Editing Star Control (section)

=== Design and production ===
Fred Ford's first prototype was a two-player action game where the VUX and Yehat ships blow up asteroids, which led them to build the entire universe around that simple play experience.<ref name="Barton2016"/> Ford designed the Yehat starship with a crescent-shape, and the ship's shield-generator led them to optimize the ship for close combat.<ref name="youtubex"/> They built on these two original ships with many additional ships and character concepts,<ref name="DeMaria2018"/> and play-tested them with friends such as Greg Johnson and Robert Leyland.<ref name="youtubex"/> The team preferred to iterate on ship designs rather than plan them, as they discovered different play-styles during testing.<ref name="youtubex"/> The asymmetry between the combatants became essential to the experience. Ford explained: "Our ships weren't balanced at all, one on one... but the idea was, your fleet of ships, your selection of ships in total was as strong as someone else's, and then, it came down to which matchup did you find".<ref name="warstories">{{cite web|last=Hutchinson|first=Lee|date=October 23, 2018|title=War Stories: How Star Control II Was Almost TOO Realistic|url=https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/12/video-how-star-control-ii-was-almost-a-much-more-boring-game/|url-status=bot: unknown|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201108095109/https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/12/video-how-star-control-ii-was-almost-a-much-more-boring-game/|archive-date=November 8, 2020|access-date=October 20, 2020|publisher=Ars Technica}}</ref> Still, the ships were still given some balance by having their energy recharge at different rates.<ref name="youtubex"/>

Although the story does not factor heavily into the game,<ref name="HG101SC"/> the character concepts were created based on the ship designs.<ref name = "GDC2015"/> The team would begin with paper illustrations, followed by logical abilities for those ships, and a character concept that suited the ship's look-and-feel.<ref name="Barton2016"/> The first ship sketches were based on popular science fiction, such as ''SpaceWar!'' or ''[[Battlestar Galactica]]'', and slowly evolved into original designs as they discussed why the ships were fighting each other.<ref name="youtubex"/> Reiche describes their character creation process: "I know it probably sounds weird, but when I design a game like this, I make drawings of the characters and stare at them. I hold little conversations with them. 'What do you guys do?' And they tell me".<ref name="DeMaria2018"/> By the end of this process, they wrote a short summary for each alien, describing their story and personality.<ref name="youtubex"/>

After creating a large ship that launches fighters on command, Reiche and Ford decided this would be a dominating race.<ref name = "warstories"/> These antagonists would be called the Ur-Quan, with a motivation to dominate the galaxy to hunt for slaves, and an appearance based on a [[National Geographic]] image of a predatory caterpillar dangling over its prey.<ref name="DeMaria2018"/> They decided to organize the characters into nominally "good" and "bad" factions, each with seven unique races and ships, with the humans on the good side.<ref name="youtubex"/> As they were creating the alien characters based on the ship abilities, the Spathi's cowardly personality was inspired by their backwards-shooting missiles.<ref name = "GDC2015"/> A more robotic ship inspired an alien race called the Androsynth, whose appearance was imagined as [[Devo]] flying a spaceship.<ref name="Barton2016"/> Reiche and Ford were also inspired by character concepts in [[David Brin]]'s ''[[The Uplift War]]''. The designers asked what kind of race would be uplifted by the fiercely heroic Yehat, and decided to create the Shofixti as a ferocious super rodent.<ref name="GDC2015" /> The team also decided that the game would need more humanoid characters, and created the Syreen as a powerful and attractive humanoid female race.<ref name="youtubex" /> When they saw that the Syreen ship resembled a cross between a [[rocket ship]] and a ribbed [[condom]], Fred Ford suggested calling it the Syreen Penetrator, which coincidentally happened moments before the [[1989 Loma Prieta earthquake|1989 San Francisco Earthquake]].<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Reiche III |first=Paul |date=December 1990 |title=Blasting VUXs, Etc. Part II |url=https://archive.org/details/Computer_Gaming_World_Issue_77/page/n33/mode/2up |magazine=Computer Gaming World |issue=77 |page=34}}</ref>

The game's [[file size]] was largely devoted to sound effects,<ref name="HG101SC" /> with audio [[Sampling (music)|sampled]] from famous science fiction media,<ref name="cvg3" /> as well as original sound designs for other alien ships.<ref name=":10" /> Each alien race also has a short victory theme song, composed by Reiche's friend Tommy Dunbar of [[The Rubinoos]]. The longer Ur-Quan theme played at the end of the game was composed by fantasy artist [[Erol Otus]].<ref name="youtubex" />