Shallow Space News

We've catalogued the games assets and we're in good shape.

We have most of the components we need to rescue the project and the opportunity now to learn from the previous failures and adapt. We appreciate the project was abandoned and trust is low, so until we've made things right - we'll shortly be making the game free on Steam.

There will be some challenges - multiplayer will need to be baked in from the start and it was incredibly difficult to tame those free moving ships into something that was actually purposeful and strategical.

Then there's the fact that the Shallow Space project is huge.

There is so much lore it's hard to put it into words (excuse the pun!)

Detailed specs of each system, each faction, how they operate / co-operate. Much of it was on the old website which sadly got shuttered, We're excited to come across this treasure trove and are even much excited to get that stuff back online.

Then there are the assets.

We're by no means complete there - i'd say we were about 65-70% of the way, but we have enough of them to recreate Shallow Space as a more fun game using more modern tech.

But hold on; one doesn't just make a free multiplayer game.

So why would we bother with it? Because multiplayer is important, but not to everyone. But something like Shallow Space could really shine if we could have hundreds of players working together (or against each other) somehow competing for control of space or resources. We need to lay that groundwork from the start.

The current alpha shows a bit of the intention with having multiple zones with background traffic, we're just going to scale that up quite a bit to accommodate multiplayer and make those environments richer with localized events, random encounters and plenty of opportunity to team up with your mates for big-ass fleet battles or go at it alone if you prefer.

OK ... so yeah that sounds good - but how?

Technical speak: In the background we'll run a number cruncher as a highly efficient micro-service based platform that is designed to scale when Players join and be the brains of the universe, we'll call this the backend which is the hard part of the project. Now that sounds complex, but in our 3.5 year absence we have gathered experience developing such systems.

This backend is the part we're currently working on and it's coming along nicely. We're using test driven development to ensure it's as stable as possible. We have working integration, so we're able to push out updates quickly and safely, as we develop them.

All that jargon is important, because it means more time delivering the goods and what we deliver will work better with far fewer crashes. This was a major failing of the project previously.

Good news, but the game client also needs to benefit from this streamline integration also.

The current alpha is running in Unity3D, but we're not really doing that much with it and it's a pain to work into a pipeline. We want something with a lighter footprint, so we're experimenting with porting the game to GoDot - it's a tiny game engine that's efficient and free.

Shallow Space has been going for a long time and if you look back at the Youtube videos we spent a lot of time playing with the art of space battle and working out what looks right, some might say too much time.

It's so easy to get distracted with details, we've got to make a game out of this and we've got to be ruthless to get there. Expect some changes; some loss of detail, some improved controls - it's all in the name of making it more fun, and feel more like a game. We obviously want some opinions on that so we're aiming to get something out ASAP, i'd say within 6 months.

The project is huge and the bulk of the work lies in the backend, we're making good progress but we're still at the start of it. The game client should come together quickly (once we've gotten used to GoDot) and we don't have to wait for artwork because we have enough of it already - massive time saver, then we'll start seeing Steam updates on the client again.

But when will that be?

Shallow Space has always been a labour of love, born from a love of the genre. We're not going to get stressed about delivering it again, better to enjoy the journey and the positive community spirit the project has always seemed to attract. We'll get back on our feet first, make the game free and get it into a state we can play together and then look at how we'll get the funds to finish it.

We're amazed and grateful to read the comments of support, it's very encouraging and really makes us work harder. It's been a productive couple of months of cataloguing assets, planning and coding and we'll have something to show for that soon, in the meantime, look forward to some of that lore reappearing on the web.

Thanks to everyone, we'll be in touch regularly with updates!

I must have sat down to write this post a thousand times …

So the project had a number of failings.

We had limited resources, driving the project took up a lot of that. There was a lot of stuff in the background that just wasn’t implemented or managed properly. Updates were rushed, manual and error prone because we had no tests or continuous integration and there were some game design issues.

More bad luck, we had a publisher lined up but it fell through (Brexit,) our devs found other projects, some arguments with ex-teammates spilled into public and bad reviews started to bury the game because hands up, we forgot to actually make it fun!

Even more bad luck. A large bunch of keys appeared on a certain grey market site and sales dried up overnight. Business drove into the ground hard; personally - I was burnt-out and broke, and I had to heal quickly and then go and get a job.

I couldn’t heal while trying to explain to a bunch of people why I failed. I stepped back for the sake of my mental health.

I had to close Steam, block it from my life for a while and I apologise for that, after four long years I was burnt out …

Why couldn’t I just tell you all of that later on?

Well it's hard to stand up in front of the 15-25K people who were good enough to support you and tell them you had failed to put together the game you always dreamt of. But it was harder still to come back to it and pick at the remains.

What have I been doing all these years? Becoming better at what I do, learning how to do software development properly (and lurking on Steam of course.)

I finally got over myself and found Shallow Space still here, frozen in time.

So why am I telling you this now?

Because i'm going to finish Shallow Space.

The team is coming back together.

We know what went wrong, we know not to do it again and we’ve spend the last 4 years writing software for other people and have learnt a thing or two. We still have all the source code - 3 iterations of that engine, we still have the knowledge from that.

We’ve been heavily inspired by Hello games with No Mans Sky. They launched with such appalling reception and they just kept going and going - making that game right.

We need to do that here.

We’ve been working on Shallow Space for a month or so now. But it’s all backend mechanics, written neatly learning from all the lessons since the project began. Right now it’s just a load of lines of text running down a screen but progress is swift and the project is robust.

That backend is going to take a while to develop, and after that we need to make the client. But we have most of the artwork ready for that, with a well-formed plan we can put it together in a reasonable time.

Is it wise to try and reignite this old flame?

This is about finishing what we’ve started. If a handful of the 25K people who bought this game already say to us ‘I enjoyed that’ then it will be worth it.

Looking at Steam there’s still not much around for open-world style fleet management games and we have some cool ideas and some legacy to resolve. I have to hope that if we do manage to deliver to the good folk that supported us, we might still be able to make something from this yet.

It’s been an interesting year for the project, feedback fairly early on in the release caused us to slam on the brakes and have a real think about the direction in which the project was going. We had two choices; do what is normally done and continue down that path and release the game hoping to learn the lessons in the sequel, or do the honest thing taking it back to the start and work in the stuff you really wanted to see.

We chose the honest path meaning progress this year has been somewhat of a forward-sideways step rather than a direct lunge forward. Even so mechanically things are shaping up well, once we have matured and stabilised the code base the rest of the route to completion is a case of joining the dots, it’s high level stuff that will come together quickly once the remaining assets arrive and the story is finalised.

How quickly I hear you ask? Well it’s difficult to say.

There aren’t any rulebooks on the creation of this type of game, well actually we suppose there are; we could take another game and clone it, but that doesn’t really advance the genre. Besides it's been said before, the reason we are here is to explore the RTS – take it apart, assess each piece, put it back together incorporating elements from other genres if they fit.

We’re three years into the project now (one year on Steam,) we are clear now on exactly what the finished product will look like and it’s very exciting but it’s safe to say that our chosen path means that we face some pretty serious challenges in the coming year.

These challenges directly hinge on the unilateral changes that Steam continue to make.

These changes might be for the good of the customer and we are behind them, what's more we remain grateful for being offered the opportunity to trade on Steam. But had we known a year ago the changes that would be made we would likely not have released on Steams Early Access and instead continued down a pre-order/beta route but there is no going back now.

We work hard to ensure that you guys are kept informed and release regular updates, but that might not be enough to keep our heads above water anymore.

The real killer is this ‘rolling aggregate score’ they’ve introduced which has lead to a change in Players reviewing habits. What we’re seeing is that when people have positive things to say they’ll often post on the forums but when people have feedback or issues they often leave a negative review. This is worrying because negative reviews can easily kill a project dead – especially if the aggregate score falls into ‘Mixed’ which happens when a project has 70% (or below) positive reviews – this is simply brutal.

What’s more we have zero control over them, even if we capitulate to what is effectively blackmail and fix the issues by then the Player has refunded and moved on.

Then there’s the issue of grey market sales, the refunds themselves, games websites being closed to indies (probably a blessing in disguise judging from the way games are reviewed these days,) social media reach being intentionally borked - all these little things are eating away at the money we need to finish this thing.

So what does this uncertainty mean for Shallow Space?

Firstly don’t worry; personally, I haven’t spent 3 years of my life on a project only to roll it up when the going gets tough. No f**king way!

Take a look around on Steam for similar projects to ours – open RTS games set in space and you won’t find many (if any at all) and the ones you do find have been rushed to completion. This is because they are extremely unlikely to get funding from investors or the crowd because they are not a safe bet.

But this project is different.

We have proven ourselves to be dedicated, we have something tangible and the most important thing: We have made some money. That effectively makes it a dead cert in the eyes of many an investor. The game is undeniably good looking so potentially we could Kickstart it and even if it failed it’s a nice little publicity push.

Needless to say, more money means more developers and artists.

These are hostile times for any indie project and every bone in our bodies is screaming out to rush this thing to completion. But games take time to make – if anything we need to slow it right down, take bigger steps forward taking time to make sure the new inclusions are more stable.

We need to get a business plan together and start canvassing for investment because the games completion shouldn’t rely so much on Steam profits, especially as it becomes an increasingly hostile place to do business and the cash reserves dwindle.

So admittedly it’s a struggle, but without these struggles we would become complacent and above all the woes progress remains strong. But don’t take our word for it, go back through the previous news, and take a look at the YouTube gameplay videos from 6 months ago. You’ve all bought into a project that is progressive and moving forwards.

This will be a good year.

We can expect 3 times the number of ships presently in the game; the asset factory is churning in the background making it so. The author has fleshed out the main storyline and sidequests and will soon start working on lines for voice acting.

We’re working on the Zone/Map switching so that it is seamless, resource collecting, construction and working on that planetary map but implementation-wise this is all superficial stuff reliant on the foundations we’ve already built that improve every week.

The hard work is done now, all that remains is to tidy up and continue to build on those foundations. We foresee struggles but fortunately we are now stood at the top of the hill looking down. We must be a little more careful in todays landscape and spend more time building the business and not just the game but there is little doubt that 2017 is the year we’ve been working towards.

Wishing all of our Players and followers a happy new year and the biggest thanks from the team for all your support in 2016!

It’s been an interesting year for the project, feedback fairly early on in the release caused us to slam on the brakes and have a real think about the direction in which the project was going. We had two choices; do what is normally done and continue down that path and release the game hoping to learn the lessons in the sequel, or do the honest thing taking it back to the start and work in the stuff you really wanted to see.

We chose the honest path meaning progress this year has been somewhat of a forward-sideways step rather than a direct lunge forward. Even so mechanically things are shaping up well, once we have matured and stabilised the code base the rest of the route to completion is a case of joining the dots, it’s high level stuff that will come together quickly once the remaining assets arrive and the story is finalised.

How quickly I hear you ask? Well it’s difficult to say.

There aren’t any rulebooks on the creation of this type of game, well actually we suppose there are; we could take another game and clone it, but that doesn’t really advance the genre. Besides it's been said before, the reason we are here is to explore the RTS – take it apart, assess each piece, put it back together incorporating elements from other genres if they fit.

We’re three years into the project now (one year on Steam,) we are clear now on exactly what the finished product will look like and it’s very exciting but it’s safe to say that our chosen path means that we face some pretty serious challenges in the coming year.

These challenges directly hinge on the unilateral changes that Steam continue to make.

These changes might be for the good of the customer and we are behind them, what's more we remain grateful for being offered the opportunity to trade on Steam. But had we known a year ago the changes that would be made we would likely not have released on Steams Early Access and instead continued down a pre-order/beta route but there is no going back now.

We work hard to ensure that you guys are kept informed and release regular updates, but that might not be enough to keep our heads above water anymore.

The real killer is this ‘rolling aggregate score’ they’ve introduced which has lead to a change in Players reviewing habits. What we’re seeing is that when people have positive things to say they’ll often post on the forums but when people have feedback or issues they often leave a negative review. This is worrying because negative reviews can easily kill a project dead – especially if the aggregate score falls into ‘Mixed’ which happens when a project has 70% (or below) positive reviews – this is simply brutal.

What’s more we have zero control over them, even if we capitulate to what is effectively blackmail and fix the issues by then the Player has refunded and moved on.

Then there’s the issue of grey market sales, the refunds themselves, games websites being closed to indies (probably a blessing in disguise judging from the way games are reviewed these days,) social media reach being intentionally borked - all these little things are eating away at the money we need to finish this thing.

So what does this uncertainty mean for Shallow Space?

Firstly don’t worry; personally, I haven’t spent 3 years of my life on a project only to roll it up when the going gets tough. No f**king way!

Take a look around on Steam for similar projects to ours – open RTS games set in space and you won’t find many (if any at all) and the ones you do find have been rushed to completion. This is because they are extremely unlikely to get funding from investors or the crowd because they are not a safe bet.

But this project is different.

We have proven ourselves to be dedicated, we have something tangible and the most important thing: We have made some money. That effectively makes it a dead cert in the eyes of many an investor. The game is undeniably good looking so potentially we could Kickstart it and even if it failed it’s a nice little publicity push.

Needless to say, more money means more developers and artists.

These are hostile times for any indie project and every bone in our bodies is screaming out to rush this thing to completion. But games take time to make – if anything we need to slow it right down, take bigger steps forward taking time to make sure the new inclusions are more stable.

We need to get a business plan together and start canvassing for investment because the games completion shouldn’t rely so much on Steam profits, especially as it becomes an increasingly hostile place to do business and the cash reserves dwindle.

So admittedly it’s a struggle, but without these struggles we would become complacent and above all the woes progress remains strong. But don’t take our word for it, go back through the previous news, and take a look at the YouTube gameplay videos from 6 months ago. You’ve all bought into a project that is progressive and moving forwards.

This will be a good year.

We can expect 3 times the number of ships presently in the game; the asset factory is churning in the background making it so. The author has fleshed out the main storyline and sidequests and will soon start working on lines for voice acting.

We’re working on the Zone/Map switching so that it is seamless, resource collecting, construction and working on that planetary map but implementation-wise this is all superficial stuff reliant on the foundations we’ve already built that improve every week.

The hard work is done now, all that remains is to tidy up and continue to build on those foundations. We foresee struggles but fortunately we are now stood at the top of the hill looking down. We must be a little more careful in todays landscape and spend more time building the business and not just the game but there is little doubt that 2017 is the year we’ve been working towards.

Wishing all of our Players and followers a happy new year and the biggest thanks from the team for all your support in 2016!

Just a quick note to add that we have a round of fixes and tweaks coming in for updates that have been released in the last few days - details below.

Some great feedback coming back, special thanks to SnottyGremlin for his clear and constructive criticism, very useful to hear from new Players!

As always, we really appreciate the support and we hope you have a great festive period!



- Added option to disable 'Film Grain' in graphic options
- Fixes to crash caused by clicking 'End Deployment' with no units deployed
- Fixes to camera drift when Joystick plugged in
- Fixes to scrolling using mousewheel affecting camera zoom
- Fixed crash saving game with containers
- Fixed crash refreshing inventory window
- Fixes various to stability
- Tweaked default camera panning speed
- Tweaked targetboxes to make them more visible
- Tweaked Ship Builder UI button to close on click if already open



- Fixes to combined Inventory window
- Fixes to Save/Load
- Fixes to missions/objectives not being cleaned up on game exit
- Fixes to tutorial being show in Quick Battle mode
- Fixes to rare crash on mission 'All Good Things'
- Fixed issue with time controls animating incorrectly on game restart
- Fixed issue with Player ship fleet panel not spawning correctly on load game
- Fixed issue with 'ghost ship' on load game