Absolute Territory 2.0 Update brings new VR experience graphical updates with more configurable options, user accessibility options, and more.

centaurianmudpig

centaurianmudpig

Rear Admiral
Allow me to introduce you to this huge title update bringing all-new VR mode! For those without VR headsets, there is a host of visual improvements and upgrades to pleasure your eyes.

Also, save at least 20% off Absolute Territory in the current Green Man Gaming Sale and you still get a Steam key.

To VR or not to VR?​

That is your choice. Make it a good one :)

VR provides a first-person experience piloting every starfighter available to fly. Each fighter has a 3D modeled cockpit to look around for improved situational awareness.

Warp to new horizons​

To keep you firmly seated in your cockpit, warp speed has been invented for transitioning to new areas during multi-staged missions faster than the speed of light.



Visual Enhancements​

  • A range of visual enhancements brings increased fidelity to the original graphics along with:
  • Increase fighter texture quality for all Endophora fighters.
  • Lighting improvements for explosion effects.
  • 16 new skyboxes (updated in campaign, tutorial, waves, and gauntlet modes) along with their own unique lighting



New Graphics Options​

PCs have always been synonymous with configurability. 2.0 brings a wide range of video options to configure to either increase performance or increase visual quality.

The Enhanced Graphics option brings greater flexibility for increasing performance at the cost of visual quality or increasing visual quality at the cost of performance. Or you can just keep it disabled and use the default settings for the chosen Overall Quality setting.



User Accessibility​

  • You can disable all camera shakes if you suffer from motion sickness.
  • Field of view provided in Standard mode,


Simulator Modes​

  • Longevity brought to Waves and Gauntlet with ship selection. Test your flying skills with all 6 Imperial fighters along with full weapon load-outs.
  • Gauntlet now provides shield recharging and ammo restock at the end of each mission.



Wheres the rest?​

Check out the latest patch notes for the full list of new features, improvements, and bugfixes.


Absolute Territory Steam page

 
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Its been (almost) two years, while development has been on and off (mostly off), work continues.

Here are some gifs.
Cockpit views (5.93mb) - Front, side and rear. There is now an actual cockpit hatch so the pilot is no longer sucking vacuum.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bp49tshch6ob5bs/201811 Cockpit Views.gif?dl=0

Flak (3.44mb) - Just like WC1/Wc2 (kinda)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8plcejuq5lhspif/201811 Flak.gif?dl=0

Radar (402kb) - The best radar design ever
https://www.dropbox.com/s/i8camptrmpccwz5/201811 Radar.gif?dl=0

Midigo transport escorted by light fighters (15.8mb) - Equivalent to the Salthi/Dralthi fighters
https://imgur.com/gallery/Rcw4xrj

Demo is not updated.
 
As per the update to the original post. I have a new alpha release for my game, Absolute Territory.

The biggest change is the art style. If you play, I'd appreciate feedback around using the mission editor.

centaurianmudpig said:
Hello!

Two things my space combat action game now has in common with Wing Commander.

1) The simulator (Waves of opponents)
2) Mission Editor (create your own missions to fly)

You can try both out in the latest demo release.

Since the last update, there are now range of primary weapons to choose from and ships to fly, and a change to the visual style. If you play, please use the green feedback button on from the main menu to share your experience of Absolute Territory.

I also have a Steam page, where you can go and wishlist if this is your sort of game.


View attachment 10773View attachment 10774View attachment 10775View attachment 10776View attachment 10777
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For timeline purposes, I've updated the original post. This update is to showcase the level editor I've been working on for over the last 5 months.

Any constructive feedback is appreciated.

centaurianmudpig said:
Hello!

Since the last update, I've been busy working on the Level Editor. The inspiration partly came from Wing Commander Academy, but I never got over how limited it was in creating missions. I wanted to make my own WC1 style missions, not just the drop some enemies and go skirmish.

To that end, I've reached another milestone. To show what the level editor is capable of, I loosely re-created the Enyo 1 and Enyo 2 missions. These where made with the in-game level editor. While adding in some WC1 style Era ships would be icing on the cake, my Blender skills (what little they where) have diminished, so please use your imagination a bit.

Enyo 1 Re-enactment

Enyo 2 Re-enactment

Absolute Territory Steam page
Click to expand...
 
As above, a demo is available for a short time to try out Absolute Territory.

centaurianmudpig said:
Hello!

During the Steam Summer Game Festival, Jun 16th - 22nd, a demo for Absolute Territory is available to play.

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.


Absolute Territory Steam page
Click to expand...
 
So I gave this a play during the 2020 game festival. Overall it was pretty good, the shooting was reasonably enjoyable with one oddity that during the campaign mission where you have to destroy the supply depot crates, I noted that the weapons actually seemed to shoot marginally below the cross hair, it wasn't clear if that was true elsewhere or if the ITTS equivalent was doing some aim-assist for other targets. Also the player ship seemed a little overpowered with shields, taking a fair beating while enemies crumple under two battery banks of shots or (1.4?) missiles. The flipside to that being that the gun battery seemed a little small, but perhaps that's intentional to avoid head-on shoot-outs and force dogfighting. I didn't find it so problematic during the 3rd missions 4-on-1, but did rely more on missiles than I would in WC.

Generally the UI is a little sparse (I admit that I didn't check for a cockpit view, so was using the default) and it was sometimes hard to tell when weapons missing due to range or aim (or the above calibration problem?). It wasn't problematic, but I think for the 3rd-person view I'd push the UI more to the edges of the screen and make them a bit more elegant and professional looking.

I loved the somewhat sparse, sombre music, would like it to grow into something more epic ultimately and obviously more tracks - but the composer deserves kudos.

Generally I'm very impressed, and encourage you to continue developing!
 
Thank you for the feedback @Madman. You are correct about the crosshair being off slightly in the 3rd person view.

When targeting a ship, your guns will lock onto the lead indicator, so the problem is only when blind firing. Though it's still possible to miss if your opponents velocity is changing (i.e. accelerating/decelerating, changing direction).

I agree the gun battery is a bit too small, the problem was made worse as you were supposed to have the same laser weapon as your opponent, but I thought adding the neutron would make it easier to start off with. I may revert that. But the issue does persist across all ships, I should listen to my gut feeling more often, but it is good to hear from others.

The music was purchased as part of a package. I am also impressed with it, though the selection was limited in suitability for a space setting. I'll have to see what else the composer has that fits. I'd like the music to be more dynamic than switching between combat and non-combat track.

When you say sparse re the UI, is it the dressing up you are speaking of, or is there a HUD feature missing that you would expect to see?
 
In fairness the gun battery is less a problem, and more that it forced me to change my dogfighting style a bit - so it frustrated me a little bit but I got somewhat used to it (though 1 or 2 more shots wouldn't hurt!). That said, it probably helped avoid feeling overpowered as the player ship felt like it could take a fair beating. As for the UI, yeah it's really the dressing up, no features were missing, and to be honest, that's probably one of the last things that needs fixing during development.

Overall though, impressive stuff and I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for further improvements.
 
Thank you. I think I'll look at contracting someone to spruce up the UI assets.

How satisfied were you with the combat against the AI? One on one and when going up against more?
 
Both WC4 and Prophecy have very different play styles, so it would probably be more constructive if you were specific about what those games have an Absolute Territory lacks that makes the game 'uninteresting'. From a general HUD/POV/UI perspective, I'd say the game is actually more like WC4, Prophecy or Arena than any other game in the series. I would say dogfighting is more like Armada, which gets sometimes mixed reviews: it's fast and unforgiving, so you have to be in control of your speed and accurate with your guns. Moreso than any other WC game, varying your speed (and not just your afterburners) is necessarily to carefully lead your opponents. I feel like the hitboxes are also a little unforgiving, kind of like Privateer 2, so if I had one recommendation, it might be to open those up a bit, at least for shield impacts.
 
Unfortunately it is very difficult for me to say what exactly is different. But it is not the HUD. This is also different, but does not bother me as much as other aspects. Let's say it is the way the projectiles move through space. The flight behavior of the fighter is also an important point. I can't say exactly what is different, I just notice that something is different compared to WC4 and WCP. It can be quite funny to play this way, it would just be very unfamiliar to me and I don't want to "relearn" at the moment.
 
What you might be picking up on is:
1) Projectiles move like that in any Wing Commander game. No physics and travel in a straight line in the direction pointed.
2) You ship (unlike most Wing Commander games) uses physics. When you turn you start sliding while your flight computer corrects the trajectory.

If you make a turn while shooting, your projectiles don't inherit your velocity, which can make firing appear a bit off as your projectiles appear to move sideways (when it's actually you moving sideways while firing). At least, that's what I always pick up on during those turns and firing.

Having projectiles inherit the ship's velocity could resolve this.
 
Is this something you're intending to continue working on in the future, adding more polish in here and there or would you consider this game complete and only looking to do some debugging?
 
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