Dev Blog - Mech Timelapse, menu improvements and some setbacks. (Patreon)

Hello beautiful Patrons!

Before we begin with this developer blog, I’d like to rip the band aid off right away as I promised to always be honest with all of you; the past 2 weeks have been slow and development went through a bit of a rough patch. I have been dealing with covid which thankfully did not make me feel very sick, but did make me feel exhausted and tired all day, making it very difficult for me to work on the game. On top of that, two of our artists are having technical problems (one has a broken drawing tablet, one has a broken laptop SSD), putting the concept art department in a full stop. I promised I would show some environmental art 2 weeks ago, but I am afraid that we will have to wait for a little while longer. My apologies.

Of course, this does not mean we have spent the last two weeks doing nothing! So let's begin.

(UPDATE 16-3-2022: Laptop problem has been solved! Work is resuming)

Time-lapse

(Apparently it is not possible to properly embed a video in a text-blog post...)

Mech Timelapse Video 

Last week we showed completed renderings of our new enemy type, the Mech. Before we began the modeling process, I asked Arturo if he could record the entire process because I always felt like that would be a fun reward for our backers. It is 80 minutes long and plays at 8x speed, but if we made it any shorter, it would have been too hard to pick out the details. Feel free to skip certain sections and look for the parts that seem interesting. Alternatively, you can play it in the background and listen to that awesome Safe Room theme that Lawrence composed a while ago. Enjoy, I think it’s a very fun watch!

Aim Assist

For the players who prefer to play with a controller, I started working on an aim assist feature which will help you snap onto targets easier. This is needed because of how mobile the enemy is. It is still in a prototype stage so I can’t show it off yet, but know that I’m working on it! Hopefully I can get a basic implementation working before our Patreon Exclusive Demo begins.

Main Menu

The menus have been proven to be quite challenging. None of us like the default GZDoom menu as it is one bloated and outdated mess that still looks nearly identical to how it was 30 years ago. So we wanted to modernize it a little by rewriting the whole thing and come up with our very own menu system. This one is still far from being completed, but I’d love to show what it looks like so far.

This week, we’ve added some visual effects to the main menu by adding a 2D smoke and embers as an overlay, demonstrated in the GIF below. The artwork of Dawn shown here is a placeholder. The goal is to show key art of Selaco there, a nice overview of the city to familiarize the player with the setting straight from the get go.

(Upon making the GIF, I realized that it is very hard to notice in this format. Apologies)

Then we have the Difficulty Menu. This one looked awful in the early days. Here is a difference between the new one and the old one. I wanted to label which one is the old version and which one is the new version, but I think it should be obvious enough. The GIF compression does not do the smoke effects any favors however.

After selecting a difficulty, the screen fades to black and prompts you with 3 choices. This is an important one, as this choice has a huge impact on how you play the game.

(Very work in progress)

We’ve mentioned it before in the past, but I’ll briefly explain it again. Traditional Mode is the standard mode. You can save the game at any moment, your health regenerates up to 35 HP and automated checkpoints are enabled.

Hardcore Mode takes the ability to automatically save the game away from you and requires you to spend credits at a Gwyn Machine to save your progress. You can compare this to the original Resident Evil games where you had to use ink ribbons to save, which could deplete. Additionally, there are no checkpoints, no health regenerations, and some portions of the game have been altered to be more deadly. For example, touching a texture that has a spinning fan on it will not damage the player in traditional mode, as that would be too punishing. In Hardcore Mode however, touching the texture will damage or kill you. Some item placement will also be altered.

We have plans to show this prompt again when a Hardcore Player finishes the first level, allowing them to switch back to Traditional Mode if they feel like Hardcore Mode is not their cup of tea.

Randomizer Mode is something we will most likely not finish on release and will be added for free post-launch, probably between the release of Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. Randomizer Mode is one of our answers to replay value and will be unlocked after the player finished the game (a cheat can be used to unlock it right away). It’s a mode that turns the game into a chaotic mess by randomizing a whole bunch of stuff, like enemy placements, weapons, pickups and more. That room that used to have a Shotgun might now contain a Railgun. That small group of soldiers that spawn in that one area of the game might now consist of 2 large Juggernauts. That infamous area with the Juggernaut? It might now be guarded by a large Mech. Of course, in the background through the power of scripting, some things will still be controlled to ensure that the game is beatable and won’t just endlessly throw mechs at you. It may, however, still make your playthrough extremely difficult if it wants too, making the Randomizer Mode unpredictable but very fun.

Other screenshots of the menu:

New chairs!

In the last blog post I showed an image of The Broken Seal, a lovely little old-fashioned restaurant owned by a man who is nostalgic to the past, so made it look as earth-like as possible. We used plastic chairs as a placeholder because we didn't have any chairs that really blended well will the environment. Thankfully, we have Borion! He made a few new chairs that match the environment much better.

A third stage of destruction is WIP. Will show it in the next blog post!

Maintenance Areas

Not a lot that I want to share here as I strongly refuse to spoil too many environments post-launch, but I’m working on a new environment. We try to make sure that Selaco keeps switching things up as far as environments go, so we continue to make new tile sets. Say hello to the Maintenance Shafts, which you will frequently visit in the second level as you battle your way through the rooftops. They’re dark and unstable. As you traverse, lights will frequently snap as missiles and other explosives keep hitting Selaco. Just like The Broken Seal, the amount of sci-fi in this area is kept low, but it's still present in some areas!

Patreon Exclusive Demo

Still on track! If you are a $5+ backer, expect an email with more info to come your way very soon. This demo will feature the first level of the game, consisting of 3 segments which takes roughly 40 to 50 minutes to beat in total.

Conclusion

While level design and some of the back-end stuff have progressed very well, anything else has been a bit slow for the past two weeks. I am confident we will have some more things to show next time. We are currently working on an audio pass for the Crawler Mines, so I’ll show these off in action next week. We’re also going to spice up the death animations when killing enemies with a shotgun, so stay tuned for that as well!

I would like to thank everyone again for backing us! None of this would have been possible with you and we're really excited to hear your thoughts on the upcoming demo!

Wesley de Waart