Annihilate the Spance
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
Annihilate The Spance v0.77
Huge improvement, huge feature implementations, a massive amount of unit/structure model and visual enhancements. The implementation of Rogue Dive in it's most basic form. Huge amounts of AI improvements and build order overhauls, mixed with new tools and UI to manipulate them.
There's so much that's been done it's near impossible to try to list out...
But ATS grows and grows.
Join our Discord server for news, and if you wish to volunteer yourself to join Beta Testing
Skyglow Softworks Official Discord Server
DIVE THE STORM.
ATS v0.75
There are very many things that have been added, fixed, updated, and improved since 0.71
Namely:
- The Shallows Campaign ( which has been overhauled as the game has grown and improved hugely over the year ) is effectively at the brink of completion. Needing only polish, and balance. The story is finalised, the level drafts have been brought in to solidity, and the gameplay is fluid. Lessons have been learnt.
- The new Mk2 Base AI overhaul has finally been merged in from it's experimental branch that has taken over 9 months of development and improvement. It's working far more reliably.
- The Kontaalen, Vaalkorei, and Tychon continue to have their ships balanced, their models enhanced and reworked, and their weaponry given new functionality.
- Large improvements to certain aspects of game performance, such as target finding, processing, spawning, etc.
- Major update to the Map Editor for a better, easier, more "Age Of Empires" editor experience.
Demo Release is looking all the more promising each day.
ATS Beta Version 0.71
To anyone interested in the progress of ATS, let me bring you up to speed.
Work:
We're only 3 months off the 2nd anniversary of ATS's development beginning. There's been a lot of work, and a huge number of drastic improvements to the game's quality standard and style have been made since just January. We've gone from a 2D battlescape to a (though still 2D in gameplay) visually 3D battlescape with starships able to fly high into the sky and drones to swoop low below cruisers.
Due Date:
It's very hard to estimate when our game will be done, due to the unstable nature of our indie-dev lives. But, we're always pushing for a Demo. It's the main thing we want, and need. Feedback from a lot of people.
More Info:
Join our Discord server, to receive updates on ATS's continued development and the milestones we hit.
V0.5 Major Update
Major Changes
+ Version >>> 0.5
+ Databank added
The Databank provides a detailed central repository of information on all Units ( Ships and Structures ) in the game. It can be accessed at any time by either pressing O, pressing i on a Unit's build-image, clicking "Info" on a selected unit. Or opening it via the Unit Databank on the Main Menu.
+ Campaign Maps and Progress Tracking
A campaign map now exists for the Demo campaign "The Shallows"!!!!!!!
It contains Map Nodes ( click to launch mission ) for each of the planned missions in the Shallows campaign. Once a mission is completed, the next node will unlock. ( Only two actual missions present, and intended in-mission communications don't exist yet... sadly. Also there are no Staging-Posts yet so Mission 2 doesn't work the way it should... you can still Tolly Spam them to destruction. )
+ Other stuff???
There was a lot of things that changed under-the-hood. A lot of work was done both to improve the game's performance and to make the game's code more maintainable and easier to build off of. ( Something we're always doing, obviously. But should be pointed out. )
+ Resource Capacity
Resources are now capped at 3000 Matter, 1500 Energy. This is just until we get Storage structures working.
+ Ah... other stuff?
Listen, I did so much work over the last while that I've lost track. There's probably a few more Quality Of Life changes that... oh yeah.
+ Quality of Life
Click and Drag to place multiple structures!!!
Fullscreen switching F11
Stuff?
+ Faction Tweaks
Plenty of faction unit tweaks in this one. Always messing around with the units. ( At least Kontaalen units )
+ Vaalkorei
Heron Battlecruiser added!
+ Tychon
Ballist Missile Box added! ( kinda OP, we know )
Enjoy.
- Luke