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 theĀ 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!

What’s Upcoming – In-flight HUD Improvements

Based on your feedback, this last week I’ve worked to improve the HUD displays and allow them to fit better in a Sci-Fi environment. I’m sure any military organisation will comment that they are too flashy for them, but these HUD elements certainly fit the part.

Primary Energy

Shield and Armour

Secondary Ammo

Speed and Throttle

Target Brackets

Target brackets now expand around the selected target.

I still have a few more elements to take care of. Expect an update within the next 7 days if all goes well.

Absolute Territory is available to buy now on Steam.

Z Minus 21 Days Until Release (Release date: September 1st 2020)

Absolute Territory is releasing on Steam September 1st, 2020.

What are you getting when you buy Absolute Territory: The Space Combat Simulator:

Single player storyline campaign with 21 missions. Fight to maintain your empire’s Absolute Territory over the Xeno Endophora.


Challenge yourself with the waves game mode against each type of Endophora fighter. Learn their weaknesses and overcome them.

Dare to take on the Gauntlet and truly test your skills against every fighter that Absolute Territory has to offer.


Newtonian physics to allow you to pull off maneuvers you could never do in many other space combat games.


Create your own missions using the built-in level editor. Share and play with Steam Workshop support.

Wishlist Absolute Territory for a pre-launch discount.

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

Learn more about Absolute Territory’s development in this interview

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.

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

Absolute Territory Demo Released

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 thrill of space combat with infinite replayability. Play the demo.

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.

Singleplayer Campaign

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.

Space flight simulation a step above others

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.

Instant Action

Squadron

Fly against waves of enemy opponents. Can you win this simulation by going up against two types of Endophora fighter?

Mission Editor

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.

Wishlist the retail version

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.

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

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