SpaceSimCentral

Looks like Quazar Studios is making another space game called 'Cold Stars'. As far as I can tell it hasn't been released yet and not sure if it will be translated? But visuals look better than Dark Horizon but you can see that it still has similarities to the previous two Quazar Studio games. Below is a brief description of the story, it is ran through google translator so excuse any faults.
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In deep space, in the center of our galaxy race geometers, mastering space, faced with something that, for the first time in its history, could not understand. Unable to even describe this thing, Geometry called it - Shadow. Top scouts race disappear in the mysterious gates, the best pilots are killed in battles with the previously unknown machine. Wanting to know anything about their enemy, Geometry decide on the immediate organization of a research campaign on the outlying areas Shadows, tentatively called "Sector 7".Green light given the initiators of all imaginable and unimaginable expeditions, including long is in "soft" scientific, social, economic and political disgrace negumanoidnoy anthropology professor Don Bruno. With meager funds and are under strict control, the scientist headed the expedition, which is destined to reach the very sources of Shadows and learn the truth about it and its creators.
Checkout this video : Here is some pics:[hsimg]http://www.coldstars.ru/images/coldstars_screenshot01.jpg[/hsimg][hsimg]http://www.coldstars.ru/images/coldstars_screenshot07.jpg[/hsimg][hsimg]http://www.coldstars.ru/images/coldstars_screenshot12.jpg[/hsimg][hsimg]http://www.coldstars.ru/images/coldstars_screenshot19.jpg[/hsimg]

Looks pretty good. You got planet-side battles as well as space. Story appears to retain some prominence. When's it released?BTW, you mentioned Dark Horizon. Yet another space sim on my hard drive that I'm planning on going back to soon. What was your opinion of the game?

I liked them, I mean both Tarr Chronicles and Dark Horizon isn't at the top of my to play list but they are decent games. At times I actually thought it was pretty tough, they send a lot of enemies sometimes Overall visually nice game, voice overs are ok. But you have to take any game that is being translated is going to be a little weak in that department. This is also mission based game and you really have no freedom to explore the world that they did a nice job creating.Cold Stars I haven't found much on so I will have to wait a bit and see if any of the Russian members can find some good info because Quazar Studios one page site doesn't say much. They did have some sort of map on another page I couldn't read not sure what it is?

Followed the links through the games forum to the games publisher it got a date in a weeks time 23/12/09 [url]http://ru.akella.com/Game.aspx?id=2294[/url]

Well this was the feature list and maybe just maybe 'Free Movement' is exactly that and you can do whatever during that chapter that's do-able for me. Is that 11 ships total or more like 55 ships? Now it's finding out if they are going to translate it
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- Deep story in 8 chapters about looking for the mysterious civilization Shadow.- Free movement and execution of tasks within the chapter.- Great graphics, re-creating the majestic atmosphere of space and spectacular dynamic fighting.- Managing choice in any of the 11 ships of different races.- Characters and enemies of different civilizations - Geometry, Terminators, Flexible, silent, solid, Rerriku.

Have you fired off an email to them.

I will in the coming week when I get more time. Working on a Q&A for NSW first.

Contacted Quazar Studios Director (Timur Lazarenko) on Cold Stars. Cold Stars is not a sequel to Tarr or Dark Horizon and has a totally different story line. Cold Stars will be using a modified Dark Horizon engine with better graphics, shaders and fx. Quazar Studios wants to get a internationalized version out but they are waiting on a publisher. But they did grant SSC a Q&A So if there is anything you want to know just post away, will want to send it off next week sometime.

Couple of question.It looks in the vid that you can play different races or characters in the game?.Free movement and execution of tasks within the chapter.Is that Free-roaming within the level and being able to complete tasks in any order.Will you be able to board any other ships or stations in the game.

Here is a small Q&A with Timar Lazarenko the Director of Quazar Studio. For the most part Cold Stars will in essence be like Tarr Chronicles and Dark Horizon with a few changes. I guess I have to read more up on Sergey Lukianenko and that book night watch.
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One of the biggest questions is when do you expect a English or moreinternationalized version of Cold Stars to be released?I can't tell you something definitive about time you will seelocalized version of the game, though we'd translated it into Englishand Akella is searching for western partners to release Cold Stars inEU and US.Since Cold Stars isn't following any of the story lines from TarrChronicles or Dark Horizon, can you give a brief description on the storyand background in Cold Stars?The Cold Stars story based on the book of famous russian writer SergeyLukianenko (as well as the film "Night Watch" based on his book), andbeeing the true prequel to the book. We'd added new races (Hard Ones,Silent Ones, Raibaru, Terminators) to the original book's universe aswell. Unfortunately my English isn't enough here to tell you about epicstory canvas of the book and the game itself, and all that remains foryou is just to wait there for the wind from western pubs.:)With watching some of the preview videos, seems like you are using asimilar engine as what was used in Tarr Chronicles and Dark Horizon. Can youelaborate on what the differences are in the engine over TC and DH?Yeah, we'd used the same engine, although it was a bit reformed torender shadows, post-fxs, asteroids shaders, hull shaders, beautifulplanet clouds and etc. As well as we raised polygon counts onasteroids and ships.Is Cold Stars mission based gameplay or is there more of a 'open world'concept?Sure, the same mission concept is still on the root of gameplay. Atthe other hand we added some new concepts like character's briefingsas the main story-telling element and revised the mission designconcept - now you are free to fly anywhere in mission - nocheckpoints, no script rails etc. I think we can assume this to be"open mission" concept ;)How many new ships and weapons can we expect to be able to use?We have done 12 unique ships for player. And the main idea thatdiffers Cold Stars from TC & DH is that you can choose any ship of allthe game races to fight in missions.Thanks Timar.

I have Tarr Chronicles and liked it very much. Combat was fairly thrilling, the graphics are gorgeous, ships are sexy....voice-acting's a little ropey but not as bad as some culprits (coughTomorrowWarcough), coming across as only slightly amateurish. I did get stuck, though, on a quite hard mission that was compounded by having a massive unskippable cut-scene bolted on the front of it and as we all know unskippable cut-scenes are on of gaming's most heinous crimes.Haven't got around to Dark Horizon yet but am still interested to give it a go. Cold stars, however, looks even more promising than that.If the 'Freeform' "open-mission" style mentioned in the game attributes is interesting. Tarr Chronicles was very much 'on-rails' at times, as befitting a military pilot. More freedom to complete missions in my own unique idiom would be very welcome. One to watch out for...PS: Those screenies are just beautiful to look at...!

I would like to see a English publisher pick this up for translation. Or give the community the ability to do the voice work

I like to know more about the free form mission,it sound a little like Red sun on the ps1.

Ever heard any more about Cold Star D1.

Here is my most recent correspondence on the issue of english conversion or retail release:
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Hi,There is no one who defined this yet. Russian publisher is pending onsaling project to western publishers. But western publishers are soworied about overall pc retail game sales, that they do not care amuch of publishing space titles. But chance for CS to be released isstilll remains in future. Hope for once it should happen.

Interesting reply about the retail market.

The comments do have some merit I think Pinback. I seems space combat/sim games are popular in Russia than in USA/EU. But hopefully SSC and the fans can change that over time and supporting the indie devs :)Even though I would like to see Cold Stars on my PC soon i'm not sure it will happen unless the devs allow the fans to do it. I mean the Precursors was in the same boat until the community did the translation. All we can hope for is that more developers leave certain files editable to the community for them to make changes when the company cannot.

Bit of catch 22 situation with Cold Stars in that people need to be able to get the game in order to do the translation patch.

Thinking about Pinback's last post, there could be an opportunity here Darkone. Perhaps you could help these Russian devs by providing an area in the SSC for them to get a foothold in western markets? An SSC shop if you like?

That is very interesting idea Geraldine. Just one problem... I don't know how to set one of those up or any legal ramifications in doing so But I do get the idea that's for sure, I just don't see why more developers don't digitally publish there own games because it is only paying for bandwidth and if your selling games bandwidth isn't an issue.I also think before I try to do something like that I might have to move hosting providers because right now SSC does not have a unlimited bandwidth account and I would definitely need one to host a store front or something like that. But I will definitely look into that and maybe see if they would do an affiliate type of situation where I will host a english forum for them and put links up to buy the game.We'll see.... thanks for that idea Geraldine.