Dev Blog - Pre-Demo release date, Dawn 3D Model, improved menus and more. (Patreon)

Admiral Tier Pre-demo Testing

We've been discussing this for quite a while now. Given how Selaco is still relatively far from releasing (insert obligatory 2255 joke here!) we were hesitant to share a demo with anyone who wasn't part of our current (playtesting) team. We are currently far enough into development to confidentially say that we are getting close to the vision that we have for this game and are ready to get some more testing done with a larger group of people; our Admiral tier backers. Our current target is to get the demo ready on October 25th, 2021. The Pre-demo test will be updated weekly as new content and fixes are added to the game. Eventually, when everything is in place and most of the reported bugs are ironed out, a more polished version becomes available to Lieutenant Tier and above. We are still aiming to get this done in 2021!

Pre-Demo testing will require you to sign an NDA. Everybody eligible for the Pre-Demo test will receive an Email with more information a few days before the demo hits. After the NDA is signed, you will be handed a Steam Key to play the game along with a Discord Invitation to a private playtesting server.

Patreon Merchandise

Another thing we have been discussing for what feels like an eternity is the inclusion of Patreon Merchandise. Starting tomorrow, our Patreon Page will start using the so called 'Loyalty Feature', where backers using the Commander Tier or above will get rewarded with physical Selaco items every 3 months of backing this project. This is a fantastic way to reward long-term backers with exclusive rewards that will not be available anywhere outside of Patreon! 

If you are already a Commander Tier, you are automatically eligible for Merchandise. The graphics below are not final and are subject to change (Especially the clothing items! We are going to make custom art for those and make sure they are gaming related clothes that you would actually want to wear!)

(Altered Orbit Studio's is not responsible for the quality of the Merchandise. Patreon is handling all of the merchandise and, outside of sending the graphics, we are not involved with the process)

Apologies for these terrible background graphics, our graphic designer is on a break!

Dawn 3D model

Our character artist (Arturo Pahua) has started working on a 3D model for Dawn. This model will be used as an ingame sprite reference so we can get some proper window reflections going, but also to aid us with promo material. There is still a lot to do here, as you can tell a lot of things are still missing compared to the Turntable shown below. We can show you the full model in about 2 weeks.

The goal is to show visible wear and tear in Dawn's mirror reflection. This will be done in two ways:

Armor wear & tear - If the player has no armor, no armor will be shown in the mirror. If the player has armor, armor will be shown. However, as the campaign progresses, the armor will appear more worn out and damaged when compared to the early game.

Brushes and scars - Show damage to Dawn's skin based on player health. Having her appear more bruised and damage the lower your health is. Kind of like Doom guy's mugshot in the original Doom games, except cooler because it's a full body reflection in a mirror! Showing armor damage is going to happen, but brushes and scars are still under consideration.

Because uhh.. Here is what our current Mirror Reflections look like. You literally play a cardboard cutout right now and we cannot wait to remove this curse from Dawn.

Sieger Death Animation

Last weak I've showed the model of our new enemy type, the Sieger, and explained how he worked.

I've spent some time adding proper death animations for the siegers. It being a flying enemy gave me a perfect excuse to blow him up in spectacular fashion. After being killed, they will either fly straight down to the floor, or fly towards the left / right and explode as soon as they touch something. On lower difficulties, the Sieger Death Explosion will only be lethal towards World Objects and Enemy Soldiers, the player will be fully immune to this. This will not be the case on higher difficulties.

We've had some interesting discussions with our Patrons on Discord about how we could potentially make this even better by adding a tactical element to it. What if you could manipulate his death direction? As in, if the enemy is doing a strafe run to the left side, and you kill him during this motion, he will consistently fly towards the left after being killed. A skilled player will be able to abuse this system and allow Siegers to fly into the direction of a group of enemies, killing everyone caught in the blast radius. You bet that we are going to look into this feature!

Menu Progress

We always felt that GZDoom's default menu is starting to show its age. Cockatrice is currently rewriting a large portion of GZDoom's menu system to appear more modern, show a proper preview of what each and every graphical setting does and to allow us far more control over how we control the look and feel of our menu's. The screenshot below is still an early draft and will look better in a later version. It's shaping us great!

That's it for this week! Apologies for the lack of SMG in this blog post, we are still wrapping up the animations. As soon as it's ready, I will do a follow-up blog post dedicated towards the SMG. Rough estimate should be 4-5 days from now.

Remember to join our Discord Channel where we show Patreon Exclusive content on a near-daily basis! Thank you all for backing us, looking forward to sharing more in the near future!

- Wesley de Waart