ASPEC First Assault Patch Notes 0.6.0

Patch Notes 0.6.0

Overview

  • A focus on improving the user experience as a demo candidate for the next Steam Fest

Known Issues

  • Weapon Panel border and title misaligned
  • Autospeed match ‘close’ setting does not work as expected
  • Turret gunners are trigger happy generally firing too early and very likely to miss their target at longer distances on the initial trigger press

Added

  • Key binding for cycling only Hostile targets
  • Key binding for cycling only Friendly targets
  • Key binding for cycling only Neutral targets
  • Distinct debris for Kherson, Luhansk, and Donetsk
  • Added control binding Group 2 & 3 in Control Mapper
  • Added ‘Classification’ to current target display in HUD
  • New HUD Color Picker, for changing colors on HUD elements (Options > Game > Edit HUD Colors)
  • Screen flash effect on the player taking hull damage (Options > Game > Flash Screen on Critical Damage)
  • Primary guns will now point over the closest hotspot on a target, instead of focusing at the center of the target

Changed

  • Disabled controller thumbstick for menu navigation due to interfering with Control Mapper Configuration of axis controls
  • Renamed ‘Pilot’ category to ‘Flight’ in Control Mapper
  • Renamed the ‘Shift 1’ category and bindings to ‘Group 1’ in Control Mapper
  • Proofread and updated descriptors for key bindings in Control Mapper
  • Added headings under categories sections, and re-ordered binding controls in Control Mapper
  • Second ship collider for testing against ship collisions to avoid ships wedging each other
  • Minor adjustments to Slide, Flight Assist, and similar indicators
  • Ship armour sections will regenerate, as long as the section does not take damage for 10 seconds. Regeneration will be interrupted on taking damage
  • Top and bottom armour sections added to all ships
  • Explosions, caused by weapons (i.e. artillery), inherit the velocity of the object they hit
  • controllerData.cfg is now located inside the player’s Profile directory (allowing multiple Steam users to have their own unique controller bindings)
  • settings.cfg now located inside the player’s Profile directory (allowing multiple Steam users to have their own unique settings)
  • Armour/Hull Quadrant display flash effect now animated over time
  • Radar display quadrants light up when the player takes damage in that quadrant
  • Primary gun pointers now have state changes (solid = ready to fire, hollow = reloading)
  • Changed AU damage evasion modifiers. AI pilots will make efforts to avoid taking weapon fire more frequently

Fixed

  • Static gun pip displayed on HUD if no primary weapon is equipped
  • Issue preventing accuracy of primary weapons, causing unintentional misses
  • Mouse bindings incorrectly configured

Absolute territory updated to 2.2.0

2.2.0 Release (20210912)
Overview – Early enemy fighter weapons feel less overwhelming due to the fast firing rate

Gameplay

  • Amend – Track IR anchor point made same as VR
  • Amend – There are now two versions of the laser bolt cannon (Rapid Firing and Standard)
  • Amend – Vomitoria and Drosophilia now use slower firing laser bolt cannon
  • Amend – Updated weapon lore entries for the laser bolt cannon variants
  • Amend – Updated the 21 Absolute Territory missions to include the new standard laser bolt cannon. Added briefing text highlighting when new ships are made available. Added briefing text to make known about experimental laser weapon being available in mission 20

Simulator Modes

  • Amend – Wave and Gauntlet to include the new standard laser bolt cannon

Campaign Menu

  • Amend – Removed Tutorials as a campaign item selection (they are still available under Simulator menu). They no longer have skip dialogue, since all tutorials are available and there was no need to skip


2.0.1 Release (20210820)

Overview – Tunnelling can be disabled in options and an unsupported TrackIR implementation.

Visual

  • Added – Auto Exposure and Ambient Occlusion Postprocessing Effects
  • Amend – Gameplay scene lighting adjusted to use the Skybox instead of constant color.

Gameplay

  • Added – Toggle Tunnel Vision when using VR (Options > Game > VR Tunnelling
  • Added – An experimental and there not officially supported (I reserve the right to pull this feature at any time) Track IR implementation

VR

  • Amend – Press CTRL-F12 to recenter the VR headset in the main menu and in flight

An important developed note on the current Track IR implementation
As I don’t own any Track IR hardware I cannot reasonably test this myself and has been classed as experimental and officially unsupported. If you enable Track IR the experience may be sub-par or entirely broken. I will do my best to work with any Track IR users willing to be guinea pigs and provide relevant feedback towards improving the implementation. That is no guarantee that Track IR will become an official feature in the game and I reserve the right to abandon any further development on it.

Enabling Track IR
The command-line argument “-trackir” will be needed, I recommend you create a shortcut to the Standard game exe on your desktop and add the argument in the target box as exampled below.

Flying your Starfighter in Absolute Territory

Absolute Territory is a futuristic single-player mission-based space dogfighting with the familiar feeling of good space sims. Fly 21 missions with a variety of search & destroy, assault, patrol, escort, and scan objectives. Choose from several space superiority fighters, customize loadout from over a dozen weapons, manage power settings, and use directional thrusters like an elite pilot.

Ship and Weapon Selection

Outfit your chosen fighter in the Weapon Selection Screen

Chose your ship type from fast-moving glass cannons to slow hard-hitting tanks. Outfit your chosen ship with a variety of deadly weapons. Make sure you chose both ship and weapons wisely to enable the completion of your mission objectives.

Dogfighting with arcade-sim mechanics

Dogfighting against enemy stafighters

Engage in gripping dogfights with Newtonian physics. Arcade forces are used for an arcade-sim experience, allowing for responsive controls to pull off hair-raising maneuvers making yourself a harder target for enemies. AN RCS computer will compensation for all directional changes, turn too hard and you will but yourself into a slide, or worse find yourself a sitting duck while your ship adjusts speed. Fight against a variety of enemy ship types from light to heavy fighters, transports, and large warships.

Absolute Territory is not pure arcade or pure sim. Its arcade-sim.

Power management

Assaulting an enemy destroyer

Distribute power across engines, shields, and guns for an advantage over your opponent or get yourself out of sticky situations. Power to engines gives faster acceleration and increased top speed, for shields faster recharge rate and overcharging, and guns for faster recharge rate for longer sustained firing of heavier weapons.

Advanced flight mechanics

Picking off turrets using the slide mechanic

Engage slide, match speed, and directional thruster mechanics to keep your target in your gun sights. Warships and transports are not defenseless and come armed with flak turrets. Use component targeting and de-teeth these ships of their turrets. Then move in for the kill.

VR and Standard mode

Fully modelled cockpits to look around in VR

The recent 2.0 update added VR mode. Use this to your advantage for improved situational awareness in the cockpit. Identify the biggest threats with a glance before turning to engage.

Play Absolute Territory today

Absolute Territory update 1.1.0 brings improved HUD art, additional 3rd person views, improved missile experience, additional enhancements, and improvements.

The latest update for Absolute Territory (Ver 1.1.0) has been published and brings more than 50 individual additions, improvements, and bug fixes.

Heads Up Display (HUD) art improvements
As mentioned in the last news update, I’ve been busily improving the existing in-flight HUD elements, covering the primary, secondary, shield & armor, speed, and range bars along with targeting brackets and waypoint indicators.

These have been designed to draw your eyes towards them when needed, i.e. when taking a lot of damage, and provide a significantly better experience in the presentation of information at a glance.

Improved HUD displays

Based on your feedback, waypoints are now context-sensitive depending on the required usage. Find yourself in an asteroid field and the waypoint will no longer confusingly tell you to use your autopilot, but to exit the hazard first!

New 3rd Person Views

Increase your situational awareness in 3rd person with additional sides and rear views. You can also toggle the HUD on/off (which was added quietly in the last update).

Fly-by external side view
Shocking external rear view

Waypoints

Improved visual indicators for waypoints for better “at a glance” awareness.

  • Broken with a line: Autopilot required but obstructed (either by hazard or nearby enemy)
  • Broken: Autopilot required
  • Unbroken: Can be reached without the need of autopilot
Waypoint States

Improved missile experience for starting mission
The introductory experience for missiles was not as fun as it could have been. Due, in part, to including the Javelin Heat Seeker missile in the loadout when going up against fast-moving enemies. It just didn’t have enough time to reach the exposed tailpipe of its target before it had turned around, therefore losing its lock on the heat signature.

Introducing the Lancea Friend or Foe missile, with significantly improved tracking ability over Heat Seeking variants but with a lower explosive yield. To make up for the lower yield, the base ammo count has been increased.

The existing Spiculum Image Recognition missile has had its steering velocity/acceleration reduced in-line with other seeking missiles which will bring better accuracy, and less wild behavior when being launched.

Random Crashes on AMD Graphics Cards

There was an issue for AMD Graphics Card owners where Absolute Territory would randomly crash. This was related to the Unity version used to build the game. I’ve updated to a newer version of Unity which has fixed this issue.

Full Patch Notes1.1.0 (20200928)
Overview – Improved the majority of in-flight HUD elements. Added additional views to 3rd person. Improved missile experience for starting missions. Various improvements and bugfixes.

Try the demo or buy now on steam

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1130880/

Unity
Amend – Updated Unity to 2019.4.10f1
Amend – Updated TextMeshPro to 2.1.1
Amend – Updates Jobs to 0.2.10
Amend – Updated HybridRenderer to 0.5.2
Amend – Updated NodeCanvas to 3.1.0
Amend – Updated Rewired to 1.1.36.1
Amend – Updated Aura 2 to 2.1.14

General
Added – Default display name for all vessels, used for when the Display Name field is not populated within the Level Editor
Added – Short description for selected Campaign Mission, underneath the campaign drop-down box within the Campaign Menu.

Amend – Radar blips no longer use the camera space for position calculations
Amend – Moved Level Editor button from the Simulator Menu to the Main Menu to make it more obvious

Missions
Amend – Adv Tutorial 201: Killing the Vomitoria too quickly would prevent any further progression

Gameplay
Added – Added Lancea FF Missile

Amend – Replaced Javelin HS with Lancea FF missile as a loadout in the first 3 campaign missions, for a better missile introductory experience
Amend – Spiculum Missile: Reduced Steering from 120 to 90 DPS on all axis
Amend – Spiculum Missile: Reduced Steering Acceleration from 240 to 135

Fixed – Null Reference Exceptions when exiting or restarting a mission during the Autopilot cinematic
Fixed – AI afterburning no longer causes the player camera to shake

Visuals
Added – In-flight External Camera Views

Amend – In-flight HUD graphical improvements across the majority of HUD elements
Amend – Waypoint Icon now context-sensitive based on Local Waypoint or Autopilot destination
Amend – Waypoint Indicator text now displays “Exit Hazard” if within a hazard zone and “Use Autopilot” when out of hazard for static waypoints
Amend – Reduced size of Help Glyph icons
Amend – Help Glyphs, Missile Alert, and Received Transmission Text now positions and resizes based on required usage
Amend – Help Glyphs: Controller Glyphs no longer disappear when interacting with the mouse, and will remember the last used controller
Amend – Missile Alert warning now has a bar representing the distance of the closest missile locked onto the player
Amend – Unintentionally removed Depth of Field effect, when the effect is enabled, from the 1st person cockpit, but looks better for it
Amend – First Person Neutral Camera Sway reduced from 0.25 to 0.15, for less noticeable effect on the cross-hair (if you focus too much on it)
Amend – Increased size of Explosion_003 M (Missile Explosions) Particle Scale from 14 to 20, to make these explosion effects stand out more at a distance

Fixed – Video Options post-processing effects no longer defaults to on when progressing to the next mission
Fixed – AI piloted ships using Hi-Rez assets no longer use opaque cockpit models to reveal there is no actual pilot!

Closed Beta and other Juicy Details – January 2020 Developer Diary for Absolute Territory: The Space Combat Simulator

Greetings pilots!

In this month’s dev diary I cover all things juicy which help improve the aesthetics and feelings of the game, along with some not so secret details about the closed beta.

Watch the video to find out more:

Add to Wishlist on Steam
Wishlist Absolute Territory: The Space Combat Simulator on Steam

Absolute Territory – Developer Diary December 2019

Greetings Pilots!

Welcome along to the Absolute Territory Developer Diary for the month of December 2019. The last month has brought in new post-processing visual effects, music, and more level editor improvements for more flexibility and provide easier use.

Read the Full Diary over on IndieDB.com

Welcome along to the Absolute Territory Developer Diary for the month of December 2019. The last month has continued to bring more challenges as I work towards a release date. The road may be long but I can see whats on the horizon for that all important 1.0 release.

Absolute Territory Developer Diary December 2019

POWER TO THE FIGHTER! ABSOLUTE TERRITORY OCT 2019 VIDEO DEV DIARY

Greetings pilots!

This month has flown by, in part due to a well needed holiday. Now that I’m back, I’ve been continuing work on the Level Editor towards allowing you to create your own missions with a greater range of variety.

Here’s the run down on what’s discussed:

  • Current expectations for release.
  • Power management
  • Conditional Actions
  • Showcasing the heavy fighter and bomber.
  • What I will and won’t be doing next.

Absolute Territory is available to wishlist on Steam.

Wishlist on Steam | Itch.io | Game Jolt | Twitter | Website

Return of the Cockpit – Absolute Territory Sep 2019 Video Dev Diary

Here is the rundown for this September 2019 developer diary for Absolute Territory:

  • Steamworks Integration
  • Release Date Expectations
  • Controller support improvements in-menu/in-game
  • Space Mine Fields (Hazard) and Nullifier Fields (Cancel out Hazards)
  • New ships
  • Return of the cockpit
Absolute Territory September 2019 video dev diary

Absolute Territory is available to wishlist on Steam.

Wishlist on Steam | Itch.io | Game Jolt | Twitter | Website

Absolute Territory Dev Diary Aug 2019

In this August 2019 developer diary for Absolute Territory:

I demonstrate the new Navpont System for the Mission Editor. Navpoints break up the Mission into multiple zones for the player to complete a set of objectives as laid out by the designer (you!). If you have ever played the Wing Commander video game series you’ll be familiar with this format.

Based on feedback from the playable Alpha demo it seems players are not making themselves familiar with the abilities of their chosen space superiority fighter. To inform, I go into detail covering the basics and more advanced features that will help players increase their odds of surviving against multiple hostile opponents.

Watch the video to find out more…

Wishlist on Steam | Itch.io | Game Jolt | Indie DB | Twitter | Website

ABSOLUTE TERRITORY DEV DIARY JULY 2019

This months Dev Diary for Absolute Territory is all about progress on the Mission Editor where you create your own missions. You will be able to fly multiple ships and configure their loadouts for optimum effect. Challenge your piloting skills by creating your own missions. Develop unique scenarios envisioned from your imagination. You decide the difficulty by adjusting the environment and opponents. Fight with the most devastating weapons against lighter opponents or truly test your skills against-all-odds.

Watch this dev diary to find out more…

July 2019 Dev Diary

Wishlist on Steam | Itch.io | Twitter | Website