There's no question that Sword of the Stars (SOTS) offers some of best 3D combat visuals of any 4X game to date, thanks to features like the dynamic damage texturing, destroyable turrets and subsystems, and the ability to hurl a gigantic, hilarious rock at an enemy colony and witness the brutal after-effect. How do you feel about the community's feedback from the game's range of graphical and artistic detail, and is there anything you would change or improve if given the chance?

Receiving feedback from the community is always great. We’ve gotten a good sense of the kinds of things they like, so we’re looking forward to hearing their reaction to A Murder of Crows (AMoC). With our established forums we have a very direct channel to the fans and community. When we go about creating our elements we try to conceive of as many perspectives the audience will approach it from, what conclusions they may come to, and then work within and around all that knowledge.

Releasing it out there and getting to see what bits of the details and subtle design and philosophy concepts they pick up on is always rewarding. Because of the high level of complexity and customization of the ships within our game, all sorts of decisions must be made for levels of detail, and new concepts and ideas are always being cooked up on the side. Some of them make it in and some of them get shelved or scratched. Can't give anything specific away, but there are more then a few things I started developing in mind that couldn't make it into the scope of this project. They will appear in SotS2.

I always thought the turn summary images were a really nice touch for the game, and add a real sense of connection to your race that other games lack. What stands out the most is the contrast the different races have for the "Research Overbudget" warning – SolForce for example shows an amusing image of your research team trying to hide the excess grant money from your government agents, while the Tarkas display a humbling image of a scientist impaling himself (presumably out of shame). What originally prompted the implementation of these little touches, and what challenges did you face trying to keep them diverse and interesting?

The main purpose of these images came from the desire to share a more personal level of the characters portrayed in the game – more down at the level of the average citizen of your empire so to speak – in juxtaposition to the dry, functional summary of the past events for a “year” or turn.

The initial concept that was conceived for this was like a news report TV station. We’ll sometimes refer to that corner of the screen as the “TV box” for that reason. News events are not only designed to convey the event itself, but to give you a better feel and insight into the race you are playing. Often the event itself would determine the mood we’d like to convey. Most are more serious, but a few come with a heavy dose of comedy to break the mood up a bit. To me, nothing is worse than a game that takes itself too seriously. The research ones were a great joy to brainstorm; wacky scientists in elaborate labs and all the things that go wrong.

Ken Lee, our primary 2D artist, is responsible for the vast majority of these elements, but wherever we could, many members of the team would add their opinions and suggestions to the mix. My favorite in this bunch had to be the Hiver accident one with his antennae on fire. I am still thinking about getting that one made into a T Shirt!

Any plans for expanding the graphics engine features further, such as putting custom nametags on ships, or adding visible maneuvering thrusters?

Oddly enough all ships in SotS used to have directional thrusters, but they were removed as they ate into frame rate significantly in larger battles and regardless, you could not really even see them unless you were zoomed in closer. I can’t really go into the details about what new features we have brewing for the ships down the road in SotS2, but I can say we are working at a more complex level for the ship designs. As processing power continues to improve, maybe by the time we reach SotS2 every l’il thruster can be added back in. It terms of several new layers of custom personalization per ship, we have plans, but we’ll have to wait and see if they make it off the drawing board.

Accounting for all of the content added to date, who's your favorite race in the game?

Hey now! Which one of your children do YOU love most? Not an easy question to answer, but I will give it a shot. We've been at this for some time now and new techniques and mechanics have changed how the different races function and interact, so my favorite tends to change as time goes on. And also, being an artist as well as a gamer, my favorites can some in two categories, gameplay AND visual. Right now the Tarkas are my favorite. Now these guys I got to pour as much of my personal creativity into design-wise, so they were very fulfilling to produce and extremely fun to play. Now between the Morrigi and Zuul I almost don't know which I could pick as being the most visually interesting. Both have some very peculiar and radical ship designs. Now that I start dwelling on the ship design aspect of the game I can’t help but remember the Hiver have some of the most solid, earliest ship concepts we came up with, while the Liir had some of the most elegant. The Humans have some of the most functional. With all that being said though, bang for the buck, right now I’ll have to go with the Morrigi for their radical new ship concepts and versatile game play that fits my personal strategic style.