Dev Blog #52 - New Demo Level And A Broken Computer (Patreon)

Dear backers,

It is with great regret that I inform you that my computer has passed away this afternoon at 2:13PM UTC, June 6 2023. Or at least, the Power Supply did. A new one has been ordered but it won't arrive until tomorrow, You know what that means? I won't be able to develop the game today. How boring.

Thankfully, I can still get some work done. Like writing a blog post for all of you.

Oh oh, before I forget, we managed to hit 140.000 wishlists! Absolute insanity. Thank you all so much <3 Still a chunk of work left to do, but seeing people interested in this game of ours makes me really happy. We wouldn’t be here if it weren't for you!

Extended Demo

Speaking of being a cool backer. As promised, this year we are going to be sending out an extended demo to all of you who backed the project after June 2022. If you are reading this, you are most likely eligible!

The Extended Demo takes place in both Level 2-2 and Level 2-3 and features 3 brand new environments (as opposed to only one like in the original demo). Backrooms, The Broken Seal Bar and a brief section in the Water Treatment Plant. The levels will be slightly altered for demo reasons however, so you may find some locked doors that would otherwise be open. The Water Treatment Plant section is a lot longer in the full game but, no matter how much I like all of you, we do have to keep our demo’s short! If it's any consolation, it pains me too, I really liked that section! :(

In addition to the new environments, you will also gain access to a new weapon: The UC-11 Compact SMG. A powerful bullet hose that’s not only fun to shoot, it’s also fun to melee enemies with due to the attached Taser. Punch the enemy and they'll get shocked, stunning them for a good duration of time! Want to shock multiple enemies at once? Try punching the enemy towards a wall, which causes a shockwave electrocuting everyone near your target. Except you, because you are way too badass to be shocked. But not badass enough to ignore the Taser cooldown.

The Workshop will also be present and can be found in Level 2-3. Allowing you to upgrade some of the weapons.

(WIP - Some assets and systems still missing)

The Extended Demo will also run on a brand new build that introduces a large number of improvements. Enemies are more dynamic, they dive out of the way from grenades and have vastly improved pathfinding among other improved systems. Performance has been increased significantly, the audio (and mixing) has been redone entirely. Producing more punchy sounds, improved ambiances and improved explosion sounds (they really kick ass now!).

We are aiming to get this build out there on August for all backers who are eligible. Admirals will be getting it one month sooner so we can test things before rolling it out to other backers. We did this approach with the Pre-demo back in 2021 and has proven to be very effective.

For the time being, have some screenshots of the level! Some of you may have seen these already, but I'm sure some of our newer friends have not:

3 New Enemy types (Continued)

Two weeks ago I mentioned I was working on 3 new enemies at once and was planning to get them all ready by June. This worked out for the most part, two new enemy types are pretty much entirely animated and functional, but still need some polish. The third enemy type ended up having a few complications we had to iron out before we could properly work on them, so it was temporarily put on hold. Thankfully, it’s all working now so once my computer is operational again, I’ll finish the third enemy type!

Gibbing and Blood effects for the new enemy types are mostly finished too. Given the spoilery nature of these enemies, I still cannot show them. Sorry!

Secret Level

We’re doing this, we’re working on a secret level! It’s a very unusual level, but hey, that’s what secrets levels are for right? No screenshots for this thing, it’s a secret after all. But, it will have 2 unique enemies (they are easy to make, won't take a lot of dev time!) and a brand new set of very low resolution textures. I think you will really like this one.

Pathfinding

We have, once again, vastly improved our pathfinding solution in Selaco.

First and foremost, the node building process has been completely overhauled. In the current demo build, nodes are built as the level is being loaded. This basically means that while you are waiting for the level to finish loading, the game is looking for every Pathnode (used to tell the enemy where they can walk) in the level to see which other path nodes it can traverse to. This is quite a demanding process and adds a significant amount of loading time. The more path nodes in the level, the more time it needs to check all of them. Level 1-2 for example took 4 times longer to load than intended purely because of the node building process. We were aware of this problem when we launched the demo, but like many other things, we were unable to correct it in time! But now we fixed it!

The new system allows for these nodes to be pre-built by the level designers. We basically added a script to Ultimate Doom Builder (the tool we use to build levels) and added the option for designers to connect their nodes. This will store all the data in regards to pathnodes into the level file itself, meaning we no longer have to do this when the game is running. The result? Blazingly fast loading speeds since we only have to read something that's essentially a text file. If you play the game on a fast storage device like an SSD, the average loading time should only take a second. Even less if you use an M.2.

On top of that, flanking code, pathfinding and error correction has been reworked from the ground up, and we’ve added a step-based pathfinding solution that allows us to have hundreds of enemies to use pathfinding at once without the game suffering from performance issues.. If an enemy gets stuck, they will reroute immediately, enemies no longer bump into each other, they can finally traverse slopes properly and many other improvements. There’s a lot that went into this and for a game like Selaco which is all about dynamic combat, we have to nail the implementation of enemy pathfinding. The new system makes the game feel infinitely more dynamic as soldiers always know how to reach their desired destination and have no difficulty going around the arena to flank you.

This will be present in the updated Demo build and we would love to hear your thoughts on this!

Printer

This is a printer. It can print!

Conclusion

I suppose we can start counting down the days until the Extended Demo hits. Let's say that it arrives in roughly 10 weeks.

Get hyped!

Thank you are for supporting our game <3

Wesley de Waart