Author Archive
Merry Christmas
von mr_werns am 24. Dec. 2011, unter News
(Fancy Star-Trek-Christmas-Decoration from etsy)
The Star Trek: Origins team wishes you all a merry Christmas!
Enjoy the days between the years and use them to share with your family and/or beloved ones.
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Stock-check
von mr_werns am 01. Dec. 2011, unter Origins Development
After a necessary server relocation, I’ve got a short stock-check for you – on the one hand dealing with the state of development of Origins, on the other hand dealing with the things which awaits you in the finished game.
Just to let you know up front: We’re surely not making quick progress, but we’re making progress. Till fall of the year the last puzzles will be finished and the real development will start.
The latter has already been started by doing concept-drawings of the Game-Locations.
What we are still really in need of are good character-artists. Of course we’re searching for people supporting us doing all the backgrounds, too, but talking about the characters there is still a gap.
So who is able and willing to help us: info@startrekorigins.de – we’re looking foward to your contact.
In order that you know for what you are signing respectivley the gamers out there know what Origins will have for them, here comes the status quo dealing with the content and scope of the final product (as free of spoilers as possible 
:
- 1 coherent story
- 10 chapters in total – 9 of them playable
- 3 visited plantes (stations and other ships not counted)
- 17 acting (Main-)characters
- 152 Locations/Scenes (there will be more)
- 38 Cutscenes (there will be more)
- 1 Redshirt (one have to be in the game – but one is also enough )
We’re very excited about the upcoming time in which Origins finally get’s a real face. We also want to thank you for your patience and your participation here and at our facebook-page.
LLAP
Your Origins-Team
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To boldly go…
von mr_werns am 20. Oct. 2011, unter News
Star Trek Day on Pro Sieben
von mr_werns am 20. Sep. 2011, unter News
To TV-Junkies (in Germany): Mark the 25th of september.
The TV-Station Pro Sieben brings us a Star Trek Day and will show …
8:40 – “Star Trek – The Motion Picture”
11:15 – “Star Trek IV – The Voyage Home”
13:45 – “Star Trek VII – Generations”
16:00 – “Star Trek IX – Insurrection”
18:10 – “The Simpsons” with two Trek-Episodes.
20:15 – “Star Trek XI”
22:50 – “Star Trek X – Nemesis”
Not quite right in the correct order, but nice to see that Star Trek is still good enough for a TV-Special
Watch the Trailer for the event:
via Trekzone
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45 years Star Trek
von mr_werns am 08. Sep. 2011, unter News
Creating a Plot
von mr_werns am 15. Aug. 2011, unter Origins Development
Since 2009 it has been a long time and the news about the delays writing the script for Star Trek 12 opens space for speculations.
How could it be that a (financial) successful movie – which is the holy grail for Hollywood – has to wait so long for it’s sequel? I don’t want to join the “what’s the matter”-discussion which is ongoing through forums and fansites, but I want to draw some parallels to Star Trek: Origins.
Sure – we involve ourself voluntarily in our freetime and without being paid in this project. Job, family, private life – all that has priority and is delaying big movements. Ressources are rare and if somebody has no time/desire, there is no option to counter that. Nevertheless I want to leave some lines about how hard it could be to write a working story in which the plot is exciting and the characters are believable.
The first draft of Origins – in that time yet aboard USS Lexington and playing while TNG – had one main idea: Let’s create a game dealing with Star Trek and the Origin of the Borg.
There where many interesting approaches and in the beginning the main goal was, to throw everything which was somehow “cool” together. In that period of production I were doing that alone – I thought I could create such a game like e.g. A Final Unity by my own – a point of view I fortunatly do not share anymore today
Somedays I realized that the plot – which I’ve written down on 5 or so pages – would work even better if happen some hundrets years before aboard the Enterprise NX-01.
So there was a huge cut and a turn around for Origins – increasing the problems as well.
While aboard the Lexington I took care of the timeline and tried to integrate characters – if somewhere mentioned – into the story, which was apart from that very open and unbound. There where many things I could imagine from scratch.
Aboard the Enterprise on the other hand there where many well known characters and already happend events which has to be integrated in a respectfully into Star Trek: Origins. In the beginning I thought that this task would be more easy because of the background of countless episodes and much information at e.g. www.memory-alpha.de instead of create everything out of nothing but very soon I realized that the more of available material was increasing the trouble
While writing you have to take care of not creating something, which might stand in conflict with episode XYZ and this is harder than you might think. So it took a long time till the first real draft was finished.
In that period the Origins-team was growing so there where many new point of views, ideas and critics, so that some parts where completely rejected, supplemented and/or added. Altogether a very time-consuming process because if you’re sitting at home alone and just writing down what you think what is best, it happen all along the journey that you lose focus and that you imply that your readers/gamers would have the same stand of knowledge you have reached by doing research in countless encyclopedias. The first feedback of the team was in consequence of that a knockdown 
Ok it wasn’t that bad, but if you’ve worked so much on a story you hope that everybody else will like it – well … that wasn’t (exactly) the case
In the meantime we kept up with the times and the story was developed together in a wiki and a forum. A progress which took a long time, too, and which created some more frustrations because of some back and forth between different story-versions. Main focus of the revision was to create a believable motivation of the different characters of the game. There is (nearly) no worse thing, than a protagonist who is doing something and nobody could really follow his motives for his acts. We didn’t want to create a game with the niveau like Transformers, including a nice face but no brain So we were twisting, inventing, rejecting, inventing…
Somedays this process leads to a bad motivation of all members of the team and we decided to stop the discussion and that the new ideas and ways which we had on oure journey till then, should be worked out in detail “in silence”. Exactly this elaboration is now complete and as a result there is a exciting and sweeping story and some tricky puzzles as well. It is time now to give this story a face. The working-together has made the story of Origins a grown-up and it has become so much better, that I can’t express how thankful I am for my team-colleagues and co-writers!
Of course we would like to have finished more than we have today, but as Orci & Co are used to repeat over and over again “… we didn’t want to rush it…”
It was worth the time to concentrate on the base of the story and we now can go on working on the conversion to a game. Point one for that goal: Scribbles … many scribbles
One experience we could made was, that the process of creating a story is never really over… But the range of changes decreases and at that point we’re standing now. There might be changes to details but the main-plot is ready to face the world.
I can just hope that people could say that about Star Trek 12 soon, too… I hope the authors have used the 2 years till now to prevent such crater-wide plot-holes which have made watching ST11 a hard task for me sometimes. But – after the years with Origins – I can comprehend that the creative process, which is needed for writing a good story, is full of dead ends and stumbling blocks. It is even more fulfilling, when you could close the laptop after another long writing-day and you can say to yourself “it is done!”.
With this little insight view to the production of Origins till now and with a short excerpt of the prologue of Origins we wish you all a nice week and we wish to thank you very much. Although there is not much to see till now, there are already loyal fans! You are the best motivation for us! Thank you!
Star Trek: Origins – August 2011
Prologue
March 2153.
When a ship, crashed almost 100 ago, and some corpses are discovered at the Arctic Circle Starfleet is very eager to find out what this strange finding is all about. Immediately a research expedition is sent to the site to start the investigation.
It is Admiral Forrest who calls the Enterprise NX-01, one of the most modern and up-to-date ships of its time, for help, when the contact to the artic research team is lost and all that can be preserved of the small research station are ruins.
At that time none knew what evil they were up against. Nobody had ever heared of a species called “Borg”. Even though they had the a sligh idea of how overwhelming their enemies technological advantage was they were willing to fight’em.
Paradoxal this story will have its start almost 200 years from now, when a group of Borg will be trying to assimilate Earth – an attempt that will fail due to the intervention by the NCC 1701-E commanded by captain Jean Luc Picard. The same attempt they will repeat shortly after the third World War. Captain Picards Crew is able to prevent this too, but has to suffer big losses, in order to do so.
To defy the unfathomable capability of resistance and adaptability of the borgs collective could only be achieved by few and most of those who even dared fell prey to the hive mind. To meet one’s death was one thing, conciously loosing your own existence was another. Whitnessing yourself killing friends and family, beeing stripped of your free will and your ability to resist has to be a dreadful experience. To extradite your former friends to that same fate, by injecting them with Nanites into their blood circuit, is a cruelty of other dimensions. All you have to do is pierce their soft skin with your nanotubes, an intermixture of a hose and a blade, integrated inside your forearms. Mothers don’t know their children anymore. Brothers turn against each other. Lovers tumble into tragic chaos and eternal suffering.
In the collective there is only one voice. Identity is eradicated, remaining only as an echo, freely recallable for all in the collective. Your thoughts are the collectives thoughts, and the collectives thoughts are your thoughts. That complex system works much like a hive of bees with billions of drones. A huge organism with only one goal, to expand, to enhance themselves and achieve ultimate perfection in everything. Those who defy that urge and resist, are assimilated or annihilated. Those who don’t submit are extinguished. Whole worlds ceased to exist and amazing cultures are robbed of their peculiarity. Remaining mutilated as a part of the collective, mixed with thousands of assimilated races, their former members carving out a miserable umbral existence. Sorrow, compassion, mercy – fundamental values are unknown to the Borg. Just the pure anxiety for perfection dictates their actions.
As a result of their strive and to achieve their goals, the reanimated Borg assimilated the research team and fled from Earth, using a cargo ship. Soon the ships appearance had been changed almost beyond recognition, because it has been altered and upgraded piece by piece. Engines, weapons, navigation – the Borg made use of all their skills to transform the defenseless cargo ship into a serious opponent.
When the Enterprise was finally able to capture the modified frighter, the collective was prepared to shut down the earhtlings ship. Crewmen of an attacked frighter, assimilated and brought aboard beforehand, sabotaged vital systems of the Enterprise and Captain Archer had no choice but to catapult the Crewmen just saved, by dint of an airlock, into space. That was the only way to prevent the Enterprises destruction and his Crews death.
No one knew then that besides the Borg another party was present. Observing. Passive. Biding it’s time…
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Enterprise NX-01 1/850 from Bandai
von mr_werns am 06. Jul. 2011, unter Origins Development
(Translation will follow soon)
Ok, das ist keine wirkliche Fortschrittsmeldung zum Spiel, aber gehört doch irgendwie dazu
Schließlich braucht man ja auch Anschauungsmaterial für etwaige Outside-Shots im Game und ganz abgesehen davon gehört zum Nerdsein ja auch der Besitz von Gegenständen die neben ihrer Existenz keinen weiteren Nutzen haben dazu
Via Facebook habe ich ja bereits einige Bilder vom Zusammenbau veröffentlicht. Dieser ist wirklich nicht schwer und mit etwas Sorgfalt auch für Modellbau-Anfänger zu bewerkstelligen. Da man weder Kleben noch Bemalen muss, ist die Enterprise an zwei ruhigen Abenden montiert (die schnellen unter Euch schaffen’s bestimmt auch an einem Abend) und mit drei AA-Batterien gehen dann auch buchstäblich die Lichter an. Ich muss sagen die Beleuchtungseffekte sehen recht ansehnlich aus. Zwar hätte ich mir auch ein paar Blink-Lichter gewünscht, aber abgesehen davon ist es schon etwas besonderes, wenn jedes Fenster, der Antrieb, der Deflektor, usw. ihre Umgebung erhellen.
Ein Manko jedoch hat die Beleuchtung. Selbst mit neuen Batterien ist’s nach 2-3 Stunden wieder dunkel. Ein Umstand der mich dazu brachte das Modell nochmal anzufassen und eine Verbesserung vorzunehmen
Auf starshipmodeler.com las ich, das man die Stromversorgung via Batterie leicht durch ein Netzteil ersetzen kann. Gesagt, getan begab ich mich zu Conrad und kaufte ein 5V-Netzteil mit 1,2 Ampere für 9 Euro.
Den Stecker am Ende schnitt ich ab und verlötete die Kabel, nachdem ich die Litze entfernt hatte, mit den Kontakten im Standfuß des Modells.
Et viola: Meine Enterprise erstrahlt nun viel heller und und vor alle ausdauernder als zuvor
Super Tipp also!
Mit dieser visuellen und moralischen Stimulanz, mache ich mich nun wieder an die Arbeit. Schließlich soll Origins ja auch irgendwann mal fertig werden und die Kollegen warten auch schon auf den finalen Stand der Dinge
Bis dahin: Licht aus – NX-01 an
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It still goes on!
von mr_werns am 16. Jun. 2011, unter Origins Development
Contrary to any speculation we are still working on Star Trek: Origins.
Like it is with fan projects - there are ups and downs and in the recent months except of additions to the story and approaches to the puzzles of the last chapters, there was unfortunately not much progress.
We are sorry for this circumstances and we hope that you give us yet more confidence because the story of Origins has to be told.
Your Star Trek: Origins Team
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Small update on quarter
von mr_werns am 24. Jan. 2011, unter Origins Development
The quarter isn’t finished yet, but it’s in progress. As shown in the Concept-Sketch, there are still missing a bed, tables, chairs and a bath of course. In this small update strips for the ceiling-lights and place-holders for the furniture have been integrated.
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Star Trek XII – rumor mill
von mr_werns am 20. Jan. 2011, unter News
Granted – till 29th June 2012 there is much time, but likewise before Star Trek XI the rumor mill is fired for the twelth incarnation.
Much of those rumors are surley pipe dreams, after all not even the script seams to be finished.
But, what I find exciting again, is the closeness to the fans, which is suggested at least. So Roberto Orci gets into a discussion about an articel at TrekMovie.com to tell some inside stories. How much of it is really “free speach” I don’t want to evaluate, but it seams that they internally trying to convince JJ Abrams to direct the next Star Trek. He on the other hand wants to depend his decission on the script of the movie, but he is the producer of the movie and owner of Bad Robot (Orci is in that company, too) so it seams to be kind of strange, that Abrams has no clue about the quality of the story. But ok, let’s accept this as a fact – do we have to expect the script of STXII is bad if JJ don’t want to direct the movie? And if – is that a good or a bad thing for Star Trek?
The people commenting the article (by now nearly 700) wanted to get more information and peppered Orci with questions. A direct answer they didn’t got from him – sure – but he answered in form of a question by himself, which is “significant” for STXIII:
By the time we reunite with the beloved crew of the USS Enterprise in the summer of 2012, what adventures from the original series should already be in their PAST?
None? Two seasons worth? Ten Episodes? Which ones?
Of course this question hasn’t created clearness about the plot, but the fans are involved and fire one guess after the other – good marketing.
I just hope that they will hear some of the critics about STXI and that they will do better. More Trek than Wars. More think than shooting. And mainly: More engineering than brewery
In case you don’t know it – the review of Red Letter media is the best in my eyes and it expresses my feelings about the last movie, too:
Part 1
Part 2
If they will think about it for Star Trek XII we will see in future, but for Paramount the brand is a cashcow and this is why I’m afraid that they will keep to the actual level. No experiments – they could end in bad box-office-results. A new reboot perhaps? Look, 2009… it’s a long time ago. Watch Spiderman – they do it there, too. I augur reboots in a yearly cicle. And in the end there are – let’s say – only 10 movies left, but they are reimagined all the time … what a bad sight on the future – so back to Star Trek
The actual discussion is: Should STXII follow the trend and shall be shot in 3D? Even for this point there are many different thoughts. but there is a strong majority against doing this and I voted “no”, too. Why? Let’s say I first want to be convinced with a logic and good plot. After that we can talk about effects. Warp in 3D. The Enterprise within reach … sure a cool thinking, but following the actual “everything-has-to-be-in-3D-so-we-could-earn-much-money”-illusion, there are to many black sheeps arround here, trying to catch up with the success of Avatar while really destroying the own market for 3d-cinema. You read much about the 3d-glasses are annoying, but this isn’t my problem. My problem are movies which are compiled in 3D after shooting in 2D in the worst way so you get epilepsy while watching the movie.
A funny clip dealing with the 3D-Hype I won’t keep from you, too – perpare for 3D! 
Thanks Robert
Abrams has noted some doubts about 3D by himself, which speaks for him as I think. But in my eyes more interesting would be a mix of classic filmmaking in combination with the IMAX-format as it has worked for Nolan’s The Dark Knight and for Star Trex XI, too (but sadly the last one wasn’t shown in Germany I think).
A bunch of wishes for Star Trek 2012 would be:
- A more intelligent story
- Less war, murder and violence
- Less/no reheating of already known stories, but a orginal new story
- No 3D (yet), but IMAX for the big shots
- A new engineering
- Perhaps a new director, not Abrams
How the movie will be developed I’m sure that there will be more information soon. I’m excited in which direction the new Trek will go, but I hope it won’t regress. I will post further news and rumors from time to time, but till then, I will work on for Origins