Space Beast Terror Fright

Released: Jun 3, 2022
Platforms: Windows
Last updated: 05 Sep 2026, 00:48 GMT

Updates & announcements

20 posts

20 Mar 2025Developer post
Update Sextiofem (65)
Update Sextiofem (65) build id: 67DC79A1 nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright . MAINTENANCE UPDATE This is a general maintenance and compatibility update and intended to keep the deployed game in line with nornware's evolving codebase in the
13 Jun 2024Developer post
Update Sextiofyra (64)
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 pr
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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Original post
05 Nov 2023Developer post
Space Beast Terror Fright Update Sextiotre (63)
Update Sextiotre (63) build id: 6547A592 nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright . MAINTENANCE UPDATE This is a general maintenance and compatibility update, seeing as my general codebase has been mutating for over a year since Update 62, and it
Update Sextiotre (63)
build id: 6547A592
nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.
MAINTENANCE UPDATE
This is a general maintenance and compatibility update, seeing as my general codebase has been mutating for over a year since Update 62, and it's always a good idea to have the deployed version be as close as possible to what I'm working with in the interest of finding and adressing potential bugs.
EXPANDED USER OPTIONS
In those modes with fine-grained control over various plan generation and rules settings certain settings have been expanded to include a new "unknown" value, which simply means that the game will randomize a value for you. These new settings are also available when creating user plans, and all existing user plans have been migrated to the new format.
SHADER MODEL 3.0 SHOULD NOW WORK ON AMD GPUS
The long-standing issue of materials "disappearing" on AMD GPUs along with the mess of trying to detect your gpu, forcing your settings to shader model 2.0, as well as the whole stop-gap of shader model 2.0 to begin with SHOULD now be resolved. The issue turned out to NOT be a bad implementation of the DirectX9.0c specification by AMD (as I had suspected for well over 10 years) but rather a LENIENT implementation on nVidia's partt which allowed me to (erroenously) specify "mixed" shaders where the vertex shader was 2.0 and the pixel shader was 3.0. This is explicitly forbidden by the specification, and the error was entirely mine.
As usual I have limited ability to test all of this, but I have verified that shader model 3.0 works on my own AMD hardware. I would appreciate reports from anyone who has an AMD GPU in the forums.
While I await broad verification that shader model 3.0 works on all AMD hardware, as well as in the interest of potential performance gains, I have left shader model 2.0 i the game as an option.
MISCELLANEOUS

fixed bad XP calculation
showing N / A when next rank is beyond maximum
made list / grid buttons consistent with new blue / orange tab scheme
fixed fancy space windows to work in shader model 2.0 (were erroneously requiring shader model 3.0)
fixed lamp mode switch crash on shader model 2.0 - this is apparently because "legacy lamp" uses more too many shader ops for shader model 2.0 (65 of 64 available), and as a result "legacy lamp" is disabled when running shader model 2.0
fixed security table collision bug that occured when the security table was too close to the reactor
live sentries (pulsing diamonds) display is disabled on the tracker/map when the power is out
removed PvP tags from store page
added LAN co-op tag to store page
As always, thank you for your support and patience.
/nornware AB c/o johno
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Original post
18 Sep 2022Developer post
Update 62 hotfix 1
fixed replay playback crashing the game fixed position of reinforcements numbers in network party list (off by one) update 62 announcement is now part of the databank fixed MotD completion / caching updated tracker to show things as powered down during a power failure new options
fixed replay playback crashing the game
fixed position of reinforcements numbers in network party list (off by one)
update 62 announcement is now part of the databank
fixed MotD completion / caching
updated tracker to show things as powered down during a power failure
new options for HUD color include random by mission (legacy) and random by character
Original post
09 Sep 2022Developer post
Update Sextiotvå (62)
Update Sextiotvå (62) build id: 631B9588 nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright . INTRODUCING GRIND MODE As you might imagine the release of SBTF out of Early Access after 7+ years brought quite a bit of clarity as I was able to take a step bac
Update Sextiotvå (62)
build id: 631B9588
nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.
INTRODUCING GRIND MODE
As you might imagine the release of SBTF out of Early Access after 7+ years brought quite a bit of clarity as I was able to take a step back from constant iteration and maintenance of the game. The prior update (61) was very satisfying to deploy as it let me fix a lot of quality of life issues and in general address some rough edges that remained.
In observing the feedback that started coming in via various video reviews I began to realize that the practical effect of the Instant Action pipeline was for new players coming in to quite naturally simply play the game via this mode / button. However as many of you know Instant Action leads to Randomize All rules that can result in a quite unforgiving experience, especially for new players.
This is conjunction with some prior experiments relating to Campaign of the Week (CotW) led me to realize that the game has always had a real problem with any kind of meaningful progression. This has certainly been discussed at length in the forums and I was never really satisfied personally with the macro-level feel of the game. While of course surviving a mission would let you keep your upgrades it has still always been the case that any small mistake will quite brutally take this progression away from you.
Of course that while this has always been one of the main premises of the game (in being a roguelike) it still didn't feel very good to me. The addition of CotW was certainly interesting in that it both added a time-limited linear sequence of missions to attempt (that also had some kind of difficulty curve) but in practice this mode was really even MORE hard-core in that any small mistake would not only wipe your character / upgrades but also put you back at the beginning of the campaign. I personally was never really incentivized to attempt any given CotW more than once.
All of this got me thinking about how the game might feel with what I view as a more "classic shooter progression" - what if the game saves a checkpoint at the beginning of each mission, and death in any mission will simply restore your character and upgrades back to that point and allow you to re-try that mission any number of times? Initial experiments were quite positive but I was quite aware of the fact that this idea conceptually clashed with a core premise of the game being about "disposable heros" - effectively this idea leads to the scenario that your character cannot ever REALLY die, at least not in terms of progression.
However due to said increased insight into / objectivity concerning the new player experience I decided to look into actually adding a more "casual campaign" as per the above. The result is what I'm calling "Grind Mode" which is a new type of campaign of the week but with the addition of casual / persistent progression. This means that you can hammer on / "grind" any difficult missions in the campaign as much as you like until you complete them, culminating in a audio/visual reward of sorts once you have completed 35 missions. This number of missions corresponds to parts of the mission generation algorithm relating to size that will max out after 35 missions. Since the Grind campaign is infinite (in the same way as CotW) it is possible for those who want further challenge after 35 missions to continue indefinitely, but conceptually you are "done" after 35 missions. This creates something that is reasonably attainable within one week's time.
Personally I've had lots of fun playing Grind Mode during development, so much that I strongly feel that it should be (and now is) the default selected experience for new players coming in (and if you delete your game app data). It makes me feel that something like this should have been in the game for a very long time and checks a lot of my personal boxes when it comes having the game feel "meaningful" to play. Indeed I believe (in hindsight) that the main problem with SBTF in terms of progression has been that it did not quite feel like the game respected your investment of time / effort, and Grind Mode offers at least some kind of solution to that problem.
Of course I know by now (after all these years of development) that ANY change I make to the game (optional or not) has great potential to be contentious. I hope however that all the hard-core players out there can appreciate Grind Mode as an attempt to make the game more inclusive to a more casual type of player, and that if they don't hold with the idea of this kind of progression then they can simply ignore Grind Mode - indeed all the legacy game modes that you've come to know and love about SBTF are intact with the exception of the Instant Action pipeline (which in itself was a "casual" type of feature).
In the best case scenario I hope that even hard-core players / fans of roguelike progression might still have some fun if they decide to try Grind Mode after all - I personally feel that Grind Mode makes the game "even more SBTF than SBTF" due to the fact that it makes a highly upgraded character much more attainable, and the kind of gameplay that occurs in high intensity missions in conjunction with a highly upgraded character is something that I believe not very many players have experienced yet.
The way that science grants higher ammo tiers is different in Grind Mode than in other modes. This has been restored to the legacy setup for all modes except for Grind Mode (in order to make CotW more reasonable again) and in Grind Mode it basically takes more science to upgrade your ammo. This has been tuned during development of Grind Mode so that it is harder to max out your ammo tier before the end of the 35 mission campaign. Science / relation to ammo tiers has now been visualized in a more clear fashion in the mission setup screens as well.
I've cleaned up mode selection quite a bit (a drop-list instead of always visible buttons), redesigned the various information tabs, and am automatically selecting the last mission outcome tab upon mission end which amounts to a more "proper" mission outcome. There are more animations in general in the intermission / setup screens, and also a new system of "medals" that will light up as you progress through the Grind campaign that will hopefully stimulate your low-level brain and bring some satisfaction. The aforementioned "reward" for completing the campaign I will leave for you to discover on your own.
I hope you will all agree that Grind Mode is a fun new addition to the long long (long) development of this game. This update also serves as the official end of development of Space Beast Terror Fright (excluding of course future quality of life changes / bugfixes). I sincerely thank you all very much for accompanying me on this unprecendented journey of exploration and discovery.
MISCELLANEOUS

Lurking beasts is now an immutable option - this means that they will either lurk or not for the entire mission (excluding during reactor overload when no beasts will ever lurk). The reasoning here is that this works better with all modes that mutate rules at runtime, resulting in more varied gameplay overall.
Upgrades in last outcome and team statistics screens are now shown in the same way as in the obituaries list - as icons instead of text.
Hopefully more robust user plan download and decoding.
Infestation has been suppressed so as to not cover certain important interactive level elements such as sentry control panels and door / fence controls.
The game now displays useful tips while loading a mission.
CotW and Grind Mode now utilize hashing / security in multiplayer as well as singleplayer in order to protect against tampering as well as to support campaign timeout at the end of the week.
The pub party list is now more descriptive.
The game now explicitly prompts the player to open the reactor shield prior to disabling coolants.
There is now a setting for "fancy space windows" (default on). This shader is inspired by work on the Grind Mode completion "reward".
The reactor shield is now shown on the security map table as well as in the player tracker / map.
As always, thank you for your support and patience.
/nornware AB c/o johno
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Original post
15 Jul 2022Developer post
Update 61 hotfix 1
Update 61 hotfix 1 build id: 62D1C516 fixed a breaker-related crash in networked games
Update 61 hotfix 1
build id: 62D1C516

fixed a breaker-related crash in networked games
Original post
15 Jul 2022Developer post
Update Sextioett (61)
Update Sextioett (61) build id: 62D1761D nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright . POST-RELEASE BUG-FIX / QUALITY OF LIFE UPDATE This update includes miscellaneous bug-fixes and quality of life improvements for the game. CHANGELOG The user inter
Update Sextioett (61)
build id: 62D1761D
nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.
POST-RELEASE BUG-FIX / QUALITY OF LIFE UPDATE
This update includes miscellaneous bug-fixes and quality of life improvements for the game.
CHANGELOG

The user interface will now prompt you if you have unpublished user plans.
User plans that don't pass playability tests are not selectable for play.
User plans can now be filtered by completion status: unattempted, attempted, failed, succeeded.
You can now use text search to filter user plans.
The user plan list can now be navigated with home / end / pgup / pgdown in addition to mouse scroll wheel (+SHIFT to go faster).
Fixed mission experience not counting towards character rank.
Door integrity is now displayed at all times in the id-field.
If power is initially off, doors can now have an arbitrary track position as well as open / closed state, achieving a more abandoned look to the maps.
Reactor safety protocol (all barriers automatically opening during overload) will now always open any doors where the player is immediately.
Breakers spark a lot when reset.
Breakers spark a little when recharging player battery.
Some enemy broods now have red blood.
Core text colors and screens have been adjusted to work better on higher brightness levels.
Core albedos have been significantly desaturated.
New design for core frames / support structures.
New fence shader (fancy fences) setting (requires shader model 3.0) and is on by default.
Adjusted download times to (10, 7, 5, 3.5, 2.5) from previous (10, 8, 6, 4, 2).
Ammo type upgrades for science now occur at 8: MEDIUM, 16: HEAVY, 32: ULTRA as opposed to previously 4: MEDIUM, 8: HEAVY, 16: ULTRA.
Each science now increases re-arm rate by 1 instead of 3.
Instant Action is now Random Seed with default options. This was previously Randomize All which could be a bit brutal on new players.
Right / left aligned plan preview (ascii) legend text.
Breaches now drip moisture and spark much less.
The replay screen now notifies that only local replays are recorded (not networked).
There are now three modes for network pub chat: PUBLIC (send to everyone), PARTY (send to your party only), and DEAF (send to / receive from your party but not receive public chat). When DEAF is selected while not in a party you will not receive any chat whatsoever.
It is now possible to block / blacklist players in the network pub by clicking on the button with their name on it. You will not receive any chat from blocked players nor will the be allowed to join parties you host.
The game now attempts to detect AMD GPUs (via driver description string) and will automatically set shader model 2.0 for maximum compatibility upon startup. You may still change the setting to shader model 3.0 at runtime but all evidence points to this not working properly (geometry not drawn) on all AMD GPUs.
Shader model 2.0 now more properly incorporates material roughness on PBR materials, achieving a look that is far closer to shader model 3.0 (albeit with simplified reflections). Players may in general want to play on shader model 2.0 in order to potentially increase performance.
System glitch sounds are now suppressed for all dead players.
System glitch sounds are now only played for your own systems while you are ALIVE in a networked game, but play for all players while you are DEAD (waiting for reinforcements / spectating).
Fixed miscellaneous erroneous player text colors due to infravision being activated.
POTENTIAL bugfix for audio errors on linux (untested): I have removed aggressive audio playback positioning code which I suspect has been the cause for audio errors on linux.
As always, thank you for your support and patience.
/nornware AB c/o johno
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Original post
05 Jun 2022PC Gamer
Claustrophobic cooperative shooter Space Beast Terror Fright has exited Early Access
Eccentrically named cooperative shooter Space Beast Terror Fright has launched on Steam following a long sojourn through Early Access, bringing its cooperative horde shooter and roguelike horror energy to the masses. In it, you and a team of marines (read: your friends) must boar
04 Jun 2022Developer post
Space Beast Terror Fright exits Steam Early Access
After many years I've finally decided it is time to release this little thing I built called Space Beast Terror Fright. I can't say I really know how I feel about this; maybe this is what a 7 year pregnancy feels like. If course I never intended nor imagined that I would be worki
04 Jun 2022Developer post
Early Access Update 60
Databank updated with latest Early Access Update announcements. Operating system mouse cursor is hidden at all times.
Databank updated with latest Early Access Update announcements.
Operating system mouse cursor is hidden at all times.
Original post
07 Feb 2022Developer post
Early Access Update 59 hotfix 1
Legacy 2018 network code (CLSV1) has been disabled - the game now runs exclusively on 2022 network code (SHI6). Fixed issue where some clients were stuck outside the map upon connecting to a multiplayer game. Fixed issue where low ammo warning sound was being played during connec
Legacy 2018 network code (CLSV1) has been disabled - the game now runs exclusively on 2022 network code (SHI6).
Fixed issue where some clients were stuck outside the map upon connecting to a multiplayer game.
Fixed issue where low ammo warning sound was being played during connection to a multiplayer game.
SYSTEM messages in the multiplayer pub no longer have ranks.
Infravision intensity has been toned down.
Original post
05 Feb 2022Developer post
Early Access Update Femtionio (59)
Early Access Update Femtionio (59) build id: 61FED270 nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright . NEW EXPERIMENTAL NETWORK PROTOCOL (SHI6) In an effort to improve the overall network experience, this update includes new and experimental netcode fr
Early Access Update Femtionio (59)
build id: 61FED270
nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.
NEW EXPERIMENTAL NETWORK PROTOCOL (SHI6)
In an effort to improve the overall network experience, this update includes new and experimental netcode from 2022 (SHI6) along with the legacy 2018 netcode (CLSV1).
In the interest of being able to honestly compare the old and the new in this build it is possible to play both Local Area Network and Steam games using both protocols.
Please note that the front-end menu colors will be different (green rather than blue) on purpose to denote that you are playing on experimental netcode (SHI6).
I hope that you will all take the time to honestly compare the two variants and feed me back on your experiences.
MISCELLANEOUS

Added unofficial Discord and community guides links.
Updated Infravision shader, works better across legacy and vpbr materials.
Contrast of aim assist icons and text vs Infravision
Coolant ambient plays regardless of power state
Explicitly polling for XBox360 controller connections when the drop-down is opened.
XBox360 controller menu navigation has been completely removed.
Fixed third person muzzle flare positions.
Fixed erroneous weapon swapping on chat toggle.
Fixed erroneous weapon swapping on mission menu toggle.
Fixed / reset spectator / split-screen modes on reinforce (avoid getting stuck in non-self view).
Displaying CotW scoring criteria in the leaderboard screen.
Fixed CotW difficulty / power failures progress, guarding against infinite loop when selecting max difficulty (always happens at mission 32 (zero base)).
Anisotropic filtering defaults to on (uses max for current device).
Showing actual anisotropy setting.
Showing GU description in settings.
Fixed vertical text alignment of slider settings / better slider element collision.
More mouselook range.
Gui scale is now a drop-list with fixed settings.
Better VPBR reflections (legacy simple reflections are now an option).
New flashlight / lamp shape (legacy lamp is now a setting).
White airlock in holotable (just like tracker).
Scientist blip on tracker is always base color (not changed with Infravision).
Reactor shield now shown in tracker.
Drawing of security console and reactor shield (in tracker) obey normal map discovery rules.
New level styles: Adamant(flipped), Bastion(flipped), Oracle(flipped).
Iterated on labs.
Fixed barrier frames during reactor overload.
Fixed door numbers on control boxes during reactor overload (respect reactor safety protocol).
Fixed missing target icon on broken barrier control boxes.
Fixed erroneous crosshair disable when reactor safety protocol locks out frame control boxes (doors and fences).
Disabled interaction prompt on frames during overload with respect to reactor safety protocol.
Airlock door now opens immediately with reactor safety protocol enabled.
Suppressed mist around doors, panics, and reactor shield in order to prevent clipping.
New sounds for weapon swapping and Infravision toggle.
New sounds for electronics system glitching.
Relevant sounds converted to mono, saved 3.5MB.
Fixed strange audio panning looking at feet (straight down)
Fixed music to not go out of sync during power failures
No longer distorting doors in z-axis, makes decals look better (also avoids popping doors out of door frames).
Fixed broken airlock mesh when surrounded by alt-walls.
Completion status for user plans is now shown in the list (and stored on disk locally).
Modulating frequency of reactor shield while opening.
Moved path nodes outside reactor shield (improves beast movement).
Player rank is now displayed in various places (based on purchase date).
Please note that as it has been a while since the last update there may have been bugs introduced. As always, thank you for your support and patience.
/nornware AB c/o johno
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Original post
30 Apr 2021Developer post
Early Access Update Femtioåtta (58)
Early Access Update Femtioåtta (58) build id: 608BB9BA nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright . (PROBABLY) PENULTIMATE EARLY ACCESS UPDATE Much to my chagrin SBTF is now in its sixth year of development. That's way too long. The past year or so
Early Access Update Femtioåtta (58)
build id: 608BB9BA
nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.
(PROBABLY) PENULTIMATE EARLY ACCESS UPDATE
Much to my chagrin SBTF is now in its sixth year of development. That's way too long.
The past year or so hasn't really seen a huge number of updates, and much of my time has been spent on researching yet another potential re-write of the network code (I've talked about it as a "hybrid" system). Progress has been made in that direction, but ultimately I've come to realize that even though that system has the potential to increase perceived quality of the networking experience it won't actually add any new functionality.
I've also spent quite a bit of time on a SBTF Discord server (https://discord.gg/GepWN2V) talking to some of my users, and this has really improved my objective sense of where this game is at and as such I think it's time to draw the line.
The list of things that COULD be done is infinite, but I feel that SBTF has been in a pretty good place for quite a long time now. There is by this point quite a bit of resistence to change in the codebase, and also I'm much more motivated by the thought of working on a potential sequel product; I've already done quite a bit of research and prototyping along those lines.
Subsequently I'm hoping that Update 58 will be the next-to-last update for SBTF before it finally leaves Early Access. I'm expecting Update 59 to be necessary as I've been doing some pretty extensive changes to the code and as such expect bugs in Update 58, but I also plan for Update 59 to include all the absolutely-must-have polish changes as well.
Of course I will be monitoring the state of SBTF even beyond release, and will fix any critical bugs that may come up. Don't hesitate to report issues in the forums or via email.
NEW OPTION - BEASTS LURK
I have implemented a new option for Beast "lurk" behaviour. Since the ability for Beasts to hide / lurk in the infestation was implemented it has been observed that this can be exploited in conjunction with total infestation and map saturation (when the number of live Beasts reaches the game limit), resulting in a situation where all Beasts are lurking and will remain that way unless you shoot them or get too close.
This new option defaults to on (legacy behaviour) but with it turned off Beasts will never lurk in infestation, and this results in a generally more hectic gameplay experience (reminiscent of old). Note that in Randomize All / MotD this is among the options that will mutate on the fly, and I think this leads to even more dynamism in the overall experience; whole rooms of lurking Beasts may suddenly awake all at once. Also in Campaign of the Week this options starts on but will turn off over time as options randomly "get harder" over the course of the campaign.
NEW OPTION - REACTOR SAFETY PROTOCOL
Also new is the option for "reactor safety protocol" which is the relatively new behaviour of all barriers opening during a reactor overload (defaults to on). This addition has proven to be somewhat contentious in the community and that (along with the fact that I really wanted the Beast lurk option) led me to implement this as an option as well. Note however that this option does NOT mutate on the fly, but in Randomize All / MotD this will be randomized at map generation time. In CotW this will start off (legacy behaviour) and eventually change to on (all barriers open during overload).
Note also that you might want to adjust your user plan options, as the new options are new bits that will default to 0 / off.
INSTANT ACTION PIPELINE
It has been speculated that a rather common behaviour among players is a reluctance to actually host network parties while much preferring to join parties that are in progress. This has rather a detrimental affect on the health of the multiplayer community, and it got me thinking about ways to improve the general situation.
What I've come up with is an extra screen that precedes both the local game setup screen as well as entering the network pub, which allows access to the "Instant Action" pipeline. This is a much simplified screen which allows you to choose the number of players (in local mode) and your weapon loadout(s) and then simply jump straight into the action without any further setup required. This is technically equivalent to Randomize All, and all character progression is to those character slots, but you won't be exposed to any setup nor statistics before or after missions when in the Instant Action screen.
For network play things are a bit more complex under the hood, but everything is streamlined in order to get you into the action as fast and as painlessly as possible. When you press Launch Mission on the networked Instant Action screen you will automatically be placed in the first free slot of the first available party (in the interest of filling up all parties). If there are eligable parties you will simply become the host of your own new party (in Randomize All mode), and incoming players can / will join you as they come along.
Note also that this is 100% compatible with the legacy pub system which still exists and functions the same way as before. Regardless of how a party was started (Instant Action or via the pub) they are technically the same thing, with the only difference being that when Instant Action parties are initially hosted they will run in Randomize All mode with all default party options (friendly fire on, reinforcements 2, and public). The ideas here are to not fragment the user base at all, retain all deep legacy options, while also allowing for a fast-path into the game for those who are uninitiated or may simply be uninterested in messing with the options.
I hope that this addition will further ease players into the networked aspects of SBTF.
CHARACTERS / STATISTICS REWRITE
For the longest time I've wanted to properly support character statistics for all characters in a mission. With the implementation of reinforcements long ago this kind of broke, with the outcome screen showing only the last characters in each slot. I thought this would be pretty simple to fix, but it quickly ballooned in complexity and is the main reason this update has taken so long to complete.
The technical details are messy and lengthy and ultimately not really interesting, but finally I've (hopefully) managed to repair all of the damage caused by this change (among others), and now you can view statistics for all characters in the outcome screen using the scroll wheel while hovering with the mouse cursor above each of the "slots" (red, green, blue, gold). Because of the need to track the mouse cursor position both the outcome and the team statistics are now modal as opposed to previously being "mouse over" only - I realized that the problem of displaying all this information really becomes three-dimensional.
This might seem like a minor or even insignificant improvement to the game as a whole, and indeed had I known how difficult the implementation would prove to be I most likely would have skipped it. However it was all mixed up with numerous other improvements (not least being the new options) so I was reluctant to throw away the development branch entirely and as a result continued to push through. Technically there have been a number of other changes made under the hood that were intended to facilitate the hybrid network implementation, but again I've decided against doing that prior to release. That stuff will however most likely find its way into future products.
MISCELLANEOUS

"SURVIVED" instead of "SUCCESS" in outcome table.
User Plans are now robust for no internet connection / unavailable backend.
Better user interface / incremental decoding of User Plans.
Increase the number of vfx / sfx events from 32 to 64 per tick after identifying certain things being missed / dropped.
Space Beast variants no longer have easily identfiable stripes on their tails, making them better camouflaged in infestation.
LAN network mode now uses computer name instead of trying resolve a host name from ip adress (faster and more reliable).
Networking is in general more robust, with all recoverable / non-fatal errors being silently ignored.
The "rapid fire" bug in network mode has been addressed by fudging timestamps.
Better replay restocking, showing currently parsed lines while still restocking.
During reactor overload all barrier frames now alternate between evacuation prompt and time remaining until overload.
During reactor overload fence frames now properly show evacuation prompt.
During reactor overload all barrier control boxes are disabled if reactor safety protocol is on.
As always, thank you for your support and patience.
/nornware AB c/o johno
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Original post
17 Nov 2020Developer post
Early Access Update Femtiosju (57)
Early Access Update Femtiosju (57) build id: 5FB3DC2A nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright . NETWORKED MODE CHANGES With the help of the gracious players over at the Space Beast Terror Fright Discord Server I have managed to reproduce and fin
Early Access Update Femtiosju (57)
build id: 5FB3DC2A
nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.
NETWORKED MODE CHANGES
With the help of the gracious players over at the Space Beast Terror Fright Discord Server I have managed to reproduce and find the cause of what we believe to be the main recurring crash in networked mode. It was being caused by a number of collaborating factors (and bugs) that resulted in the game literally "running out of bullets".
I have plugged that hole by simply not allowing that many bullets to exist, which practically means that no sentries nor players will fire when the bullet pool is exhausted. Note however that via extensive testing I have found that this doesn't happen during normal play, and the crashes that have been happening are more a result of erroneous simulation (i.e. "the rapid fire bug") that occurs on the host during networked play. Rest assured that this is also a high priority bug for me to fix.
Furthermore network data has been somewhat compressed (bullets use fewer bytes), and also I'm experimenting with having the host / server push twice as much state to the client per network packet. While this will increase bandwidth usage somewhat it will not do so in a linear (2x) manner due to each packet being compressed (as before). This change is experimental, and I will be monitoring closely to see if it improves or degrades the overall network experience.
FURTHER REACTOR OVERLOAD SAFETY
Early Access Update 56 introduced a new twist to the reactor overload sequence, namely that Doors and Fences open (conceptually in my mind as a "safety feature") and may not be closed during the reactor overload. While this has been contentious in the community, I'm still not fully convinced if it should stay or go. For the time being I have continued along this line of reasoning and now Panic Room doors will also open in the same manner as Doors and Fences during reactor overload.
SENTRY AMMO BUFF
Sentries will now use the same ammo tier as players, meaning that increasing Science will upgrade sentry bullets as well - previously Sentries would always fire light ammo (albiet with different audio than player fire). Note that ammo tier fire rate variance will also affect Sentry fire rates (as with player bullets).
Note that this effectively means that Sentries become more deadly vs Space Beasts and Astro-Creeps as Science increases, while damage vs players is still the same (one upgrade or system knocked out per bullet striking a player).
MISCELLANEOUS

BUGFIX: Network chat was missing for non-hosts when a User Plan was selected.
BUGFIX: It is now no longer possible to wake Beasts inside Panic Rooms by firing at the Panic Room door.
BUGFIX: The "friendly" check (for players and scientists) will no longer penetrate walls.
As always, thank you for your support and patience.
/nornware AB c/o johno
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Original post
08 Nov 2020Developer post
Early Access Update Femtiosex (56)
Early Access Update Femtiosex (56) build id: 5FA850B0 nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright . MAINTENANCE / COMPATIBILITY RELEASE This update is mainly to align the deployed version of the game with the current nornware codebase / toolset, whi
Early Access Update Femtiosex (56)
build id: 5FA850B0
nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.
MAINTENANCE / COMPATIBILITY RELEASE
This update is mainly to align the deployed version of the game with the current nornware codebase / toolset, which has progressed quite significantly since Early Access Update 55. This will allow me to find and fix any errors in a more expedient manner.
Although I've done extensive internal testing, it has always been the case that deploying a build to the general public is implicitly superior in terms of test coverage. A it's been over 6 months since the last update, please report any problems in the forums.
POTENTIAL 4K / DPI-SCALING / MULTI-MONITOR FIX
An experimental / potential fix for the recursive hang on startup has been implemented (disabled checks for window size matching backbuffer size). If you see strange window sizes / resolutions, try switching between windowed mode and fullscreen using ALT+ENTER.
I have reproduced the issue with DPI-scaling on Windows 10, and at least on my system this fix solves the issue. It would be helpful to know if this fix also solves issues related to 4k resolutions and / or multi-monitor setups; please report your findings in the forums.
REACTOR OVERLOAD CHANGES
With this build, immobile ("lurking") Beasts awake immediately when the reactor overload sequence begins, and no beasts will lurk again until the end of the mission (escape or overload).
Also, all Doors and Fences will now automatically and gradually open in a cascade during reactor overload (including the airlock door). During the overload you may open any yet to be automatically opened Doors and Fences (as the cascade takes a bit of time), but you may not close open ones again during the overload sequence (interaction is denied).
Note that these changes have the potential of making the game both easier (no barriers obstructing your path to the airlock) and harder (less obstructed line of sight for Beasts, as well as no lurking Beasts) during the reactor overload sequence. Feel free to discuss in the forums.
MISCELLANEOUS

BUGFIX: Fixed swapped upgrade announce position of Infravision and Battery Life.
The menu background world fly-thru scene is now also dimmed properly in networked mode, the same is in the local party setup screen.
The HUD will now warn you that Scientists are friendly if you aim at them, in the same manner as teammates.
Mission of the Day now uses legacy characters and science in order to simplify things internally. This means you can now play MotD with an upgraded character if you like.
Ammo "Rate" is now "Re-Arm" in HUD text.
The visualization code can now handle more events (event max from 16 -> 32 per tick). I found that a full shotgun blast to a player was overflowing the buffer. It is possible but unknown if this was the source of crashes in networked mode when using the shotgun.
Replays have been further compressed.
Lore / Databank unlocks will no longer occur during networked play.
Stan Brown Studios has been credited in the About screen.
As always, thank you for your support and patience.
/nornware AB c/o johno
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Original post
10 Jul 2020Developer post
Space Beast Terror Fright : live stream with Timpedia
What? Timpedia will be doing a live stream of Space Beast Terror Fright on Saturday July 11th 2020 at 10:30 am EST (16:30 CET). I (johno / nornware / the developer) will be joining via voice chat to discuss the game as well as answer any questions the community might ask during t
23 Apr 2020Developer post
Early Access Update Femtiofem (55)
Early Access Update Femtiofem (55) build id: 5EA16C27 nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright . COMMUNITY RESPONSE TO USER PLANS First of all I would like to express my extreme joy and satisfaction at the level of community engagement in regards
Early Access Update Femtiofem (55)
build id: 5EA16C27
nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.
COMMUNITY RESPONSE TO USER PLANS
First of all I would like to express my extreme joy and satisfaction at the level of community engagement in regards to the ability to share user plans since Early Access Update 54. The sheer number of plans as well as the fantastic creativity you all have shown is fantastic, and it really gives me a great sense of accomplishment and that all the work put into the editor and the new back-end has been well worth it.
Thank you all! XD
USER PLAN SIGNATURES
As some of you may have noticed in the last update, any user plans that weren't created by yourself or one of your Steam Friends would simply display [unknown] as the author. The reason for this is the fact that I'm storing user plans in a third-party back-end (not via Steam's systems), and hence I'm not allowed to do look-ups to get user information via the steam id of the user who created the map. This is by design and really a good security feature on their part.
In order to play nice with GDPR I've opted to not try to hack around this but rather change the user plan format to store a signature field where the user can optionally sign and / or describe their creation. It is of course completely optional to do this - signing a map is a post-creation step just like flagging it as public (via "my plans"), so there is no requirement to do this if you prefer not to.
As part of the technical work to achieve this change the existing user plans needed to be moved to new storage, and this achieved via a batch conversion process. I will be doing the final conversion just prior to rolling out this update in an effort to catch all the latest user plans and modifications.
The legacy storage is still intact however, so if you feel that the conversion process managed to miss something that you created at the eleventh hour before the update please email me ([email protected]) with the name of the user plan and I'll sort out the conversion.
The new storage format is technically much more robust to changes in the data formats, so I don't anticipate the need for any more large scale conversions like this.
NEW USER PLAN SELECTION SCREEN
Due to the great influx of user plans I've invested in a new selection screen for user plans that is more reminiscent of the "my plans" screen available via the editor. It uses most of the screen, shows plan previews in the large / pretty format, and also displays more informative tool-tips. I've also implemented a number of sorting / filtering options that should help with managing the large number of user plans that are already in the system.
I anticipate that it might be a good thing to have a free-text search field as well, not least if users start signing their maps in a consistent manner.
I've also seen at least one instance of maps being named in a way that suggests the desire for "user campaigns" - I assume the intent is to create maps that are meant to be played sequentially, with the requirement to finish them in order. I'm definitely interested in supporting something like this if there is demand for it.
UNLOCKABLES / LORE / DATABANK
Coming out of some of the technical work with the new user plan storage format I had the idea of some of the Datacores including "secret information" that you could randomly roll as the result of a download. This led in turn to the implementation of "unlockable lore" in the game, which at this point is mainly all the history / development information pertaining to S.B.T.F. that I could find, some of which is quite ancient by this point. I don't know how interesting this will be to the average user, but it certainly amounts to a lot of stuff, so I chose to use that as a "lore" component to the game.
There is now a Databank button in the main menu which will take you to a screen that shows a large number of unlockable pieces of "lore". Initially none of it viewable, but as a result of playing the game in a normal manner there is always a chance that you will unlock a piece of lore / databank entry with each Datacore download. There is an accompanying audio cue as well as a text notification that flashes at the top-center of the screen when this occurs, and after that once out of mission you can peruse this information via the Databank interface (use the scroll wheel + shift).
I would optimally have liked to have more game-relevant / in-universe lore / story stuff to unlock, but that would certainly be a lot of work to write - just collecting and formatting all the stuff that I "had already produced" was a massive undertaking of several full workdays.
In any case I hope that at the least the simple act of unlocking this stuff will add a sense of progression to the game, and even if you have no interest in reading it all simply the goal of unlocking all of it will cater to the (possible) completionist inside you.
The Databank is a completely local feature, and as such functions in all modes as well as in both local and multiplayer. If you ever want to reset your progress, simply delete this file:
C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\nornware\sbtf\lore.txt
KNOWN ISSUES

In multiplayer mode, user plan signatures (if present) are only displayed for the party host, not for other party members. Signatures however work properly in local mode.
Surrounding the airlock with alt-walls in a user plan will cause erroneous geometry to be generated.
MISCELLANEOUS

BUGFIX: Enabling chat input when in-mission could cause input lock-ups when playing user plans.
BUGFIX: Potential crashes when quickly switching leaderboard weeks on the CotW Leaderboard screen.
BUGFIX: Hosting a party with non-empty chat input could crash in multiplayer.
BUGFIX: Random breaches could spawn in airlock.
BUGFIX: Slush memory increased from 1MB to 2MB - certain maps with large numbers of active sentries / simultaneous Beast deaths could cause overflow crashes in particle systems.
BUGFIX: The game is now robust for the user plan back-end being unavailable.
Navigation of linebroken text is much improved - this applies to both multiplayer chat as well as user plan signatures.
The holotable map display has been tweaked to be closer to the surface of the underlying geometry / no more floating.
Sparks for fences now have better / matching colors.
The replay library now shows progress in percent while parsing the replay files on disk.
The menu background world is now faded in at startup.
The menu background world is now slightly darkened in relevant screens to improve readability (Mission Setup and Databank).
There is something strange going on in panic rooms these days...
As always, thank you for your support and patience.
/nornware AB c/o johno
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Original post
08 Apr 2020Developer post
Early Access Update Femtiofyra (54)
Early Access Update Femtiofyra (54) build id: 5E8E26A1 nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright . SHARING USER PLANS Building on the previously deployed user plan editor, this update features online storage of all user plans (as opposed to the pr
Early Access Update Femtiofyra (54)
build id: 5E8E26A1
nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.
SHARING USER PLANS
Building on the previously deployed user plan editor, this update features online storage of all user plans (as opposed to the previous local storage). This means that it is now possible to share your creations with the entire community.
You can set your maps to public or private (they are initially private upon first save), and this is intended to facilitate private iteration on your work until you feel you are ready to share it publicly. Note that it is still possible as multiplayer party host to play one of your private user plans with your party; this is analogous to playing a locally saved user plan in multiplayer in previous updates.
User plans are color-coded in all lists as follows:

BLUE = other users' plans which are public (otherwise you wouldn't see them)
WHITE = your plans which are set to public (other users will see these as blue)
ORANGE = your plans which are set to private (othere users will not see these)
It is now also possible to like other users' plans. This interface is to the left of each plan name in the mission setup screen (when in user plan mode), and the number of total likes per plan are displayed to the right of the corresponding plan name.
For those of you who have invested in user plans prior to this update (which are saved locally), there is an interface to import these plans to the new backend; from the main menu go to the editor, click "my plans", then click "import". If any previously saved user plans exist on disk they will be listed here, and can be loaded into the editor as usual. After that you can save the plan to any unique name (per user) in the new backend, and after that you can set them to public when you are ready to share via "my plans".
MISCELLANEOUS

A new test for sentry object limit has been added to the editor.
Widget / button backgrounds are now solid and hopefully more readable.
As always, thank you for your support and patience.
/nornware AB c/o johno
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Original post
06 Mar 2020Developer post
Early Access Update Femtiotre (53)
Early Access Update Femtiotre (53) build id: 5E629F5F nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright . NEW STYLE : Oracle A new style has been added (Oracle), designed in collaboration with Stan Brown . NEW WEAPON TEXTURES Since the first person weapon
Early Access Update Femtiotre (53)
build id: 5E629F5F
nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.
NEW STYLE : Oracle
A new style has been added (Oracle), designed in collaboration with Stan Brown.
NEW WEAPON TEXTURES
Since the first person weapons are so visible in the game (cover so much of the screen), Stan Brown and I thought they would be a good candidate for a VPBR paint-over.
MISCELLANEOUS

Fixed some weird back-lighting artifacts on first person weapons.
Proper persistence check (unsaved changes) when exiting user plan editor.
Slightly transparent walls in user plan editor, which allows the menu background to show through slightly.
As always, thank you for your support and patience.
/nornware AB c/o johno
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Original post
05 Feb 2020Developer post
Early Access Update Femtiotvå (52)
Early Access Update Femtiotvå (52) build id: 5E3ACE3C nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright . NEW STYLE : Guardian This is a small update that introduces a new style (Guardian), designed in collaboration with Stan Brown . As always, thank you

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Claustrophobic cooperative shooter Space Beast Terror Fright has exited Early Access

Space Beast Terror Fright exits Steam Early Access

Early Access Update 60

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Space Beast Terror Fright : live stream with Timpedia

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