Skyward Flight FM interviews Dan about Absolute Territory
This month I was fortunate enough to be asked to take part in an interview covering Absolute Territory, and a bit about Digitum Software (that’s me!).
Check it out, over on Skyward Flight Media.
Absolute Territory takes inspiration from classic space combat simulation games from the ’90s and ’00s and adds features for modern gameplay and offers expanded replayability with Steam Workshop support.
Absolute Territory takes inspiration from classic space combat simulation games from the ’90s and ’00s and adds features for modern gameplay and offers expanded replayability with Steam Workshop support.
The demo is only available during the Steam Summer Game Festival, don’t miss out, head on over to the Absolute Territory Steam store page and download the demo.
Download and play to enjoy the first 3 missions from the Absolute Territory campaign (all 100% created with the in-game mission editor). Before jumping in, be sure to familiarise yourself with the basic controls of your ship by trying out the two tutorials and/or reviewing the reconfigurable keybindings.
In the campaign demo, you will fly patrol, raid an enemy depot, and strike down enemy transport.
As there is no drag in space your fighter wouldn’t normally fly where you pointed it after a turn. The on-board Reaction Control System (RCS) will attempt to compensate for your direction changes and maintain manageable speeds using the ships’ thrusters and main engines. Each ship in Absolute Territory has it’s own mass and thrust power and won’t handle the same.
Rotational thrusters will rotate your ship and attempt to compensate for any outside forces (collisions) which would turn you off course, and be mindful of oversteer as these fighters can turn fast.
Hit the afterburners and perform huge drifts while keeping your guns on your nimble opponent, or disable RCS and slide past large and slow targets while you pummel them into scrap metal.
Squadron
Fly against waves of enemy opponents. Can you win this simulation by going up against two types of Endophora fighter?
Try the mission editor to create and play your own custom missions.
The mission editor in Absolute Territory provides a limited experience from the paid version. This demo offers restricted ship and weapons selection, and will not be able to create any conditions to drive events/storyline nor publish your missions to the Steam Workshop.
Absolute Territory is in development with a planned release for later this year. Wishlist and follow to show your interest and be notified of progress updates and its release.
The last several months have been difficult for people all around the world. I pray this announcement finds you in good health and in improving circumstances.
I have been very fortunate to be still employed and also working (not at home) throughout this crisis. I had several weeks off before the lockdown came into effect and by the end of that time, I was relieved to get back into work (even though I spent the whole of that time working on Absolute Territory). I think that must come down to not managing my time better and neglecting other areas in my life while I single-mindedly continued to work on Absolute Territory (and still do on my downtime ːlunar2019crylaughingpigː).
Release date expectations
The good news, I am aiming for a release date for Absolute Territory towards the end of 2020!
Campaign
Over the last few months, I have been working on the Absolute Territory campaign missions. Everyone one of these missions has been handcrafted within the in-game level editor which you can also use to create your own personalized missions and upload to share with the rest of the Absolute Territory community on Steam. The process is quick, taking a couple of clicks to upload and share.
The campaign story is around a faction of the Endophora (your opponent during this campaign), named The Order of Linnaeus, who has invaded Imperial space and laid claim to Bold Peace. You will find yourself going against Order forces, driving them back out of the sector. Each campaign mission in Absolute Territory brings unique experiences.
Absolute Territory has a full flight roster of eleven fighters across Imperial and Endophora . Five of which have a full 3D cockpit.
Options on the go
Graphical and audio options have been made available during the missions. Simply press Escape (or start button on your controller), drop into the options menu, configure to your liking, then exit out and test your changes reflected in the game instantly.
Warships
No space combat game is complete without having huge warships to either protect or destroy. Absolute Territory brings three huge warships into the conflict. Two destroyers (one for Imperial and Endophoria) and an Endophoria Cruiser, that’s in addition to the transport ship already available.
Situational awareness improvements
To enhance your situational awareness a small but very useful change is to include the name and distance to your target on the offscreen arrow indicator. Cycle through all your targets and know exactly what you’re targeting, even when they are not directly in front of you.
Tutorial Controller Glyphs
The tutorial missions in Absolute Territory introduce fundamental concepts of flying and fighting. Controller Glyph’s already cover keyboard & mouse and Xbox controllers to ease learning controls. This has now been expanded to include glyphs for PlayStation 4 controllers.
Performance Improvements
Minefields were costing twice as much CPU usage as Asteroid fields, after some investigation I was able to reduce this cost and it’s now on a similar level of performance.
Absolute Territory AI gains more improvements to help reduce the number of incidents where they find themselves stuck against Warships. It does happen much less, but I’ll admit it can still happen. I’ll be looking at ways to ensure that they can recover themselves.
been many other performance improvements in scripting, mostly to due with displaying text on the screen, towards reducing CPU cost and garbage generation for a smoother experience.
Demo & Wishlist
A demo for Absolute Territory will be made available during the Steam Game Festival. It’s already packaged, uploaded and ready to be downloaded when the festival goes lives at 10am Pacific time on June 9th, 2020.
Finally, head on over to the Steam store page, scroll down and hit that wishlist button! Every wishlist helps towards showing Steam that this is a game worthy of the algorithm’s attention.
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:
Watch the video or read on below:
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.
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.
Have any feedback or suggestions or questions regarding this month’s dev update? Post them below.
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.
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:
Absolute Territory is available to wishlist on Steam.
Here is the rundown for this September 2019 developer diary for Absolute Territory:
Absolute Territory is available to wishlist on Steam.
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…
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