Let's brainstorm a Starcraft rip-off

[Mislagnissa]

A couple additions I wanted to make to the timeline to account for things I learned recently:

The cold war goes on for a while, and in many ways resembles the plot of Command & Conquer. Although it does not go hot until the first contact war, many of the colonies are emboldened to succeed by the wealth they rapidly gain. Many groups similar to the Brotherhood of Nod and the Forgotten show up as a result of the political and ecological strife.

The first contact war also goes on for a while. While humanity is locked in both civil wars and defending themselves from aliens, the elves are having strife of their own. The high elves experience a schism between those who want to exterminate humanity as collateral damage and those who want to protect them. When the dark elves show up, they serve as wild cards: some help the humans defend themselves from the bugs and genocidal high elves, some team up with the caretaker high elves to protect the humans, some team up with the high elves to take the offense against the bugs, etc.

One of the fallouts of the first contact war that occurs during the bug wars is that the unity of the high elves is broken. Previously they were united by the telepathic internet, but electronic warfare by the bugs has interfered with it and fostered the growth of tribal nationalism that was previously kept dormant. Since their core worlds were lost to the bugs, they need to reunite to reclaim them.

Honestly, the timeline is becoming really, really complicated because of the time scales, space scales, and number of sides involved. I love it!

[Mislagnissa]

Hello again! I just wanted to necro this thread because I have been thinking over starcraft clones again. Anyway, if anyone is still here, I am happy to discuss ideas for Starcraft clones.

Here are some notable Starcraft clones I found over the past couple of years. They might be useful to analyze.

• Atrox
• Dark Planet: Battle for Natrolis
• StarFront: Collision
• Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends

An idea that came to me recently was the idea of different spin-offs for different genres. A scifi spin-off, a fantasy spin-off, a science fantasy spin-off, etc. It seems that fantasy is more popular than scifi for whatever reason, so I thought maybe I could use that to my advantage.

For example, the humans could be changed from space marines to a generic fantasy world army with knights and mages. Or even orcs!

What do you guys think?

[The_Blade]

I'd say there's been quite a good amount of input on this thread for you to start something of your own, rather than wait for us to gather as a community to continue writing. I'd definitely would be more interested on the political aspects of the new universe the most, however I feel like you should start with a "text dump" for worldbuilding and character creation.

Create a drive that only you can edit and give us a link. First start really rough. Write random characters and archetypes with reference images from google that might add a visual towards their appearances and motif. Considering the density of the StarCraft scifi universe I would start writing the world and the plot at the same time, even if you are a 100% Pantser or Plotter.

Creating a character can help you create a world.

King > Castle > Country

Or the world itself can give you a character.

Wasteland > Mental Instability > Fanatics > Mad Max

Either way, choose how you want to mutate the StarCraft Universe and how much to push it away from the source. I'm not opposed towards anything. However, a scifi world would be best for theory-crafting and feedback within this community. Some here hate the thought of fantasy

[Mislagnissa]

I'd say there's been quite a good amount of input on this thread for you to start something of your own, rather than wait for us to gather as a community to continue writing. I'd definitely would be more interested on the political aspects of the new universe the most, however I feel like you should start with a "text dump" for worldbuilding and character creation.

Create a drive that only you can edit and give us a link. First start really rough. Write random characters and archetypes with reference images from google that might add a visual towards their appearances and motif. Considering the density of the StarCraft scifi universe I would start writing the world and the plot at the same time, even if you are a 100% Pantser or Plotter.

Creating a character can help you create a world.

King > Castle > Country

Or the world itself can give you a character.

Wasteland > Mental Instability > Fanatics > Mad Max

Either way, choose how you want to mutate the StarCraft Universe and how much to push it away from the source. I'm not opposed towards anything. However, a scifi world would be best for theory-crafting and feedback within this community. Some here hate the thought of fantasy

Thank you for your response.

I’m currently surveying options for a multiplayer RTS. Writing lore is okay, but I want to have a working game before I start investing too deep in lore.

I’ll let you know how that pans out

[Mislagnissa]

My attempts to plan an RTS game are going nowhere. I don’t have any useful skills or funding.

All I want is a Starcraft with a story that doesn’t suck. Is that too much to ask for? Apparently yes!

[The_Blade]

That was fast.

Doing steady work at a steady pace is the only real thing in this world.

In a way, these late fiasco stories and reboots coming from all kinds of media spark the same kind of nostalgic rage on all of us. There is just no second chance for an existing universe once it gets out there. A Spanish writer named Miguel de Unamuno constantly said that art did not belong to the artist after leaving the warehouse. Others could appropriate it as an idea and change it into something else, and then art would never be owned by anyone. That's the curse of fucking up on the large spotlight. That a fuckup is barely relevant, but the potential and what great a thing it could have been is way more haunting.

Skills can be learned and funding becomes irrelevant if you scale down a project instead of trying to go full Blizzard production (which now just means bullshit long). Just stop and think if you will get the same satisfaction from a teenager frustration rather than other more competent life goals. Sure you can always develop an rts as a hobby, but people have come to find that they would rather create their own stuff if they are going to bang that hard at it.

[Mislagnissa]

That was fast.

Doing steady work at a steady pace is the only real thing in this world.

In a way, these late fiasco stories and reboots coming from all kinds of media spark the same kind of nostalgic rage on all of us. There is just no second chance for an existing universe once it gets out there. A Spanish writer named Miguel de Unamuno constantly said that art did not belong to the artist after leaving the warehouse. Others could appropriate it as an idea and change it into something else, and then art would never be owned by anyone. That's the curse of fucking up on the large spotlight. That a fuckup is barely relevant, but the potential and what great a thing it could have been is way more haunting.

Skills can be learned and funding becomes irrelevant if you scale down a project instead of trying to go full Blizzard production (which now just means bullshit long). Just stop and think if you will get the same satisfaction from a teenager frustration rather than other more competent life goals. Sure you can always develop an rts as a hobby, but people have come to find that they would rather create their own stuff if they are going to bang that hard at it.

I’m taking you up on your offer of writing an original setting infodump and publishing it on Google. I’ll try posting something today and update it as I have time.

[Mislagnissa]

I posted a basic pitch to google. It's still very rough and focuses primarily on laying the conceptual groundwork. I haven't gone into detail on fictional history, locations, technology, or characters. That's for later updates. I'm also open to making the basics generic and offering multiple campaign settings using the same tools.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...vyRpGPReWr/pub

[sandwich_bird]

My attempts to plan an RTS game are going nowhere. I don’t have any useful skills or funding.

All I want is a Starcraft with a story that doesn’t suck. Is that too much to ask for? Apparently yes!

You know, you're 100% focused on the lore as far as I can tell. Why does this have to be a new video game then? Video games are the hardest media you could ever want to make for one. And secondly, the story is rarely the sole selling point. Conceptualizing one involves thinking about every aspect of the medium. Primarily the gameplay of course but other things such as visual and music/sound are important. Plus, even if you'd manage to realize your idea, I'm fairly sure it wouldn't sell well and wouldn't develop the kind of community you dream of. Not necessarily because I don't think you wouldn't do it well (though, tbh, your chances of making a classic on your first try are low), but because the current overall gaming demographic would probably not support such an idea short of a very very small and ageing niche. Maybe, instead, you could focus on the tabletop community. This is something that pretty much anyone can do and thanks to kickstarter (among other things), there's some kind of board game renaissance going on. What you want to do sounds especially well suited for a board game. I'm far from a connoisseur in that realm(in fact I don't really play them) but you could make some kind of mix between a strategy board game and a rpg. I know some board games you can play alone too(see scythe). And if you manage to write your companion book and have a prototype, you can work with companies that specialize in producing said prototype into a real game. You have people like: https://www.makemygame.com/ that make it easy. And, lets say you go through with this, make a solid game, actually have people buying it... maybe just maybe you would then be in a better position to turn your board game into a videogame

[Mislagnissa]

You know, you're 100% focused on the lore as far as I can tell. Why does this have to be a new video game then? Video games are the hardest media you could ever want to make for one. And secondly, the story is rarely the sole selling point. Conceptualizing one involves thinking about every aspect of the medium. Primarily the gameplay of course but other things such as visual and music/sound are important. Plus, even if you'd manage to realize your idea, I'm fairly sure it wouldn't sell well and wouldn't develop the kind of community you dream of. Not necessarily because I don't think you wouldn't do it well (though, tbh, your chances of making a classic on your first try are low), but because the current overall gaming demographic would probably not support such an idea short of a very very small and ageing niche. Maybe, instead, you could focus on the tabletop community. This is something that pretty much anyone can do and thanks to kickstarter (among other things), there's some kind of board game renaissance going on. What you want to do sounds especially well suited for a board game. I'm far from a connoisseur in that realm(in fact I don't really play them) but you could make some kind of mix between a strategy board game and a rpg. I know some board games you can play alone too(see scythe). And if you manage to write your companion book and have a prototype, you can work with companies that specialize in producing said prototype into a real game. You have people like: https://www.makemygame.com/ that make it easy. And, lets say you go through with this, make a solid game, actually have people buying it... maybe just maybe you would then be in a better position to turn your board game into a videogame

Thank you for the suggestion. Tabletop games are probably better options. There’s an unofficial Starcraft tabletop game too. I reached out to the developer and he seems pretty chill.