build id: 631B9588

nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.


INTRODUCING GRIND MODE
As you might imagine the release of SBTF out of Early Access after 7+ years brought quite a bit of clarity as I was able to take a step back from constant iteration and maintenance of the game. The prior update (61) was very satisfying to deploy as it let me fix a lot of quality of life issues and in general address some rough edges that remained.

In observing the feedback that started coming in via various video reviews I began to realize that the practical effect of the Instant Action pipeline was for new players coming in to quite naturally simply play the game via this mode / button. However as many of you know Instant Action leads to Randomize All rules that can result in a quite unforgiving experience, especially for new players.

This is conjunction with some prior experiments relating to Campaign of the Week (CotW) led me to realize that the game has always had a real problem with any kind of meaningful progression. This has certainly been discussed at length in the forums and I was never really satisfied personally with the macro-level feel of the game. While of course surviving a mission would let you keep your upgrades it has still always been the case that any small mistake will quite brutally take this progression away from you.

Of course that while this has always been one of the main premises of the game (in being a roguelike) it still didn't feel very good to me. The addition of CotW was certainly interesting in that it both added a time-limited linear sequence of missions to attempt (that also had some kind of difficulty curve) but in practice this mode was really even MORE hard-core in that any small mistake would not only wipe your character / upgrades but also put you back at the beginning of the campaign. I personally was never really incentivized to attempt any given CotW more than once.

All of this got me thinking about how the game might feel with what I view as a more "classic shooter progression" - what if the game saves a checkpoint at the beginning of each mission, and death in any mission will simply restore your character and upgrades back to that point and allow you to re-try that mission any number of times? Initial experiments were quite positive but I was quite aware of the fact that this idea conceptually clashed with a core premise of the game being about "disposable heros" - effectively this idea leads to the scenario that your character cannot ever REALLY die, at least not in terms of progression.

However due to said increased insight into / objectivity concerning the new player experience I decided to look into actually adding a more "casual campaign" as per the above. The result is what I'm calling "Grind Mode" which is a new type of campaign of the week but with the addition of casual / persistent progression. This means that you can hammer on / "grind" any difficult missions in the campaign as much as you like until you complete them, culminating in a audio/visual reward of sorts once you have completed 35 missions. This number of missions corresponds to parts of the mission generation algorithm relating to size that will max out after 35 missions. Since the Grind campaign is infinite (in the same way as CotW) it is possible for those who want further challenge after 35 missions to continue indefinitely, but conceptually you are "done" after 35 missions. This creates something that is reasonably attainable within one week's time.

Personally I've had lots of fun playing Grind Mode during development, so much that I strongly feel that it should be (and now is) the default selected experience for new players coming in (and if you delete your game app data). It makes me feel that something like this should have been in the game for a very long time and checks a lot of my personal boxes when it comes having the game feel "meaningful" to play. Indeed I believe (in hindsight) that the main problem with SBTF in terms of progression has been that it did not quite feel like the game respected your investment of time / effort, and Grind Mode offers at least some kind of solution to that problem.

Of course I know by now (after all these years of development) that ANY change I make to the game (optional or not) has great potential to be contentious. I hope however that all the hard-core players out there can appreciate Grind Mode as an attempt to make the game more inclusive to a more casual type of player, and that if they don't hold with the idea of this kind of progression then they can simply ignore Grind Mode - indeed all the legacy game modes that you've come to know and love about SBTF are intact with the exception of the Instant Action pipeline (which in itself was a "casual" type of feature).

In the best case scenario I hope that even hard-core players / fans of roguelike progression might still have some fun if they decide to try Grind Mode after all - I personally feel that Grind Mode makes the game "even more SBTF than SBTF" due to the fact that it makes a highly upgraded character much more attainable, and the kind of gameplay that occurs in high intensity missions in conjunction with a highly upgraded character is something that I believe not very many players have experienced yet.

The way that science grants higher ammo tiers is different in Grind Mode than in other modes. This has been restored to the legacy setup for all modes except for Grind Mode (in order to make CotW more reasonable again) and in Grind Mode it basically takes more science to upgrade your ammo. This has been tuned during development of Grind Mode so that it is harder to max out your ammo tier before the end of the 35 mission campaign. Science / relation to ammo tiers has now been visualized in a more clear fashion in the mission setup screens as well.

I've cleaned up mode selection quite a bit (a drop-list instead of always visible buttons), redesigned the various information tabs, and am automatically selecting the last mission outcome tab upon mission end which amounts to a more "proper" mission outcome. There are more animations in general in the intermission / setup screens, and also a new system of "medals" that will light up as you progress through the Grind campaign that will hopefully stimulate your low-level brain and bring some satisfaction. The aforementioned "reward" for completing the campaign I will leave for you to discover on your own.

I hope you will all agree that Grind Mode is a fun new addition to the long long (long) development of this game. This update also serves as the official end of development of Space Beast Terror Fright (excluding of course future quality of life changes / bugfixes). I sincerely thank you all very much for accompanying me on this unprecendented journey of exploration and discovery.

MISCELLANEOUS

• Lurking beasts is now an immutable option - this means that they will either lurk or not for the entire mission (excluding during reactor overload when no beasts will ever lurk). The reasoning here is that this works better with all modes that mutate rules at runtime, resulting in more varied gameplay overall.
  
• Upgrades in last outcome and team statistics screens are now shown in the same way as in the obituaries list - as icons instead of text.
  
• Hopefully more robust user plan download and decoding.
  
• Infestation has been suppressed so as to not cover certain important interactive level elements such as sentry control panels and door / fence controls.
  
• The game now displays useful tips while loading a mission.
  
• CotW and Grind Mode now utilize hashing / security in multiplayer as well as singleplayer in order to protect against tampering as well as to support campaign timeout at the end of the week.
  
• The pub party list is now more descriptive.
  
• The game now explicitly prompts the player to open the reactor shield prior to disabling coolants.
  
• There is now a setting for "fancy space windows" (default on). This shader is inspired by work on the Grind Mode completion "reward".
  
• The reactor shield is now shown on the security map table as well as in the player tracker / map.

As always, thank you for your support and patience.
/nornware AB c/o johno

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build id: 62D1761D

nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.


POST-RELEASE BUG-FIX / QUALITY OF LIFE UPDATE
This update includes miscellaneous bug-fixes and quality of life improvements for the game.


CHANGELOG

• The user interface will now prompt you if you have unpublished user plans.
  
• User plans that don't pass playability tests are not selectable for play.
  
• User plans can now be filtered by completion status: unattempted, attempted, failed, succeeded.
  
• You can now use text search to filter user plans.
  
• The user plan list can now be navigated with home / end / pgup / pgdown in addition to mouse scroll wheel (+SHIFT to go faster).
  
  
• Fixed mission experience not counting towards character rank.
  
  
• Door integrity is now displayed at all times in the id-field.
  
• If power is initially off, doors can now have an arbitrary track position as well as open / closed state, achieving a more abandoned look to the maps.
  
• Reactor safety protocol (all barriers automatically opening during overload) will now always open any doors where the player is immediately.
  
  
• Breakers spark a lot when reset.
  
• Breakers spark a little when recharging player battery.
  
  
• Some enemy broods now have red blood.
  
  
• Core text colors and screens have been adjusted to work better on higher brightness levels.
  
• Core albedos have been significantly desaturated.
  
• New design for core frames / support structures.
  
  
• New fence shader (fancy fences) setting (requires shader model 3.0) and is on by default.
  
  
• Adjusted download times to (10, 7, 5, 3.5, 2.5) from previous (10, 8, 6, 4, 2).
  
• Ammo type upgrades for science now occur at 8: MEDIUM, 16: HEAVY, 32: ULTRA as opposed to previously 4: MEDIUM, 8: HEAVY, 16: ULTRA.
  
• Each science now increases re-arm rate by 1 instead of 3.
  
  
• Instant Action is now Random Seed with default options. This was previously Randomize All which could be a bit brutal on new players.
  
  
• Right / left aligned plan preview (ascii) legend text.
  
  
• Breaches now drip moisture and spark much less.
  
  
• The replay screen now notifies that only local replays are recorded (not networked).
  
  
• There are now three modes for network pub chat: PUBLIC (send to everyone), PARTY (send to your party only), and DEAF (send to / receive from your party but not receive public chat). When DEAF is selected while not in a party you will not receive any chat whatsoever.
  
• It is now possible to block / blacklist players in the network pub by clicking on the button with their name on it. You will not receive any chat from blocked players nor will the be allowed to join parties you host.
  
  
• The game now attempts to detect AMD GPUs (via driver description string) and will automatically set shader model 2.0 for maximum compatibility upon startup. You may still change the setting to shader model 3.0 at runtime but all evidence points to this not working properly (geometry not drawn) on all AMD GPUs.
  
• Shader model 2.0 now more properly incorporates material roughness on PBR materials, achieving a look that is far closer to shader model 3.0 (albeit with simplified reflections). Players may in general want to play on shader model 2.0 in order to potentially increase performance.
  
  
• System glitch sounds are now suppressed for all dead players.
  
• System glitch sounds are now only played for your own systems while you are ALIVE in a networked game, but play for all players while you are DEAD (waiting for reinforcements / spectating).
  
• Fixed miscellaneous erroneous player text colors due to infravision being activated.
  
  
• POTENTIAL bugfix for audio errors on linux (untested): I have removed aggressive audio playback positioning code which I suspect has been the cause for audio errors on linux.

As always, thank you for your support and patience.
/nornware AB c/o johno

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After many years I've finally decided it is time to release this little thing I built called Space Beast Terror Fright.

I can't say I really know how I feel about this; maybe this is what a 7 year pregnancy feels like. If course I never intended nor imagined that I would be working on this for so long, but as they say life does tend to get in the way.

From the original Greenlight submission to getting amazing press right off the bat, getting Greenlit in 2 weeks, realizing that I needed to quit my day job, finding an office, growing the team, shrinking the team, switching to working from home, shrinking the team some more, being homeless, to being forced to balance continued development with other jobs in order to pay the rent.

Then came the day my accountant started laughing at me because I was too afraid to check my bank account; that was when I realized that this thing was sort of working out and that I could do this full-time (albeit on a shoe-string). That was the day I decided that I would either succeed or be left standing in a really expensive crater.

Honestly this whole trip has been a coming of age story for me as a game designer. I've been in the games industry mainly as a programmer for many years, but over time I realized that I really do have an insanely opinionated creative agenda which eventually led me to starting nornware and trying to take myself seriously.

But it has been the interaction with the SBTF community that has been absolutely instrumental in pushing the game far beyond where it all started. The experience of "pants down" development of a product that has been both constantly functional and slowly expanding over all these years has taught me the value of balancing my own vision with the needs and desires of the actual players. And ultimately it has been all of you who have finally allowed me to emotionally lay my monsters down and realize that this game really has been finished for years now.

I stand today as a much more confident designer / programmer / director thanks to all of you. And there are still so many games left to make; there are still "worlds in there" for us to explore together.

sincerely,
/johno

build id: 61FED270

nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.


NEW EXPERIMENTAL NETWORK PROTOCOL (SHI6)

In an effort to improve the overall network experience, this update includes new and experimental netcode from 2022 (SHI6) along with the legacy 2018 netcode (CLSV1).

In the interest of being able to honestly compare the old and the new in this build it is possible to play both Local Area Network and Steam games using both protocols.

Please note that the front-end menu colors will be different (green rather than blue) on purpose to denote that you are playing on experimental netcode (SHI6).

I hope that you will all take the time to honestly compare the two variants and feed me back on your experiences.


MISCELLANEOUS

• Added unofficial Discord and community guides links.
  
  
• Updated Infravision shader, works better across legacy and vpbr materials.
  
• Contrast of aim assist icons and text vs Infravision
  
  
• Coolant ambient plays regardless of power state
  
  
• Explicitly polling for XBox360 controller connections when the drop-down is opened.
  
• XBox360 controller menu navigation has been completely removed.
  
  
• Fixed third person muzzle flare positions.
  
  
• Fixed erroneous weapon swapping on chat toggle.
  
• Fixed erroneous weapon swapping on mission menu toggle.
  
  
• Fixed / reset spectator / split-screen modes on reinforce (avoid getting stuck in non-self view).
  
  
• Displaying CotW scoring criteria in the leaderboard screen.
  
• Fixed CotW difficulty / power failures progress, guarding against infinite loop when selecting max difficulty (always happens at mission 32 (zero base)).
  
  
• Anisotropic filtering defaults to on (uses max for current device).
  
• Showing actual anisotropy setting.
  
• Showing GU description in settings.
  
• Fixed vertical text alignment of slider settings / better slider element collision.
  
• More mouselook range.
  
• Gui scale is now a drop-list with fixed settings.
  
• Better VPBR reflections (legacy simple reflections are now an option).
  
• New flashlight / lamp shape (legacy lamp is now a setting).
  
  
• White airlock in holotable (just like tracker).
  
• Scientist blip on tracker is always base color (not changed with Infravision).
  
• Reactor shield now shown in tracker.
  
• Drawing of security console and reactor shield (in tracker) obey normal map discovery rules.
  
  
• New level styles: Adamant(flipped), Bastion(flipped), Oracle(flipped).
  
• Iterated on labs.
  
  
• Fixed barrier frames during reactor overload.
  
• Fixed door numbers on control boxes during reactor overload (respect reactor safety protocol).
  
• Fixed missing target icon on broken barrier control boxes.
  
• Fixed erroneous crosshair disable when reactor safety protocol locks out frame control boxes (doors and fences).
  
• Disabled interaction prompt on frames during overload with respect to reactor safety protocol.
  
• Airlock door now opens immediately with reactor safety protocol enabled.
  
  
• Suppressed mist around doors, panics, and reactor shield in order to prevent clipping.
  
  
• New sounds for weapon swapping and Infravision toggle.
  
• New sounds for electronics system glitching.
  
• Relevant sounds converted to mono, saved 3.5MB.
  
• Fixed strange audio panning looking at feet (straight down)
  
• Fixed music to not go out of sync during power failures
  
  
• No longer distorting doors in z-axis, makes decals look better (also avoids popping doors out of door frames).
  
• Fixed broken airlock mesh when surrounded by alt-walls.
  
  
• Completion status for user plans is now shown in the list (and stored on disk locally).
  
  
• Modulating frequency of reactor shield while opening.
  
• Moved path nodes outside reactor shield (improves beast movement).
  
  
• Player rank is now displayed in various places (based on purchase date).

Please note that as it has been a while since the last update there may have been bugs introduced. As always, thank you for your support and patience.
/nornware AB c/o johno

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build id: 608BB9BA

nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.


(PROBABLY) PENULTIMATE EARLY ACCESS UPDATE
Much to my chagrin SBTF is now in its sixth year of development. That's way too long.

The past year or so hasn't really seen a huge number of updates, and much of my time has been spent on researching yet another potential re-write of the network code (I've talked about it as a "hybrid" system). Progress has been made in that direction, but ultimately I've come to realize that even though that system has the potential to increase perceived quality of the networking experience it won't actually add any new functionality.

I've also spent quite a bit of time on a SBTF Discord server (https://discord.gg/GepWN2V) talking to some of my users, and this has really improved my objective sense of where this game is at and as such I think it's time to draw the line.

The list of things that COULD be done is infinite, but I feel that SBTF has been in a pretty good place for quite a long time now. There is by this point quite a bit of resistence to change in the codebase, and also I'm much more motivated by the thought of working on a potential sequel product; I've already done quite a bit of research and prototyping along those lines.

Subsequently I'm hoping that Update 58 will be the next-to-last update for SBTF before it finally leaves Early Access. I'm expecting Update 59 to be necessary as I've been doing some pretty extensive changes to the code and as such expect bugs in Update 58, but I also plan for Update 59 to include all the absolutely-must-have polish changes as well.

Of course I will be monitoring the state of SBTF even beyond release, and will fix any critical bugs that may come up. Don't hesitate to report issues in the forums or via email.


NEW OPTION - BEASTS LURK
I have implemented a new option for Beast "lurk" behaviour. Since the ability for Beasts to hide / lurk in the infestation was implemented it has been observed that this can be exploited in conjunction with total infestation and map saturation (when the number of live Beasts reaches the game limit), resulting in a situation where all Beasts are lurking and will remain that way unless you shoot them or get too close.

This new option defaults to on (legacy behaviour) but with it turned off Beasts will never lurk in infestation, and this results in a generally more hectic gameplay experience (reminiscent of old). Note that in Randomize All / MotD this is among the options that will mutate on the fly, and I think this leads to even more dynamism in the overall experience; whole rooms of lurking Beasts may suddenly awake all at once. Also in Campaign of the Week this options starts on but will turn off over time as options randomly "get harder" over the course of the campaign.

NEW OPTION - REACTOR SAFETY PROTOCOL
Also new is the option for "reactor safety protocol" which is the relatively new behaviour of all barriers opening during a reactor overload (defaults to on). This addition has proven to be somewhat contentious in the community and that (along with the fact that I really wanted the Beast lurk option) led me to implement this as an option as well. Note however that this option does NOT mutate on the fly, but in Randomize All / MotD this will be randomized at map generation time. In CotW this will start off (legacy behaviour) and eventually change to on (all barriers open during overload).

Note also that you might want to adjust your user plan options, as the new options are new bits that will default to 0 / off.


INSTANT ACTION PIPELINE
It has been speculated that a rather common behaviour among players is a reluctance to actually host network parties while much preferring to join parties that are in progress. This has rather a detrimental affect on the health of the multiplayer community, and it got me thinking about ways to improve the general situation.

What I've come up with is an extra screen that precedes both the local game setup screen as well as entering the network pub, which allows access to the "Instant Action" pipeline. This is a much simplified screen which allows you to choose the number of players (in local mode) and your weapon loadout(s) and then simply jump straight into the action without any further setup required. This is technically equivalent to Randomize All, and all character progression is to those character slots, but you won't be exposed to any setup nor statistics before or after missions when in the Instant Action screen.

For network play things are a bit more complex under the hood, but everything is streamlined in order to get you into the action as fast and as painlessly as possible. When you press Launch Mission on the networked Instant Action screen you will automatically be placed in the first free slot of the first available party (in the interest of filling up all parties). If there are eligable parties you will simply become the host of your own new party (in Randomize All mode), and incoming players can / will join you as they come along.

Note also that this is 100% compatible with the legacy pub system which still exists and functions the same way as before. Regardless of how a party was started (Instant Action or via the pub) they are technically the same thing, with the only difference being that when Instant Action parties are initially hosted they will run in Randomize All mode with all default party options (friendly fire on, reinforcements 2, and public). The ideas here are to not fragment the user base at all, retain all deep legacy options, while also allowing for a fast-path into the game for those who are uninitiated or may simply be uninterested in messing with the options.

I hope that this addition will further ease players into the networked aspects of SBTF.


CHARACTERS / STATISTICS REWRITE
For the longest time I've wanted to properly support character statistics for all characters in a mission. With the implementation of reinforcements long ago this kind of broke, with the outcome screen showing only the last characters in each slot. I thought this would be pretty simple to fix, but it quickly ballooned in complexity and is the main reason this update has taken so long to complete.

The technical details are messy and lengthy and ultimately not really interesting, but finally I've (hopefully) managed to repair all of the damage caused by this change (among others), and now you can view statistics for all characters in the outcome screen using the scroll wheel while hovering with the mouse cursor above each of the "slots" (red, green, blue, gold). Because of the need to track the mouse cursor position both the outcome and the team statistics are now modal as opposed to previously being "mouse over" only - I realized that the problem of displaying all this information really becomes three-dimensional.

This might seem like a minor or even insignificant improvement to the game as a whole, and indeed had I known how difficult the implementation would prove to be I most likely would have skipped it. However it was all mixed up with numerous other improvements (not least being the new options) so I was reluctant to throw away the development branch entirely and as a result continued to push through. Technically there have been a number of other changes made under the hood that were intended to facilitate the hybrid network implementation, but again I've decided against doing that prior to release. That stuff will however most likely find its way into future products.


MISCELLANEOUS

• "SURVIVED" instead of "SUCCESS" in outcome table.
  
  
• User Plans are now robust for no internet connection / unavailable backend.
  
  
• Better user interface / incremental decoding of User Plans.
  
  
• Increase the number of vfx / sfx events from 32 to 64 per tick after identifying certain things being missed / dropped.
  
  
• Space Beast variants no longer have easily identfiable stripes on their tails, making them better camouflaged in infestation.
  
  
• LAN network mode now uses computer name instead of trying resolve a host name from ip adress (faster and more reliable).
  
  
• Networking is in general more robust, with all recoverable / non-fatal errors being silently ignored.
  
  
• The "rapid fire" bug in network mode has been addressed by fudging timestamps.
  
  
• Better replay restocking, showing currently parsed lines while still restocking.
  
  
• During reactor overload all barrier frames now alternate between evacuation prompt and time remaining until overload.
  
  
• During reactor overload fence frames now properly show evacuation prompt.
  
  
• During reactor overload all barrier control boxes are disabled if reactor safety protocol is on.

As always, thank you for your support and patience.
/nornware AB c/o johno

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