Update Sextiofyra (64)

build id: 666A0693

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

MISSION OF THE DAY CALENDAR
Along the lines of Grind Mode I have been thinking a lot about the ways in which SBTF has generally lacked any sense of high level progression that is found in most games these days. As has been noted by some players "numbers in SBTF go down", while it is my experience that in modern games "numbers go up." There are certainly strong human emotions attached to all of this, and I feel it is important for the player to feel like the game is acknowledging and respecting the investment of time played, as well as the game having clearly presented and achievable goals.

Part of the problem is of course the original "permadeath" design of SBTF - while you get to keep your upgrades if your character survives a mission it is very easy to make a tiny mistake and lose all of that at any time. The same goes for all the science you may have earned. There is indeed a lot of statistics tracking for your character as well as a "rank" for all of that experience but this has no actual effect on the gameplay. While perhaps this can be motivated by saying that the game is "hardcore" I'd still have to call it "bad design" - especially in 2024.

As many of you know Grind Mode was an attempt to create a more "classic" shooter progression - character progression is stored each time you complete a mission and death will restore you to that point and allow you to try the current mission again up to the "win" of completing 35 missions (in what is still an infinite campaign). I realized however that while this is a good addition to the game your "progression" will still be voided and disappear whenever a new week rolls around, so at a super high level the game is still the way it has always been - there is no real persistent progression.

For these reasons I decided to do another experiment - namely take the log running Mission of the Day (MotD) and transform it into a system of permanent progression. In this mode your character progression works the same as in Grind Mode, i.e. on death you are always restored to the state you were in upon last mission completion. Additionally there is now a "calendar" that allows you to play and track the completion of every mission of the day starting from January 1, 2024 and moving forward. There is as before a new MotD each day but now you can potentially complete them all.

These changes have a lot of (in my mind) interesting implications. For the first time the character you roll (names are still randomized) in the MotD slot is truly persistent, and you will gradually over time progress to a character that is fully upgraded and very powerful (including the highest ammo tier and extreme re-arm rates). This in itself moves SBTF into a very intense but still manageable space where the player is able to eventually acquire a lot of power to pit against the enemies.

For those of you who like statistics the new MotD mode effectively grants you a character that is "forever", and all your hard work will be reflected in experience and rank.

The missions themselves are as before - Randomize All settings with maximum map size (compare this to Grind Mode which also uses Randomize All settings but with map sizes that start small and grow with campaign). The result is that MotD is brutal and unpredictable and can generate quite difficult missions. This is offset by the fact that it is now possible to strategize greatly around which mission to tackle next in your progression from a green recruit to a full upgraded galactic beast-slayer.

From a purely psychological standpoint I personally find it extremely satisfying that the growing set of MotD missions now represent "official" and "permanent" challenges for players to tackle as a community. Some of this psychology has always existed with Explicit Seed mode (as those missions are always the same) but conversely there are simply too many permutations there (billions) for it to be meaningful to try to "complete them all", not least because Explicit Seed mode lacks integrated completion tracking. Grind Mode has obviously evoked some of the psychology of "official challenges" as there have been lengthy discussions about some of the campaigns over the years, but still this progression "goes away" after a week so there are diminishing returns there.

I sincerely hope that all of you will feel some of the satisfaction of progression that I have felt while developing this new twist to SBTF. Indeed the new MotD is somewhat of an "overlay" upon the evolved and incremental design of SBTF (so it isn't perfect) and as with Grind Mode some hardcore purists might not like the idea of character snapshots / restoration, but as always the new MotD is optional and everything else legacy about the game remains intact.

I personally feel even more motivated to play the game in the new MotD mode than I did with the addition of Grind Mode (I feel like Grind Mode starts a bit slow), and as with a lot of other games I play I get a lot of satisfaction out of being able to "light up all the icons". I have iterated quite a bit on the design and visualization of the MotD calendar to make it as pleasing as practical within the constraints of the game, taking care to celebrate and animate completion in a similar manner as in Grind Mode (which has also benefited visually from this work).

Of course I realize that a very compelling way to play is to be able to collaborate and tackle the difficult missions that will doubtless arise in MotD mode together in a networked team, and I'm happy to say the there is full support for this. In networked games completion of each day is indicated simultaneously for each player so it is easy to see who in the party has completed what. Upon mission success each networked player will have completion recorded locally so you will always be credited with completion if you were in the mission when it was won. In this way it becomes meaningful to "get help" with MotD completion if you so desire, as well as to help others with missions that you yourself have completed and have some tactical insight into.

Note that as with legacy progression systems in SBTF you have separate characters and progression for local and for each network (LAN and Steam).

MODERN RENDERER
As a result of finally realizing what the problem was with shader model 3.0 on AMD (i.e. "bad programmer, no cookie") I have implemented a "clean" shader model 3.0 renderer that is now called "modern shader model 3.0". This is now the default (but check your settings) and the main difference is that it supports a greater number of dynamic lights than before.

The main goal here was to allow for each player to have a dedicated and visible lamp as well as for other player and sentry fire no longer "stealing" the single dynamic light away from the local player. Things are still satisfyingly strobey (it's SBTF after all) but lights no longer look glitchy, and the addition of dedicated player lights is subtle but pleasing as you can see a light preceding a player that is moving down a hallway.

Both legacy render paths ("legacy shader model 2.0" and "legacy shader model 3.0") are retained for performance / compatibility.

MISCELLANEOUS

• space windows now correctly emit a small amount of light (visible when power is out and player lamp is disabled)
  
• the visuals of lab sections have been updated to have a more focused palette (more focus on whites and cool blues, and reds are largely removed)
  
• panic room doors have been redesigned to look more like actual doors
  
• Grind mode medals have been updated to be more visually rich (as a result of work on MotD medals)
  

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

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