Steredenn: Binary Stars is finally available on Steam!
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8738527/21fd88faf9837a1f6f21a4766077ff782bfec72c.png
It's bundled as a free DLC, automatically included with your
Steredenn purchase. Restart Steam, and you should see a new update available. You get the
2.0.0,
2.1.0 and
2.1.1 updates in one package.
The leaderboards are also new. You can still check the old ones, but
Steredenn: Binary Stars is a fresh start for everyone.
To recap quickly what
Steredenn: Binary Stars is:
- Local 2-players co-op mode;
- 5 new playable ships;
- Boss Rush mode;
- Tons of new content (music, bosses, upgrades, weapons, waves).
Below, you will find the 3 changelogs, if you want to read more about the changes.
You can switch between
Steredenn: Classic and
Steredenn: Binary Stars at will, just by clicking the checkbox in the DLC list.
Obviously, there isn't many reasons to play
Steredenn: Classic instead of
Steredenn: Binary Stars, but if you are nostalgic, it's still possible. ;)
- Check the official Steredenn: Binary Stars website.
- Listen to the new soundtrack.
- Read the FAQ about our thought-process and decisions behind the update.
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8738527/453202739d2a5369d5e5b1d4836651cd7f0c7c0a.png
Steredenn 2.0.0: Binary Stars
After a year of work, we are excited to release
Steredenn: Binary Stars, the hugely improved and massively expanded version of Steredenn.
This changelog, as you might expect, is a big one. This update changes so many things that we thought it deserved the big number increase.
-
Your savegame will be deleted. It's a new start. We revamped the progression system, and we think it will be better for everyone to experience it. Don't worry, for an experienced player, this won't take long (you just lose the Arena and unlocked weapons, after all).
- The leaderboards will be erased too. With the new scoring system and mechanics, it doesn't make sense to keep the current ones.
What's in this 2.0.0? The main highlights are:
- 5 playable ships with a new
special ability mechanic.
- Local 2-players co-op mode.
- And many more new and upgraded things. Read on for a detailed list.
It's a culmination of a ton of work from our part. This makes Steredenn an even better game: the experience has been enriched and diversified in many ways. I don't think we can really improve the game anymore (except for bugs — fixing bugs is a never-ending task like this game). Not in its current form anyways. ;)
Enough chit-chat, let's dive in!
A fair warning: this changelog is very exhaustive and contains SPOILERS. If you want a pure experience without knowing anything, don't read it. You have been warned. 😉
Features
- 5 playable ships.
- Local 2-players co-op mode with special leaderboard.
- Boss rush mode. Face a pre-selected roaster of bosses, and beat them! You can try as many times as you want, and your score will go ina special leaderboard. This is a weekly challenge.
- Secret bosses. If you do a certain thing (Zhu Li, do the thing!), you will earn the privilege to fight against one of the secret bosses.
- 3 new music tracks: Binary Stars, Supermassive, Star Devourers. Listen on Bandcamp.
- Cargos can drop Medkits and Ultramedkits. This is rare, but it can save you from an ineluctable death.
Ships
- New ship: the "Tempest". This is actually the current existing ship — same speed, same health, same damages. Its special ability is to use a melee weapon as a third weapon. Taking a melee weapons has a real value now, without any handicap. Yes: you can have the cake and eat it!
- New ship: the "Fortress". It's slow, it does less damages, but can absorb many more hits. Its special ability is a rain of homing rockets. There's no subtlety here: just rush into the battlefield. Everything is gonna be fine, trust us.
- New ship: the "Fury". You got less health, but more damages. And this ship is fast! Its special ability is a teleport. Press the button, choose your target, and bam! You're there. If you quickly press the button, it will teleport a few light-years before you instantly. Because it's Steredenn, the teleportation is, obviously, explosive. If you teleport near an enemy ship, there's a good chance that you will wreck it.
- New ship: the "Specialist". The master of Bots. This ship is radically different from the previous ones. You can only use Bots. If you orbitate near them, they will become invincible, so use them as a wall! Its special ability is a Boosterbot and you can only have one at a time. This Bot changes the behavior of the other Bots under its aura. For example, a Gunbot will fire a huge number of bullets in a larger cone, but will deplete faster. A Bot under the influence of the Boosterbot is not necessarily better, but its new behavior can be used to handle different situations. This is key to the gameplay of the Specialist. Try everybot, with or without the booster, and you will understand.
- New ship: the "Red Baron". Like the Specialist, this ship is completely different. This time, you start the game with 4 abilities and that's all. No cargo, nothing else. The first ability is a spread gun to destroy light targets. The second ability is a huge laser. Yes, you read it right. A freaking huge laser!! This is your main weapon against medium targets. Finally, your last weapon is a grenade. You can charge it to launch it far away. The more you charge, the more damages it will deal. The last ability is not a weapon, but a Speed Boost. Move at an unparalled velocity and dodge everything, or re-deploy yourself quickly in better spots and fire at will!
Bosses
- 2 new bosses.
- New boss: "Cruiser MK-II".
- New boss: "Carrier MK-II".
- 6 new secret bosses.
- New secret boss: "Verdukul".
- New secret boss: "An Old Friend".
- New secret boss: "Garbage Collector".
- New secret boss: "Alien Threat".
- New secret boss: "SUPERCHABAL".
- New secret boss: "The Red Baron".
Weapons
- The "Bullet" category has now 11 weapons, 12 with the default.
- The "Energy" category has now 11 weapons, 12 with the default.
- The "Heavy" category has now 11 weapons, 12 with the default.
- The "Bot" category has now 10 weapons, 11 with the default, and 12 with the Boosterbot.
- New "Bullet" weapon: "Helixer".
- New "Bullet" weapon: "Hypershotgun". We had a shotgun. But no Hypershotgun. What a shame. This is fixed.
- New "Bullet" weapon: "Sniper". Check the cursor: if you target a special area of an enemy, you can demultiply the damages you'll give.
- New "Energy" weapon: "Fusion Blaster" (Fury's default weapon).
- New "Energy" weapon: "Fusion Hyperblaster".
- New "Energy" weapon: "Lightgun". A pulse of light rays.
- New "Energy" weapon: "Ultrabeam". Take the Ultralaser, apply the reverse effect and bam: the Ultrabeam. Focus on an enemy, don't release your fire and watch it get bigger overtime.
- New "Energy" weapon: "GLORYHAMMER". Faster than a laser bullet. 😎
- New "Heavy" weapon: "Fire Blaster" (Fortress' default weapon).
- New "Heavy" weapon: "Fire Hyperblaster". You might have understood now that we love the word Hyper?
- New "Heavy" weapon: "Frag Missiles". If your big girl/boy doesn't reach its target, it will destructure itself into many homing missiles.
- New "Heavy" weapon: "Lag Cannon". 😇
- New "Bot" weapon: "Blasterbot" (Specialist's default weapon). Combine the three other default weapons for a devastating effect.
- New "Bot" weapon: "Fusionbot".
- New "Bot" weapon: "Demuxbot".
- New "Bot" weapon: "Ninjabot". Trained in the dark art of stealth, your Ninjabots can conceal themselves into the Darkness of Space.
- New "Bot" weapon: "Drillerbot". With the Specialist, you can hold them and create a huge stack of mini-drills.
- New "Bot" weapon: "Laserbot".
- New "Melee" weapon: "Razorblade" (Tempest's default special ability). Tiny but handy.
Events
- 4 new events.
- New event: "Bumpers". A bumpy ride awaits you.
- New event: "Bulletmines". Okay, mines were great. A bulletmine? More laughter!
- New event: "Bulletstorm". At this point, a bulletstorm shouldn't surprise you, right?
- New event: "Quantum Asteroid Field". We thought the Asteroid Fields were too easy and we should add a variant that can teleport. Because we can. 😎
Upgrades
- Upgrades have a title and a description. This way, you can better understand the actual effect of an upgrade.
- 5 new upgrades.
- New upgrade: "Chain Reaction". When an enemy ship is destroyed, it creates a small shockwave. Which can trigger another shockwave.
- New upgrade: "Guardian Angel". Prevent death once per level. Basically, it gives you another HP when you should have died the first time it happens.
- New upgrade: "Heavy Armor". When you are hit by a bullet that does 3 (or more) damages, it reduces the amount you take by one.
- New upgrade: "Ancient Power". Create an electric damage aura around you in a small radius.
- New upgrade: "Next-Gen Special Ability". Boost your special ability. The effect depends on the ship you are using. The Tempest creates an additional shockwave when you use its melee weapon. The Fortress throws more missiles. The Fury deals damages before and after its teleportation. The Specialist can use two boosterbots, that gain the ability to mirror bots with a weaker ghost. The Red Baron becomes invulnerable for a few frames when using its Speed Boost, and throws mini-grenades with the bigger ones.
- Artefacts: 7 deadly game modifiers that change the flow of the game. They also increases the difficulty.
Misceallenous
- New scoring system. Like the old one, but simpler. There is no type of wave anymore. If you destroy all the ships, you gain one combo, if you take no damage, you gain one combo. That's all.
- Export your death gif (only on PC/Mac/Linux).
- Add 14 incredible space environments.
- Add 42 new waves.
- Rework the background of the main menu and first level. This environment is huge. Have some time to lose? Wait and watch the main title screen.
- Rework hyperspace animation. Smooth!
- Rework pause UI. Pretty!
- Update the tutorial with a special ability section.
- Add new achievements on Steam.
- Add new tips.
- Add toast when a weapon, mode or ship is unlocked.
- Animate rocks, mines and events a bit to make them more "alive".
- Easter egg. 😘
- Better cheat protection.
- Improve many parts of the UI.
- Add the ability to rebind all the controls and controllers.
- Overall polish and optimisations.
Bug fixes/technical stuffs
- Improve japanese translation.
- Add traditional chinese translation.
- Add a progressive screenshakes on Shotgun and Hypershotgun. Add junks too.
- Make black overlays bigger to prevent a small 1px gap on the sides.
- Fix double collider explosions.
- Fix bot search animation bug.
- And many other bug fixes.
Balance
- We checked many upgrades to make them better interact with other aspects of the game. We squashed some bugs or missing effects there aswell.
- Improve some enemies patterns in loops.
- Improve "Score" upgrades.
- Make later loops harder (5+). Why? The game wasn't scaling well enough past a certain number of loops. This was not interesting to watch or play.
- Balance some patterns (bosses or standard enemies).
- Balance "Reinforcements" upgrade.
- Balance all bots (life, contact, duration, ammunitions, etc.).
- Balance enemy shields mechanic. Before Binary Stars, shields were, most of the time, useless: you had a shield-breaking weapon, or the Shield Breaker upgrade, breaking them so quickly that you couldn't even see them. We reworked the shield in order to make them a real threat: even with the shield breaker or a shield-breaking weapon, they can represent a true danger.
- Balance the bonus of each event. They give way more points now. This reflects the fact that they make the game really more difficult and require a real reward if you can survive them.
- Balance Flamethrower. Still powerful, but a bit more restrained against certain types of enemies.
- Rework the Shockwave. The old Shockwave was not a bad weapon, but we were not happy with the feeling. We tried to keep what made the Shockwave a useful weapon, but this time, it's also fun to use.
- Rework the Stasisgun and Stasisbot. They are more Flamethrower-like now. And better. Because they were not.
- Rework the Lightsaber. The old one was ugly and the feeling was even worse. This time, you got a real lightsaber: quick, pretty and powerful. Throw back all the bullets!
- Rework melee weapon mechanic. It's more robust, but it changes the tempo quite a bit.
- Ultrawarrior achievement is extended to all ships.
- And many other balance tweaks.
Fiouu. I think this is it.
Stats
We hope that Steredenn: Binary Stars will please you as much as we enjoyed creating this expansion. Whether you are a new player or an experienced one, we think that you will find enough new contents and features to motivate you to play the game, once again or for the first time.
Let's end with some statistics (from February 22nd, 2018):
- The "first" commit (that started Binary Stars) is dated to `March 2, 2017`. So, almost a full year.
- We made `1954` commits since this first commit.
- We made `8891` commits since the beginning of Steredenn. Before Binary Stars, we were at `6937` commits (`+28%`).
- We wrote `63506` lines of C# code. Before Binary Stars, we were at `47339` lines (`+34%`).
- We drew `8813` sprites. Before Binary Stars, we were at `5761` sprites (`+52%`).
- There's a total of `40 667 664` pixels in those sprites. Before Binary Stars, we were at `31 341 674` pixels (`+29%`). I can't get an exact calculation without the transparency, but this averages to
more than 8 millions non-transparent pixels.
- We moved `552` cards in our Trello board, only for
Binary Stars.
- We use `Unity 2017.3`. We started with `Unity 4.3`. This means many migrations throughout the lifetime of the game.
The website has been updated for the occasion: http://steredenn.pixelnest.io/.
We also wrote a huge FAQ on this website to describe our thought-process and decisions behind Steredenn: Binary Stars. Some parts of the FAQ are used in this changelog, but you can find more information about other topics. Read on (http://steredenn.pixelnest.io/faq/).
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8738527/453202739d2a5369d5e5b1d4836651cd7f0c7c0a.png
Steredenn 2.1.0: Switching Guns
A new patch with many critical fixes and improvements for Binary Stars.
What's new?
To sum up quickly: we have increased the performances, slashed many bugs, improved the Specialist, reworked small lasers, destroyed tons of crashes, and added new contents.
It never ends! Like the universe… ha ha… ha? 🙄
Features
- Add 3 environments.
- Rocks, mines, bulletmines, bumpers and other small explodable elements have a small movement.
- Use bumpers on gamepads.
- Improve first level's background. It's huuuge. The whole solar system. Waow. 😱😱😱
- Improve loop first level's background.
- Improve vibrations on gamepads (if supported). Way way better!
- Improve texts.
Bug fixes/technical stuffs
- Increase performances for bullets and Asteroid Fields.
- Optimize Stasisbot and Stasisgun.
- Use correct background for special bosses in Arena.
- Handle language change in the settings in a smoother way.
- Rework Arena starting animation.
- Add Pro Controller support on PC.
- Fix Tempest taking a normal weapon in its melee slot (which was not a viable strategy since the weapon was not useable, sorry).
- Fix spamming bugs with the Tempest special ability.
- Fix Garbage Collector cross pattern.
- Fix some errors in texts.
- Fix some bugs in Arena's game over.
- Fix some starting weapons not considered unlocked by default.
- Fix bug with two identical controllers considered the same in co-op.
- Fix artefacts being dropped after the destruction of a miniboss in the Arena.
- Fix the Rocket Circus' targeting during the Asteroworm fight.
- Fix a rare date bug in Daily Run.
- Fix Red Baron boss' trail not cleaned correctly during hypespaces.
- Fix trails when the SUPERCHABAL is destroyed.
- Fix mini-Garbage Collector trails.
- Fix audio bugs.
- Fix pesky misalignment issues for special ability UI.
Balance
- Tweak Specialist for a better game experience. Changes below.
- Bots under the Specialist Aura have a bigger shield radius.
- Bots under the Specialist Aura are pushed back each time they get hit. You have to move to stay behind them. This is a big change, but it's a good one, don't worry. ;)
- Specialist can stop freefalling Bots by coming near them.
- Bots can target new enemies more quickly.
- Ghost Bots (from Next-Gen Special) ignore the Specialist aura.
- Remove Specialist passive bonus damage.
- Reduce Fury special ability damage bonus.
- Reduce Ninjabot damage.
- Reduce Minirockets damage and increase cooldown.
- Reduce Quick Reload bonus a bit.
- Reduce Laserbot damage.
- Balance Flamebot.
- Increase Ancient Power damage.
- Modify Cruiser MK2 patterns conditions.
- Modify Gunbot boost mode.
- Melee weapons don't trigger suicide bullets in loops.
- Change damage type of Red Baron's spread weapon.
- Improve heal speed of a health capsule.
- Shieldbots last longer but can only be spawned twice with a bigger cooldown.
- Shieldbots can stop laser.
- Shieldbots don't destroy ally bots created near them.
- Shieldbots are less vulnerable to collisions.
- Shieldbots blink more when they are almost discharged.
- Shieldbots last longer under the Specialist aura.
- Rework Reflector to be more intuitive and easier to use.
- Reflector shows an animation when fully charged.
- Shield shows an animation when fully charged.
- Shield stops small lasers.
- Change probabilities on SUPERCHABAL and Asteroworm.
- Increase cooldown of the Baygun.
- Reduce number of bullets reflected by the Heavy Shielder.
- Rename "Reconfigured Slot Design" to "Improved Reconfiguration System".
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8738527/453202739d2a5369d5e5b1d4836651cd7f0c7c0a.png
Steredenn 2.1.1: Orbit Correction
We continue with a bunch of small improvements and fixes, especially for Steam, Xbox One, and PS4 releases.
The main improvement is on the UI, where we finally found a way to improve retina screens support (offering us the chance to remove many hacks that were required with previous Unity versions). This is cleaner and better, yay. 🙋♀️🙋♂️
Features
- Cinema mode is now permanent and you have to disable it manually in the settings.
Bug fixes/technical stuffs
- Fix incorrect music (or no music) after a restart with the Specialist.
- Fix tons of hacks in the UI, allowing us to handle resolution changes and retina screens correctly all the time.
- Fix white noise sound staying after being defeated by the Nemesis.
- Fix (again) bots and Autocannon targeting an out-of-screen enemy.
- Fix a sound bug at the end of the Arena.
- Fix a bug with Mines and generators.
- Fix a bug with Shotgun and EMP mines.
Balance
- Increase Helixer's side cannons damages.
- Decrease Helixer's main cannon damage. Overall, the Helixer deals more damage.
- Increase cooldown of Stasisbot.
- Increase cooldown of Frag Missile.
- Reduce movement speed of Frag Missile.
- Change combo bonus of "SUPERMASSIVE GLORIOUS SURVIVOR" artefact.
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8738527/453202739d2a5369d5e5b1d4836651cd7f0c7c0a.png
If you read this far, well done!
As always, thanks for your support and do not hesitate to send feedbacks on the forums. ;)
Special thanks to Simon Coroller, Etienne Marque, Zander Noriega, Anaïs Mayance, Claire Thouault, Krokmou, Kevin Scatton and Plug-in-Digital - as well as our fantastic players! 👏
Out.
Damien Mayance & Matthieu Oger.
— Steredenn’s team.
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8738527/71a94a6c64f2162cfdcbd2cce66eb8b26a19f971.png
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8738527/75bc32aa9838b2ef9e281d80ab297b9e6c4e18d4.png
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8738527/8cb946ab69ab54088e633ee5d395d604669a6685.png
