Annihilate the Spance
0.91 build 20250320 available for [public testing].
= = =
You can join the Tester beta via:
Steam > Right click ATS > Properties > Betas > none > tester - unstable
Bare in mind [tester] can contain SPOILERS, CRASHES, and other nonsense going on.
= = =
Brendan is writing out an update message for what we've been up to and what we're doing, so that should be out soon. But let me give you a quick overview.
Beta 0.91 is available for public testing. This includes a large internal engine update, performance improvements, instability, visual ship and structure damage effects, among other things. Attempts to fix various crashes... still haven't fixed the main leak crash, pain in the butt.
I have completed a rather massive update to the game's engine code (Unity 2021 > Unity 6000) including updates to Unity ECS (v0.51 > v1.3.10) including a variety of system improvements.
We had hoped this would help solve our infamous crashes... but it has not. However the game should be faster in a variety of places.
Aleks and I did some efficiency updates to certain core sytems.
Brendan and I added a new visual damage shader to all ships and structures. Which looks cool, as well as update a variety of visual elements throughout the game.
I'm still working to finish fixing some stuff that broke in the engine update, but once that's done I'm getting on to finishing all the Kreydell difficulty levels, adjusting some map balance that people complain about, and then finally have time to try and squash this long-standing crash.
Alright, cheers.
Patch 2205 - Kreydell 14 difficulty fix
UPDATE: All those skipped moments, like... dust, in, Spance.
Yes, the update name is a Blade Runner reference.
Since the game is out, is reasonably stable, and people quite like it (92% review score!) We've finally had some time to relax, and deal with a large number of back-burner issues.
Brendan and I have been working away on a lot of stuff over the last few weeks. We have some unit behavioral adjustments, some balance changes, mission dialogue overhauls, general design updates for the final 2 kreydell missions, and a whole bunch of UI and HUD stuff.
Build - ATS_win_2025_02_08_0437_ACTUAL
Patch [2204]
General Updates
Crash Handling
- We've identified the general source of the crashes on some people's hardware. We're working to resolve it but need more time than we had for this update. Will be coming as soon as possible.
Quality of Life
- Fast Forward. Holding Shift during cutscenes will fast forward time by 2x. I can't make it go faster without making the simulation in missions such as Consequences or Kreydell Rock, unstable.
- Dialogue Skipping (hotkey Shift+Enter)
> I want to add an auto-skip seen dialogue toggle, but that will have to wait for next update.
HUD
- Selecting multiple units now presents you with a proper multiselection panel. You can easily swap between multiple selected yards and set what they are building.
- The "Currently Building" panel has been overhauled to show the picture of the thing you are presently building, clearer costs, and the ability to
- Z is now the "Pick Structure" hotkey. Mouse over something and hit Z to start building it. (If you have it unlocked of course)
Campaign Updates
Shallows
- Some Trauma missions have been adjusted to be somewhat less... traumatic.
Kreydell
- Overhauled the dialogue of mission 11, and mission 14.
These were very rushed missions. So we've finally had the time to get the story in as we intended and make the scenes make sense.
- Reworked the map design of mission 14, and 15.
Once again time was against us, and although these missions are beatable and fun, mission 14 specifically was asking players to learn a very very different method of combat compared to the rest of the campaign and was resultantly far too annoying and frustrating.
Mission 15 was not entirely finished and the opponent has been redistributed in a far more interesting and interactive way.
Faction Updates
Vaalkorei
- Added new units Utility Depot, and Bastion Relay.
- Adjusted a number of unit behaviors, and some weapon stats.
Kontaalen
- Adjusted a number of unit behaviors, and some weapon stats.
I'm sure I've missed something, this is over three weeks of dense changes, fixes and stuff.
Enjoy.
- Luke
What we're working on / things to come
While we don't have a full roadmap laid out, here's a little update on what we're currently working on and what additions and improvements you can expect in the near future.
Apocrypha Side Story
The next major bit of content (at least for campaign-enjoyers); this should be out within the next few weeks. Set between The Shallows and Kreydell chronologically, Apocrypha takes you out of Junior's shoes and has you following a small Vaalkorei Coalition task force, sent to discover the fate of a missing archaeological expedition deep in the Spance. This will be a string of six missions with full Relaxed/Normal/Trauma difficulty options.
QoL Improvements
There's been lots of great community feedback since our early access launch, and we're adding in a bunch of features that have been widely requested. You'll be able to select the production of yards before placing them, pick which structure to build by clicking on an existing one, drag-select multiple yards without other structures clogging up your selection, and fast-forward cutscenes (full skip coming later).
Character Portraits
Thanks to everyone who has purchased the game, we now actually have money to commission artwork to replace the AI-generated placeholders. While I don't support the use of AI-generated "art" in general, this game was developed on a frankly miniscule budget and it was all we could afford. This will take a bit of time but it's coming.
Kreydell Difficulty Settings
The game's second campaign, Kreydell, launched with only Normal difficulty available. We don't want to go the lazy route of just increasing/decreasing enemy stats to create artificial difficulty, so difficulty variants for missions take a while to make as we need to tune things like enemy composition, base layout, event timings, triggers, etc separately for each version. We didn't quite manage to get to it before early access launch, but we're working on adding Relaxed and Trauma versions of each mission.
Other Stuff
New skirmish maps, more control over skirmish AI difficulty, various balance tweaks, spelling/grammar fixes, Vaalkorei databank lore entries, a couple of new structures. Adjusting some levels that people had issues with, particularly Vultures (Trauma) and Game Theory (in general). Vaalkorei AI in Skirmish is also no longer completely obsessed with spamming only Strix/Cormorant forever. Also probably some other stuff I'm forgetting and may or may not edit in when I remember it.
Things to Come?
Beyond the aforementioned stuff coming in the immediate future, the next big thing will be Fortune's Progress, the Vaalkorei campaign. This is planned to be 19 missions long; it will be a while before it's released but we'll get there. Also the next two side stories after Apocrypha... not sure if these will be ready before or after Fortune's Progress; we'll see. All five campaigns are fully plotted out story-wise so now it's just a matter of actually making a whole lot of levels, building assets for them, and testing them thoroughly to make sure they actually work. Also, the Tychon faction is being worked on pretty constantly; it'll be added to skirmish once it's in a somewhat more complete state.
Thanks again to everyone who's supported the game; we're very happy to see how well it's being received on the whole.
P.S. To those who don't buy early access and are waiting for full release: totally reasonable; we get it. Early access is always a bit of a risk since you're trusting the devs to actually finish their product, and money is tight these days. We hope you'll enjoy the full game once it's out.
Slow Memory Leak Crash, and how to avoid it for now.
There's a small memory leak somewhere in our systems and it's proving very difficult to hunt down.
Over time it will use up ATS's Memory reserve and crash ATS.
Systems with very high memory (16+ GIGs) won't notice this unless you play for a very long time - open very big custom maps - or already have most of your memory used up by other programs (internet tabs).
If you're hitting crashes regularly, open Task Manager and keep an eye on ATS. If it's Memory usage is going above 4 GIGs (or more if you have a lot of memory), kill it and restart. You can of course let it run on until your system runs out of memory to allocate to it, but that's risking a crash.
Hoping to fix this ASAP.
Fight Me More, Fight Me Less, But Do Fight Me
Did you know the build number is just the time I make the build? ...Yes I will get some sleep now...
Build `ATS_win_2025_01_20_0402_ACTUAL` patch `2169`
Fixes
- Tried my best to locate and resolve the memory leak causing crashes to people. Please let me know if you keep crashing.
- Controllable units (Hemedall) no longer self-eviscerate from reality itself when ordered to hold position.
Changes:
- Skirmish AI build rate range greatly increased, you can make them a lot easier.
- Skirmish team income multiplier for matter. Go ahead, to a 1v4 with 4x matter income.
Kreydell
- Heavily overhauled mission 3, it was quite ugly and too unrefined.
- Added Relaxed/Trauma variants for missions 1, 2, 3, 4. Let me know if they're too easy.
- Reduced difficulty of Vein Rebellion somewhat.
- Heavy Mortar changes should make mission 11 somewhat more challenging
Tychon
- Heavy Mortar show shoots 2x faster, and does half damage.
- Misc fixes and adjustments.
Annihilate The Spance is released, take a moment with my reflections.
Four years, three guys, and a tiny budget. Welcome to the Spance.
I'm Luke, and along with Brendan, and Aleks we've been piecing this game together for what has felt like eternity. I don't really remember the times before ATS, and at the rate we've been working to get this thing done to release yesterday I can hardly remember last week!
We released last night, content and happy in a Discord call bridging three continents, we hit the release button. After finally sleeping for the first time in a few days I thought I'd give a little look back over the last years and reflect a bit on how it's been going.
To be clear, we've been working on this for four years out of our own pockets, and to finally be here today with ATS released and - potentially - earning us something to live on... is a relief hard to express.
I would like to quickly mention our testers, who have been great friends and critics over the years. I'm leaving them out of this write up mostly for brevity sake. But without them I assure you this game would be rubbish and incredibly buggy - as well as us three simply having lost the will to continue at one point or another.
Our little team started because Aleks and Brendan wanted to learn game dev from me, something I had been doing a bit on my own by then. (Solo dev is hell, don't do it, get help) After about two weeks we had a bare, terrible little prototype modeled faithfully after CW Wallis's Obliterate Everything. This got me thinking, hey, a three man team with common ground, shared interest, and specialised skills? This could go far...
Seems I was right.
Now look my memories are unreliable but as far as I recall the first functional version of ATS was about 4 months later. Boy, was it WEIRD. Hahah. It was 3d models in a 2d board, a weird box platform, and... of course... the Tolly. Because everything starts with the Tolly. And not just any Tolly, a Tolly with 200 DPS and 100 hp meaning it was like watching a knife fight. Of course, they rammed directly into each other, and barely worked but hey, progress.
The key thing was figuring out Unity's brand-new DOTS system. An Entity Component framework that enabled far far superior multithreaded and base-line performance than anything Unity had before. And it was easy to use. Okay.. not easy, nothing is easy, but easier than having to make it yourself.
Figuring out Unity's DOTS and Burst systems and pushing them HARD really is the core of ATS's performance. Aleks and I spent a very very large amount of our time just learning this stuff and getting good at it.
A year later, somewhere in 2022 we had quite a lot of the core gameplay working. I had just taken Turrets and ships through Quaternion hell to get them shooting at and predicting targets reliably in a moving 3d space (We went from a 2D battlefield to a 3D one). Brendan had time off from uni to make more Vaalkorei forces (why did he start with the Eyrie!? WHY IS IT HUGE!?), and Aleks had learned how to talk the computer into building AI bases for us to fight against, among many other things.
It was shaping up.
Another year later in 2023 and frankly we were ready. It was content time. We knew how to make a ship dance, knew how to make thousands of units exist in harmony with your computer. It was time for some fun story. Or "content" if you want to be sterile.
We had been forging the story of ATS over the years in the fires of ambition. It was time to make it real.
The Level Editor was always my baby, the basics of it were cooked up over a weekend in 2021 or 2022. It's had a lot of growing pains and has been overhauled in behavior a few times. Not as many times as other parts of the game, but quite a few times.
Every game needs an editor. Because people are the backbone of making a game that's funner than what the Devs alone can make for it. Look we're pretty okay, but we're a bit more on the tech side than the creative - unhinged - side.
The Editor is what every mission in ATS was built in. Absolutely everything... hah... Okay, ah, no. Almost everything. Vagabond's Rest and Husk Field's tutorials are scripted. And sadly Scenes can't be edited from outside the game. But of the non-tutorial missions in the game, and ignoring background scenes, absolutely EVERYTHING is made with the same tools available to everyone else.
So the demo released. And people loved it. 14,000 downloads can't be wrong!
But unit movement was held together by bailing wire and duct tape, and frankly nothing was working correctly. Or at least working well enough to do more than what they were already doing.
So the rest of 2023, and the first half of 2024, was tech time. Overhauling AI systems, rethinking movement logic, yadda yadda yadda time time time, money money money we can't keep doing this Bob! (Incredibles reference) So it was time to set a launch date, make some story levels, and release.
Kreydell... yeah I had to make that, and it was only done a few days ago... cutting things pretty close don't ya think? The story of ATS as a whole was done in 2023 but the exact nature of how things get to be can change. So Kreydell went through quite a lot of changes and rethinkings. Improvements. Maturity. Rewrites, remakes, and of course all the while trying to make the Soul Warden. The less spoilers said the better, but some things take a bit more effort than others. Thankfully I had Brenden with me to give me a critical second opinion on what I was doing. Aleks weighing in rarely to offer Input for very specific scenarios. It was a team effort, and here it is. Done.
Next up is Apocrypha which Brendan is working diligently on - pulling his hair out on much the same problems I have. Making things fun, making them interesting, making them good. It's not easy, and it takes sweat.
Then lots of Skirmish work and improvements.
Then a functioning Tychon, which Aleks has been cooking over for many months already.
( Did I mention we're each responsible for a faction? Mine are the Kontaalen, Brendan's are the Vaalkorei, and Aleks' are the Tychon )
Then Fortune's Progress and White Tower, then alllll the rest of it.
And I promise those in the audience whom love the Glowfish.
You will have a chance to play as them.
TAAAAD BAAAAR SOOOOT
VEEEER KOOOOS RAAAAV VAAAAR
I would have written this with Aleks and Brendan, but then Brendan would have made me edit and *proofread* it, (I mostly have; to be clear) and this will be much funnier for me if they are surprised by it.
Cheers.
Luke AP
Co-Director, Skyglow Softworks
20 Days to Release
As a reminder, on the 14th of January 2025 at roughly 23:00 UCT, we'll be releasing ATS.
Along side that, we'll be updating our Demo with the latest and greatest power of the Spance. Including all our new units, and shenanigans.
On launch day please be patient for any unforeseen bugs or issues. We're a small team of 3 and are understandably stressed. Things will slip past us in the frantic hours. But, patches and fixes will arrive quick and fast.
See you soon, Junior.
- Luke
January 14th - Early Access
ATS will be launching into Early Access on the 14th of January 2025, at $30
( or your regional price adjusted / discounted equivalent )
Also we've setup a Patreon account, so you can help fund development or get access to the Beta right now.
Skyglow Softworks Patreon
The game release on the 14th Jan 2025 will contain the Kontaalen Kreydell campaign, level editor, and 10 skirmish maps - as well as all future campaigns as they are developed.
It'll have been 4 years of development, but we're finally at the final set of milestones.
ATS has reached - terrifyingly - only the half way point. Content is now the focus, fun is the pillar, and story is the word.
From simply making turrets turn, to developing and forging the three main factions, to numerous systems overhauls and performance minded improvements. It's been a long project, but we're making it.
Luke AP
Skyglow Softworks
Vast Progress, Deep Storm
Luke here.
It's 8 Months post demo release. The team and I have not made any official announcements about ATS's development for a long time - and that's plainly because we're three developers who are more focused on making the game than talking about it!
You can always check our live dev updates for ATS on our Discord server:
Skyglow Softworks Discord Server
Also don't forget to try out the free demo if you haven't already.
Also also I want to mention that we are hoping to go into Early Access by around December with the Kontaalen and Vaalkorei campaigns as well as whatever side content we manage to get done. But that's a hope for then, this is progress now!
So let's get things straight. We've entered Version Beta 0.8, which marks the point I believe us to be over the greatest humps in the game's development. To have hiked the second tallest mountains, and now to descend into the valley of 0.9, to reach the summit of 1.0
A ton of work has naturally come along the ways to get us here. So much infact that it's an unreasonable task to attempt to accurately summaries it ( Also I want to get back to work ). So we can focus on a little "executive overview" that leaves out a ridiculous amount of detail and even whole events, but provides the jist of what's been happening.
Over the past 8 or so months since the demo was released, we've added units, reworked PD, reworked Drones, improved models, worked on performance, fixed errors, added features, cleaned up HUD information, added in Alerts ( like buildings blowing up ), added in new dev tools, worked on the Kontaalen Campaign and overhauled parts of the Shallows to improve learning and reduce somewhat the rather strong difficulty curve it had for new players.
To be clear, a huge amount of work.
In the end, the point of 0.8 is that the game works. Not just works, works well. It's fun. It's behaving, it's got maturing promise, and charm, looks good, feels good, sounds good, and runs fast.
So what have us three been doing? Well all the stuff above plus our more individual specialisations.
Aleks has been doing a large amount of modeling and visual work for his Tychon Division. Followed by overhauling our build-grid systems in preparation for a number of feature improvements and systems necessary for the Tychon to operate as envisioned. As well as continued to work on improving the intelligence and functionality of our AI Commanders. And a bunch of other stuff.
Though sadly he's not had the time to work much, due to the demands of life.
Owl has as ever been working on proof reading, adjusting and otherwise cleaning up the text mess I leave behind throughout the game's writing. Cooperating in narrative and story design, as well as working tirelessly to improve the Shallows maps both visually, experientially, and in terms of difficulty. ( He's the one that does all the Trauma mission version )
And of course the ongoing duties of adding in new Vaalkorei Coalition units, improving weapon/unit/effect visuals across the board and for all the factions, and fighting with individual ship AIs and weapon behaviors on all of the factions' units to get them to perform their best.
Finally I've ( Luke ) been working on the Kontaalen Campaign, rewriting parts of the Shallows narrative and redesigning our in-mission-coms-chatter. As well as my usual techie work of overhauling parts of our ship movement systems to make them fly better, replacing large segments of our weapon firing code to fix a large number of issues and limitations, fixing yard ( spawner ) behaviours and doing code nonsense for a whole bunch of things, improving and adding in a number of features for the HUD, Level Editor, and Commander AI Editor. As well as new Kontaalen Armada units. And just generally working on just about everything else because this is my day job.
And... well that's it. Left out a lot of stuff we've all been doing just for the sake of brevity ( and the fact I really can't remember in fine enough detail what the other guys have done, let alone what I've done over the months )
That's that!
Look forwards to continued updates and come hang out on the Discord server.
Luke AP
Skyglow Softworks