Dev Blog #51 - Rain! (Patreon)

Hey everyone,

This will be a shorter development blog than usual. Most of our time these last few weeks is spent working on some very spoilery stuff, which we cannot share here. At least for now. This means that there is unfortunately not a lot to talk about, but that wont stop me from at least trying to make a good blog post!

This blog post is entirely written by me and nobody has proofread it. I am absolutely certain everything is going to be OK and we wont get another 'Steam Dick' disaster!

EDIT: The first typo has already been found. That took... 14 minutes! It has been corrected.

Plush

I’ve seen the first draft of the plush (basically a prototype with visible seams) and it’s lovely! I’m not allowed to share this version of the plush yet since it’s still a first draft, but I will share the entire process, from concept to actual plush, in a future blog post. Best I can do for now is a very blurry image, enjoy!

Launch is expected to happen in August and will be a limited edition. If the plushies end up being profitable, we will use the money to further increase development funds! Honestly, we just think it’s really damn cool that a company is willing to do this for us and it’s a great excuse to give our budget a tiny boost.

The plush will cost $30. If you want one, ensure you have something to spare around the month of August! Remember, they won't be sold forever.

Steam Deck Tests

A few days ago we posted a tweet asking for Steam Deck testers. Everybody is able to sign up for this test, but I'm considering sending a version to Patrons a little earlier than others because all of you are extra awesome.

‘’Didn’t the Demo already work on a Steam Deck?”

It did, but not anymore! :( Valve launched a Firmware update for the Steam Deck and our Vulkan Texture Loader is not a fan of it. Launching Selaco on Vulkan using a Steam Deck (or some Linux distros) will result in an error.

The bad news? We are going to have to find out why this happens and fix it.

The good news? This firmware update will very likely improve performance on a CPU-heavy title like Selaco. So yay!

We will be updating the demo with a fix in the near future, but not after some extensive testing to ensure things are working properly.

If you want to help us test, please let me know in our Discord server or shoot us an email! The test wont take a lot of your time, we only need to know if the demo boots properly and doesn't have any stuttering problems.

Rain Effects

I’ve been eager to work on this for over a year now, and we’re finally getting it done!

From the moment we knew that we were going to have exteriors, we wanted to work on rain effects that look both convincing and performance friendly. We have to, since exterior levels have to remain performant despite their increase in scope. A common approach for GZDoom games/mods is that every rain splatter is basically an actor. This may look convincing, but it tanks performance down drastically because there are hundreds of individual raindrops being fired at any given time that your computer will have to process. The level already has an increase in fidelity due to the large draw distances, so this solution was a definite no-go.

Our solution is very different, and practically the opposite; as few actors as possible, capable of covering a ton of ground. GZDoom is very CPU-intensive, so we decided to look for an option that’s more GPU intensive, since the GPU load is relatively mild and has plenty of performance budget left in this game.

We decided to go with a shader solution. We added a bunch or 2D planes in Blender which will function as a reference point for the shader, then added it to GZDoom as a fully invisible mesh (a 3D object). Through some fancy coding magic, Cockatrice coded a shader from scratch that moves up from the sky, all the way down to the reference point seen in the image above.

The result? Accurate rain effects at no performance costs. We can add hundreds of these and the performance loss will be neglectable, the rain actors dont even have to Tick, further keeping the performance cost in check. The rain is also accurate; A player seeking shelter under a roof will block the rain properly, while still spawning rain in your surrounding area where no shelter is present. It’s beautiful and it works surprisingly great.

The rain is hard to demonstrate in a blog post, but I’ll try my best to do it justice. Be mindful that this is still very WIP! More effects like tiny water splashes around the player are still being worked on.

[GIF brightened up by 30% in post. Pay close attention, you may see a raindrop effect on the camera lens!]

We also did a lot of work on the sound design of the rain. The sound of rain will always play around you, but only in places where there is a sky. If you face the entrance of a building and you move forward, for example, the sound of rain will only be heard behind you. Standing near a car will play different rain sound effects where you can hear the roof getting hit by the drops. Standing near a tree? The rustling of the leaves becomes a bit more intense as opposed to a level that has no rain. Standing under a thin roof? A different sound is used to simulate the sound of rain drops landing right above you, and wind always comes from one specific direction. If you have a surround sound system, you’ll love the extra work we put into this! I often load a rainy level and just wander around to listen to how the whole thing is coming together. It’s beautiful and I cannot overstate my enthusiasm for it!

On top of that, there’s a lot of smaller details in play as well. A different layer of sound is added to your footsteps to make it sound more ‘rainy’, going from outdoor to indoor will briefly leave wet footprints behind, a raindrop shader is applied to every surface that has the sky above it, rain drops can hit the camera (which is more common when looking up and less common when looking down) etc etc. There’s a lot going on here and hope the details are appreciated!

Office Complex screenshots

This level is still WIP! This is a very combat heavy level. You will face opposition in pretty much every room and not a single office will still be left standing by the time you’re done with it. It’s fun and it’s a blast to test! The first Office Complex level is finished and is currently being polished by me. ReformedJoe is working on the second Office Complex level which is also shaping up great despite being mostly a bunch of blockouts right now.

What's in the pipeline?

I am currently working on 3 enemies at once. The models are done, Yij fully rigged them so they are ready to be animated, now it's up to me to take care of the rest! They are from a different faction and are very different compared to the Aliens we currently have. They will need their own blood effects, their own gibbing system, their own AI, set of animations, reactions etc etc. Quite a bit of work, and I gave myself until the end of May to get it done *gulp*.

Cockatrice is currently working on some UI systems that play during a later section of the game (which I, again, cannot get into right now!).

ReformedJoe is mapping away at the Office Complex level (screenshots below!). Very action heavy level where you basically go from office to office to gun down a bunch of enemies. Good fun! The rest of the team is providing the assets. Borion, for example, is working on an interactive printer and I can't wait to implement it.

In the meantime, I will continue to polish up the game as a whole. I have a few ideas in regards to AI that I would love to implement to make them a little more reactionary, and recently made a nice gore sound pass so things sound extra juicy.

Conclusion

Apologies that this blog post is much shorter than any other blog post we’ve done. Last week and the current week have been very difficult since adding these new 3 enemies have been giving us headaches where we face a tiny bump in the road on a near daily basis. It’s working out really well, thankfully, but it’s a challenging endeavor.

Regardless of the short blog post, progression remains steady! Rain effects being a particular highlight.

Thank you all for being here and we hope to see you again in two weeks!

Wesley

[Spinning Dawn added as an epic bonus]