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Northstar

 

This interview with Kerberos Productions' Martin Cirulis & Co at Rare Candies will leave you wishing... for more. With topics ranging from industry trends, the indie scene, touch devices and what goes into game development, or not, and why.

Unless you've been living under that proverbial rock for far too long you'll know that these are the people behind games like Sword of the Stars, Homeworld: Cataclysm and the stealthy North Star whose development we'd all like to see coming out of suspended animation.

 

But that's not all, as other things too, it appears, loom alluringly in the darkness:

 

It's hard for me to say without talking with the new stuff that we're not really supposed to talk about. Let's say that there's a couple big things in the way, we’re working on a couple small internal things, and depending how those go, that'll pave the time and place.

 

Curious? Well, then, read the rest of the interview over yonder.

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C:What do you think about Kickstarter?

 

I think Kickstarter is very cool. I think if you ‘look’ look at it, when you’re looking at serious money, you see that people with serious names attract that money. I think it’s fabulous what Tim Schafer and Brian Fargo is doing on there. I think that’s the perfect essence of what Kickstarter should be. The huge talent guys, getting overlooked by the what’s the mainstream at the moment. Despite the fact that they have a huge fanbase out there.

 

If you didn’t have a name, for example, as much as I love North Star, I wouldn’t go to Kickstarter and ask 2 million dollars for North Star. We’re not going to get it. If we said 10,000 for North Star, sure. It also has to do with the scope of the project within reason. I think PC gaming in general has to adjust to the scope of things. There is a delusion that PC gaming can support console budgets. When we first started Kerberos, it was really bad for PC projects. We kind of weathered it up to now, but back then, people were denying that PC games can earn out 6 million dollars, and because of that, there was no point of trying. We don’t get that kind of logic.

 

Sound ideas.

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I'd pledge. I was pretty disappointed when SotS2 was announced simply because this unavoidably meant NS will wait. And wait. If they want to remedy some of the SotS2 fiasco they will definitely need to get the expansions out, just to tell people that the game is complete. So NS will wait more.
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Don't know how was SotS1 on Day 1. But probably still better than SotS 2 now.

 

And of course I was refering to SotS1 Argos Naval.

SotS1 at release showed really cool concepts (if you want details, we have a preview and a review written under Articles section). It was a MUCH poorer game in terms of diplomacy, no trade and so forth so it left some things to be desired.

Than Born of Blood expansion really blew my socks off. I can say with no thinking whatsoever that IMO even with BoB only, SotS1 is best space strategy ever made.

 

The only drawback such games have is scope, which demands a month of playing to get into the game.

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I've just run another quick test run of Sots2. It is getting better but there are a lot things to do. The MAJOR thing that they must improve is battle optimisation. 30 ships firing that nice shiny energy weapons makes battle highly choppy (15 FPS at my rig and it is not a bad rig).
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  • 2 weeks later...

Northstar looks lovely but how can anybody trust these guys with a dollar after the SoTS2 debacle? I'll buy Northstar:

  • after it gets 3 favorable reviews from sites I trust,
  • it makes me breakfast (and doesn't overcook the eggs)
  • it is beatified and canonized by the Pope.

Not until then.

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I would have bought Northstar based on our interview alone, but will probably be a bit more cautious now if it comes to fruition.

 

The screens we've seen though, be they pre-alpha or not, make me want to play. The Mars 2 engine could make it look very pretty as well, which might not be as much of a requirement for a 4x game, but I think would be a requirement for Northstar if you want to truly immerse the player in an adventure set in a galaxy that sounds far, far away if you know what I mean ;)

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All true and fine, but I find some solace in the fact that SotS2 is coming closer and closer to completion, however late. Kerberos seems very determined to stick to its end of the bargain and I trust them on it.

 

Now I must do something about that DX10... Eventually.

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