SENTRY News

Update notes for Build Version Number 0.7.25599

Generally speaking, this patch makes the balancing feel more refined and we've fixed some issues that people had reported. Specifically:

Fixed a seam in the door collision that meant there was a (very small) chance that Grub enemies would get stuck just below the ground if the door was destroyed. If this happened it would seem like the level couldn't complete because of this rogue enemy that was trapped in a hard to spot location.
Client can now see the picture-in-picture when enemy vessels/missiles are moving
Fixed the "Waiting for other player" text that would flash on for 1 frame on the After Action report in singleplayer
Guardian Camera UI now correctly shows the Steam username of the player operating it
Fixed an issue where the Steam username would occasionally appear blank
After seeing the campaign victory/defeat screen and both players click continue, the client would be told they were disconnected if they clicked continue first. We've fixed it so in that situation they now go to the main menu without the error message.
Disabled a rogue piece of collision on the Guardian cameras that was making building on them slightly finicky
Fixed an issue on the friends UI that meant if you had enough friends for the menu to have the scroll bar appear, the "add" buttons would get misaligned
Tweaked some escape values on enemies
Increased the health of the Core
Adjustments to the final battle in Sector 3 so it should feel more suitable to end the run
Refined Research values, so there should be less spare by the end of a campaign
Fixed a bug where boarding parties with Rambulls would only have them appear in the breaching waves, not subsequent ones.
Made some adjustments to the frequency of the Needlejack and Grubs appearing throughout the campaign. Needlejacks weren't populating enough early boarding parties, while Grubs were populating too many.

The Co-op Update

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:

C:\Users[Username]\AppData\LocalLow\Fireblade Software\SENTRY\Saves\Steam\[SteamID]

Onto the update itself!

[h3]Co-op![/h3]
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.

[h3]New Levels![/h3]
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.

[h3]Popular Requests[/h3]
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.

[h3]Massive Rebalancing[/h3]
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.

[h3]Other Stuff![/h3]
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]

[h3]Headline Additions[/h3]
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.

[h3]Co-op[/h3]
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:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1252680/view/4438953498491486247

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.

[h3]From the Community![/h3]
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…

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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!

[h3]Co-op![/h3]
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.

[h3]A sneak peek![/h3]
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.

[h3]From the Community![/h3]
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:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
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.