Developer Blog - Changes in the demo, flying kicks, artwork and more! (Patreon)

We’re back for another dev blog and, phew, what a couple of weeks it has been. I want to take a moment to discuss the results of the previews and the changes we've made for the upcoming public demo. Usually we show tons of new features and additions in these blog posts, but with the demo on the way, we mainly focused on refinement.

As usual, if you are on a mobile device, you can find all the GIFs and images here: https://imgur.com/a/lfao0hE 

Previews

The preview from GmanLives and JarekTheGamingDragon has done some great stuff for us. Our wishlists went up significantly, giving us 3500 wishlists on the first day of Gman’s video, followed by at least a thousand wishlists for the days that came after. This is still going. Jarek’s video that appeared a week later brought it back up too, keeping it going!

We saw a much needed increase in Patrons as a result, as you might have probably noticed. If you are new here, we are eternally grateful for your support, this was a boost we really needed.. We now have the budget for a new level designer (maybe even two, if the momentum keeps going) and are going to start looking right after the demo releases. Not only will this allow Selaco to be a longer game, it allows me to further refine features, polish the game up and assist Ken with the writing process. I am beyond excited for this. Big thanks to both GmanLives and Jarek for putting the word out. It got people talking and we got exactly what we were hoping to achieve out of it.

You can view the previews here:

GmanLives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qatHGKV0opk

JarekTheGamingDragon:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCoPn4VhYmg

New feature: Use-to-pickup

When analyzing footage from players testing the Patreon Demo, we often noticed a massive flaw in the way we handle pickups. Items, like ammo boxes and portable medkits, are often placed on top of desks, furniture or other objects. Not only do we think this looks better aesthetically, it also sort of acts as guidance. It’s always worth focusing your eyes on furniture to check whether or not you see something shine. Makes sense, right? It’s easy to get used to this design choice as a player.

A problem arose when we noticed players would often ‘hug’ a desk to pick up an item from a desk, just to realize they are not within the pick-up radius of the item. A solution to this is to either jump on top of it, or circle around to the other side of the desk where the item pickup is closer and within pick-up range.

While I love the idea of Dawn jumping on top of tables to pick up ammo, it feels rather clunky in practice. So we added the ability to press the Use button to pick-up all sorts of items. Not only that, a label will describe the item and tell you the quantity of the ammo pickups. See the screenshot to see what I mean!

Additionally, we have added a feature called 'Manual Pickup mode' (Gameplay -> Immersion) that prevents items from being automatically picked up. Useful in hardcore mode where you don't want to accidentally pick up items you currently do not need.

New feature: Jump Kicks

One commonly requested feature was to add the ability for flying kicks. F.E.A.R. has it, so surely we should have it too, right? Well, not exactly, sort of.

The problem with flying kicks is that I was struggling to find a use for it. We already have sliding kicks, which is a more powerful melee alternative that puts your slide on an extended cooldown as a trade-off. From a game design standpoint we feel like this made sense. However, how is this going to work if we add flying kicks? Do we give a full slide cooldown when a flying kick is executed? That doesn’t make sense and won't feel very intuitive. Do we make it identical to a regular weapon melee? That sells the wrong idea, because if the move is more complicated to execute, surely we need to reward the player for it. What if we just make it more powerful? That would make regular melee completely worthless because flying kicks will always be available. Making it another cooldown would make melee too involved because that would mean both Flying Kicks and Slide Kicks would have their own cooldown. Decisions, decisions…

Then I realized that I was being an idiot. What if we allow the player to turn slide kicks into jump kicks? We already have a Slide Jump mechanic that people love, let's upgrade it!

While performing a Slide Attack, you can now jump to switch to a flying kick. This will keep your feet up and this allows you to kick the enemy in the head. It functions nearly the same as a slide kick does, however, the amount of knockback is always based on the velocity of the player, so if you time your flying kick just right, you might be able to knock the enemy down just a little further than usual. This is not always the desired outcome, so watch your kicks carefully!

Artwork Progress (WIP!)

We showed this piece a while ago, but unfortunately had to put it on hold to focus on some demo stuff. With the demo being mostly ready to go, Silvia took some time to get back to work on it and this where it is currently at. There are still some things missing here, like some smoke and particle effects (it is Selaco, after all), a sky and some additional tweaks. What are we going to use it for? Nothing specific, really. I think it's important to always have some spare artwork available that we can use for a random announcement or blog post to draw some eyes. Since we’re all caught up with the demo, and all of Silvia’s stuff is put on hold until we can focus on the full game again, she went to work on this piece. It turned out fantastic, don't you think? I’ll share it in full res glory once it’s finished!

Demo Preparations

If you took a quick glance at this blog post to count the amount of pictures, you might have noticed there’s a little less of that than usual. That is because we are preparing for the final deadline: Demo!

We basically refined as much as we could. The demo level being the first level I made for this game, it needed some changes to match the newer levels of the game. Let's talk about some of the improvements we’ve made. This doesn’t cover all of it, but a good amount.

Admiral tier backers, we will be updating your client soon with a demo test! Keep an eye out for the Test Server, I'll ping everyone there when it's ready!

Layout improvements

A number of combat encounters have been adjusted. Expect some new rooms here and there that allow both you and the enemy to have more movement options in combat.

Color Grading

All maps have been re-colored almost entirely. I always liked the lighting in Selaco, but noticed I could do a better job with giving the illusion of bounce lights. A red light in a bright blue environment should never be solid red, it always looked a little out of place. I redid all of those, adjusted sector lights, new little fog effects and more. I am not sure if everybody will notice the changes, but I do think it’s more pleasing on the eyes than it usually is.

Scripted sequences

I rewrote a number of them and added a whole bunch of new ones. While I always loved the opening, I felt like not enough things were exploding and the intensity was lacking a bit. So that’s what I improved on. While you run and look for a weapon, a lot more is going to happen, as well as a slight tweak in the maintenance shaft section.

Pathfinding

Another thing I addressed was enemies getting stuck between objects. If they are in pathfinding mode (player out of sight, trying to reach the player), they will no longer get stuck inside objects and have a much easier time locating the player.

Improved effects

We are now fully utilising Cockatrice’s Particle System. Not only did we refine a bunch of the effects themselves, we are now also capable of adding more particles with less of a performance hit.

Improved audio experience

If you work on a game for many years, you learn a lot and get new talent onboard. Many of our older sounds did not really fit anymore, so got to work on replacing a bunch of older sounds. On top of that, I continued my never-ending journey of fixing the mixing (that rhymes!) problems. Once again, expect sound decibels to be more believable. A piece of broken monitor hitting the carpet floor will no longer match the audio levels of a gigantic explosion!

Slidings are more reliable

Slidings are now more reliable than ever. GZDoom uses a state-based system meaning that only one thing can be done at once by an actor. As a result, firing your weapon while sliding (or any action, really) would completely cancel out any slide damage you could apply. When I wrote slides many years ago I didn’t know any better, but now that we fully utilize Zscript, It can be written to be more reliable and allow for proper multi-tasking. If Dawn’s legs are visible, you will apply slide damage. As an added bonus, pushable objects will now get pushed out of the way and crates will be destroyed instantly from slide damage.

Reanimated and re-rendered player sprites

Dawn will have updated sprite work where she looks less out of place and a little less ‘’happy’’. We are still working on these, so apologies for the lack of a screenshot!

Eliminated all floating items

In my last blog post I discussed replacing all pickups with ‘stationary’ ones, meaning they will no longer float. I strongly believe in the visual design of the game, but having both floating and stationary items always threw me off a little. I was not quite sure what to do here. Floating items trigger my nostalgia, but grounded items are more believable and aesthetically pleasing in a game like this. The choice ended up being rather easy, so I decided to lean into grounded items. This now includes weapons, health / armor shards and much more.

Key art

Same as last blog post! In progress. WIll show more later <3

(Heads up: This next part is not written by me. If you want to get angry over the amount of bro puns, take it out on Cockatrice. Just Bro with it.)

Space Bro:™:

Hey Broseph, are you a real BRO? Do you love SPACE? Then you're going to love SPACE BRO.

That's right, SPACE BRO is actively in development, and we hope to have a solid taste of the favorite arcade game of Selaco's finest ready to play for the public demo release. Get ready to boldly BRO where nobody has BROne before, and save the earth from deadly asteroids and aliens. Prove that you have what it takes to be the ultimate SPACE BRO! Credits are required of course, so keep some handy while you explore the demo levels, Broba Fett.

In SPACE BRO you will compete to beat Tychus and Dawn's high scores using your ship's laser to turn asteroids and aliens to dust. Activate the TURBRO engines to boost around at high speeds (watch your heat!) and use your limited screen killing NUKES to save yourself from impossible scenarios. More action is planned but we can't guarantee how much will make it in the demo release.

On the technical side

SPACE BRO is being written from the ground up using GZDoom's basic 2D drawing capabilities. It uses none of the sprite or gameplay features of GZDoom has to offer as it technically runs inside a menu in the UI context. We have gone this route because it means not interfering with level design in any way besides placement of the game cabinets.  We are proud to have sounds, particles, screen effects and even a crude physics engine running in this tiny little game-within-a-game.

What you see in the screenshot above is an early prototype but we are rapidly developing SPACE BRO into a properly playable arcade experience.

Conclusion

As you can see, the past couple of weeks have been all about refinement. The Patreon Demo went really well as far as feedback was concerned, so now we took the time to improve what we already have and get things ready for the public launch. We’re super nervous, but we’re also confident.

Thank you all for being here and for supporting this project. The month is about to end, so some of you might end the subscription today. Take good care and see you when the demo launches <3

Two weeks left!

Wesley de Waart