Selaco v0.90 Update + State of Early Access

Let's address the elephant in the room; This blog post is huge. Just look at the scrollbar to the right of your browser window and you'll probably see what we mean. Sit back, relax, and let's not waste any more time!

One of the key goals of this update is to enhance performance without sacrificing visual fidelity. This is always challenging for a game like Selaco, because we aim for a world that's highly interactive and responsive to player actions. We've made significant improvements toward our performance targets ahead of leaving Early Access. Here’s a quick overview of what’s been improved.

• Brand new Particle System We've completely rebuilt our particle system from the ground up! Instead of relying on clunky old methods, the new system is much faster and smarter -- using pooled particles and hardware rendering to significantly reduce performance overhead. This means smoother gameplay across the board, especially during combat!
• Complete do-over for all particle effects To take full advantage of the new system, every single particle effect has been rewritten from scratch. Not only do they look better than ever because we're more experienced, but they also run more efficiently.
• Improved rendering performance for Floor Decals Ever noticed how having thousands of blood splatters on the floor reduced your FPS to a significant amount? We've optimized how floor decals are rendered, which should result in much better performance. Most noticeable in gauntlet encounters, and for players who have Permanent Blood enabled.
• Improved smoke culling We've improved how smoke is handled, reducing the performance hit when lots of smoke is on-screen by preventing too many smoke clouds from stacking.
• Improved floor decal spawning Floor decals like blood, bullet holes, and scorch marks now spawn more intelligently. They won’t stack on top of each other anymore (which helps avoid unnecessary slowdown), and we've made changes that reduce micro-stutters when a bunch spawn at once.
• Blood effect overhaul Blood never utilized any type of particle system before, making them more demanding than they should have been. With this new system in place, it only made sense to port our blood effects over. This took quite some doing, but we pulled it off! Expect more performant blood and some new effects sprinkled in-between.
• Improved Enemy AI logic This has been an ongoing effort with every single update, and we’ve taken more steps forward here. Their behavior feels the same, but the way they make decisions is now more efficient.

Other performance improvements

• Updated glass effects to be more performant
• Improved fire hydrant performance by culling water sprays for faraway players
• Paint buckets now utilize an actual particle system instead of actors
• UI elements are now precached and can be properly unloaded to save VRAM
• Added a "Texture Quality" setting. This will slightly reduce sprite resolutions but drastically decrease VRAM usage. Use this if you have a GPU with low VRAM!
• Numerous smaller improvements to reduce VRAM usage
• Overhauled bullet puff code to be more performant and easier to maintain
• Red blood decals are no longer flat meshes and now use the new decal rendering
• A lot of "simple" effects are now considered Particles to make them cheaper to spawn.

The second goal was to spice up the Special Campaign / Randomizer even further! Feedback on this moment has been great and we expect things to be even better with this update.

Brand New Options Menu

A common bit of feedback was that some options were too vague, and that there were simply too many - which understandably, not everyone wants to tweak every time they do a new run. We've tackled both problems!

• Added Presets Rather than having to select everything manually, we’ve added a number of presets that configure everything for you. The following presets are available: Minimal Preset
  • Keeps all possible randomization elements but makes them subtle. Use this if you want to utilize all the Special Campaign features while keeping randomization to a minimum.

  Default Preset

  • Uses all available randomization while keeping gameplay balance in mind. Use this if you want a random, yet balanced experience.

  Vanilla Preset

  • No new content and minimal randomization. An optimized preset for players who want to replay the Standard Campaign with a few surprises, including extra enemy spawns and shuffled item pickups.

  Vanilla Plus Preset

  • Very similar to Vanilla but adds Special Campaign-exclusive enemy types. An optimized preset for players who want something close to the Standard Campaign with slight alterations and a few new features.

  Controlled Chaos Preset

  • High randomization with all the bells and whistles. Designed to be chaotic but fair.

  Overkill Preset

  • All randomization cranked up to 11! This run will be chaotic, unpredictable, and probably very difficult.

  All presets can be manually tweaked after being selected.

• Added Description Pane and Option Descriptions
  Highlighting an option in the Randomizer Menu will now explain what the setting does. No more asking on reddit required!
  

The randomizer can now spawn Health and Armor shards in hallways. On by default, but can be disabled.

Selaco has always been about immersion. Special Campaign is a very gamified experience which caused it to not click with everyone as a result. As such, we've added an Immersive Mode that keeps most of the gameplay in tact, but with some tweaks to retain immersion. For instance, floating weapons will now instead be stationary on the floor, and "joke traits" like the Brick Launcher or Paintsplosion are no longer present.

Other Special Campaign improvements

• Added full localization support
• Added 2 new Weapon Traits
• Fixed an error where Random Encounter enemies could spawn in inaccessible areas
• Random Encounters will no longer spawn when the player is in a Safe Room
• Fixed an error where Engineer Grenade Shells used the wrong model
• Added proper ammo UI for weapons with the Bottomless Mags trait
• Earthquakes no longer push Detonators, preventing potential softlocks
• Fixed Triple Damage trait not applying its intended damage correctly
• Combat Chests now have a distinct color and slight illumination, making them easier to spot
• Fixed an error where Encounter Chests spawned enemies too close to the player
• Fixed an error where Crawler Queens became invisible
• Dawn's suit no longer references "+ Roaring Cricket" when Weapon Randomization Style is not set to "Vanilla"
• Reduced healing sound volume for Life Leech and Life Siphon
• Fixed an issue where Item Flares did not despawn properly. Most noticeable with red flares on Medkits
• Ammo pickup counts are now biased toward slightly higher amounts, addressing scarcity issues
• Disabled Soldier and Robotic spawns in Level 6-3

Fully Reworked Swimming

• More natural swimming movement: the player now darts forward while swimming instead of moving at a constant velocity, better simulating the feel of real swimming
• Added underwater swimming sounds
• Crouching no longer slows swimming speed
• Players are now forced into crouch mode while swimming
• Removed view and weapon bobbing while swimming
• Added a warning sound when the player is about to run out of oxygen
• Added a warning sound when the player has run out of oxygen
• New and improved exertion sounds when resurfacing after a long swim
• Added dripping sound and visual effects when leaving the water
• Most weapons can no longer be fired underwater. Since Selaco doesn't feature underwater combat, we focused on immersion here. If underwater combat is added in the future, we’ll revisit this
• Vertical swimming movement speed is now equal to horizontal speed
• Improved underwater bubble visuals

Armor

• Armor is now slightly less durable on higher difficulties. Recent buffs made it stronger than intended
• Plasma Projectiles deal significantly less damage against Armored players, but deals more severe damage to the armor itself
• Reworked sound effects when taking damage with armor on

UC-11 Exon SMG

• Increased weapon damage (21 -> 23)

Roaring Cricket

• Slightly louder firing sounds

S-8 Marksman Rifle
This is a little embarrassing, but...

• Headshot damage now increases with distance, as originally intended. This feature broke during a previous systems rework. Thanks to Discord user "Lush" for spotting it!

Slide Proning

Sliding under a tight area now puts Dawn into a prone position, allowing movement where you'd otherwise get stuck.

Other Stuff

• Dawn can no longer uncrouch when the ceiling is too low
• Pain sounds now trigger more consistently when taking damage

• Further improved sign posting and navigation in numerous levels
• Weapon Bar icons are now greyed out when the weapon has no ammo
• Added "Mark all as read" button to the Wrist Codex
• Added "Invert Y-Axis" setting to the Gamepad menu. This was always there, but it was buried deep into an Advanced Settings Menu where players could not find it.
• Yellow Barrels now appear on the minimap. Now you can all stop losing them!
• Machine Gun Ammo dropped by Enemy Soldiers now use a different voxel model to be more distinct from regular Machine Gun Ammo pickups, resulting in less misleading +10 ammo pickups.

In our endless pursuit of making Selaco's combat the most dynamic as possible, numerous projectiles now respond to explosions. For instance, an explosion can apply knockback to a grenade, causing it to go another direction. Quite similar to the Halo series. This can result in some beautiful chaos, or a very embarrassing death. We have plans to spice this up even further in the future.

This is not nearly special enough to warrant its own headline, yet here we are, we think it's cool! All bullet casings now interact to both player and enemy movement; kicking them aside based on the direction of the footstep.

Visual Effects

• Added Railgun Beam effect
• Improved visual effect for Railgun shot impacts
• Improved visual effects for animated spark effects, looking a little less cartoony.
• Added more gravity and bouncing variations for Spark particles
• Added Red Spark effect when hitting Energy Shields
• Improved Plasma Puff effects to be more visually pleasing and powerful
• Added new Purple Blood wall decals
• Adjusted illumination color for all blood effects to better match the purple blood color
• Decal spray directions when hitting have been adjusted to be more believable and will no longer spray unreasonably far away
• Yellow Barrels now have an impact effect when shot
• Improved bone gibs by being more performant and having better bouncing sounds
• Applied a bit more texture to Gore Mist sprites
• Improved (almost) every pick-up sound to be more snappy and satisfying to listen to
• Improved gibbing sound effects to be slightly louder and slimey
• Added a whole bunch of new bullet impact effects for Wood, Metal, Concrete and more. A shooter can never have enough bullet impacts!
• Added a wooden thud effect when enemy corpses hit a wooden floor
• Lamp/Light Textures now spawn glass effects when shot
• Fully reworked Wire Texture to appear less out of place. It was an old asset that should have been updated sooner
• Added 'Burger Junkie' flyers
• Explosion effects now always face the player, even from above or below
• Added a new destruction model for Computer Monitors, giving a bit more variety

Sound & Audio

• Added sound effect when crouching
• Added stepping sounds for walking over static paper decals
• Added pushing effort sounds when pushing heavy objects like Heavy Barrels.
• Improved Health Regeneration sound effects
• Added sound effects for leaking waterpipes
• Pain Sounds are now more reliable and always play as intended.
• Pain Sounds no longer cancel eachother out
• Brand new recordings for Pain, Death and Danger States sounds
• Added new spark sound effects
• Added unique pickup sound for Small Machine Gun Ammo
• Improved Bullet Whiz sound effect for bullets that pass the player
• New Sound Effects for picking up Plasma Rifle ammo
• Reduced audio volume of Rooftop Wind sound effects
• Fully reworked the 'Warzone' soundscape ambient effect that plays in the background of some earlier levels

Immersion & Interactions

• Disabled Weapon Bobbing when not on the floor
• Plants on Plant Pots now properly rotate along with the pot when picked up by the player
• Enemy Flashlights now cause a shadow based on the player's Shadow Quality
• Spark Missile effects can no longer spawn underwater
• Updated a whole lot of outdated posters in Pathfinder Memorial Hospital. They were showing their age!
• Added Civilian Corpses. No longer is everybody being turned into a pile of red giblets; there are actual civilians now!
• Added Corpse Shadows for both enemies and civilians
• Added a whole bunch of new Doodle Decorations, created by our patrons!
• Jukeboxes stop playing music when destroyed
• Added sound effect that plays on all connected Jukebox speakers when the jukebox is destroyed
• Vending Machines now spit Soda Cans when destroyed
• Vending Machines now have increased Soda Can quantity. This was needed to make the previous change cooler, which is sometimes all that matters.

Watermelons

Never did we anticipate that watermelons would become the strongest health source in the game, yet here we are.

• Added 3 new voxels for destroyed watermelons
• Improved randomization for watermelon chunk angles to add more visual variance
• Nerfed watermelon health gain (2hp -> 1hp). However, large chunks still give 2hp
• Watermelon effects are now juicier

All Enemies

• Improved AI logic to reduce hesitation during pathfinding

Soldiers

• Soldiers now reload when low on ammo and not in direct line of sight with the player, avoiding awkward moments where they rush in with empty weapons
• Slightly increased hitbox height

Air Drones

• Rendering tweaks to improve visibility from below
• Reduced rocket projectile speed (25 -> 20)

Siegers

• Rendering tweaks to improve visibility from below

Plasma Troopers

• Reduced projectile size by 25%
• Added flare effect to Plasma Trooper projectiles

• Added option to disable View Bobbing. This removes vertical up/down movement while walking and can help reduce motion sickness. This keeps Weapon Bobbing, but this can also be disabled.
• Improved camera tilting on gamepad. Previously, slightly angled input could cause an unintended wobble, this has been fixed

For the future
We’re still looking into adding a Contrast Mode for visually impaired players, which will apply a strong colored overlay to enemies and interactive elements.

• Updated Plasma Rifle weapon bar icon
• Improved camera tilting on Gamepad
• Corrected broken audio mixing on kill notifications
• Removed numerous Juggernaut brightmaps to save space
• Fixed an error where the Weapon Wheel could be opened from the Main Menu
• Fixed overlapping Mutator UI elements on lower resolutions
• Fixed an error where Windows would stop capturing mouse input after closing the game
• Tweaked DMR scope timings to better match the zoom effect
• Keycards are now set to "Always Pickup" to reduce softlocks from sequence breaking
• Destroyed Sentry Guns no longer block doorways, a common cause for soft locks
• Weapon swapping with Bottomless Mags (Mutator or Weapon Trait) no longer forces a Weapon Reload
• Fixed an error where Children Doodles briefly turned into an "X" when shredded
• Fixed a crash caused by Stretchbeds if their hitbox was missing
• Fixed an exploit allowing players to boost rate of fire by timing the 'Throw Equipment' button
• Gravity Manipulator no longer picks up explosive plants, preventing potential softlocks
• Fixed an error where Shooting Range menu info didn’t match actual settings, often causes by load games
• Menus and intermission screens now close the automap
• Fixed a crash caused by snipers targeting a non-existent entity
• Fixed an error where Weapon Kits played a healing sound on pickup
• Fixed overlapping pickup sounds
• Fixed an error where throwing a grenade with the Grenade Launcher could lock weapon state, rendering all of your weapons unusable
• Removed duplicate smoke sprite effect, reducing file size by a massive 650 bytes
• DMR: Fixed an issue rapidly zooming in-and-out could result in a zoom with no scope overlay
• Fixed an error where Stretchbeds spawned blood decals when shot
• Playstation icons are now properly saturated
• "Sitting Corpses" no longer spin when shot
• Fixed crash when Weapon Mods had no ammo type assigned
• Fixed error where purple blood splatters looped back to the first frame
• Fixed rare crash caused by switching equipment when Dawn didn’t exist (???)
• Fixed error where Crawler Mine corpses dealt incorrect damage type on impact
• Fixed numerous typos in upgrade descriptions
• Fixed error where rain splatters showed a white block texture
• Removed the “Enemy Grenade (Unusable)” prompt
• Fixed a bug where Yellow Paint was Purple Paint and vice versa, ruining our best joke for a second time
• Fixed an error where Bottomless Mags reduced ammo in the Shooting Range
• Fixed crash from Sentry Guns acquiring targets after becoming friendly turrets
• Transitioning from in-game to Titlemap no longer briefly shows hexacons
• Tweaked item flare offset for Large Plasma Ammo to prevent model clipping
• Siegers are now easier to see from below thanks to forced XY billboarding
• Added 'Drink' interaction label when looking at beer bottles
• Fixed an error where UltimateSelacoBuilder was missing from the Steam download
• Fixed a Level 1-3 bug where a one-way door could be closed from the wrong side
• Fixed potential crashes caused by Pathnodes
• Automap can no longer be opened when dead
• Fixed graphical issue with the first frame of the Invasion Tier menu
• Fixed "Pimp My Vacbot" neon sign appearing massive from behind
• Added extra snipers when returning from the South Wing with a key in the Mall level
• Cleaned up Level 5 map screen to hide unintended areas
• Attempted fix for Mall level keycard not spawning correctly
• Fixed numerous script oversights across the entire game
• Fixed Plastic Shards despawning with Permanent Destruction enabled
• Improved transition of Item Flares and Icons for smoother appearance
• "Give All" now includes a Flashlight
• Fixed Workshop Screen showing Xbox controls while using Playstation icons
• Holding Jump in tight spaces no longer causes repeated jump sounds

If you ran into any issues or simply prefer the old version, you can go back to an older version by rolling back using the Steam Beta features

1. Go to your Steam Library
2. Right Click on 'Selaco'
3. Click on 'Properties'
4. On the right side of the screen, press 'beta'
5. Click on the Dropdown Menu
6. Select 'v0.89-BF'
7. Wait for the download the finish

You are now back to the old version of the game!

Stoked for this one!

We've been thrilled by the number of mods Selaco has received since the Early Access launch a year ago -- especially considering we haven’t launched any documentation yet!

Shortly after Chapter 2's launch, we’ll launch a full Modding SDK as free DLC for Selaco. This SDK will include the 3D models we used to create sprites (both Weapons and Enemies), our first-person arm rig, development tools, and more.

This allows modders to create anything they want with almost no limits! New guns that use Dawn's arm model? New animations for existing enemies? All possible!

Selaco Level Editor Source Code Is Now Available

Our Level Editor is based on UltimateDoomBuilder, a staple tool for DOOM and GZDoom mappers. Selaco, on the other hand, needed its own custom editor optimized for our systems like path nodes, spawning configurations, and more.

If you’re not a developer and just want to create maps using the tool, you can download the newest version of UltimateSelacoBuilder here:

Selaco Level Editor Download (Windows Only)

If you want to see the source code for development reasons or curiosity, here it is:
Source Code Link

Our Store Page has been reworked!

We made our Steam page roughly 5 years ago when the basics of the game were still shaping up, and it was starting to show its age. A lot of the information was outdated, and the game wasn't presented in a way it deserved.

Oh, and better GIFs! Feel free to look a look.

Let’s talk about how development is going!

I’m happy to report that development is going well, especially when it comes to Chapter 2, which we’ll dive into in just a moment. Overall, the current state of development mirrors what we shared in our last update: there are no major roadblocks, and things continue to move forward at a steady, healthy pace.

However...

This one hurts to write.

Our original plan was to launch in Q4 2024. Then we aimed for Q1 2025. Neither worked out. Then we aimed for this patch to have it, which also didn't work out. We know that's a bummer -- and trust us, it bums us out just the same.

We want to be upfront here: We’ve been underestimating just how much work it takes to make this game. This is our first real project, and it landed a bigger audience than we had anticipated. We're still learning how to deal with expectations and not get carried away with our excitement.

The good news? It's shaping up really well. We're actively working with Melissa Medina (Dawn's voice actress) as we speak to get a lot of work done, as well as working with a number of new actors who have been brought on board recently. And, because our players like them so much, a whole bunch of new enemy chatter and new callout types!

Given the past delays, we’ll only announce the new release date when we’re confident it’s close. This is what we've been doing with Chapter 2, and something we should be doing here, too. Thanks for sticking with us, and we’re sorry for the wait.

2 months ago we launched the so-called "Nightly Builds". It's always been our goal to be fully transparent during our Early Access phase, which is why we invite everyone to play our development builds on a (almost) daily basis. Complete with all the bugs that come with!

This has been a lot of fun, and something we'll continue doing! The update rate might slow down a little as we work on two other major Selaco projects (Chapter 2, Story), but we'll keep 'em coming at a good rate!

For details on how to enter, visit this page

Shaping up really well, but still far from complete!

Chapter 2 is more than just a content update, it’s a full-blown expansion by this point. We’re not just making a few new maps and calling it a day with this. It has new guns, new tools, updated mechanics, and even a Chapter 1 makeover that takes full advantage of a brand new lighting system we're making for Chapter 2. A lot of content is already fully functional, and you might be surprised to learn just how much of it is already completed.

But hey, it’s our 1-year anniversary! So we figured it’s about time we start showing some stuff. Consider this a little treat.

For now, enjoy these random, completely out-of-context images from Chapter 2. No explanations yet, just a taste of what’s to come. When the time comes, we'll do an actual trailer and introduce the new toys properly. Everything below is Work in Progress!

Enjoy!

What a journey it's been so far and what a behemoth of a blog post this turned into!

It's hard to believe it's already been a year since Selaco launched into Early Access. Month after month, the game continues to perform well, and we’re constantly humbled by the love and support you’ve shown. Seeing players recommend Selaco in many corners of the internet never fails to make our day. We may sound like a broken record by now, but we truly are grateful for all of this, and we will not disappoint with the final version of this project.

If we can ask for one more favor: please consider giving the game a review on Steam to give us your input. We're a very small studio who work really hard on Selaco, and these things help tremendously!

Thank you all very much, and until next time! 💙