I've taken a knock or two this last week from some who feel that I might be overconfident or missing a trick or two. Please don't mistake my clear sense of direction as over confidence, i'm fully aware of how big this project is but i'm also aware that obeying principles taught to me by Object Orientated Programming 101 the project will come together like a lego brick castle. I am also very open to advice.
What makes me so sure I can do this? Well for a start i've been programming since I was 8 years old so it's pretty easy for me to visualise my intentions in code and i've just ended my 4th programming course so believe me I am now very well armed with experience and knowledge. More than that my day job involves project and infrastructure management so I know when to spot additional resource is needed and how to bring that additional resource to bear.
Over this last week we've seen the project come along piece by piece, the tactical overlay now furnishes the battlegrid with positioning information and there's more to come with the addition of some new options to the orders panel. Some of these options you may never use, that is a fleet commanders prerogative, but the fact that you have them puts an almost sandbox edge on what is going to be an epic adventure.
What of that adventure I hear you say and just where am I going with this exactly? Well I am very much a singleplayer game person so my immediate focus will be just that. I have an sweeping story arc prepared that will reveal the universe piece by piece with more than the appropriate lashings of surprising and more importantly suspense. I have a story to tell you and I intend on doing it with all the bells and whistles, voice acting and maybe even cut-scenes.
Multi-player I recognise is an important element but that will follow as a secondary concern, I think I would rather see co-operative play as the storyline keenly supports it, but i'll see what the potential fan base comes back to me with.
We have another addition to the team, John joins Yogev and myself and he will be pulling some fancy camera effects out of the bag for us. This game is all about perspective, the lead character will start off small and will become a universal player and it is important to capture all that majesty with appropriate movements of the camera.
Lastly, we are starting to gather a bit of traction with this. I noticed my voiceover video clocked up a nerve-wracking 250 views in the first day (look forward to the next one without the CPU fan in the background!) and we've even received our first review, I continue to be humbled by your attention and remain very committed to bringing you a complex yet polished and fun title.
James
Great to see progress is being made on this, I love the Jupiter incident and I've been longing for a really good space-fleet simulator.
My only suggestion would be to add as much control for the player as possible. Things like adjusting power distribution, repair crews and similar would all be extremely interesting additions that would put it way above a standard RTS in space.
I don't think there's a danger of being too complex with these sorts of games - everyone wants to be in as much control as they can be in these sorts of games, and with liberal use of tooltips and a decent manual/help file, there's no risk of alienating users.
Of course you're absolutely right, but the trouble is scope creep. I'd love to work in things like subsystem targeting and manually being able to set the individual turret targets but I don't want it to be one of these projects that's in beta for ever (like this whole early access thing for example.)
I know what i'd like to see out of this sort of game (basically the bastard lovechild of starfleet command, nexus and homeworld) but in running off with the maths, the function and the ideas its likely I may lose sight of what is actually fun. So I really will come to rely on people like yourself offering me advice and feedback like this, nice one.
Scope creep is what made Nexus so amazing! That game has so many undocumented and poorly explained features that it takes a long time to master. I don't think you can make this kind of game too complicated. If this is like Nexus, then you only have a handful of ships to manage instead of hundreds or thousands in an RTS, so most of the tactics are going to come from the depth you get from fine control of those few vessels.
Yep totally agree with you there but it will be so difficult to capture the majesty of Nexus. This game will play a lot more like a traditional RTS than Nexus did, you'll be able to produce your own ships (although they'll be expensive to prevent C&C style hording) the trouble with Nexus was that some of the missions were just plain boring. In Shallow Space there will be lots of things going on at once, mine resources here while escorting a freighter over there, the mechanics I'm demonstrating only form half the picture and by adding too much in will just frustrate the player.