- Primary weapons missing the abbreviation for weapon size
- Burst Autocannon/16 X2 and Burst Autocannon/8 X2 will now show up correctly on the inventory screen
- DirectoryNotFoundException
A-Spec: First Assault
Small Patch for (0.14.1) Early Access and (0.13.3) Demo
The Interception Update (Patch 0.14.0) is ready for download
Overview
- New Interceptor Corvette (Avdiivka)
- New passive modules to enhance your ship
- Bugs fixes, improvements and balance changes
Known Issues
- Autospeed match 'close' setting does not work as expected
- Colliders for Fighter, Gunship, Carrier, and Large Transport are not optimized for best-fitting
- Jump-out animations are not scaled correctly for ships bigger than a gunship
Added
- Avdiivka Interceptor Corvette (Unlocked from completing Chapter 1 Mission 3)
- Armour plating module small and medium modules
- Explosive Armour Protection small and medium modules
- Kinetic Armour Protection small and medium modules
- Additional icons for module items
- New module inventory items are unlocked progressing through chapter 2 missions
- Player fleet size increased to 3 after completing Chapter 2 Mission 3
- Progress rewards will be retroactively unlocked based on players current progress
Changed
- Balancing Ships to allow the player to approach at target strategically affecting ship Mass, Armour/Hull HP, max speed and acceleration/deceleration for velocity and rotation
- Percentages are now used for all module stats displays
- Amended text layout for Loading a saved preset in ship fitting to limit text wrapping from long equipment item names
- Adjusted prestige price, fitting, applied stats and their values for module items
- Module slots now have slot sizes which will only fit the same size module item
- Starting a tutorial now goes straight into the mission, bypassing the ship selection screen
Fixed
- The mouse cursor was never visible on the 1st time welcome screen
- Ship stats displays for Yaw/Pitch/Roll and Horizontal/Vertical for acceleration are not updated in the ship fitting screen when modules applied
- Null reference errors on ship loadouts with multiple launcher groups
- Weapon models not being updated in fitting screen preview when added and/or removed
- Null Reference error caused exiting the Vessel Fitting screen and then going straight back into it, preventing loadouts from being displayed correctly
New Patch - Version 0.13.2
With this update, the Ship Fitting screen will no longer be shown in the tutorials. Also, fixed an issue with the same screen where the ship fitting was not displayed correctly on viewing the loadout and would remove all fittings during the tutorial.
DEMO Patch (0.11.9)
A-Spec First Assault Current Progress Update
Read on to be kept in the development loop 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 in 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.
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 Improvements
Some repetitive audio effects are cascading and these will be significantly reduced (if not eliminated).
Also, explosions were cutting off too soon, this is fixed.
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.
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.
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).
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The drums of war update
Overview
- Big improvements to all sound effects!
- Lots of other miscellaneous improvements!
- Bug fixes!
Known Issues
- Autospeed match 'close' setting does not work as expected
- Colliders for Fighter, Gunship, Carrier, and Large Transport are not optimized for best-fitting
- Jump-out animations are not scaled correctly for ships bigger than a gunship
- Guard My Target command is not implemented
Added
- Vessel names can now be randomly generated
- AI Actor will now change targets if another hostile is more of a threat
- AI Actor uses a fuzzy target selection of the nearest hostile (rather than using the 'Select closest hostile' command)
- Ship wings will now jump in formation to their leader
- Flash Radar Quadrant On Hit effect attached to a toggle option in Options > Game
- Added Autogun (XXS) as a replacement primary weapon for hostile fighters in the prologue (due to fixing AI firing weapons slowly)
- Added UI Volume slider
- Audio priorities adjustments for sound effects during gameplay to better manage many simultaneous playing sounds
Changed
- Controller Glyphs now display the control element descriptor for controllers without a defined glyph icon
- Prologue mission 1: Added Throttle Axis to help glyphs
- Prologue mission 1: Removed diagonal help glyphs as the vertical and horizontal glyphs communicate this
- Prologue mission 2: Updated directives text regarding waypoint references in line with Prologue mission 1
- Prologue mission 3: Removed the distress call waypoint when in range
- Prologue mission 7: Fixed typo during friendly spawn message near end of mission
- Corrected spelling and grammar throughout all prologue mission briefings and debriefings
- Navigation tutorial 2: Can now use throttle axis during throttle acceleration and deceleration section
- Navigation tutorial 2: Allowed 8-way hat to work during diagonal thrust sections
- Navigation tutorial 3: Disabled autopilot
- Mining beam SFX replacement
- Increased size of flare and muzzle VFX for mining beam
- Removed hull Hit Effect for mineable asteroids and normal asteroids due to excessive calls from using the mining beam
- Updated main missions and side missions to use directives and monitoring panels as needed
- Dying throes explosions VFX/SFX improved
- Death explosions VFX/SFX improved
- Gun sound effects improved
- Round robins used for repetitive sound effects (i.e. gunshots, impacts, explosions, etc)
- Replaced most Heads Up Display sound effects
- Directives Panel: When directive status changes the text now flashes with an audible bleep
- Player Received Transmission: Play audio bleep at the start of a transmission
- Main menu: Increased vertical button spacing for easier mouse highlighting on mouse over
Fixed
- Prevented mineable asteroids and Mining Station from being pushed around easily
- Particle explosions from weapon damage on the player seem to jitter/skitter during player movement
- Attempt to set pitch to infinite value from script ignored!
- Prevented autopiloting out of Skirmish when all enemies were destroyed
- Explosion lighting source only lights up for 1 second, where it should be limited for the particle animation time
- Turret Railgun shell mass not scaled correctly (decreased accordingly)
- Burst Autocannon 2/4/8 shell mass not set correctly (increased accordingly)
- Impact Hull/Armour SFX now calculated for pooled items
- Audio Asset pooling counts are under-calculated for guns and launchers
- Skirmish: Player not spawning in the correct position
- Projectile spawn location offsets more as the shooter's velocity increases
- Primary weapons fire faster the more the gun control subsystem is damaged
- AI Actor would trigger pull-release for each primary weapon shot, unintentionally slowing down the fire rate of fast-firing weapons
- Button UI audio interactions are not affected by the audio volume sliders
- Fixed duplicate audio sources from being created for parent objects not added to the pooling system
- Fixed issue of audio popping where played audio was stopped too early for explosions
- AI Actor severely under-calculated the effective firing range (effectively preventing the AI Actor from using primary weapons)
- Prologue mission 2: After mining 1st asteroid, engines should not be activated until 2nd asteroid is targeted
- Prologue mission 4: Enemies at Navpoint 2 can no longer be goaded in to attacking the player instead of transports
Absolute Territory on Sale in the Steam VR Fest
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1130880/Absolute_Territory/
Quick fix - Patch Notes 0.12.2
Overview
- A quick fix to resolve an issue where the player control bindings and settings are deleted each time the game executable is run - Thanks Dark Lark
Known Issues
- Autospeed match 'close' setting does not work as expected
- Colliders for Fighter, Gunship, Carrier, and Large Transport are not optimized for best-fitting
- Jump-out animations are not scaled correctly for ships bigger than a gunship
- Guard My Target command is not implemented
Fixed
- The version.ini file is not being created for first-time players
A-Spec First Assault Patch Notes for 0.12.1 (November 2023)
Overview
- Improved explosion visual effects
- Transmission ticker added to flight HUD
- Resolution ratio UI fix
- Lots of bug fixes and improvements to prologue missions
Known Issues
- Autospeed match 'close' setting does not work as expected
- Colliders for Fighter, Gunship, Carrier, and Large Transport are not optimized for best-fitting
- Jump-out animations are not scaled correctly for ships bigger than a gunship
- Guard My Target command is not implemented
Fixed
- UI cut off when using 1920x1200 resolution and other edge case resolutions
- HUD Afterburn and Speed Indicator panels fail to maintain scaled positions across various screen resolutions
- Advanced Navigation tutorial has reference to completing intermediate training
- Explosions now look better than before
- Distinct debris flickering when the player rotates the view
- Prologue Mission 7: The briefing title states "Prologue 1" and should be "Prologue 7"
- Various scripting improvements and fixes across all Prologue Missions
- Pause menu background is not flush with the border
- Spelling error in the tutorial weapons_01_primary transmission dialogue
Added
- HUD Monitoring panel for tracking the status of important structures during campaign missions
- Added External Orbit Camera during flight
- Ticker text for displaying player-received transmissions in the top left of the HUD during flight
- Prologue Mission 4: Added transports to the monitoring panel
- Prologue Mission 4: Transports have now been given names better than Transport X
- Prologue Mission 7: Added transports to the monitoring panel
Changed
- Increased max range of distance indicators for missile alert to 8000
- Wingman monitoring panel adjusted in size and now scales horizontally
- Adjusted flight HUD element positions to make best use of screen space across a range of display resolutions
- HUD Waypoint marker now has a border to make it stand out better on bright backgrounds
- Prologue Mission 3: Beautiful Mind is now the first object to be targeted
- First Person Camera positions for cockpit views moved nearer the model bounds and more central to that location (you'll see less of your ship)
- Removed the non-functional News button from the Campaign menu