What, is this penance for not liking sweet potatoes? Well, nothing can make me like them! No, sir! Nothing at all! Even if they transformed into something else, I still wouldn't like them. And they'd probably just transform into something equally nasty, like beets.
First off, the Stars! Website isn't responding. Not a good sign.(*)
The last I heard was that the team wasn't having any luck finding a publisher, and was looking at self-publishing the game, and this is supported by the other info I found.
But, pressing on, I find two sites that look reputable and that deal with Stars! Supernova: Starbase Delta, which is about S!SN and the original Stars!, and this site, which, well:
The Rules Description Language, or RDL, is a proprietary
object oriented, polymorphic and non-procedural
programming language for use in modifying the values and
behaviors of low-level elements within the game Stars!
Supernova Genesis through the creation and modification
of files called "rule sets."
So it's open to user mods. All well and good, as there are usually a few worthwhile user mods amidst the dross.
Both sites have active messageboards, and the news seems to be "Don't bother asking when it will be done." The Delta site says that, as of August 22, S!SN is "in its first phase of beta testing [and] it is expected to be released to the gaming public in 2002."
You can, however, buy a S!SN soundtrack CD for a mere $9.99. But the description, frankly, terrifies me:
The soundtrack was created with real, acoustic
instruments and noise from my own body, intertwined with
digital & synthesized sounds. The result: a simultaneous
combustion of organic and manufactured music that
touches our soul while it takes us to another world.
It's not merely the threat of noises from his own body, but the sheer pretentiousness displayed in that statement. Fortunately, this is only the sound and music designer, so we can hope that the rest of the team can keep the microphones out of their orifices and their fat, grubby little programmer hands away from our souls.
The music is pretty typical trancy, Hearts of Space type stuff. It's not bad, and I'd probably let it play during the game unless I was already a bit tired. The title of the sample is "The Feeling Surfaces", which really makes me want to smack this guy. I can't honestly say that my soul was touched in any way, appropriately or inappropriately. It's not the sort of music that you'd play while forging an empire, by any means. Unless it was a really peaceful, enlightened, utopian empire. By which I mean a loser empire. Any empire that develops to this music is definitely going to fall prey to any non-wuss empire. I know that I'd take particular pleasure in stamping out any race that developed to the songs "Conversation Heart" and "Awake & Dreaming". They'd probably eat a lot of tofu and whine incessantly, anyway. Not convinced? Here, read some more from the musician:
The music I designed for STARS SuperNova Genesis, I
call "Organic-Tech," because it connects your soul with
the natural world, at the same time your brain travels
into outer space.
You don't normally see that level of pretension outside of a goth teenager's poetry website. And this is the music that he expects us to listen to while we build a mighty star empire and go out to confront our rivals. Not bloody likely. Jasona listens to the kind of screamy/shouty music that old people think all of us youngsters listen to, and develops the kind of vicious, psychotic empires that you'd expect from that. Sun Ra, meanwhile, listens to German metal and rap (often at the same time), and therefore develops paranoid, xenophobic empires with a tendency to beat your ass down if you mess with them. Lictor, meanwhile, listens to...I'm not sure, actually, but he did recently express great admiration for Lawrence Welk, so that might explain why his empires tend to get the crap kicked out of them as soon as the rest of us ferret him out and can bring our navies to bear. As for me, I do reasonably well, and if I don't, I blame it on the AI, or an unfair allotment of useless worlds, or the fact that I had to destroy Lictor's empire and didn't have time to look after my own.
As for the game itself, well, that's more difficult to determine. A cursory inspection of the few available FAQs shows that the game will include Spying and Pirates. I'm all for both of those, mostly because they offer more things to destroy. Otherwise, it's like Stars!, but more: many different scenarios, more races, more ships, less micromanagement, etc. But until the thing is done, they might as well be claiming that it does everything, including curing baldness, leprosy, and making you irresistible to the opposite sex. Us old-time gamers are a jaded, cynical, scurvy lot, and won't believe any of it until we have the boxes in our hands and can finally, after years of waiting, start enjoying the game by reading the manual. Carefully. And then read the install instructions. Because someone wrote those, dammit, and it's the least you bastards can do!
*And right after I finish writing this, the link works again. Typical.