The Selaco Christmas Challenge (Beta) is live! (Patreon)

Hello backers!

After launching the Big Demo Update last week, we wanted to work on one last thing before starting our vacation. Introducing: The Christmas Challenge, and you get it a few days earlier than anyone else! There are a few more things we want to improve, but at it's core it's entirely functional!

This was a ton of fun to be working on. We challenged ourselves to come up with a completely different take on Selaco’s gameplay and gave ourselves only 5 days to implement it. We aimed for something that felt high quality while also not requiring too much work. We are very curious to hear your thoughts on this one, as it's highly experimental.

Rules of The Christmas Challenge:

• The Christmas Challenge takes place in the usual Demo Levels
• All item pickups have been removed from the level
• Presents are spawned at random locations of the level. This could be under a table, on top of a closet or somewhere along the sides of the hallway
• Enemy squadrons will periodically spawn at random locations of the level
• Unwrap 10 presents to unlock the exit

How to play

• Go to your Steam Library and right click on Selaco Demo (If you own the ‘Selaco’ app as an Admiral, there is nothing you have to do! Just launch the game after downloading the update)
• Click on Properties
• Navigate to ‘Beta’
• Enter the code “MerryChristmasPatron”

After the update has been downloaded, launch a New Campaign like you usually would. The following option should now be visible. Check the box and hit ‘Proceed’! Good luck with the challenge, you will need it.

Information

One of the challenges we had while working on this was that we were not allowed to alter any of the levels or actor classes directly. Everything that happens in this event is applied through a layer of code that runs on top of the game. So every snow pile, enemy spawn, present, and gameplay mechanic is achieved without touching the .WAD files (the files we use to store level data). The only minor exception to this rule was the start of the first level, since we wanted the action to start right away without having to sit through the opening sequence.

Once the level is loaded, a script searches for every single item in the level and erases it permanently, unless the item is considered ‘Essential’ (Keycards, Cabinet Cards, upgrades).

We want the Christmas event to be cheery, so we replaced all human blood splatters with piles of (voxel) snow, and used an extra bit of code to move them towards nearby walls, giving the illusion that humans have been ploughing snow. ‘’But Selaco is indoors, right? How does snow wor —’’ Ssssh! This event has no rules when it comes to visuals!

Of course, snow cannot be absent during a Christmas event, so we’ve added indoor snow and the occasional fog bank to make it seem colder. Again, please don't question how something like this could happen. Who knows how indoor technology works in 2255.

Then we have gift spawning. This was surprisingly easy! A long time ago we talked in-depth about how our Pathfinding works; where we manually place path nodes down to create a network of traversal options for the enemy. Turns out that we can re-use path nodes to do other things besides just navigation. In this case, they are also used to decide where presents should spawn. We look for path nodes, then shoot multiple line traces (a technique used to gain information on surroundings) in different directions to look for nearby walls, then spawn the gift at one of the walls that we’ve located. This ensures that gifts only spawn in locations where it’s actually feasible. If we take a full-random approach where they are placed in random coordinates instead of path nodes, it’s very easy for them to spawn in unreachable / silly places.

When interacting with a present, they fly up into the air, spin around and get fancy, then spit out a selection of items that you can use. And you will need them, because this challenge is far from easy.

Conclusion

We hope you enjoy this little Christmas Challenge. It was quite a *clears throat*  ..challenge.. to make, but a very fun learning experience for when we start working on our Randomizer Mode, which will be the highest effort Randomizer Mode you have ever seen (hopefully!).

We will keep our eyes and ears open for any bugs you may find and will fix these before the event goes live to the public (non-backers) on Saturday December 24!

Thank you for your continued support, it really is appreciated! The next blog post will be our very last blog post this year. See you then <3

Wesley de Waart