Shallow Space is a 3D Real Time Strategy game inspired by Nexus: The Jupiter incident and Homeworld. Shallow Space focuses on organised mass RTS space combat in a fully 3D environment. Ships in Shallow Space are nearly always grouped into Flotillas and Wings, and orders issued to these structures cascade to the subordinate members. Rather than stressing out clicking on the units or dragging selection boxes during the heat of battle, standing orders are issued in advance leaving you to zoom around, activating abilities and arranging support and reinforcements. Should the tide turn in battle traditional control is still available.
Spent the last couple of weeks making strides with the AI. Ships will dodge each other but dodging static installations still have to be worked out, should happen soon.
Tonnes of other improvements also such as:
* Large ships no longer static when attacking, they move like the smaller ships (albeit slower) actively avoiding collisions.
* Tactical indicators clamped to the sides of the screen.
* Subsystem targeting, including the ability to disable large and very large turrets.
* Performance enhancements after another re-factor.
* Pack AI now capable of acting in the interests of an objective.
Looking forward to adding in missiles and weapons platforms, NPC mining and then I'll start tying it all together with a medium term goal to form procedurally generated scenarios. Keep an eye on the blog (http://shallow-space.com) for more information. Thanks!
Why ship just disappearing after death? No cool explosion or something? I mean... it's... just... so weird.
Also, why large ship should dogfight at all? It's a job of fighters, not big ships with big crew. They shouldn't roll around like crazy.
I can be wrong but that's just my opinion :)
We're working on the explosions, the whole dissolve effect is better than them disappearing into thin 'space' lol
Perhaps dogfight is the wrong term, I mean they no longer sit still. It looks silly them just being sat there and it plays rather static too. It strikes me that if I was in command of one of the ships I'd want to keep moving to avoid fire but you can fly the ships in formation still if you prefer.
One cannot be wrong expressing his own opinion ;)
I think ship explosion should be pretty rare (in case of critical hit, like ammo boxes or engines?)
It make more sens to have disabled ships than everyone of them exploding
Just like in Nexus
I love how the ships turn when you give them order to fly in a new direction. Fell smooth and natural. Cheers
After watching that video I cant help but be reminded of the real-time battles that took place in the game 'Nexus:The Jupiter Incident' if this video is signs of what I am to expect to see in Shallow space I'll definitely be looking forward to seeing how this game turns out.
One thing that did grab my attention though (which may of already been mentioned) was that smaller ships such as destroyer class and medium ships like cruisers appear to have almost identical pitch and roll speeds, I would of thought that the overall mass of a ship would come into play, for example small ships are agile and turn reasonably fast, medium ships are slowed down slightly due to the sheer size of ships bulk/mass, and lastly large ships like battleships have extreme difficulty making fast maneuvers and if they could it would more than likely put so much stress on the hull of the ship and tear itself apart, but that's just my theory anyways...
Yeah there's that old realism vs. theatrics argument rearing it's head again. The more realistic I make the simulation the less fun it is, you might disagree but I'm running this thing and trust me the two options in this case are mutually exclusive:
Longer ranges = can't see the juicy battles
Slower ships and turn speeds = yaaaaawn.
Making it fun is the priority for me, it is a game after all.
Moreover, I had to completely remove the old movement system and write this in, so many of the old attributes such as rotation speed and max speed need to be rebalanced, mass doesn't come into this - I'm not using physics for the ships. Why are I not using physics? Because it give weird results, Alex is running his testing platform for the special effects in Unity and we are get weird results when the ships collide and it looks silly. He's having to code to counter the physics, no thanks.
The local avoidance commands how the ships will move to a certain extend as well, I have to work around it to make the ships move. Try not to form conclusions at this early stage, balancing is incredibly difficult and I haven't even started that yet really.
The only thing that I did not like it that the turrent in the light cruiser seem too big.
As far as gameplay goes, this is a marvel. Nice work :)
Do I really have to put the works 'placeholder' and 'temporary' over everything i'm doing? Jeeeez
Thanks for the remaining nice words :)
Sorry, I thought it was the final model.
Naaaah none of the models or effects are final, I have a couple of guy knocking together a new fleet of ships and someone else working on far better effects than this.
This is just me adding stuff in to plug a hole, I'm really focusing on the gameplay and getting these little buggers to play nice.
Sorry for being harsh, just got up!
Don't worry haahaha
As said, gameplay is looking really nice. Can't wait!
I know this game isn't finished yet, depending on your point of view a long way off or actually a really short time depending on the polish. At this stage if I had a stable build and a couple of game modes i'd start taking preorders for shipping shallow space one in a few months or so, it would bring in an income and start collecting more fans than the usual crowd on moddb. (The vast majority of players don't go onto moddb everyday of the week). Just a suggestion, I know a lot of major games that came out where fairly basic at first and grew in size soon enough by the next releases.
Hugo1005 (Some suggestions but your game at the end of the day and you understand it best)
When anyone from another field wants to start a business they have to work hard, save and borrow to make it happen. I have something pretty and promising but it's all too easy for me to stick a preorders button on my site and start collecting money for something I haven't made yet. I think it's rash and a tad dishonest, there will come a point where I rub my hands together and say 'it's time' but still a little way off.
Of course, the second I turn on the tap by taking peoples money questions are asked, e-mails fly, a community forms that needs supporting, legal and financial obligations start to form but right now I'm at the fun bit where I'm just making a game.
We began rounding off the game design document and I can tell you there is much to get excited about, I'm still prototyping while getting wheels moving in the background - sure what I have looks decent but it represent about 25-30% of the actual game, it'll be good to show at around 40-45%.
Arbitrary figures aside, I want to build a skirmish mode in the short-term and that's the part the public will get their hands on before too long.
Fair enough, i guess enjoying developing it is the most important things, just the fact that i've seen quite a few games where they either take too long to make and by then there is competitors or the game is cancelled or they release bits and peices as early access or open beta, so it never really make a fully fledged game or is an endless production cycle, but not endless new revenue to support that. I guess its a balance between polish and commercial viablitity
Well it's a big project, these things take time - competition doesn't bother me, if the're prepared to put in the sheer amount of work I have then good luck to them and btw it will never be cancelled but it will be on Early Access.
We're singing from the same book essentially mate; getting it out there is important, getting it to make money is important, but I tell you what's more important than all of that?
Getting it right.