The Steam Game Festival
First, I think the Summer Gamer Festival was a great idea. Absolute Territory was put in front of more eyes in a weekend than an entire month.
I've been receiving amazing feedback from gamers on the demo, since the initial closed beta I ran back in February, and found ways to make the Absolute Territory experience even better.
The demo for Absolute Territory is still available to download an play.
Do you Hands On Throttle And Stick (HOTAS)?
The death of space sims in the late 2000s was either chalked up to the failure of Freespace 2 or the high purchase price of requiring a Joystick / HOTAS (depending on what you read). As consoles became popular Joysticks faded out and controllers became the norm. The space game genre fizzled out and FPS became the popular genre. The barrier for entry to FPS was significantly lower with a standard controller that everyone on their console had.
I don't know the numbers for Joystick / HOTAS, but I'd be pretty sure it be still low. While Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen support HOTAS, they also support console controllers, along with keyboard and mouse.
I've had Joystick / HOTAS support in Absolute Territory for a long time and was meant to be the primary device to use. Facing reality, mouse and keyboard is the number one choice on PC, and I expect many console owners with a PC use their controller additionally.
Mouse Flight
Over the last week, I've been working on improving flight using a mouse.
- The lowest sensitivity value has been halved, and I've doubled the maximum to retain its previous sensitivity.
- There is now a dotted line to link up the mouse cursor to see where it is pointing.
- The dotted line and cursor fade out when close to the gun crosshair to not obscure it.
- The cursor is now bound to an invisible border to indicate the maximum pitch and yaw of the ship.
The end result, a much more smoother and friendlier flying experience with greater configuration to meet the needs of a wide range of players.
Console Controller (Xbox, PS4, et al.)
Various console controllers are supported. Due to the sheer number of controllers, help glyph's in the tutorials are only provided for Xbox and PlayStation controllers.
To increase flexibility in gamepad support, with less need to use the keyboard, I am considering implementing either a control wheel, which you bring up to select controls (like Mass Effect or Rebel Galaxy Outlaw). Or shift functionality where you hold down a designated button to swap the bindings to a second preset and back again when released. I have gravitated to the shift functionality as it would take the least amount of development time. What would your preference be?
Let's Play
If you make a Let's Play or impression video of Absolute Territory I would love to see it. Just be sure to tag me in if you post to Twitter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OgSpD9Et6A
Thank you for reading, head on over to the Absolute Territory store page for more info and hit that wishlist button.