Early Access Update Fyrtioåtta (48)
build id: 5D6AA9D4 5D6BC610
nornware AB is happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.
HOTFIX BUILD
A hotfix build is now online (build id: 5D6BC610) that addresses the following issues identified in Early Access Update 48:
- The display of remaining time in the current Campaign of the Week (CotW) has been corrected. Note that campaigns start on Mondays and use ISO week dates based on UTC without taking daylight savings time into account.
- Long names on the Campaign of the Week leaderboards are now elided as to not clip into the medals.
KEYBINDING
I have implemented the option to modify keybinding (applies to the keyboard + mouse input device for player 1). This functionality is accessed via the settings menu.
I had been shying away from this feature for a long time mainly because of the limitations of font / text / character rendering in SBTF. The game is limited to rendering a subset of ASCII, and hence cannot render Unicode. For non-english users, I was worried that it might be hard to visualize a keybinding interface if the player cannot see the key that is bound.
I am using Windows Virtual Keys to detect input, and found a table that identifies what all the virtual keys are named (in English). I simply used this table to name all the keys, and hope that this will suffice to make the feature work. In addition while in the settings menu you can press and hold any bound key and it will highlight the action that is bound to that key, even if the display of that key might be wrong for your input locale.
I would appreciate feedback in the forums on how this feature works for non-english keyboard layouts.
CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK DIFFICULTY PROGRESSION
As was suggested by the community, a few changes have been made to the difficulty progression of CoTW:
- Armories now start at "more" and will eventually later change to "fewer" instead of the other way around. This does not strictly speaking making things more difficult over time, but the compelling argument is that failing later missions due to ammo depletion isn't very much fun.
- The Difficulty setting will now progress as follows: easier, random all, random each, easier +, hard, hard +, insane. This progression is based on measuring the time it takes for a single / same map to become saturated with space beasts.
CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK SCORING
As was warranted, I received a lot of feedback on the scoring algorithm that was deployed along with Campign of the Week (CotW). As some players are aware, I had simply used the existing experience calculation verbatim as the "score" for a CotW run. There are multiple reasons why this is sub-optimal and encourages some weird behaviour in the pursuit of the highest scores.
I realized that a scoring scheme very much emphasizes the "intent" of how the player should be acting from a design perspective, and as such I considered what I wanted CotW to be about. After many iterations I realized that I should be awarding the player for achieving the objectives as presented by the main game itself; for download datacores, disable coolants, and escaping the ship.
By awarding score for only these things, it is indeed true that any players that complete a certain number of missions will achieve exactly the same score. That might seem like a bad design, but it enforces my intent of having CotW be about progression; the player who "progresses" the furthest in the campaign should be the one who wins the CotW. Furthermore, awarding points for each datacore and coolant achieves a more fine grained way to measure progression in the campaign, as you can of course die at any time after achieving any number of objectives.
In addition to points for the main objectives, I am also awarding points for fully opening the reactor shield (required), opening panic rooms (optional), and for rescuing scientists (optional). The reactor shield score is again in line with my intent of progression, because if you manage to open the reactor shield before dying you will achieve more points than if you didn't. The hunt for scientists is of course not required to complete any mission, but they seemed like a good source of potential additional points for those players who take the risk of going for them.
The new CotW scoring calculation is as follows:
- coolant disabled: 100 points
- datacore downloaded: 100 points
- escaped the mission: 1000 points
- opened a panic room: 10 points
- rescued a scientist: 100 points
- opened the reactor shield (fully): 10 points
Of course most activities in SBTF have additional benefits aside from score that directly affect your survivability (such as getting upgrades from datacores, using fences and sentries, repairing damage, upgrading ammo by rescuing scientists, etc), so the game is still full of a lot of interesting trade-offs that will conspire to affect your ultimate progression in CotW.
As always, this new scoring algorithm is a just a theory. It has survived some internal discussion as well as implementation and initial playtesting, but of course the true test is deploying it live to see how the community reacts. Feedback is always welcome.
NOTE: How potential tied scores are ordered is an internal detail of the Steam Leaderboards backend. We'll have to see how this plays out.
CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK LEADERBOARDS SCREEN
I've added an explicit leaderboards screen for past and current Campaigns of the Week. Because bragging rights. This is accessible via the main menu.
In this screen it is possible to browse all past campaigns as well as the current one and see the scores for each. The top three players are displayed using Steam avatars and names on classic gold, silver, and bronze medals. Note that for the current CotW standings will change as new scores are submitted.
MISCELLANEOUS
- The airlock cell in the tracker / map is now white instead of the regular floor color.
- As SBTF font rendering is limited to a subset of ASCII, unicode / illegal characters are now rendered as question marks.
- As a result of new Campaign of the Week scoring, some character statistics have been generalized; your persisted characters may be affected.
- When loading the local team data, the game will reset your current CotW attempt if that attempt was started prior or later to the current week, as well as if it was tampered with in any way (hash check). The game will display a relevant notice if this happens.
As always, thank you for your support and patience.
/nornware AB c/o johno
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