Pause for thought news - Shallow Space

As I grow more and more used to the indie lifestyle and with around 75% of my thoughts and finger movements devoted to the game, it occurs to me that striking the balance between achieving greatness and having a life is actually really pretty difficult. My housemates cast me strange looks now, especially when they see me at my desk at 7:30am on a Sunday.

It bothers me not, perhaps its the cost of providing fans of the genre with a much needed fix, if I have to distance myself socially for a little while i'm sure it'll be worth it. I picture the hours of amusement I can potentially bring people and that spurs my creativity.

The pace is still brisk with improvements across the board. Late last week we caught our first peek at the fighter mechanics which will form a pivotal part of the game play, plus I think including them has just taken the game from 'hmmm interesting' to 'oh wow look at how they move' in a good days work. Much more to be done there, they look pretty well rounded in the dev vids but they actually have a lot of kinks in their behavior to work out but they work pretty well for testing.

I realised while recording one of the videos that even though it was clear to me who was firing at who, it probably isn't clear to you guys. I was going to leave the polishing act a few more weeks but decided that it can't hurt to do it early - well i'm glad I did because as well as being really good fun, I got some fantastic feedback. One guy on twitter asked me when the film was due for release, that put a smile on my face I can tell you!

One thing that I thought blatantly distracts from the ambiance is that Fleet Orders window. It was never a permanent fixture, more there to demonstrate the direction in which i'm taking the fleet management aspect. I'm pleased to say it has been removed and replaced with something a little bit more discreet.

So you can see in the money shot above I've opted for the Nexus: TJI method of listing the ships, even still a few tweaks have been made this morning splitting the list into two side by side; small and large ships respectively. I'll be working on being able to group the ships by dragging and dropping them on top of each other with grouped ships indented slightly against the pack leader. In the long term you can expect to see level-up icons displayed over the capital ships and status indicators over the rest.

I do take a good screenshot though I have to admit, Yogev thinks I missed my calling as a photographer (and sends his regards from Thailand btw) screenshots like this will hopefully help me to build a fanbase which is going to be very important for helping me balance the ships and weaponry.

Very little in the way of revolutionary progress planned this week, I need to work my my way down the bug list and revise some code as I've learnt a few optimisation techniques I didn't know of before. You can expect more screenshots and videos though and i'll put up another voice-over hopefully this week. While you're waiting i've noticed some excellent offerings from my fellow indie devs that really have to be mentioned, the first is the Quantum Principle which basically looks like SPAZ on steroids and Flagship which curiously made my heart both sink and rise at the same time.

Thanks for reading.

James