A Unique Starflight-y Game

After reading through how much you've both done and learned, as well as perusing the net, and managing a Starflight: The Lost Colony group on facebook, I would have a few suggestions.

1. Find out who actually owns the IP for the original series currently, and inquire about the desire to create a legitimate sequel to the game (If no, inquire about the option to purchase the IP)
2. Attempt to contact the original authors of the game for ideas/collaboration
3. If you can complete #1, Make many announcements, and acquire funding via crowdfunding, which is how many of the games from the 80's/90's have regained interest and been funded, at least partially.
4. If you can get the original designers help/collaboration, it's likely they may have ideas/concepts/races/dialog, etc. sitting in a folder on their computer somewhere just hoping that the project could come to fruition.
5. With the funding, now you have resources that will allow a much stronger focus on the game development.

Attempting to get crowdfunding for a "spiritual" successor, or a "Starflight-y" type game would likely be difficult to bring in enough to sustain the project through the development cycle.

Just a couple of thoughts...

Joe

 

any updates? after the fig campaign for starflight 3 didn't reach its goal, i was kinda bummed, then saw this. so, is it currently playable?

 

It's not in any sort of ready state, no. I had to pause development during "Early Alpha" to ensure the game gets the depth and complexity it deserves. I felt I didn't have the technical expertise yet to give it what it needed. This has amazing potential for a game, and as a "studio" we take the high quality of our games very seriously. After pausing, our team went with a simpler game (which turned out to be easy to develop), but one which turned out to be bigger scope (oops!) which meant it'll take longer, which is why we also paused it because it would take many more years to finish since we're just part time developers with full time jobs.

However our goal is to finish our current project (a small scope game intended to be made in 3-6 months) and through its sales become full time developers who then can work to finish Away Mission (which will be next, as I now feel I am more than capable of developing its more complex features), and then after AM we'll finish third, the simpler but bigger scope project (unannounced survival-adventure game).

We're hoping that the same middleware used in Traveler's Tale will be used for Away Mission, so work on our shorter project is, (hopefully) in a way work on Away Mission. The idea is that we're creating middleware called "Paper Engine" of which Traveler's Tale will be 1.0, and Away Mission will be 2.0 (more complex features added). Obviusly made with Unity Engine, but Paper is the middleware between Ink (an amazingly powerful narrative scripting language) and Unity.

I also hope to give full source access to people who purchase any of the three games, and (hopefully) also release any game tools we create to help write content or create mods. I believe players should have more control over their games.

1. Traveler's Tale (Part Time Developers)
   
   
   
   
2. Away Mission (Once we're full time developers)
   
   
   
   
3. Beyond the Forest (Once we've grown more as a studio)
   

We've worked on all 3 projects quite extensively, and we have the art and a lot of the tech to show it. We take pausing a game very seriously. It's just very very difficult working to finish a game project of any scope when we are not able to work full time due to requiring full time jobs outside of gamedev. We do what we can, but being able to go full time will multiply the speed of us finishing all three of these games.

And we will finish all three - eventually. The only question is will it be months/years (full time development) or years/decades (part time development while holding non-gamedev full time jobs). Until we finish our smallest game (Traveler's Tales) and see its sales, we just won't know how long until you can play Away Mission.