Dev Blog - Demo release date, new voxels, enemy type and more. (Patreon)

We are late, very late. Sorry about that! We’ve been super hard at work to revise a lot of older systems. So allow me to talk / show about some of the things we are working on! If you are on mobile, an imgur link to all the gifs can be found at the bottom of this post.

Patreon Demo release date

We are targeting Q1 2022 for the Patreon Demo, which features 3 levels. ''Prologue'', ''Pathfinder'' and ''Lockdown''. Currently we are doing tests with our Admiral Tiers and the results have been amazing. We've done a form which gave us a total of 40 submissions, all of which saying that they really liked it. 

We have received some useful feedback as some things weren't quite on-par with the rest of the game. Slidings being a broken was a big one. Thankfully, all of the critiques we got are "easily" fixable, so we're getting all these out of the way first!

Grenade Launcher

WIP screenshot. Screens are missing

I did some tests and came to the conclusion that it needs a small revision. The weapon looks great, but the screen came out bigger than I thought it would, so we are going to revise that. On top of that, I think it could go with some additional detailing.

Interactivity

We have added all new interaction prompts which we had shown off in our last blog post, but we also rewrote how the pickup & throw system works. It’s a lot like in Half Life 2 where you can pick up objects and toss them around. Useful for puzzle solving, adds immersion and allows players to reach areas you could otherwise not reach. We’ve seen some very creative use with this system in the Pre-Demo tests that we’ve been doing. One player could not find a secret so instead stacked a bunch of objects to climb through the window on the other side. This was unintentional in level design, but it works, and that’s awesome! Can’t wait to see all the exploits and tricks people are going to come up with! There's already a trick to skip an entire battle in the upcoming Patreon Demo, but I don't want to spoil that!

Gasmask

The third level of Selaco forces Dawn into a very dangerous area, one that is not hit by the alien invasion, but contains a completely different threat! It is not likely that we will show this one off in any of our marketing material or in Patreon Blog posts. I strongly believe things are more effective when they are fresh.

New Voxels

We’ve added a whole bunch of new voxels to Selaco. Here are a few of them! And yes, they are all destructible!

So many props! What's not to love here. Having all this stuff to work with makes decorating the environments so much easier. Keeping everything interactable also helps make everything feel more grounded. 

New enemy type: Enforcers

We are working on two enemy types right now. One of which is a big spoiler, the other we can show! Meet The Enforcers. Highly tactical, aggressive and far more trained than any of the other enemies you will encounter. We will discuss these guys in a later blog post!

Challenge Overhaul

Selaco uses an in-game challenge system. These aren't quite the same as achievements (which we might also add at some point!), these are simply repeatable challenges that are given to the player for doing things. Killing enemies, finding items, discovering secrets, reading datapads etc. There's a lot we reward curious players for, while not making it mandatory. Selaco can be completed just fine by ignoring challenges completely, but they will make life easier on higher difficulties. Why? Let me explain!

Completing challenges gives you credits, credits are spend on Gwyn machines for either health, a permanent upgrade called the ''Awareness Booster'' which shows radius circles around secrets you have been near to to make them easier to find, or to purchase Save Games (Hardcore Mode only). Workshops allow you to use credits to buy ammo and armor. Of course, these are scattered around the world as well, but the Workshop allows you to stock up on ammo for your favorite weapon or carry around a little more than usual just to be safe.

We are currently overhauling this system because the last implementation was very outdated. It did not scale, it looked ugly and was poorly coded. It will now use the almighty CockUI! Which looks much better than the ACS Implementation I made almost 3 years ago.

Magazine Sketches

We're working on a large quantity of different magazine voxels for Selaco which will be ongoing throughout development. It's a fun way of worldbuilding. As soon as these are all finished, they will be projected onto a voxel model. I'll share a table turn once that time comes!

Conclusion

That's all we got for now! Apologies that it is taking so long for us to show a working Grenade Launcher. As stated in a previous blog post, it's a complex weapon to work on and combined with the many other things we have in the pipeline right now, we cannot put all of our efforts into it.

I'll make sure to get another blog post out before new years, but we will probably not see each other again until after Christmas. With that said, I wish you all a Merry Christmas! Here are some Dawn stickers!

As usual, I cannot thank you enough for your pledge! We hope to see you again in the next blog post!

(Using mobile? Use this link to see the gifs!)

Wesley de Waart