SpaceSimCentral

Dear fan and spacesim lovers.With utmost sadness i need to anounce, Hidden Space development is now officialy on hold.Lot of time, work and dreams had been put in. Lots of fans has been gathered.But sadly i find myself unable to finish the game as for today. Reasons are many. Lack of man power, lack of skills, even less time (especialy as my son just born ) and many other diffrent reasons.I am incredibly sorry for stating this so late. First i have sparked your interest and hope. Waved with the carrot in front of your nose and took it away.Belive me or not - i too was staring at the carrot. And i wanted it just as much as you did. Maybe even more.Hidden Space, was, is - my dream. My own personal utopia. My absolute.But as with all utopias - this one too is hard to reach or achieve. I still have all my materials, animations, special effects, music etc and i wont give it away.I will store it and never delete. Maybe one day i will find myself skilled enough to reach for it once again. To finish it, this time.Hidden Space has one of the most powerfull storyline and lore that game industry could have opportunity to expirience - from years. Maybe it sounds a bit odd comming from the creator himself but thats the trouth. Its all writed down. And many people had chance to read it. And the story it self is a black horse and can be published as a book or movie. And i value these words greatly as suprising -they arent my. It wasnt me who said them. And it makes my heart warm. Ill keep it for today. Ill let it rest within depths of my desk. Its too good to be wasted.But the time have not been wasted. Ive learned so much, i obtained so much knowledge. I started from scratch. Just as a fellow gamer. Today my skills when still not being great enough for Hidden Space caliber of game - are more then enough to create something smaller.And this is the good news. Yes, i am developing another game. From like 4 days heh. I think i should finaly listen to my own advice and "Start small and plain. And then slowly but constantly - expand".The game has no name even at this point. But i know what i want and what i plan.Itll be a a cross-over, betwen arcade style space-shooter, but with RPG elements. Much of Starscape style. But with more freedom of choice and free-roaming. You have your ship, and yourself as a captain. You ship can be enhanced and improved. And also - transformed into diffrent tiers and branches. As a captain you gain skills and unique perks (fallout style) which not always impact your efficiancy directly. As always i try to focus more on player-skills then character power. The concept is quite plain really. But who says plain and simple things arent fun? Think first Doom game heh. There wasnt much of a storyline or complex features. Yet, i happend to play Doom 2 still in my free time.In year 2011. Even when i know and remember each and every level like my own pocket.So plans are simple. One playable Instance, one ship, couple of enemies, some roids ect. I want to deliver a playable beta as soon as possible. Of course it will not have many features and will propably be incredibly unpolished. But i want you to take part in creation of this game. I wont make the same mistake 3rd time. I wont develop a game for years keeping players watching stupid trailers and teasers. Ill start small, and ill expand. And you are invited. This game wont happend without you.Now ill go and make a recuitment thread Once more: please accept my apology for forgeting you for all those months. You must had felt ignored and forgoten. It wasnt true. I just couldnt find enough courage in myself to face you. Just couldnt stand the disapontment on your face.I always bet on quality over quantity and when fans of HS and SCS were never huge in numbers - i always valued your words and your feedback. Actualy, your feedback was the lone thing that started all this.And for that i thank you from all my heart.Stay tuned. Ill fix you something to play and waste your lunch hours on;)Best RegardsRadosław "Irbis" Bazak

Thanks for the heads up on this Irbis. I can understand this totally. I have attempted to start games a few times and then I come to the realization that my skillset is definitely not what it needs to be. One I need the time to focus on learning (SSC keeps me busy) and then I have the family life, which congratulations on your new addition to your family. I have the passion to try to make something simple and I wanted to start out slow like maybe creating a remake of an atari game or something to gain some confidence in my skills, so we'll see what the future holds. Now back to Hidden Space and your new game you are working on. When you work out a title just let me know and I will change the forum title on SSC to reflect it. And will you still be using the Construct engine? We don't have enough space style RPG's out there so I will be very interested in what you have in mind.

DarkOne wrote:
Thanks for the heads up on this Irbis. I can understand this totally. I have attempted to start games a few times and then I come to the realization that my skillset is definitely not what it needs to be. One I need the time to focus on learning (SSC keeps me busy) and then I have the family life, which congratulations on your new addition to your family. I have the passion to try to make something simple and I wanted to start out slow like maybe creating a remake of an atari game or something to gain some confidence in my skills, so we'll see what the future holds. Now back to Hidden Space and your new game you are working on. When you work out a title just let me know and I will change the forum title on SSC to reflect it. And will you still be using the Construct engine? We don't have enough space style RPG's out there so I will be very interested in what you have in mind.
Yup, The name is quite suggestive...GrindSpace :)So we have sectors, Fallout-kind map with random encounters and unique events. Ships progress tree. So you start from one ship, then on tier 2 you have 2 options, and that 2 options have another 2 options, so for example Tier 1 Multita ship can be developed into Light Infighter(combat) or Looker(mining, researching). Goin further, Light Infighter can be then developed into Corsair(medium armed, high speed, big cargo hold) or Heavy Enforcer(tank kind of ship, slow but with many turrets). Of course this is getting deeper and deeper.All ships has fixed "Class" and number of weapons(Corsair e.g has 1 turret, 1 misiles station, 2 x ligh class blasters) but the types can be changed. Also the weapons and systems can be enhanced, by paying for it or doing itself.Theres alot of resources gathering if someone want to go "pacifist". Many types of roids, crystals, space debris, derelicts, planets, moons, comets(!) or even stars (!!). All that can be sold to NPC station or used to craft or create stuff.Ahh yes, crafting, creating (sentry cannon, mining stations, diffrent class space bases etc).So diffrent elements of the ship and its types can be changed or upgraded for money or/and resources. But the player pilot also gains expirience which he can use on various skills. So of them can be picked any time as long as you have needed EXP, some of them ask you to be specific level or have specific prerequisitions and couple of them are unique and can be unlocked by doing quests or by special events.Skills can have diffrent effects. From passive bonuses to diffrent atributes lik damage, hull, shield, speed, rotation etc to more active like "Agresive Circle" that aut-set the player ship on orbit around his target and sticking its crosshair on it etc. Many skills are not related to combat at all. Like better mining, better bartering etc. Some of them might be quite unique and hard to unlock, like Psionic Tree, which has just couple of skills but all of them developed to the limits can make you ride an unarmed ship and still feel safe. Like telekinesis disruption that tears ships, or "pushing" or mind field, or control or absorb etc. Many of that skills are purely for creation. Like crafting diffrent devices. Or even a whole station! Also known "languages" are counted as Skills. Right, quests. Well dont expect this to be Battlestar Galactica - kill X number of Y, gather A amount of B, "Go there and do that" types of quests. +some special complex quests with actual story.The bottom line is still - fly around and shoot stuff. With preety much no "The End" or "The End" set high enough to be a real ultimate goal.Thats the goal. But for now? Now i am working on a plain demo.2 sectors, 5 enemy types, 3 kinds of ship, basic mining, alot of exploring and shooting spacebugs. And from there we will start to expand... just as i have said. one step at the time.

You have layed out some nice features and plans for GrindSpace (which I renamed this forum to). Do you plan to construct a economy in the game eventually since if you can mine and craft thingsm it would be great money maker for people in the game. But that is a nice goal for the demo, nice and small and have some of the basic functionality in place. Sounds like you have thought about this concept a lot. Are you taking many ideas from Hidden Space's design?

DarkOne wrote:
You have layed out some nice features and plans for GrindSpace (which I renamed this forum to). Do you plan to construct a economy in the game eventually since if you can mine and craft thingsm it would be great money maker for people in the game. But that is a nice goal for the demo, nice and small and have some of the basic functionality in place. Sounds like you have thought about this concept a lot. Are you taking many ideas from Hidden Space's design?
Thank you mate well the mining i want to use as an equal money source to getting money from destroyed ship. Because - yes, i want this to be more arcade. when you destroy something it drops some money and loot which you then collect. So you can go pasifist - and go mine, travel across the sky searching for rare minerals. Or you can go rambo and keep raiding pirates or spacebugs or other kind and make money too but with more action involed. Both mining and fighting can be of course exploited by a smart player. So some sectors have better mobs, or mobs with higher money drop. The same with mining, with some exploration you can find secret roids fields. What i always loved about such a games is to use your own brain to find an effective way of getting what you want. Of course, you can just as good go and grind, from where the title comes ;)The list of feature is huge and it keep growing but this time i am doing this with brain. So i will implement new features with new versions.From HS i am taking quite much in terms of gameplay, but everything is cut-down and simplified. At least - for now. I though about giving the game a deep storyline but then again - think about it. In base - its an arcade space shooter with rpg elements and big game world. Imagine tetris with a storyline. Some games just dont need any at all. Remember Quake or Duke Nukem? Yeah, there was some sort of "story" i gues, but the real reason wy we all launched them was because we wanted to blow alien buts, nail hell spawns, and chew bubblegum. And with the same concept in mind i am building GrindSpace. So my main target is to "not run out of bubblegum"