SENTRY News

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 :)

[h3]A retweeting favour to ask[/h3]
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!

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

[h3]Levels: Chasm & Logistics![/h3]
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:

[h3]Levels: Central Processing v2.0![/h3]
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.

[h3]Levels: Fuel Exchange v2.0[/h3]
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.

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

[h3]New Music![/h3]
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:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We get a lot of questions around when we’ll be releasing the soundtrack, this will be closer to full release.

[h3]New Levels![/h3]
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!

[h3]Weapon Skins![/h3]
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.

[h3]Other Stuff![/h3]
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.

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

Thanks for all the support and I’ll post up on Steam as soon as that public co-op test is live :)

New SENTRY Devlog (and July Dev Transmission)

Hi everyone, check out our latest Devlog diving into Major Update 1: Starfarer:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Sean hates it when I ask him to make one of these, so if you enjoyed it do please give it a thumbs up to help him forgive me :)

As we enter a new month I’ll also use this post for our July Dev Transmission!

At the beginning of the month, we followed up the Starfarer Major Update with a patch – you can read about all those changes here:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1252680/view/4383774438051194459

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…

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

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1252680/view/5921742839579227575

We’re currently working on Major Update 2, which is the co-op update. If you’re interested in what was in Major Update 1, you can read about it here:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1252680/view/4235154200342543684

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 :)