A big hello and welcome to the September 2016 update! We hope you had a great summer because we are excited by what we got finished up to date. Please consider this your new home for all the latest happenings in and around FORGE3D. You will want to check out this blog regularly; we will use it to share product highlights, sales, tutorials, tips and much more.

It’s been a while since we’ve delved into our work behind the scenes, but today we wanted to share a few pieces we’ve put together during the team up with Special Circumstances – Shallow Space project.

Alex has been with the Shallow Space from the start, he is a skilled technical artist, mathematician and programmer providing effects and advice on performant solutions to the complex problems that the project faces.

Alex is enjoying much success running his Unity Asset Store business 'Forge3D' and is the top provider of Sci-Fi assets which in turn assists us in lowering the overall cost of the project and we're also giving something back to the community.

- James MartinSpecial Circumstances CEO

In Shallow Space, we’ve put all effort to produce stunning visuals and change the way a typical indie game should appear.

First and foremost, we’ve jumped under the hood of the actual project and turned everything inside out driving the performance to its limit. We’ve made some significant changes to the overall look and major behaviours.

Recently Alex has opened up with some swanky new effects so you’ll see in the next video that pretty much everything weapons-wise has been replaced. We can expect these effects to be a permanent fixture now as they do look good. The latest video proves that.

- James MartinSpecial Circumstances CEO

Having furnished me with ship, shield and dissolving shaders it's clear the lad is talented and he can take the new models coming in and really start again in terms of special effects. I’ve created a pretty cool looking prototype granted, but some of these effects need far more detail than I have the time to fully realise and Alex really knows how to harness Unity to produce an AAA finish. He also recognises the importance of syncing the special effects with the relevant sounds which is something else he has experience with so he’ll work with the audio guy to add further depth in that regard.

- James MartinSpecial Circumstances CEO

Ok, admittedly I've used the opportunity to bring a few things up to date and Alex has started furnishing me with the fancy stuff he was doing on the side. In truth I'd have liked to have kept the pretty stuff aside for a bit while I work on the meat, but ultimately it will make no difference. I do, however, need to ensure the code is clean, the developers amongst you will know how easy it is to run off with dodgy code and it helps no-one.

- James MartinSpecial Circumstances CEO

Well I have to say I had somewhat of a reality check, me and Alex play the prototype and talk about the experience regularly and I surmise that it makes no sense for me to come bounding through the doors with some uber-complex ‘Total War-in-space' type thing. The only people I'll be trying to satisfy with that are the people most likely to pick it apart. So instead I'm going to go with the tried and tested ‘abilities' method, different weapons systems, skills and upgrades will give the ship special abilities which can be activated at the required time. Again this reduces the actions per minute leading to a better experience.

- James MartinSpecial Circumstances CEO

Getting it done right wasn’t easy, but in the end, we realised something important we’ve been missing here in FORGE3D. Something you may have already figured out, but for those who haven’t, you’re looking to get your hands dirty with all the bells and whistles that we have accumulated up to this date.

The outcome of prototyping aspects of various systems in Shallow Space shifted into confidence about making changes and improving the overall FORGE3D experience. Some of the new changes are currently available to check out in the new modular Sci-Fi Effects update.

That’s right, there’s plenty of innovations never seen in the Asset Store, and we’d like to share with you!