Back again, with another summary update.
So to recap; as you likely know we took an extended break from the project but coming up to a year ago now we picked things up again. It hasn’t been straightforward, there was lots of pressure back then and some things in 2.0 were designed in a rush without proper consideration and it didn’t really gel as a game when we tried to finish it into something objective driven.
As a result we’re having to refine the idea and make it a little more achievable for a small team, but also add some new killer features on the way.
We’ve taken to referring to the revamp as 3.0, and the whole endeavour would be completely pointless if we didn’t take the opportunity to learn what we can from the previous two attempts. If you didn’t know, you’re able to play both the prototypes right here (you can switch to the 1.0 build in the game properties.)
So the last couple of months we’ve been focusing on getting the tactical area of the game up to scratch. We have this concept of the 'Sectors', which is the name we’ve given to the areas of play that divide up the area within the gravity well of a planetary body, an area we call ‘Shallow Space’ due to congestion.
There’s a much higher emphasis on tactical play in 3.0, so the position of your forces matters a lot more. What does that actually mean? Well let's just say that there's a lot less time spent fighting the camera controls and more time planning how your forces will engage the enemy and actually playing the game.
Some examples of this are XL turrets granting abilities so you can blanket an area with flak (concept pictured above), or turrets that enable you to snipe an enemy from across the battlefield.
It's not pretty atm, but it's coming - it'll look great by the time we're finished. ːsteamthumbsupː
In 2.0 if you wanted to target a particular unit you would find that immensely difficult as the action was all over the place. The general aim in 3.0 is to make things easier to control, force ourselves (as developers) to consider gameplay before detail and not give the player too much to do at once (hard thing to do in an RTS!)
Sectors are mostly the same as in 2.0, but again we’ve tweaked a few things to make things play a little more tactically. So in 3.0 you can use the terrain to form chokepoints and if played right, a smaller force can be really effective against a larger force. Something we were aiming for in both 1.0 and 2.0 but failed miserably.
We break down the anatomy of a sector and walkthrough a tactical scenario in this blog article.
We also have made some process repurposing the Carriers, previously they used to carry Corvettes which didn’t really make sense. So instead Corvettes are now the smallest class of ship you can add to a Fleet and Fighters have become Drones, a way of projecting force away from precious Capital ships.
Another big part 3.0 that is an evolution of something introduced in 2.0 'The Strategy Layer.'
This part of 3.0 is still fairly fresh as we’ve been spending a lot of time putting Tactical together. But as that nears minimum viable functionality, we’re starting to give it some more love. It’s starting to resemble something of the ‘Grand Strategy’ we originally envisaged for Shallow Space.
As you saw in update one, we have background traffic milling around adding flavour to the sectors. But how will we control the action? How will we stir it up to become that war-torn corner of the galaxy?
We’ll do that using something we’re calling Taskforces which are essentially a group of Fleets with an objective. They can be AI or Player controlled and could be patrolling, attacking or escorting in the sectors; changing the face of that Grand Strategy map as you play.
We’ll start off small here, just build the foundations with a couple of mission types and when the game is back on Steam we’ll start to fold in some of the grander ideas such as boarding stations and Sectors exchanging hands between Factions.
We’re midway through implementing Taskforces, once that’s done it’ll be time to rework the mission interface and put the skin back on - again it’s all minimum viable stuff, just enough to get us going on Steam again and get some feedback.
We’re still some ways off that though mind, but we are getting closer each day. 8 years working this thing is a long time to accumulate knowledge and learn how things are done, not just in the computer game industry but in software development as a whole.
It’s not just about the game, it’s about how we deliver the updates in an automated fashion with as little human interaction as possible. But what does that mean? Well it means less time chasing our tails and more time delivering new features when the time comes.
We’re excited about the project again, it feels like this time, we’ve planned every meaningful detail and we know how this thing is going to play with minimal surprises and it is mind blowing. It’s only when we stopped for a second to count the number of units orbiting our test planet, over 700 fleets, nearly 2,000 ships and the truth is that we’ve barely begun to populate that. We talk about that here,
Massive scale intergalactic warfare is coming our way!
We kid ourselves that this time it’s easier, but it’s not - we just happen to have a lot of the answers now from 1.0 and 2.0. It’s an unusual path for a project to take, but we’re hoping it’ll pay off. Plus you know, what if we did pull it off? What if we finished this thing and word got out: ‘Remember that cool looking unfinished RTS? Well it got finished.’
What if we became inspiration for other studios to finishing their abandoned games?
Ah, there it is you see - it’s easy to get excited working on something like this, to stress and digress over this mammoth task. If you read some of the blog articles, you can see the stress creeping back in - so much so, we actually had to go back and edit out some of the profanity!
But the important thing is that we’re building this thing, we’re committed to it and it’s happening one step at a time.
Anyways, exciting times, thanks for remaining interested - together we’ll crack this thing and if you get a sec do check out the blog, it’s really starting to fill up with juicy details, stale memes and stunning ship renders: shallowspace.co