Tag: dev diary

A-Spec First Assault Progress Update (January 2024)

Posted on by Dan Woods in Uncategorized

Read on for the latest development news for A-Spec First Assault and what will be appearing in the next patch.

Storyline

I have planned how I would like A-Spec to finish by the end of the final mission in the campaign. As of writing this update, I have ideas for several chapters leading up to that endpoint. Currently, it’s looking like each chapter will be comprised of 3 story missions for a beginning, middle, and end for each chapter.

Chapter 2 Story Missions

3 additional story missions will be added for Chapter 2. They have already been scripted, the briefing and debriefing texts are 90% written, and all require extensive testing to ensure the scripting does not break during play.

One of these missions required additional improvements to the AI, to assist the player in completing their objectives. These improvements are 75% completed.

As the player leaves the asteroid field a battle erupts in the distance with weapons fire visible from both sides of the conflict.

Side Missions

Chapter 1 included side missions, randomly presenting a new selection after each mission, for the player to choose from between main missions.

Chapter 2 will expand the number of side missions. I have about 2 dozen side mission themes to choose from which will also be used in the main story missions. I have yet to start on the side missions for Chapter 2, but will do so once the 3 main story missions are completed.

I’d like to know your feedback on how you feel about them so far. Like, are they fun for you, what would you like to see, would you rather just go through the main story missions, etc. Post them in the comments below!

Chapter 1 Briefings/Debriefings

The briefing and debriefing text for the Chapter 1 missions were written back before the prologue existed. Since the prologue is now starting to expose some of the game’s lore, they needed updating to fit in. They were also a bit bland. This is already completed.

Expect text and dialogue to continue evolving through development as I learn and improve on creative writing.

Wingmen

Players will be able to have wingmen join them as they progress through the campaign. Chapter 2 will open up a wingman slot, for ship selection and configuration of wingmen. This is optional, the player can choose to go alone and use that extra Prestige to fit better weapons and equipment to their ship.

Audio ImprovementsSome repetitive audio effects are cascading and these will be significantly reduced (if not eliminated).

Also, explosions were cutting off too soon, this is fixed.

Streaks of missiles fly off into the distance striking their targets.

Explosion Damage Bug

TL;DR: Explosions would sometimes not damage the target. This is now fixed.

There was an interesting (read annoying) bug where exploding missiles would not damage the target. I believed I had solved this in the previous patch, but by a stroke of luck, I was able to reliably replicate the problem and on investigating found the actual cause. This was most notable on missiles striking the Gunship, but applied to any weapon with explosion damage.

When a missile explodes it creates a collider sphere and checks for objects overlapping it. The sphere can be configured to expand each frame (like a shockwave). I added some code to keep the test performant and avoid re-checking past collisions. This is a bit difficult to explain, a ship can have multiple damageable parts (i.e. the main ship and child objects including attached turrets and additional substructures). These are made up of separate collider objects. If a child collider is checked before the main ship collider the ship will not take any damage. I removed the relevant check, ran some additional tests, and determined the poor attempt at making it performant didn’t make a difference. That single line of code is gone, the problem is gone, and no performance loss either.

Weapon Adjustments

Since explosion damage now works 100% of the time every time, I needed to reduce the MLRS explosion damage caused as became overpowered as a result.

Railgun damage has been scaled properly as they were overlooked the last time I re-scaled weapon damages. They are still very powerful and their Prestige and Fitting costs reflect that power.

A new, larger, enemy ship makes its appearance

The next patch will reveal a new much larger type of enemy ship whilst introducing a new game mechanic. I won’t explain more as it’s something the players can discover for themselves (or maybe they won’t notice?). If you follow me on Twitter, this is a feature that I was working on around 14 months ago, for this very same ship. Now that the ship will make its appearance, I am now able to include the mechanic. It’s functional and in the game, requiring some minor adjustments and additional configuration.

The player zooms past the large enemy ships to tackle some easier foes further ahead.

Bug fixes

I have found a lot of bugs since the last update. All that I have found has been squashed.

If you find a bug yourself, please let me know on either the Discord or the A-Spec Steam forum, explain the problem, and if you can repeat the problem or not.

If you can repeat the problem, provide the steps on how to do it, like a list of actions to perform to make the bug happen. Using that I can investigate and follow your steps to replicate the problem, and if I can replicate the problem I can then start working on a fix.

If it’s a bug that appears often, but also seemingly random, if you are willing to provide a video recording of that moment, it may help.

Ultimately I want to keep A-Spec free of jank and bugs. Most of the bugs I found myself, which should be the case as I am on the front line. Though I am only one guy, and bugs do fall through, I work quickly to resolve them.

Game Bundles

A-Spec First Assault and Absolute Territory are part of the fantastic Independent Space Alliance Bundle 2024 containing an amazing collection of space games from other independent game developers.

This bundle is a refresh of the original Independent Space Alliance Bundle containing even more space games.

Both bundles have 60% off. Buy to complete your collection and Steam adjust the bundle costs based on any games you already have in your library.

A large enemy ships looms just ahead. As the player approaches the enemy ships heavy turrets slowly turn to face the threat.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading. I’m truly looking forward to the future of A-Spec First Assault. Given this is an Early Access game the first week sales were on par with Absolute Territory which was released as a full title.

Though putting it in perspective, Absolute Territory is still a failure sales-wise. I have learned a lot since then and hope to put that experience into making A-Spec a better success when the full release day arrives (which is still a while off).

Weeklong sale and upcoming features and fixes

Posted on by Dan Woods in Uncategorized

Absolute Territory started the Chinese New Year celebrations with a sale and what better way to end the celebration with a 40% off weeklong sale! Read on if you would like to know more about the upcoming VR update and other features and fixes?

Weeklong Sale

Save 40% off Absolute Territory on Steam, Humble Store, Microsoft Store, Itch.io, or Gamejolt.

Upcoming Updates

Plans are in progress for the next major update for Absolute Territory. Along with performance improvements and video options to improve performance on potato PC’s, there will be an optional VR mode added to Absolute Territory, a new alien cockpit, campaign story changes, and improved missile-seeking behavior. Read on to learn more.

Optional VR Mode

For the last couple of months, I have been putting my efforts into adding optional VR support. It turned out to be more challenging than expected, but it’s coming along nicely. You will get to fly your space fighter while looking around a fully modeled cockpit in VR for all flyable fighters.

A new alien cockpit model has been added for all the flyable Endophora (Enemy) fighters if you choose to fly them in a custom mission. Basically, all space fighters now have a 3D modeled cockpit to look around in both VR and non-VR.

Alien Cockpit for Endophora fighters

For improved readability and comfort in VR, all menus and the majority of hud elements have been added to a curved surface. The curved effect means you don’t need to strain your eyes when looking at corners of the menus. A menu scaling option has been added to increase or decrease the size of the menus for individual player comfort.

Curvy Menus

For certain cockpits, decorative panels which took up too much screen space have been removed. Flying the Argonaut now provides a much larger area view than before for your unobstructed viewing pleasure.

Performance Improvements

Flying through Hazard (Asteroid/Mine) fields will feel much smoother than the last update with code optimizations. For those still struggling with FPS on potato PC’s additional video options have been added to improve frame rates when flying through Hazards. The biggest gain will be seen by lowering the Asteroid Field Debris Density or turning it off.

Missile Seeking Behaviour Improvements

Missiles are better than ever with improved seeking and target re-acquisition logic. Missiles requiring a front-facing lock type (i.e. Heat Seeker, Image Rec) on a target have increased tracking the closer to the target preventing any last-second veering off bringing significant accuracy improvements.

Missiles entering a holding pattern (spinning around in circles) while they seek a new target will now use their full-throttle setting when a new target has been acquired and actively seeking. On the downside, you can no longer drag race your own missiles.

Is that all?

No! The above I can talk about in detail as they are already functional. Plans are afoot for more, including:

  • Improving lore and storyline progression to give the campaign more meaning in that aspect.
  • Various bug fixes and improvements to the ship selection screen and options menus.
  • Option to disable screen shake for those who suffer from motion sickness (Always disabled in VR)
  • Click to continue mode for transmissions. Which will be especially helpful for playing through the tutorial.
  • Showing the difficulty a campaign mission was completed on.
  • Improvements to The Gauntlet simulator mode (health and ammo regen to be added) to focus more on combat instead of managing ammo and fuel reserves.

Feeling the need for more missions?

Did you know Absolute Territory comes with its own mission editor? Use the same level editor used to create the Absolute Territory campaign missions to create, play, and share custom missions to the Steam Workshop.

This powerful level editor allows you to create conditions and instructions which respond to the player and other in-world events with an easy-to-use interface with plenty of help to get you started on the F1 key.

Create your own missions in the included editor

If you just want to jump into new missions visit the Absolute Territory workshop, subscribe to existing missions, jump into the game and choose the mission from the Simulator under Workshop missions game type.

Final Reminder

Don’t forget you can save 40% off Absolute Territory on Steam, Humble Store, Microsoft Store, Itch.io, or Gamejolt. Be sure to leave a review as more constructive feedback will help towards choosing future developments.

Follow @abs_territory on Twitter for minor updates as I progress towards this major update release.

Warp Tunnel taking you to new horizons in VR

Steam Workshop Support – Absolute Territory Dev Diary #22 (11 Mar 2020)

Posted on by Dan Woods in Uncategorized

Welcome pilot!

It has been another busy month where I had the unique opportunity to work on Absolute Territory for the past month on a full-time basis. During that time I ran a closed beta, squatted many reported bugs, added beta tester feedback, making many more improvements.

Some of the new features covered in this month’s dev diary include:

  • Tutorials
  • Transmissions (creating dialogue from NPC’s)
  • Steam Workshop support

Watch the video or read on below:

Watch this dev diary video
Add to Wishlist on Steam
Absolute Territory: The Space Combat Simulator Steam Store Page

Tutorials

Work has begun to include tutorials covering the different aspects of piloting your space combat fighter. They make use of a couple of new features added towards helping the player learn the controls. These tutorials are entirely scripted using the in-game level editor, and something the player could re-create themselves.

Transmissions

There was no way to convey the complex information needed to best instruct the player to pilot their ship. Transmissions have been added to solve this problem. Transmission sources can come from disembodied or embodied NPC’s. If the source is from an embodied NPC you will be able to see who is talking to you via the white bracket around the transmission source.

Help Glyphs

To further guide the player, help glyphs can be displayed to show relevant and appropriate controls on the HUD. These are context-sensitive and show help glyph for the currently used controller (if supported) with the correct keybinding (including user-defined). Currently, Help Glyph’s support keyboard, mouse and the Xbox 360 gamepad. Do you have a favorite controller not mentioned, post it in the comments below, as I look to expand on controller support.

https://media.indiedb.com/images/members/3/2913/2912252/profile/202003_Tutorial.png
The tutorial using help glyphs and NPC transmissions

Steam Workshop

From the conception of the level editor, one of the development goals was to have the ability to share missions with other players. With the majority of the features locked down and implemented, I was able to redirect development time into this area. From within the level editor, you can now submit your custom missions to the Steam Workshop using the publish form.

Fill in the title and description form your workshop item and hit submit. The level editor will then publish your workshop item with all the relevant files needed for other players to subscribe and play. You can make any last-minute alterations from within the Steam Community Workshop page itself.

Do you want to update your mission? Just load up the relevant mission, enter its Workshop ID and submit, your changes will automatically update your Workshop Item.

202003 Publish Mission

Have any feedback or suggestions or questions regarding this month’s dev update? Post them below.

Absolute Territory Dev Diary June 2019

Posted on by Dan Woods in Uncategorized

This months dev diary covers asteroid fields and a proof of concept for a mission creator for players to create their own custom missions. This was originally posted over on Itci.io.

Asteroid Fields

One feature I’ve always wanted to implement: asteroid fields.  Vast fields of rocks that can span across huge distances.  

The problem: performance degradation from updating a large number of bodies.  

The solution: use a smaller number of bodies, local to the player position, which are updated and displayed when in defined asteroid field areas.  Perform updates using the Unity Job System for improved performance.  

The first videos show the result of an infinite asteroid field.  A clipping distance is used, hence asteroids will pop in and out of view at the boundary.

Infinite asteroid field

How it works: asteroids are initially spawned around the players local position as far as the defined viewing clipping radius.  Each asteroid is checked to determine if it falls within a defined asteroid field area.  If it is, then show it, otherwise we hide it from view.  We then move each asteroid based on the players velocity.  When an asteroid goes past the boundary of the clipping area we re-spawn at another random position at the boundary edge.

This works well and performance is improved using the Job System over a single threaded process.  These asteroid fields demos were run within the Unity editor so performance would be improved in the build without the editor overhead.  One problem I will have is figuring out a balance for lower end systems as access to such a system is currently out of picture right now.  I will be using Unity Analytics to help, once a playable build is made available, I will be able to compare performance across a range of systems as players engage with the game.

Currently, on my dev build performance starts to drop when 7500 bodies are visible.  This was not the huge performance boost I was expecting using the Job System, so I may have to also experiment with the Entity Component System.

The asteroid field is not finished, I’d like to add further improvements to the aesthetic and also make them feel more dangerous than they currently are.  In the version two video, below, there are now asteroid debris and dust clouds.

Asteroid field with debris and dust

Flying through an infinite asteroid field with dust clouds and debris gave me a sense of claustrophobia that I had never had before. I just wanted to get out yet there was no end…

Mission Editor

Have you ever wanted to create you own missions and test the limit of your combat skills by creating your own adversities to over come?  Or is it just me?  Below is a short video showing a proof of concept on this idea. Simply click and place enemies to fight inside an area, click launch and go to battle.  

Mission Creator

It’s pretty simple, the only rule set currently is to destroy all enemies within the area.  I’d like to expand this so the player can create simple sets of rules for spawning additional enemies along with other success and failure conditions, and configure ship loadouts.

You can updates showing the development of Absolute Territory @ https://twitter.com/abs_territory

ABSOLUTE TERRITORY DEV DIARY MAY 2019

Posted on by Dan Woods in Uncategorized

Whilst perusing the Unity Asset store for spaceship ideas I came across an interesting asset pack. The Ultimate Spaceships Creator. A large collection of spaceships with modular components. Meaning I can customise quality models to my hearts content and “build an infinite number of spaceships!”. I really like it. Therefore I dumped my old models in favour of these.

Click to watch: Shelton Slide – Indie DB

One draw back to this is that this particular asset pack does not have any cockpits. The good news: the same creators of USC are working on a modular asset pack that includes cockpits which I will be looking to add upon release.

I always liked the idea of dying spaceships spinning out of control before exploding. And now they do! Once your target hull buckles it will randomly spin out of control before disappearing in a glorious explosion.

I’ve added a third person camera. I really liked that perspective in certain space games. I think it really opens up the view and of course you can see your own glorious looking spaceship getting shot up.

A new heads up display was needed this 3rd person view. A lot of work went in to it and its now fully functional. I just need to add some new indicators to the cockpit view (for the new slide and speed match functionality). Of course all the graphics are still considered place holder until they are firmly set, then I’ll add appropriate improvements.

Plenty of other features and changes have been gone in over the last month, here are some off the top of my head:

  • Improved indicators for target bracket, hits and leading shots.
  • Lead targeting on ship components.
  • New missile models (blink and you will miss them)
  • Shelton slide
  • Match speed – with 3 range modes (long, medium and short)
  • Refactoring code for hot deployment (still needs plenty of work) which will allow me to make code changes while the game is running.
  • Numerous bug fixes!