Hi everyone, our second Major Update is out now! The headline feature is co-op, but there are plenty of additions and improvements on top of that – something this post will cover.
Before we dive in, we’d like to say a huge thank-you to all our community members that helped playtest the game. The extra feedback has been invaluable helping us track down bugs and shaping our polish and balancing passes.
First up, some important logistical information:
Steam should auto-update to the latest version, which is 0.7.25563 (this is visible in the bottom-right of the main menu). If it’s a lower number, you can verify your install from the Steam Library and it should nudge Steam into updating.
Your profile saves will carry over (i.e. all your equipment you’ve unlocked thus far), but any in-progress escape run will not – so if you’re in the middle of a campaign and you don’t want to lose any new blueprints you haven’t banked, reach a gate and bank them before switching to the new version. If the game detects you’re trying to load an older save, it’ll give a reminder message in case you want to finish the run and bank any equipment on that old version, which is available as a beta branch (called "0.6.24541 - Major Update 1").
If you want to back up your profile saves for whatever reason, you can find them here:
Our guiding principle with co-op is that you should be able to play the game normally and choose to have friends dip in and out of your campaigns as much as you want – and crucially, your co-op partner should take any new equipment they bank into their own campaigns (or other co-op games). We certainly could have chosen a much easier and quicker path, but any other way felt too restrictive and a less fun experience.
Outside of the tutorial, any game – whether a new or existing one – can be opened or closed to co-op. If you’re starting a new profile and want to dive straight into co-op, you can skip the tutorial, although if this is your first time playing SENTRY we would recommend playing through the tutorial first :)
You can set a game to co-op via the Co-op Settings menu, which is accessible in the Ship Launch and Pause menus. If you have the game set to co-op, you’ll also see this menu in the Navigator and Ship Overview screens. You can invite friends in the Co-op Settings menu and via the Steam overlay, or set the game to be ‘Open’ so anyone can join.
You can have a co-op partner join at any point outside of combat. Similarly, your campaign isn’t tied to co-op once you start, they can leave any time (or be kicked!) and you’ll continue in Singleplayer (or can have someone else jump in if you choose).
When you press “Launch” on the main menu you’ll be taken to a sub-menu where you can start a new game, continue an existing one or join someone else’s. In the Join menu you can matchmake co-op games marked as ‘Open’ and see the status of any Steam friends.
The equipment handling works like this:
A co-op partner brings their own Equipment into your campaign. When you gain Equipment from a Supply Beacon, you’ll gain your own items. If your co-op partner banks this new equipment, then they’ll be able to use it in their own Singleplayer or other co-op games.
This works with the campaign and vessel unlocks too – basically if you would have unlocked it if you were playing in singleplayer, it should unlock through co-op.
New equipment that is found is only kept by the profile that found it. If a different co-op profile joins, they’ll be given enough resources to spend on equipment unlocks and upgrades so they’re not left behind.
If you don’t have any crew to respawn, then a player will take over the Guardian Cameras that are now dotted around levels. In the future we’d like to add more functionality to these so the spectating player can contribute in some way. Below is concept art of the Guardian Cameras when deactivated, activated and in-use:
In terms of difficulty, you’ll generally find co-op easier than singleplayer – if that’s the case, play Starfarer campaigns over Initiate.
That said, combat will be dynamically harder in co-op through the breach points during a wave. Roughly speaking if a wave would have come from two breach points in singleplayer, it’d come from three breach points in co-op.
Oh – and there’s additional co-op appropriate options to adjust in the Audio Settings menu, like Steam chat, audio device selection etc.
New Levels!
Plus a lot of work on the existing levels too.
First though, let’s cover the three new levels:
Logistics has crane arms moving overhead along the final stretch to the exit. If you shoot these, they’ll drop their contents. The red crates are explosive, while the grey ones will stagger enemies they fall on. The grey ones will also kill any Grubs they hit.
Chasm is dominated by a large walkway over a pit, so get ready to bust out the Vortex Glove and Conveyors!
Storage is split into two levels, with two spawns on the bottom and three up top. They all converge in a large and open central area right before the exit:
Every existing level has had work done on it too. Some may be small revisions, such as providing more places to put Deployables or fixing areas where you could see out of the level.
Others (Mess Hall, The Pit) have also had some routes made only accessible by the player to stop the enemies taking unexpected paths.
Fuel Exchange and Central Processing have received an extensive rework so definitely familiarise yourself with the changes before commencing the first wave.
Fuel Exchange has two routes on one side of the level, with two of the original spawns kept. We’ve made the spawn door ordering in this level more intuitive as well, but it may initially throw veterans!
Central Processing now has five spawns all on one side of the level, so it makes defences easier to manage. We also took the opportunity to optimise the level, so it should suffer less framerate drops than before.
Popular Requests
There have been several popular community requests that we’ve actioned:
You now receive the scrap bonus at the start of the Prep Phase and not when the wave is triggered. This should mean no more crazy few seconds placing down deployables when a wave commences
Rewards during Prep Phases are now a flat rate, so you don’t receive a bonus from triggering a wave early – we like the idea of a special ship that has this modifier, so it may make a return in future if you picked that vessel
We’ve increased the time between waves spawning, particularly before the first wave
You now get a flat rate Materials reward for completing a level, so there is no resource penalty for leaking enemies. This was resulting in players who were struggling entering a death spiral – you’re already getting punished by losing system health, so you don’t need the double punishment of losing Materials too
We know there are other areas of friction people are experiencing, and future updates will look to improve/resolve those as we work our way toward full release.
Massive Rebalancing
We’ve extensively rebalanced several areas of the game, all moving away from our previous releases and more toward our ultimate goal.
This affects the upgrade system, economy and combat although they’re all tied in to one another.
First, the Upgrade system: It was weird that you could start a campaign and immediately upgrade something to be Mastered (or close enough), then only upgrade occasionally as you progressed. Now you work towards the higher tiers, unlocking them in the latter stages of a campaign. This also means that getting equipment you already have from a Supply Beacon but at a higher level provides a better bonus. We’ve also changed it so that you only spend Research on upgrading items, not unlocking them from your Equipment list.
For the economy, you now receive a much greater amount of Materials from combat – and as mentioned above, regardless of performance too. This means that upgrading tends to happen after you’ve finished a battle, which is a more natural point in the flow. Repairing a level is now more expensive, but this is due to the large increase in Materials you receive.
In combat, we’ve tried to increase the intensity and variety across each Sector to feel both more exciting and that there’s a natural step up of difficulty as you progress – matching the player power curve.
Enemies also now have different individual escape costs, which improves two areas: the first was the disconnect between small enemies and large enemies having the same escape impact, now you’ll have to prioritise your targets accordingly. The second was that it’d be rare to lose Convoy levels through escaping enemies, the lack of threat not evoking a sense of attrition across an individual battle or entire campaign.
Combined, all these changes should put you in a position where you have to increasingly weigh up tough decisions over the course of a run.
We’re naturally keen to get your thoughts on these changes! When providing feedback, it’d be handy not just to focus on specifics, but the overall effect too. Holistically, we feel this is a better experience and the right direction to be heading in, we hope you feel the same.
Other Stuff!
Those were the headline changes in MU2, but there are a whole lot of other improvements and additions, some of which I’ll collate here:
Audio:
New combat music
All combat tracks now have unique final wave music
Flame Shot now has unique secondary fire audio and reload
New sound effect when recycling deployables
New sound effect for P9M firing and toggling scoped mode
Added a setting that allows you to choose whether the game mutes itself or not when the game is not in focus
New sound effect for enemy grenade explosions
The Storm Warden’s heavy pistol now has its own sound effect
Suit warning plays when impacted by poison or fire-based attacks
Bile Hound now has its own pain and death audio
Other Balancing Changes:
Lowered enemy grenade frequency
Scrap cost reductions for many deployables
Gave Thermal Dischargers a buff so they more reliably hit enemies
Campaign starts now also provide a gear item if you’ve previously unlocked one
Changed how the level health bar functions, so it’s easier to learn how much a certain enemy will deplete the bar when they escape
The first sector now includes an extra Supply Beacon
Bug-fixes:
Enemies will now only get up if they are on the floor (no more getting up in mid-air)
Options text in the settings menu is now translated
Fixed it so the pulse pads automatically kill the Giant Slugs
Fixed the ship launch sequence not appearing correctly on ultra-wide resolutions
Fixed an issue where the resolution setting would be broken if the value stored in that person’s settings.ini file was not a supported resolution
If you disabled the crosshair in the user settings, it would break using weapons in scoped mode
Miscellaneous:
Text files are now shipped as assets outside the build, which allows easier text updating without having to also update a build
Provided additional max framerate options
Scrap colour has changed from grey to yellow to match the UI icon
Upgrade nodes now have custom icons
Removed the After Action Report letter grades. This was making people feel like they failed and should replay the level, when really the campaign is about battling through the Sector, not perfecting everything. End of level grades will likely make a return in future arcade modes.
Increased camera speed on chasing ship/missiles. We know this is an area we’ve received lots of comments on and are planning on looking into other improvements for this, we just need to work out a way to convey the information without it being frustrating.
Miscellaneous optimisations
Mastered weapons now have different skins
We hope you like the latest additions for Major Update 2! Once you’ve checked it out, don’t forget to leave a Steam review :)
We’ll be keeping an eye on our various channels to pick up any feedback or thoughts you may have. While we may not respond to every post, be assured that we read them all and document them for future reference.
While the build has received extensive playtesting by our community, with each influx of additional players there’s the potential for more bugs to be uncovered, so we’ll most likely be doing a follow-up patch to pick up on anything that crops up, plus a few other bits we’d like to squeeze in. The latest translations will also be added as part of this.
Once the patch is done, we’ll switch focus to Major Update 3. This should return to the cadence that occurred with Major Update 1 and we’re very much looking forward to implementing new features that should greatly improve the game.
Thanks for the support!
The Fireblade Crew
Major Update 2 Beta Test (and January Dev Transmission)
Hi everyone,
You can now play a preview of Major Update 2! Any feedback or bugs you tell us about really help us put the finishing touches to the upcoming release and are therefore greatly appreciated.
To gain access, you’ll need to switch to a beta branch:
Find SENTRY in your Steam library and right-click on it, selecting “Properties”
In the menu that pops up, choose “Betas”
Select “Beta Branch” in the “Beta Participation” drop-down list
In your Library you should see “[betabranch]” appended to the game name
When you play the new version, the most important thing to consider is that while your profile saves will carry over (i.e. all your equipment you’ve unlocked thus far), your current escape run will not – so if you’re in the middle of a run and you don’t want to lose any new blueprints you haven’t banked, reach a gate and bank them before switching to the new version.
It’s also generally good practice to back up your profile saves ahead of any Major Update, just in case you’re the one that finds an obscure bug. You can find your profile and save folder here: C:\Users[Username]\AppData\LocalLow\Fireblade Software\SENTRY\Saves\Steam\[SteamID]
Headline Additions
The major additions are full campaign co-op and three new levels: Storage, Chasm and Logistics. The latter was one of the levels you could play in the Combat Co-op Test.
Most of the existing levels have been reworked. Some, like Central Processing and Fuel Exchange have had comprehensive changes; others have had smaller but important adjustments, from general flow to individual deployable placements.
There’s been a lot of smaller changes too that generally improve the game or deal with popular community requests; I’ll cover everything in greater detail for the post that’ll accompany the full release of MU2.
Co-op
Our general ethos with co-op is that you should be able to have friends dive in and out of your game as much as you want – and importantly, the client should be able to take any new equipment they find with them back to their own games (or other co-op games).
We felt this approach would be the best experience, because the alternatives (although easier to develop) would have been disappointing for the co-op partner.
Here’s some useful information to get started with co-op:
Outside of the tutorial, any game – whether it be a new or existing one – can be opened or closed to co-op. This is achieved through the co-op settings menu.
If you’re starting a new profile and want to dive straight into co-op, you can skip the tutorial. Obviously if this is the first time you’ve played SENTRY we wouldn’t recommend that though :)
The co-op settings menu can be accessed through the Pause or Ship Launch menu. If you’re playing co-op, it’ll also be viewable in the Navigator and Overview screens
You can have a co-op partner join at any point outside of combat. Similarly, your campaign isn’t tied to co-op once you start, they can leave any time and you’ll continue in Singleplayer (or can have someone else jump in).
You can matchmake co-op games marked as ‘Open’ and invite friends via the Steam overlay. We’re working to add in-game friend invites.
A co-op partner brings their own Equipment into your campaign. When you gain Equipment from a Supply Beacon, you’ll gain your own items. If your co-op partner banks this new equipment, then they’ll be able to use it in their own Singleplayer or other co-op games.
This works with the campaign and vessel unlocks too – basically if you would have unlocked it if you were playing in singleplayer, it should unlock through co-op.
New equipment that is found is only kept by the profile that found it. If a different co-op profile joins, they’ll be given enough resources to spend on equipment unlocks and upgrades so they’re not left behind.
Generally speaking, you’ll find co-op easier than singleplayer – if that’s the case, play Starfarer campaigns over Initiate.
That said, combat will be dynamically harder in co-op through the breach points during a wave. Roughly speaking, if a wave would have come from two breach points in singleplayer, it’d come from three breach points in co-op.
You can’t mute or kick co-op players yet, it’s on the way.
The update and co-op have been extensively tested by both ourselves and our Discord community, but there’s nothing like volume of players to flush out bugs – so we’re particularly keen to hear any feedback.
In order to not mix up beta branch feedback with the main game, there’s a dedicated area on the Steam forums to post your beta branch comments: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1252680/discussions/0/
We’re still busy improving the balancing and fixing bugs before Major Update 2 releases, but your feedback will really help and is appreciated.
We endeavour to respond to comments and feedback as much as we can, but rest assured that even if we don’t personally reply we do read and note everything. Here’s a bunch of useful links to where you can reach us:
Once we feel the beta branch has been sufficiently tested we’ll release Major Update 2, and my accompanying post will include the details on all the changes.
Thanks for your continued support!
Happy Holidays (and December Dev Transmission)
Hello everyone,
Our Discord Playtesters are putting the full campaign co-op through its paces, so we’re keeping a keen eye on any issues that crop up from that!
As mentioned in last month’s Dev Transmission, we’ll follow the same template as we did with the combat co-op build, where we tested with increasing group sizes until the open Steam test. This worked really well in that we ironed out a lot of issues before the majority of people got to play it.
While we’ve currently got enough testing coverage, we’ll likely welcome another swathe of Discord members into the Playtest role in January to accompany an updated co-op build, so if that’s of interest head over and keep an eye on the Announcements channel.
The Autumn and Winter sales have recently added a lot of new members to the SENTRY community, so if you’re interested in playing the combat side of co-op now there are instructions here:
While co-op has been a large focus for Adam this month, we’ve still been making progress on some new features we touched on in the November Dev Transmission, including:
The vendor needed a vessel to be represented on the Navigator, so we’ve been concepting that:
Sticking with the vendor, our original plan was to just make the top half of the character for when they’re shown in the UI panel while selling their wares – however after discussion we felt it safer to make the full body to give us flexibility later (it’s a lot more efficient to make the full character in one go rather than add a bottom half down the line) – but what does that bottom half look like? Here’s what we’re currently deliberating between:
Alex has also made the character models for the three new enemies we showed concepts for last month. I got her to stick all our enemies (minus a few visual-only variants on the larger characters) in a lineup so you can see how the roster is shaping up:
We also started concepts on another new enemy, but I’ll show those once we’re further along.
From the Community!
As always, we finish off the Dev Transmission with some cool stuff from the community.
This month Discord user Waste-o-Spacebar made us laugh when he shared this clip of him and a co-op buddy placing a lot of barrels before igniting one – it goes about as well as you’d expect…
Here’s a bunch of useful links to where you can reach us:
The end of the year is a natural time for reflection, and we’ve loved seeing how you’ve all reacted to the Early Access release of SENTRY.
Aside from people generally enjoying the game (which is ultimately why we’re all here) it’s been great to see your comments have been thoughtful, cohesive and aligned with our own plans. This helps us know we’re all pulling in the same direction. That’s important because being such a small team means we only have so much ‘muscle’, so a big thank-you to everyone who acts as a force multiplier and spends the time letting us know your feedback.
While co-op has certainly taken longer than we’d like, we’d rather not rush such an important feature and risk disappointing everyone who is keen to play it (this approach has thus far paid dividends with the co-op combat test). We’re conscious that any delays incurred here shouldn’t impact our plans for the main game – so rest assured it won’t have a detrimental effect on the rest of SENTRY. We’d rather take a bit longer to add everything we want than stick to some arbitrary date – the game is the most important thing after all. The eagle-eyed may have noted the Early Access blurb on the store page has been updated to reflect our current thinking, changing from our original estimate to Summer 2025. We’ll update this as we hone in on full release.
We’ll be taking the week between Christmas and New Years Eve off, but I’ll be keeping an eye on the forums in case anyone needs assistance or has questions.
However you spend this time of year, everyone at Fireblade wishes you a great end to 2024 :)
Dev Transmission (November 2024)
Hello everyone, here’s the latest SENTRY news!
Co-op!
At the start of the month we launched the first public co-op test (details here), which was focused on putting the combat side of co-op through its paces. We did a lot of private testing among our Discord community before we opened this up on Steam, but it was encouraging to see that it handled the greater volume of players well – so to everyone that tested this, a massive thank-you!
While we’ve got a list of things we’d like to improve/add in future, because there weren’t any emergency issues we felt it was better to plough on with the full campaign co-op. The basic navigator and overview are all networking correctly and we’re currently deep in adding the proper menu flow. Beyond that, it’s ensuring that the progression functions as it should, for example equipment discovered (and banked) while playing in a co-op partner’s campaign should then appear in your own profile for use in future sessions (whether those be in singleplayer, joining a friend or your friend joining you).
For the combat co-op test, it worked well ironing out the issues with our lovely Discord playtesters first before rolling this out to an open test on Steam, and we’ll follow the same procedure with the campaign co-op test. So Discord peeps: keep an eye on the announcement channel in December for news on this test :)
The existing combat co-op test will be available to play until the full campaign co-op is ready.
A sneak peek!
With our sole programmer being occupied with co-op, recently Sean and Alex have been either working on new levels – one of which you’ll have seen in the combat co-op test, or queuing up content for after Major Update 2 – so I thought it might be cool for you to see just a snippet of some of what we have in the pipeline. Big caveats apply with showing early work of course – it’s likely to change, has working titles, could ultimately get rejected etc.
First up is some new equipment. The Shuriken is an active ability that bounces from target to target, while the overhead laser is a ceiling-based deployable. The Steam Jets cover too many bases at the moment, so they’ll be adjusted to perform a slightly different function (like damage-over-time) which then provides an opening for this new instant-damage-dealing trap.
Melee weapons were a popular request, so a high-frequency blade and stun-stick are the two we’re looking at making next:
Not to be outdone, the Collective have reinforcements en route:
The two flyers will be larger than the current breed. While one will perform heavy bombardments from afar, the other will boost nearby enemies. The creature on the right will have a special ability that disables nearby deployables.
We’ve picked these enemies as next up in the queue because their behavior is different from the existing roster, and should provide an additional consideration when it comes to target prioritisation – you probably don’t want to leave an enemy that boosts allies for too long, nor one that temporarily disables your defences…
Next up is another alien – but this one isn’t trying to kill you!
(we haven’t decided on the colour scheme yet)
These vendors will appear on the navigator, and visiting nodes with their vessels present will allow you to see what equipment they have for sale, which should make getting those missing weapons etc. a bit easier to obtain.
Finally – and while there’s nothing visual to accompany this – one thing you will see in Major Update 2 is that enemies now have differing escape costs – so a larger escaping enemy will do more damage to the sub-system health than a tiny one. As this nudges the difficulty higher, Sean has done some equipment rebalancing to compensate.
He’s also been adding more wave types – partly in preparation for when we do the next campaign above Starfarer – but you’ll see some of these changes bleed into the existing campaigns too.
From the Community!
We’ll finish off this post with some cool stuff from the community.
Discord user Jajomba is always digging around in the game files, so we had a good chuckle when he took our alien soldier and modded him into Bomb Rush Cyberfunk:
If you have (or see) any cool SENTRY-related stuff, send it my way :)
Feedback is invaluable help in improving the game, so keep it coming! You can reach us on all these places:
Thanks for the support, it’s been great to see the campaign co-op coming along – but we’re equally excited about returning to the long list of things we want to improve and new features to add once Major Update 2 has been released! And just a heads up, the December Dev Transmission will be posted a bit earlier as we’ll be taking the Christmas week off.
Combat Co-op Technical Test (and October Dev Transmission)
Hello everyone, we've released a build you can opt into to play combat in co-op!
Before I dive into the details: a big thanks to those in our Discord community who have helped playtest co-op thus far, a lot of the revisions and bug-fixes have been a direct result of your feedback.
The Combat Co-op Technical Test (which is a mouthful, but an accurate description) is designed for you to help us put combat co-op through its paces and stress how it performs to a larger audience - and have fun while doing so :)
If you wish to play it, right-click the game in your Library and select "Properties", followed by "Betas". In the drop down list, select "cooptest - Public Co-op Playtesting" and you should see the branch name appear next to the game in Steam. Once you're playing, the bottom-right of the main menu should display a build ID "Co-op Playtest 0.7.25115" (or higher)
Some important information to read before diving in:
This is for combat only - the full campaign co-op is in progress and will be released in a future test.
The demo takes the form of two levels that are randomly selected when you play: an updated Mess Hall and Logistics, which outside of playtests you wouldn't have seen before. We've picked these levels because between them they cover most level systems (death pits, venting, overhead cranes that drop explosive crates)
The co-op front end menus are very minimal at the moment, they test the underlying code which is the most important thing, and the proper menus will follow along with the full campaign co-op test.
This doesn't use your main game profile and saves, so it won't impact your campaign playthroughs. It's never a bad idea to back up your saves though!
The "Find Game" option is essentially Matchmaking and is for open play with strangers.
The "Private Game" option is for you to host. Choose the "Invite Friend" option to invite someone on your friends list who owns SENTRY to play with you. I've put the game on discount this week so you can tell your friends now is an ideal time to jump in :)
The in-game voice chat has settings to change. If you're using an external source like Discord you may want to switch off the in-game chat otherwise you'll hear it twice.
If one person disconnects, the other will too. In the full campaign it'll be different because there'll always be a host, so if the client disconnects the host will continue playing their campaign.
As this is a beta, please report any bugs/feedback in the dedicated Steam forum or on our Discord.
Oh, and because this is a standalone test please don't focus too much on the difficulty as the context of the full campaign matters a lot! It's why we're referring to this as a "Technical Test" - we want to know about bugs, or anything you feel that is missing from the experience (for example, one thing on our to-do list is to add a log so you know when your partner dies etc).
We know that having standalone combat gameplay modes outside of a campaign is a highly requested feature, and we're planning on those modes being added at the end of Early Access.
As it's the end of the month, I thought I'd wrap our usual Dev Transmission into this post too - so here's what other stuff we've been doing in October:
A new level called Storage:
Tweaks from feedback on the recent new or updated levels and arting up those changes
The co-op test build is a snapshot of our latest changes, so it’ll have picked up a bunch of weapon and deployable balancing changes Sean has been making
You’ll also see that the early start bonus is gone. This was making people feel too under pressure, but will probably make an appearance in a new ship type for those that want it
There has also been some enemy balancing tweaks, with a lowered chance of soldier enemies throwing grenades. There's still a chance that grenade spam can happen, but it should be less frequent now (as much as I know some of you love “GRENADEGRENADEGRENADEGRENADE”…)
The Storm Warden’s hand cannon now has unique audio (it was previously using the alien shotgun sound effect)
With our sole programmer being wrapped up in co-op, Alex has been concepting up some future deployables and enemies to get ahead on future content – I’d love to show them as they’re very cool, however I don’t want to get ahead of myself quite yet just in case they don’t make the cut for whatever reason :)
A retweeting favour to ask
I don’t normally ask for this sort of thing, but as we’ve been nominated for an award and I was writing this post anyway I figured why not?
Anyway – the award is essentially a popularity contest and as we’re the only self-published game in it I’d love to stick it to the games that have big teams and publishers (just kidding, I have buddies at those studios). Simply quote tweet this post with the text:
“I vote for SENTRY to win the @gugamesfest Players’ Choice Award at #ggAwards24”
Much appreciated!
From the Community!
We’ll finish off this post with some cool stuff from the community.
Steam user Grinnij created their own render of the P9:
We always get a kick out of seeing this sort of thing, so please flag any fan art you see on your travels!
Feedback is incredibly important in improving the game, so please keep it coming! You can reach us on all these places:
Thanks for the support, while we’re keen to resume work on the full campaign co-op, if there’s anything particularly urgent that crops up we’ll update the combat test build and let you know.
Dev Transmission (September 2024)
Hi all, our programmer Adam is continuing to work through the mountain of tasks in order to get the Combat Co-op Test ready for public consumption, which is his primary focus – it’s getting closer!
Originally, we were thinking that this upcoming combat co-op test would be friends/invite only and thus those people could utilise Discord for voice chat, however we felt that it was important to also test open play, and therefore needed to add in-game voice support. This includes various additional voice-related settings to tweak to your preference.
We also found that when designing how you’d logistically connect and play with one another, we had an increasing amount of questions around how this would work in the full campaign. While we had designs for this, the devil is truly in the details and creating the exact UI flow, answering those specifics and solving those edge cases flushes out all sorts of horrible problems that needed resolution. An added benefit to doing this is that there are some shared assets and code between both the combat co-op test and what will be used in the full game.
Our testing has also thrown up some issues that we’d ideally sort too, things like one player sneaking into the other player’s pod at exact moments and getting stuck.
All told, that’s put us a bit behind where we were hoping to be, but important progress nonetheless. We’re just as eager to get this out as you are to play it; we just need to make sure we do it the right way and not rush something that doesn’t meet your expectations.
Levels: Chasm & Logistics!
With our sole programmer working on co-op, we’ve got Sean and Alex churning through new levels.
With Logistics and Chasm having had multiple playtests and refinements, both have now had their art pass from Alex.
I’ve personally been having a lot of fun with the Vortex Glove, Vortex Grid and Conveyors in Chasm – there’s lots of opportunities to throw enemies into the abyss:
In Logistics, we’ve made the overhead conveyors MUCH easier to hit so they release their crates directly below them. We also made the non-explosive crates they drop stun any enemies they hit, although the image below shows the explosive variety:
Levels: Central Processing v2.0!
We have a reworked Central Processing out with our playtesters. Sean has simplified the routes into the core room and ensured the walls next to the windows were adjusted to allow effective deployable placement when the shutters were closed:
We’re working to close off those long sightlines the enemy had on the core, so they shouldn’t be able to snipe it from as far away as they could previously:
The player spawn area has been completely redesigned. It’s simpler and shorter so you can quickly get back into the action:
All enemy spawns (the old A and C, along with new placements for B and D) are situated in the same cardinal direction, so you're able to better defend on a single front:
That means the old B and D spawns have been removed – we’re thinking the layouts for that side of the original map could be the basis for a future level. Sean talks about some of his workings and thought process here, if you’re interested.
With this rework of Central Processing, we’ll also use this opportunity to ensure the level has an improved framerate, as it was one of our worst performing levels. And speaking of optimisations, Alex has done a pass over the Crossing, so you’ll see improvements to loading times on that level once the Major Update releases.
Levels: Fuel Exchange v2.0
Fuel Exchange has also got a design pass to improve it. Some of these original levels may feel acceptable as they are, but as we saw with Mess Hall having a subsequent pass accounting for player feedback can really improve things (although at the time Mess Hall had more overt issues!)
The primary change is around the old Operations room. Whereas three routes used to converge at this point, now the old A spawn meets up with D and the old B and C routes go through here:
I talk about “old” breach points, because we’ve renamed them so that A to D goes from left-to-right as you enter the level. So that means the new A & B (old A and D) are off to the left, while the new C & D (old B & C) are off to the right. A bit initially confusing for veterans, but the objectives are easier to read now.
There’s some good places in the map for the player to rotate between A/B and C/D, some of these are one-way drops:
The new Fuel Exchange hasn’t gone out to playtesters yet, so we’d expect some changes to come from reviewing their feedback.
As with all our new levels, once we’ve had the chance to incorporate playtest feedback we’ll pass it over to Alex so she can finish the art.
From the Community!
As is usual, we’ll finish off the Dev Transmission with some cool stuff from the community.
Discord user TheCartoon1st has drawn one of our enemies emerging victorious from a battle with a turret:
We love seeing this sort of thing, so if you spot anything cool on your travels please send it our way.
Speaking of community, thank-you to those that supported any of the games in the recent Special Effect sale we participated in. All of the games on this event page contribute toward the charity, so hopefully you picked up some good games for less, along with helping a good cause at the same time :)
We track all of your feedback in a big list, so keep it coming! If we don’t respond to every single post/review, be assured we read them all. You can reach us on all these places:
Thanks for the support, as soon as the co-op combat test is up I’ll be posting about it!
Dev Transmission (August 2024)
Hi everyone, work is progressing nicely on Major Update 2 and all being well we’ll be having a public co-op test in September. As mentioned in the previous Dev Transmission, this first test will be focused on combat only, the campaign co-op test will follow on from that.
Some of the co-op focused tasks we’ve done in August relate around people playing in edge-case but valid circumstances. For example, what happens when people playing together have differing Dispenser upgrade levels? How does the game treat pre-placed dispensers?
We’ve solved this by differentiating player-placed and pre-placed dispensers, and these have differing models to reflect the changes:
As we were making changes in this area, we thought it’d also be nice to have model variants for Mastered versions of the dispensers too.
Another edge-case we’ve tackled is how co-op handles lives – specifically what happens when there are no more crew for a respawn? When this happens the dead player will enter a spectator mode. We’re putting a bunch of security cameras around levels and players that cannot respawn will commandeer them. The image below shows the three states security cameras can be in; inactive, active and controlled by a player. The latter is useful so the person still in combat can see which camera is currently controlled by their ally:
In order for players in this state to still contribute to the fight, we’re looking at giving certain abilities in this mode. Tagging enemies, remotely collecting scrap, some form of enemy stunning and more are all being considered for implementation.
At some point it’ll be good to expand this functionality out to spectators controlling turrets, but that’s a future task as it’s a bit more involved.
We’ve implemented the final set of third party animations so you can now see the other player perform all crouch-related actions and fixed a lot of sound effects that weren’t playing correctly in co-op.
We’ll be putting the combat co-op test through its paces among our Discord community first, but as soon as the public branch is available we’ll create a Steam announcement so you can dive in and let us know your thoughts.
New Music!
Barry has been back on the project in August and has made a bunch of new tracks which we’re planning to include as part of Major Update 2. While the majority of these are new music for combat, there’s some new Navigator music too.
As a sneak peek, here’s a snippet of one of the new combat tracks:
We get a lot of questions around when we’ll be releasing the soundtrack, this will be closer to full release.
New Levels!
Sean has created two new levels: Logistics and Chasm. Our Discord playtesters have provided feedback on the greybox versions which we’ll action before these get handed over to Alex to finish the art.
Chasm has a lot of places where you can throw enemies into the abyss:
Logistics allows you to shoot overhead conveyors to drop explosive crates on enemies as they are on the final stretch to the exit:
We’re also planning on giving Central Processing a pass for Major Update 2, it’s our oldest level and it shows!
Weapon Skins!
When you master a weapon, you’ll now get a special weapon skin for it:
Weapon skins have been a popular request, so this is likely an area we’ll expand upon in future.
Other Stuff!
With one programmer, one artist and one designer Major Update 2 has thus far proven to be a dependency nightmare – Adam is almost exclusively working on co-op, which is a very technically intensive task – so Alex and Sean have had to work on areas that don’t require a lot of code support (like the levels mentioned above).
It has however given us the opportunity to look further ahead at content that would be added beyond Major Update 2, so we have some early concepts of melee weapons, designs for adding vendors into the campaign, visualizing attacking enemies before entering levels and some other cool things that are part of the longer-term plans.
From the Community!
As is usual, we’ll finish off the Dev Transmission with some cool stuff from the community.
This month, Discord user Jajomba has put together a mockup of a new enemy he’d like to see in the game:
He described this as a back-stabbing, vent-crawling, wall-climbing commando type enemy:
We love seeing this sort of thing, whether it be fan art, impressive gameplay clips or whatever – send them our way on any of our socials or direct to me via our Discord and we’ll share with the community (with your permission of course).
Keep giving us your feedback! We track it all in a big list and even if we don’t respond to every single post/review, be assured we read them all. You can reach us on all these places:
Aside from the Devlog and Patch above, co-op – which is the headline feature of MU2 – has been our priority.
Co-op is split into two areas on SENTRY; Combat and the Campaign. The combat co-op requires a lot of technical support but is reasonably straightforward from a design perspective. The Campaign co-op is the exact opposite; it being turn-based doesn’t require any of the same level of technical investment as fast-paced FPS/TD combat gameplay does, but ensuring it works well with progression sharing etc. involves a lot of design planning.
That means during the development of MU2 we’ll likely run two public beta branch tests. The first would be in a demo format that allows players to really hammer the co-op combat gameplay and flush out any issues there that we can work on, with the latter beta branch test being the fully fledged campaign co-op. We’ll keep you updated with our progress!
With all eyes on co-op this month, this’ll be Adam’s focus for a while. We’re expecting Sean and Alex to increasingly work on other areas while Adam is ploughing through his co-op tasks – but more on that in the next Dev Transmission…
From the Community!
I’ll finish off with some cool stuff from the community – I’m often posting impressive gameplay clips to various short form video sites (TikTok, FB/Insta Reels and YT Shorts links below) and it’s always cool to see the amazing skill levels on display.
Here’s some fan art from Twitter user CN_Blackraven, imagining the Soldier enemy and Auto Turret as female variants:
SENTRY dating sim when?
Finally Discord user “The Darter” has made it his personal mission to escape every level and go where no designer ever intended. Here’s a screengrab of one of his escapades, getting into the Server room under the glass floor in Mainframe:
If you can see it, The Darter has probably been there.
If you’ve got any interesting gameplay captures, fan art or anything cool you’d like to show us – share them on any of our socials or send them direct to me via our Discord. We’ll share it (with your permission of course) on our various channels and we love seeing it – I’ve been sent some exceptionally awesome stuff recently I’ll share in a future Dev Transmission.
Keep telling us your thoughts! We keep track of them all in a big list and even if we don’t respond to every single post/review, be assured we read them all. You can reach us on all these places:
Thanks for all the support and if you haven’t done so already, please leave a Steam review!
SENTRY is in the Tower Defense Fest!
SENTRY is in the Steam Tower Defense Fest! Unsurprisingly, we’re big fans of the genre – but SENTRY isn’t your typical Tower Defense/FPS hybrid, so I thought it might be useful for people checking us out for the first time to have a little explainer.
We wanted to do something different with Action Defense games. After all, OMD, Dungeon Defenders and Sanctum already exist and therefore our vision is a twist on the usual format :)
This originally stemmed from thinking about what defending a spaceship from an alien horde would actually be like. For us, we felt that it should be less passive and involve a desperate, attritional defense with opportunities to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. This feeling has ultimately driven what SENTRY became, and how it differs from other games in the genre.
For example; while you absolutely need deployables (our name for traps and turrets) to help repel the hordes, you are the most powerful weapon and success relies on you constantly fighting. You’re a fast, responsive character and as you can output a lot of damage, should be where the action is heaviest. To match that, enemies are less zombie-like and will put up a fight.
The game takes place in a non-linear campaign. As you pick an escape route from Earth, you’ll be constantly boarded and attacked in random parts of your ship. Often, this will be in multiple places at once, so you’ll have to choose where and when to defend. For each enemy that escapes, that level will be harder to defend if it’s attacked again – so make every bullet count.
This also means that sometimes you’ll lose levels and victorious enemy forces will progress through your vessel – as long as the enemy doesn’t destroy the Ship’s Core or all of the defending crew, the campaign and your escape attempt continues. This is a different approach in the context of a linear TD game, where losing is a blocker to progression. In SENTRY however, occasional loss of levels will happen and is okay! Think of it as losing the battle but not the war :)
Depending on your performance in combat over the course of a campaign, you could succeed in a blaze of glory, limp over the finish line… or die trying. Because the game is run-based, there’s always another escaping ship that needs your help. Each run is varied by choosing different vessels with modifiers, campaigns, randomised enemy forces and the weapons/deployables etc. you’ve unlocked on previous escapes. Each piece of your equipment has an upgrade path too.
Because we’re in Early Access, you can find our Roadmap here:
So that’s SENTRY – if all of the above sounds to your liking, please check us out! To those TD fans finding us for the first time I hope this post has proven helpful. Hit us up on the forums or any of our socials (links are on the side bar of the store page) if you have any questions - and enjoy the TD Fest :)
Update notes for Build Version Number 0.6.24541
While we were waiting for our translations to be supplied, we took the opportunity to fix some bugs and do some balancing based on your feedback:
Added the translations for new text that came in Major Update 1: Starfarer (details of that update can be found here)
Peacekeeper now shows secondary ammo on Equipment and Loadout Menus
Flame Shot primary fire no longer does friendly fire damage to Turrets
When performing a melee attack with the Flame Shot, it now plays the correct impact VFX
Flame Shot and Peacekeeper bars weren't updating as you upgraded the weapons
Fixed a bug where the SMG could disappear when switching to it
Adjusted some wall decorations so it's easier to place deployables on them
Tagged a small sign as illegal for building purposes, so that you won't have the deployable ghost appear on an area that is far too small to build on
Fixed the small hitch that can occur during simultaneous character spawning
The Launch menu will now remember the last ship/campaign setup
Fixed the broken aiming on the shotgun-toting alien soldier after they flinched
Did a balancing pass on all deployables, including their upgrade paths
Adjusted the frequency of ammo drops
Changed how countdown lengths were displayed so that they're visually more consistent
Fixed a bug where enemies could occasionally get stuck if they collided with the bottom of a ladder
Fixed an issue where some larger enemies could get stuck in the doorway from the pods into the canteen area in Mess Hall
Fixed some grammar and punctuation issues in English. Also improved consistency in some of the gameplay terms we were using
Fixed an issue in The Pit where scrap wasn't being auto-collected if it fell into the central hole
Landmines and Rivets now do bonus damage to Giant Slugs
Reduced the maximum amount of Charger enemies that can spawn at a time
Reduced the damage from the Dog lunge attack
Improved the Railgun Mastered upgrade
Flame Shot and Peacekeeper balancing pass
Now that's done, we'll continue with our Major Update 2 focus. But rest assured if anything critical crops up we'll jump on a hot-fix.
