DEV BLOG - New setting, Mech model and more! (Patreon)

Almost one year of writing developer blogs and I am still a complete idiot when it comes to writing a good opening. So I’ll just drop something generic and move on to the fun stuff:

‘’Holy shit, has it been two weeks already?’’

Setting Change

The original idea for Selaco was to have it take place in a city located underneath the surface of Mars. This is an idea that I came up with in the early days when Selaco was still a Total Conversion mod for Doom II, a mod which was very much ‘’Doom 3 meets F.E.A.R.”. The similarities with Doom 3’s setting got a bit too obvious, and when Ken Coghlan (our writer) offered to write the story himself, he asked if he could change the setting into something else because he felt this underground city didn’t quite work with the story he wanted to write.

I declined. Mainly because at that time it was just the two of us and there was not enough manpower to suddenly change the entire setting of the game. After lots of thinking, I cannot help but feel like this whole underground thing does not quite work anymore. It’s hard to feel connected to something you cannot physically see in its entirety and it’s relatively restrictive from a design standpoint. I want to explore large and pretty open spaces but that’s hard to do when the entire game is essentially just a cave that humans have built a facility in. If the player is tasked to defend this place, the player should feel like it’s a place worth defending. The player should want Dawn to succeed, you want to see this place secure again. Currently, I do not feel like this has been achieved.

Arturo Pahua, who did environmental concept art for GhostRunner, is currently working on some sketches of the new setting. All ideas have been pitched and I’m fully confident that this is going to be a huge improvement for the game. Thankfully, we haven’t begun working on exteriors yet so this change should not slow down development too much. Existing maps will, for the most part, only need minor changes. Other than that, it’s mainly asset replacement and getting rid of all the Mars references. So, that's one of the things that we will be doing for the following week or two; asset replacement.

Stay tuned for more. Hopefully somewhere within the next 2 weeks.

Physical release / Big Box Release

The chances are becoming increasingly likely that this is going to happen, let's say that I am 90% sure. Things have been signed but I cannot confirm anything more right now. I will have to keep you guys waiting for just a little longer :(

WIP: New Level (OM_02A)

(The Broken Seal bar)

We started working on the second level of Selaco (mind you, more levels are already made. Levels are not made in chronological order). A large portion of Selaco takes place in environments where small to medium range combat takes centerstage, this level is spacious, large and open. The level features many different routes to take and allows the player to enter different buildings which all have their own small little story and environment going for it, which all interconnect to the main path. I think this will make for a great second level. The player has spent roughly an hour in the level prior to it and got used to the core mechanics by that point, so opening things up once you reach the second level is going to be fun. The first task the player receives is to visit Sal’s Bar, who owns a hidden workshop he and Dawn used to work in, before the invasion happened. It is here where the player is introduced to the Weapon Upgrade system. From this point on, ‘Weapon Parts’ can be found in the game world which is used as currency to upgrade your arsenal.

In the screenshot above is the ‘The Broken Seal’ bar. A bar that’s very back to basics as far as technology is concerned. There’s not a lot in the way of sci-fi here. Hell, The Broken Seal even refuses to use keycards so everything here is done with primitive traditional keys. I don't think most people living in Selaco even know how these work.

It’s a very fun change in environment and a breath of fresh air to both us and hopefully, the player. Something different for a couple of minutes before going back to full-on Sci Fi mode. Many assets have been made specifically for this section but the chairs are still going to get replaced with ones that suit the environment better. No worries!

Mech

The mech has been finished (Dawn for scale)! The next step is to apply a rig and begin animating this thing. Here are some renders.

Plasma Rifle

The concept art has been finished, complete with ammo pickup. Modeling will hopefully begin somewhere next month, as we’re taking a short break from modeling due to our monthly spending being a little higher than usual due to an art push.

In an older blog post we mentioned how we weren’t satisfied with the nailgun. Slower projectiles did not quite suit the weapon especially because it was supposed to be a weapon that pins enemies onto walls. After speeding up the projectiles and turning it into a semi-auto weapon, the whole gun felt much better than before. After this change however, we no longer had a slow projectile-based weapon so we needed to come up with something else.

Enter the Plasma Rifle! The addition of a Plasma Rifle suited us perfectly, especially because we needed a weapon that shares an ammo pool with the Railgun. Projectile speeds are roughly the same as in the original Doom game, but requires a bit more mastery to be utilized correctly because of how mobile most of our enemies are. The Plasma Rifle will shred armored enemies with ease (like the Mech we shared above!), and is certainly useful against lesser armored enemies as well, but their mobility requires you to lead your shots accordingly. It’s a short range beast, anything long range will be better suited for a different weapon.

Gwyn Menu rework

In one of our very first gameplay videos, we have shown a very poor attempt at a Gwyn Store menu (Selaco - A brand new upcoming GZDoom shooter). This was entirely done in a scripting language not made for user interfaces, called ACS. It was a painful endeavor to turn GZDoom’s Action Script into something that would produce a menu interface and it was an absolute nightmare to maintain. A fun hack, but an ugly one. Selaco was still going to be a free Doom mod by the time this was made and it was acceptable for it’s time. For a commercial project however, we had to opt for something that’s a little more high quality.

The Gwyn Menu is currently being rewritten entirely using our very own CockUI. It is still in its development stage, but it currently looks like this:

Gwyn is not a nice character. Her primary goal is to exploit customers with medicine that barely works, but her likeness, attractive appearance and the paranoia of people getting sick makes them an easy sell. For the UI, we wanted to go with something that resembles a scummy mobile game store. Something you would see in RAID: Shadow Legends, Cityville or many other Zynga games.

What are we currently working on?

• Finishing the Gwyn Menu
• Adding diving animations for our enemies so they can dodge grenades
• Rigging and animating the Mech
• Asset replacement
• Level design
• Music production

Conclusion

We continue to work hard on this game and it’s progressing rapidly. We hope to get the Patreon Demo available around the end of March, or at the very least early April. We’re still on track for March at our current pace!

See you all next week and thank you are usual! 💙

Wesley de Waart