Captains,
From the moment we decided to launch into Early Access, we’ve aimed to make our development process as transparent as possible and bring our players along for the ride.
A little over a month ago, we mentioned the so-called Nightly Builds in our patch notes, describing them as something we wanted to experiment with in the near future.
Today is that day!
For those unfamiliar, a Nightly Build is a development build that updates daily. Basically, if any progress toward an update has been made, that progress will be uploaded to Steam before one of the developers goes to sleep.
These builds are likely to be unstable, very buggy, and may not even work from time to time, but they can be very interesting for those who want to see how things are shaping up.
With Nightly Builds becoming a thing, there are now 3 Branches players can pick from. Let's briefly go over these:
- Default (none): This is where most players are. Everything here is thoroughly tested, polished, and stable. If this is your first time playing Selaco, this is the version we highly recommend.
- Beta Branch: A curated version that combines several Nightly Builds from the past 2–3 weeks. It’s our way of offering newer content with fewer bugs, making it more stable and playable.
- Nightly: Untested changes that may not even work. Will the game boot up? Will VAC-Bots multiply? Who knows what happens in here! This is only recommended for those who want to stay deeply involved with the development process and report their thoughts early.
Important:
Nightly development is all about the next possible update that we will launch onto Steam! If there’s no new Nightly one day, don’t worry! it usually means we were working on something bigger, like Chapter 2 content or features meant for a future update that aren’t ready to show just yet.
The best expectation is to have no expectations at all! Nightly Builds can go in any direction.
It’s entirely possible that the Nightly for that day won’t even boot up successfully. Or, when we’re in the middle of reworking some systems, it might be so buggy that a normal playthrough becomes nearly impossible. Enemies might bleed red instead of purple, all pizza boxes might be empty, or Dawn might burp at random intervals.
However, if a build goes well, you'll have access to the newest changes earlier than anyone else! You may even get to play around with (potentially stupid) experimental stuff that might never make it into the final game.
If something goes wrong, you can always switch back to the Beta or Default branch.
Just make sure to save often to avoid lost progress in case of a broken save
We're currently in the middle of a significant performance pass that reworks Smoke and Particle Effects from the ground up.
Our goal is to keep them visually identical, but make them far more efficient in terms of CPU usage. Current tests show major improvements, especially during combat, but there's still a long way to go!
Some things may look a little off in the Nightly Build as we’re in the process of migrating to the new particle system.
Similar to the Public Beta!
- Go to your Steam Library
- Right Click on 'Selaco'
- Click on 'Properties'
- On the right side of the screen, press 'beta'
- Click on the Dropdown Menu
- Select 'Nightly'
- Wait for the download the finish
Going back to a more stable build works the same. Just click on PublicBeta or Default instead!
Feedback is welcome, but not necessary! Really, it's entirely up to you.
There's a solid chance we are fully aware of the issues, largely because it's all mid-development stuff. But if you believe it's something we can easily miss, or think it's worth mentioning, please do not hesitate to do so!
Three options!
- Selaco has a very cozy Discord community that you are more than welcome to join. Feel free to report anything in the Forum category.
- You can use our Steam Forums.
- Email me directly via [email protected].
We're very excited to hear what everyone thinks of the Nightly Builds. Like most of what we're doing, it's a very experimental approach, but one we really enjoy doing.
Thank you for sticking with us, as always!