Update 0.09a pushes the project towards a serious choice
Decision Height is defined as "the specified altitude in an instrument approach at which the pilot must decide whether to continue the descent for landing or execute a missed approach." At Skies' Edge has covered a lot of ground since May 2023. After playing update 0.09a you can understand what a milestone it is, but the developer's honest thoughts about the future of the game highlights the pivotal period this game has entered. ASE has reached 'Decision Height' for its developer, Mackerel_Sky.
Operation Grand Slam
Something interesting about At Skies' Edge (ASE) is how you can track the game's development by playing the missions in order. From top to bottom. There is not really a linear campaign to follow, but you are essentially playing them from oldest to newest. As the missions go on you can see more functionality added, missions that are tailored to a certain type of weapon that was newly added at the time and tests for new concepts to the game.
Operation Grand Slam is noticeably different from every other mission in the game so far. It is a large scale mission with a 30 minute long timer. Unlike other missions, this is a multi-objective operation is split into three sub-missions.
Tank Battalion Grendel is pushing deep into enemy territory to take on enemy land forces in direct combat. As they progress, increasingly large formations enemies appear in their path.
Tank Battalion Ogre is supporting Grendel's advance from the south with the objective to re-capture an airfield. If successful, the airfield is available to the player for mid-mission resupply and a support function is unlocked.
In the middle of the area of operations, a battle for air superiority is on going. Helping allies win this battle unlocks a support function.
Looking at past At Skies' Edge missions, you would need to combine two or three of them into a single mission to match the unit count and map size for Grand Slam. But even with this large scale, mission performance was stable in places where ASE struggled in the past when there were many active units in a relatively small area. The distances travelled were also much longer. Combined with the amount of weapons the player expends, the capture of an airfield for resupply genuinely feels like a vital asset rather than an optional, unimpactful side objective.
Allied Support functions are something that sporadically appears in flight arcade titles. As referenced by the ASE's developer, Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation (2007) made frequent use of this function. You could say it was a signature feature of that game. Once certain conditions are met during gameplay, players could press a specific button to have allied non-player controlled units attack a designated area or set of enemies on behalf of the player.
In Ace Combat 6, these attacks were instantaneous and visually overwhelming. Within seconds the area on the player's screen would be swarmed by a dozen or more aircraft launching just as many missiles or a nearby fleet firing cannons and missiles into the area to saturate miles and miles of land. Allied Support in ASE is on a smaller, but believable scale.
For example, winning the battle for air superiority enables a flight of allied aircraft to attack areas with rocket pods. Represented by a long rectangle on screen, players will briefly see a pair of aircraft fly in from behind them, saturating the area with rockets.
A second support function is indirect fire support from multiple rocket launch systems that are made available when the airfield is captured. The rocket artillery strike is shown as a smaller, more precise circle to target clusters of enemies without expending an area of effect support. The farther the target is from MLRS, the longer it will take for the rockets to reach their target, making the MLRS less effective against maneuvering targets.
Solving Core Issues
Operation Grand Slam is a type of mission that was simply not possible in the past updates because of a few key factors. The developer solved core problems that would restrict many games of similar scale.
The inherent floating point errors that appear when making large worlds in the Unity development platform were solved by resetting aircraft position as it moves past a certain in-game coordinate tolerance range, the map and other game objects shift in the opposite direction to provide a smooth transition. The same position reset is applied to AI units, visual effects, clouds, weather, waypoints - everything that would need to transition in a single piece. I do not think I noticed this process happen while casually playing through the mission.
For efficiency, units that appear per mission deactivate and reactivate themselves when the player is at long distances from them, reducing CPU load. This has formed a "passive tracking" state where players far from multiple-active operations are not unrealistically pressed to complete multiple missions at once but are not physically able to be in every place at the same time. The developer found a way to periodically have friendly forces destroyed to keep pressure on players to remain engaged in combat, but not expect them to appear in the skies above full on decisive battles where tanks and destroyed within minutes while they are flying back to rearm at an air base.
Even an early iteration of GPU instanced trees batched into efficient draw calls to render forests is implemented.
Some serious strides were made for the future quality and consistency for At Skies' Edge. The devlog goes into more detail on the major updates and minor updates, so again, it is a recommended read.
Original Aircraft: RPN Mk. 1 Carcal
To me, few things show a developer's intent more than the inclusion of an original aircraft or original designs for other units in a game. The developer made it a point to utilize free assets when possible as they explored developing ASE. With this game being a side project for them, a certain level of commitment is set from the start. After seeing the new original aircraft, the RPN Mk.1 Carcal, I reached out to Mackerel_Sky to discuss it. When I asked him about the aircraft, he started by saying:
"As you know I've added in light fighters as a specific aircraft archetype within the game but I was struggling to find any light fighters which would make sense for medium to high tier planes. I'm still deciding whether or not I use real world or fictional designs, but say we go with the former, I couldn't think of many examples of mid to high tier fighters that would fit within the timezone of the game. So I decided well let's just do a fictional one. That way I cover myself in case I decide to go fictional and give myself a mid-tier design, a relatively low stakes model to see how the workflow was gonna go, etc."
As the discussion went on, he explained that the light fighter concept for the aircraft had a creep in scope and turned into an intermediate size fighter. Though the process did not exactly fit what the developer had envisioned, the model was put into At Skies' Edge and described as a product of reverse engineering technology plagued with development difficulties that resulted in an aircraft that did not quite fit its original purpose.
For a game using a 1970s-1980s level of technology, the in-game description of the aircraft actually mirrored a few aviation projects of the era on Earth. Light fighter projects creeping into a more complicated aircraft design was pretty common.
Contemplating the Future
Personally I thought these were all clear signs of a full-fledged game being all but guaranteed, but the developer expressed concerns publicly in the devlog for 0.09a. The developer is a point where they need to make a serious choice. To see if this indie developer pushes even harder to create a modestly sized full-fledged game or halts progress before this side hobby takes up more time and effort they can realistically support.
They re-state that since the beginning ASE has been a personal project in their free time and is their first attempt at programming a game. He is evaluating if he has the skills and resources to complete the project before expanding his effort and potentially pulling in new resources, the assistance of other people and further investments into assets. While surprising to hear after just playing through a mission that represents a breakthrough for the game, it is a modest and honest message from the developer to their followers. Respectable.
Recently updates for At Skies' Edge have been spaced out by a few weeks or months, so it will take time to hear an official decision on the future of the game. I am hoping to see the development of ASE continue. However the developer decides, I will be sure to give my thoughts on the situation.
About the Writer
Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers.
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