greg Johnson!
Announcement vid:
https://youtu.be/hJy-fZ-BJvY

They've started a 'kickstarter like' funding campaign over on Fig (never heard of Fig until now but it seems okay) here:
https://www.fig.co/campaigns/starflight-3

I just went for a digital pledge with extras in the end as the lowest physical tier was a bit too much for my liking sadly (I'm not in US).
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Re: New Starflight 3 game in the making

Post by pjknibbs » Tue, 11. Sep 18, 13:20

Blake00 wrote: It's quite possible I wouldn't be the X series addict I am today without Starflight as it was the first ever space exploration, action, sell stuff and upgrade your ship kind of game I ever played and owned.
You never played Elite? I don't know why we let you types in here, I really don't... :)

I never actually played Starflight--not sure why I missed it, because it would have totally been my thing in 1986. It might be because I didn't have a 16-bit computer until 1990! Unfortunately I won't be backing this one because I don't trust Fig as a platform.

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Re: New Starflight 3 game in the making

Post by Morkonan » Tue, 11. Sep 18, 19:04

Blake00 wrote:Showing my age here but are there any 80s/90s Starflight fans here?
That was an awesome game! So much going on, so detailed, so much "I don't know what I'm doing but having fun doing it" going on. :)

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Post by Golden_Gonads » Wed, 12. Sep 18, 11:26

I loved Starflight on the Megadrive. I probably wouldn't have loved it quite so much if there hadn't been a walkthrough in the manual though.

Fig was set up by one of the developers over at Obsidian Entertainment and has been used for a fair few games now.

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Post by Aye Capn » Wed, 12. Sep 18, 23:38

My first act as StarFlight captain was to go on a slaying spree, blasting Spemin ships out of the sky to trade for better ship parts.

Their ships were so pathetically outfitted fuel costs actually drove me into bankruptcy.

After that I lost interest. I read that the Gazurtoids make privateering profitable, so maybe some day I'll pick it back up again.

The UI is a disaster, and I made the terrible mistake of playing Star Control II as my first "StarFlight-like" space adventure game. I didn't know how spoiled I was until I tried to play StarFlight.

I'd rather watch someone play StarFlight than click all the damn keys necessary to actually play it myself. Count the number of keystrokes it takes to do anything in that game and tell me you wouldn't rather just watch.

(Incidentally my favorite "Privateer Start" in SC2 was hunting VUX Intruders with Earthling Cruisers. You can scan a RW, fight a lone Dreadnought orbiting Vela, and meet the Orz and Melnorme on your way back.)

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Post by Blake00 » Sat, 15. Sep 18, 08:02

Blake00 wrote:I just went for a digital pledge with extras in the end as the lowest physical tier was a bit too much for my liking sadly (I'm not in US).
Woot! Looks like Greg & Anthony have been listening to all us fans complaining about the lowest physical copy tier being too damn high at 125 USD + 25 USD int shipping! He's now added a boxed copy of the game as a 40 USD addon to any existing pledge so I've just added it to my digital pledge. Now I get to have a nice boxed copy of Starflight 3 after all! :)
https://www.fig.co/campaigns/starflight-3/updates/793
pjknibbs wrote:You never played Elite? I don't know why we let you types in here, I really don't... :)

I never actually played Starflight--not sure why I missed it, because it would have totally been my thing in 1986. It might be because I didn't have a 16-bit computer until 1990! Unfortunately I won't be backing this one because I don't trust Fig as a platform.
Hahahaha! After I posted this I thought "Oh cr*p I should have put in a disclaimer about Elite so people don't tear into me" lol. Yeah obviously there's no debate that games like X are more inspired by Elite. I just was talking about my own personal experience as sadly I never got to play Elite as a kid so for me it was Starflight to started my journey in this awesome genre. :)

Yeah I didn't pledge for like 2 weeks back in the non-public phase because I was like "what is fig?? what is a private campaign? I don't trust them" but then I heard from others that Fig was setup by former small/indie gaming studio people to help other smaller gaming companies get games funded as apparently kickstarter takes a really big cut of the earnings. Fig takes less (& may even invest $$ in your project) and allows for private campaigns with no time limits to 'test the waters' before starting a public one where you have a countdown that could kill it before it gains traction. Basically Fig is designed by game makers for game makers. At least that's what people tell me lol.

I had a look on wikipedia and can see some pretty big multi million $$ games have already gone through it (Pillars of Eternity 2, Wasteland 3, Psychonauts 2) was surprised to see it was actually started by some of the double fine guys like Tim Schafer. Let's face it, most of us had never heard of Kickstarter before Tim's famous double fine adventure crowdfund back in 2012ish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fig_(company)
Golden_Gonads wrote:I loved Starflight on the Megadrive. I probably wouldn't have loved it quite so much if there hadn't been a walkthrough in the manual though.
Haha same. That walkthrough manual is awesome. My copy is sadly falling apart now and being held together by sticky tape lol.
Aye Capn wrote:After that I lost interest. I read that the Gazurtoids make privateering profitable, so maybe some day I'll pick it back up again.

The UI is a disaster, and I made the terrible mistake of playing Star Control II as my first "StarFlight-like" space adventure game. I didn't know how spoiled I was until I tried to play StarFlight.

I'd rather watch someone play StarFlight than click all the damn keys necessary to actually play it myself. Count the number of keystrokes it takes to do anything in that game and tell me you wouldn't rather just watch.
I know what you mean. As someone who grew up playing the Sega Mega Drive SF1 remake I couldn't believe how primitive the original PC version was when I eventually tried it. I've been recently helping out on a awesome new Starflight 1 Remake Project and I had to take a whole bunch of planet surface photos for them from the DOS version. IT DROVE ME NUTS LOL. I love retro gaming but arrgh it's just too darn old lol. I definitely recommend you check out the vastly superior Sega remake. Or if you want to play a better version of the original then I'd recommend the Amiga version which had vastly better graphics than PC and also mouse support!
Last edited by Blake00 on Sat, 15. Sep 18, 15:21, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by pjknibbs » Sat, 15. Sep 18, 11:12

Kickstarter cut is only 5% or thereabouts, AFAIK? As for Fig, IMHO they were created purely so the likes of Tim Schaefer from Double Fine Productions could get crownfunded without the level of scrutiny that Kickstarter requires.

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Post by Golden_Gonads » Sat, 15. Sep 18, 21:04

pjknibbs wrote:Kickstarter cut is only 5% or thereabouts, AFAIK? As for Fig, IMHO they were created purely so the likes of Tim Schaefer from Double Fine Productions could get crownfunded without the level of scrutiny that Kickstarter requires.
What scrutiny? Kickstarter has had a great many dodgy projects, including several 'fan' remakes where they didn't have the rights. Yes the ones I know of were eventually shut down, but it took a good couple of weeks.

Fig has the added bonus in that you can choose to invest. Rather than get a copy of the game and some shinies you can become a true investor and get an eventual return... Assuming the game is completed and does well.

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Post by Aye Capn » Sat, 15. Sep 18, 23:07

Thanks for the tip, Blake! Waiting for the remake sounds like the laziest way to go.

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Post by Blake00 » Wed, 26. Sep 18, 15:06

Well it looks like it was all for nothing sadly. Just over a day to go and the Starflight 3 crowdfund is barely over halfway. 30 years waiting for a sequel and its fails due to not enough media attention. So many thousands of SF fans out there (SF1 was apparently the first ever game to go platinum with 1mil sales back in the 80s) that never got to hear about this. Such a shame!

But there's still hope as Greg & Anthony said in a recent podcast that they'll look at improving the demo and may try a crowdfund again in the future or secure a publisher. If you're a big Starflight fan and you come across this thread long after it's too late, come join the starflight facebook group and they'll let you know the next time anything happens with SF3 (if there's a next time *sigh* ) plus as previously mentioned the group is following a rather impressive Starflight 1 remake from a ex-bethesda employee so all is not lost for us old SF fans!
Blake's Sanctum:
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- Movie & TV Shrines: Lord Of The Rings & Hobbit, & Star Trek
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Re: New Starflight 3 game in the making

Post by Aye Capn » Tue, 2. Oct 18, 05:37

There are competing versions of Star Control 3 coming out / just released (not counting the craptacular Accolade crapfest of 20 years ago).

Has anyone played the Stardock version? I'm holding out for the Ford / Reiche developed sequel!

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Re: New Starflight 3 game in the making

Post by Blake00 » Sun, 18. Nov 18, 10:59

Aye Capn wrote:
Tue, 2. Oct 18, 05:37
There are competing versions of Star Control 3 coming out / just released (not counting the craptacular Accolade crapfest of 20 years ago).

Has anyone played the Stardock version? I'm holding out for the Ford / Reiche developed sequel!
Net yet, am waiting for a steam sale on Origins haha.

Yeah hopefully Ford / Reiche sequel gets made too. The whole legal battle has got pretty nasty. Money that should have gone into both games is now being spent on lawyers and court fees. :(
Blake's Sanctum:
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Re: New Starflight 3 game in the making

Post by Blake00 » Tue, 3. Aug 21, 15:14

Well here we are 3 years on and unfortunately there hasn't been another attempt at a Starflight 3 game crowdfund or a new demo. However recently the first ever Starflight Anthology book was released and to celebrate that occasion something really cool happened! I run the Starflight fan communities so as a 'thanks' I got invited to take part in a group video podcast interviewing non other than Starflight lead dev and creator Greg Johnson himself!

I was a nervous wreck as I don't normally do live stuff, and I think I was the only non-American on there so people were probably wondering what I was saying half the time lol, plus on top of that my giant 46" screen was glaring on my face making me look like a bloody ghost haha.. but in the end I had a blast as it was so cool to talk to one of the creators of a game I played so much as a kid, not to mention getting thanked by him for my Starflight community work! Greg was a super nice and humble guy and he told so many great stories about creating Starflight, and his very popular ToeJam & Earl console games, along with his consultation work on the Star Control games and Spore which many of us didn't know about! He even discussed the possibility of a Starflight and Star Control crossover game which would be pretty crazy! And sure enough he confirmed that the original Starflight games were heavily influenced by Star Trek heh.

He also confirmed that the dream of Starflight 3 is not dead and that just a week ago he was on the phone with someone trying to secure funding for it. He talked about his dreams of what the sequel could be and he showed openness to trying another crowdfund campaign. We did our best to assure him that the Starflight fan community is in a WAY better state then it was back in 2018 when they last tried the crowdfund as back then all the big old Starflight forums were gone and there was only around 100 people in my 'new' Starflight Fans Facebook group so there was just no one to friggin tell about it! That's up around 400ish members now, plus I've since created a Starflight Fans Reddit group which is closing on 100 now, and best of all there's the Official Starflight 3 Discord I help out on as a moderator which is now up to a massive 800ish members, so that's over a 1000 starflight fans that weren't around in 2018 so we're getting there! The games sold millions of copies back in the day so there's certainly still plenty of long lost Starflight fans out there though! If there's any Starflight old timers lurking around here I hope you come join the gang! :)

Anyway, here's the video podcast if anyone is interested. I posted a comment on youtube with timestamps of interesting topics should people wish to skip to stuff that interests them...

[ external image ]

There was more I wanted to say on there but yeah.. obviously the podcast wasn't about me haha.. but I got to say most of what I wanted. Really the only big thing I didn't get to say on the podcast was that I'm excited to read the new Starflight - Tales From The Starport Lounge anthology book (I've ordered it from Amazon but it hasn't arrived yet as it's probably on a slow ship heading for Australia lol!). I'm not a huge book person but I just had to get this as like I said earlier in the stream video it's amazing how playing a game and reading a book about an adventure set in that same game universe really enhances the experience. The game makes you love the book more and helps your imagination visualize the aliens and places they'll go to in the book. While vice versa the book makes you love the game more as it adds so much depth to the game universe and makes you crave going on your own adventures similar to the ones these new characters your reading about are going on. They both really buff and lift up each other to a whole new level forming this equilibrium of awesomeness haha! I had that experience with the Starflight manual short stories as a kid, and I had it in the years since with other games like Elder Scrolls Oblivion, Witcher, and of course most importantly the X Universe games (I really loved jumping between the Farnham's Legend Book and X-Terran Conflict a few years back) that all have novels or short stories set in the same universe. So hopefully I'll like the new book and get to have that experience again with Starflight! Once thing's for sure, I already know I like the cover haha!

[ external image ]
Blake's Sanctum:
- Total Conversion mods: Star Trek Doom 2, & Star Wars Civilization 2
- Game Shrines: Age of Wonders, Babylon 5 Fan Games, Command & Conquer, Elder Scrolls Series, Dune Games, Final Fantasy, Freelancer, Heroes of Might & Magic, Imperium Galactica Series, Master of Magic, Quest for Glory Series, Starflight, & Star Trek Games
- Movie & TV Shrines: Lord Of The Rings & Hobbit, & Star Trek
- Emulation

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