DEV BLOG #57 - Weapon Wheel, Extended Demo Launch, Mall Level

Good day, everyone! 

Just like 2 weeks ago, we're in the middle of a very chaotic period of the game's development, so my time to write a good lengthy blog post is rather limited. I have to keep it brief once more.

I have to be honest here, I'm completely overwhelmed with work as of late. There is a lot in motion, a lot of development headaches to wrap our heads around, and so, so many deadlines we have to hit. The currently unannounced release date will thankfully be generous enough to not require any crunch to reach, I've made sure of that, but we do have to keep our heads in the game if we want to reach it, since there's still a good amount of work left and we no longer have infinite time to get it done. 

Once Realms Deep is over and everything is out of the way, I'll be taking a brief break to get my bearings back together. I heard Armored Core 6 is pretty good, so I can't wait to play that at the end of next month! 

Tomorrow we have another deadline to meet. It's when we officially submit our trailer to Realms Deep. The trailer is awesome, I'm very happy with how it turned out. You will love it, I'm sure!

Weapon Wheel

Selaco finally has a Weapon Wheel! The current method of cycling through weapons on a gamepad was a pain in the butt, so this is a major improvement on that front. While primarily aimed towards Gamepad / Steam Deck users, Keyboard and Mouse users will find plenty of use for it too. I know I do, since I always preferred a Weapon Wheel over mouse wheel switching, which I always felt was a bit clunky in a lot of games.

(Weapon Wheel is work in progress, does not show the entire weapon roster)

When holding the Weapon Wheel button, a wheel appears at the crosshair. Here, all available weapons are displayed, and by moving the joystick or mouse around, different weapons can be selected.

The Weapon Wheel also provides additional information, including the alt fire mode the currently selected weapon is utilizing, the amount of loaded ammo and available reserves, as well as icons indicating which weapons are very close to requiring a reload. This allows you to easily decide which weapon to use in the midst of combat, reducing the likelihood of accidentally switching to a weapon that's nearly empty.

Unlike ladders, which required a fair amount of debate on how to approach downward climbing, the implementation of the Weapon Wheel went smoothly. We unanimously agreed on its functionality, appearance, and the information that should be conveyed to the player.

Mall Level

Holy shit, levels like these are tough. We have fully blocked out our mall level with some detail passes here and there. Usually, you would assume this is the hard part, but oh boy, then you haven’t met our mall yet. This week we have finally begun working on the most time consuming part; store assets and branding.

This is without a doubt the most art intensive level we have ever worked on. All stores need appropriate detailing, all the branding must be believable, most textures require a wholly unique set of textures and most stores require fresh voxels that fit within the theme. BUILD engine games always did a stellar job making places seem real, and with Selaco we want to take it one step further by putting a lot of emphasis on fictional branding.

We are currently working on an Arcade, which is especially crazy because we have to model and texture a whole bunch of Arcade Cabinets. Will we make them playable? Time will tell (most likely not).

We debated making the Arcade Cabinets direct references towards other indie titles, which would make our job much easier since it means we can borrow their art (with permission), but we eventually decided against it. So far, our world has very strict rules in regards to referencing things that exist in real life. The only exception here are Easter Eggs, but even with those we try to be clever and not reference things directly. Having a Severed Steel or ULTRAKILL Arcade Cabinet on the main path would just be out of place and feel too disjointed compared to the rest of the game world. We’re going to come up with a bunch of random games ourselves!

Once the arcade is done, we tackle the next hurdle; The clothing store. This is a challenge for more than just assets. We have to figure out what fashion in Selaco looks like because so far all story characters are not overly fashionable, and find a way to properly convey that into voxels since mannequins will most likely be all over the place.

Did I mention performance optimization is also a major challenge here? What have we gotten ourselves into!

The images here are very work-in-progress so may look a bit emptier compared to other areas we’ve shown

For the mall, we’ve been taking a lot of inspiration from the mall I often used to visit as a child, called ‘Winkelcentrum Diemerplein’. If you google it, you may see some of the influences.

I’m very excited for this level to see how it shapes up. It’s going to be great!

New Enemy VO

I’ve been improving our VO system further! Players really like how the enemy communicated with one another, so we’ve added more of it.

• Enemies can now call out the weapon the player is using. So next time you go on a shotgun or Grenade Launcher rampage, expect a comment on it.
• Enemies can now call out when you begin reloading or dry-firing your weapon.
• Enemies will now mention when you've killed their Squad Leader. This will eliminate additional soldier buffs later on in the game.
• Enemies can now call out landmines.
• (Pre-production) We're recording a whole batch of new voiceovers for the enemy types. This includes more variants of the types we already have, as well as a brand new voice for the Enforcers. The latter is quite a lot of work, as the amount of things our enemies say is much higher than most games out there, and we basically have to do that all over again for the new guy. Hell, we still have to cast an actor to do it!

Extended Demo Release Date

All backers who pledged a total of $10 between June 2022 and today will receive a code on September 25. Keep an eye out on your mail! Unsure if an NDA will be required. Likely not, but don't pin me on that. This launch is also one day before my birthday, so there's another reason to celebrate.

Admirals who have been testing the Extended Demo with us: I’m planning to launch an update in the first week of September that adds the new Weapon Wheel, VO changes and more.

Conclusion

Despite the workload and some minor bumps in the road, everything is proceeding smoothly. At this time of writing, there are 30 days left before Realms Deep. After that, we fully expect things to calm down again since the trailer, release date, Extended Demo and plush campaign preparations have all been finished.

Thank you once again for your support throughout the month of August. Hopefully we still see you around in September as well. If not, thanks for being here! <3

Wesley de Waart