Selaco v0.85 - Three-Month Anniversary Update

Three-Month Selaco Anniversary

Happy Three-Month Selaco Anniversary to those who celebrate!

Not only are we putting the game on a chunky 20% discount (From August 30 2024 6PM UTC until September 6 2024 6PM UTC), but we're also launching the most significant patch to date, with tons of quality-of-life improvements, new features, and enhanced immersion.

Some stats:

• 70,000 copies have been sold (!)
• 410,000 wishlists
• 2,500 Steam Reviews with Recent sitting at 94-95% for almost 2 months
• 8 Game Updates have launched since entering Early Access
• 0.2% Increased Purpleness on blood splatters

We are immensely proud of what the game has managed to achieve. We got here because of you guys, and that's not something we will ever take for granted. Thank you all so much!

Let's take a moment to talk about what we have been working on and what we will be working on in the upcoming weeks.

Some notes before we start:

1. Your saved games should be fully compatible. If you encounter any issues, let us know!
2. Some mods may have become incompatible. If you notice anything strange, please try disabling your mods

v0.85 Patch Notes

This patch once again adds and improves lots of different stuff. Here is a brief summary on what to expect before we go into more details!

• Lots of Quality of Life improvements, including backpack reloading, 'Last Weapon' button and more.
• Added Smart Ammo Pickups
• Adjustable difficulty during a campaign
• Improvements to immersion
• Reworked Mutator menu with 3 new mutators
• AI Improvements
• Stagger Rework
• Weapon and enemy balance changes
• Further improved level design
• Vastly improved soundscape with more ambient noises, reworked sound effects, and more
• Rain reworks
• Fan Art Kit

Checkpoints

• Additional checkpoints have been added to the levels.

Last-Used Weapon Button
A 'Last-Used Weapon' keybind has been added

• Keyboard / Mouse users: The default bind is 'T', but this can be customized.
• Gamepad / Steam Deck users: Tapping the weapon wheel button now selects the previous weapon. Holding the weapon wheel button opens the weapon wheel as usual.

Grenade Throwing

The grenade throwing system was old and a rather sloppy left-over from the days where Selaco was a small Doom mod. We have decided to rework this system to make it more snappy and responsive!

• Completely reworked logic for how grenade throws are detected.
• Grenade throwing now happens much faster with less windup time.
• Fixed an error where hitting the grenade button twice would throw another grenade after your previous one.

Backpack Reloading
This is a system that many shooters have running in the background. Half-Life 2 is one example. We've added something similar to the game as well.

• Unequipped weapons will now automatically reload when not used for a duration of time.
• Backpack reloading is disabled for Hardcore Mode.
• Added 'Enable Backpack Reloading' option in Gameplay. This is on by default.

Smart Ammo Pickups

• Ammo pickups will remain if the full capacity of the pickup is not used. This allows for less ammo to be wasted when picking up ammo while nearing the ammo capacity.

Dodge Improvements
In Version 0.84, we introduced a mechanic where making a Sideways Dash would momentarily have bullets phase through you. Visual feedback on whether a dodge was successful was lacking and had to be addressed.

The following things have been added when players do a successful dodge move

• Added a bullet whiz sound effect
• Added a slight rolling effect to the camera
• Added a subtle screen effect
• Added 'Shots Evaded' stat tracker for the Statistics screen

Stagger Rework

On higher difficulties, the shooting experience became a lot less fun due to enemies being less likely to stagger. We have addressed this. However, as shown later in the changelog, we've made some difficulty tweaks to compensate.

• Removed per-difficulty Stagger Chances entirely. Weapons will no longer 'feel' weaker on higher difficulties.
• Enemies are more likely to stagger when shot by automated weapons.

Map Screen

Explosives Charges were rather easy to miss. So...

• Explosive charges are now visible on the automap once you have been close to them.

Adjustable Difficulty

• Added a 'Change Difficulty' menu that can be accessed during the campaign.
• The lowest selected difficulty during the campaign will be shown on the Chapter 1 completion screen (e.g., playing on Captain, switching to Lieutenant, then switching back to Captain will be considered a Lieutenant playthrough).
• The difficulty cannot be changed during SMF.

Healing Stations

In Selaco, all life is precious! The Allied Coalition for Expansion has taken additional steps to ensure Security Agents remain in healthy condition.

• All Safe Rooms now have a Healing Station installed which can be used for free (eat that, Gwyn!).
• Interacting with a Healing Station administers first aid to the player, restoring 10 HP.
• Healing Stations have a limited supply of first aid. When depleted, they cannot be used anymore.

Weapon Kits

• Taking weapon kits you already own will now give 100 Selver Credits. This should provide players with more money to spend on repeat playthroughs.

Menu

• Most menu descriptions now show the default value.
• Moved some things around in the Audio Menu. Volume controls are now on top and device settings are below it.

Other Stuff

• Health for allies is now displayed as a percentage instead of a flat number (e.g., "315 HP" is now shown as "100% HP").
• Added engine support for real-time pitch shifting on sound effects that are already playing. This is not used currently, but will be used in the future.

NEW MUTATOR: Extra Ammo

• All ammo pickups in Selaco contain 50% additional ammo. Powerful ammo types like Acid Shells, Railgun Slugs, and more are ignored.

NEW MUTATOR: Legacy Ammo Pickups

• As stated above, v0.85 introduces Smart Ammo Pickups. Use this mutator if you prefer the traditional approach to ammo pickups.

NEW MUTATOR: Half-Like

• Aims to make Selaco more seamless with fewer distractions that get between you and your goal.
• Removes the 'Secrets Found' stats and no longer informs you when a secret is found.
• The intermission screen is no longer shown when completing a level.
• The Chapter Completion screen no longer shows the secret counter.
• Entering a new level no longer prints the level number. It only prints the area you just entered.

DEV NOTE:
A common critique is how some players felt secrets ruined the pacing of the game. While we personally enjoy the number of secrets in Selaco, it's understandable how this is not something everybody likes. It is also a welcome accessibility feature for players who have difficulty moving on without a full completion first.
Mutator Menu Rework

• Given the quantity of mutators nowadays, a scrollbar has been added to scroll through mutators.
• Added category labels to improve navigation. So far, the categories are "Game Modes", "Booster", "Difficulty Modifiers", and "Misc".
• Added a 'NEW' label for Mutators that are newly added to the game.

• Added collision sound effects when colliding with common props (crates, barrels, etc.).
• Added an Object Bumping system. Small props will now get kicked out of the way when walking over them.
• Added Material-Based Body Impacts. Depending on the material an enemy dies on, different effects will spawn (e.g., wood on wooden surfaces, grass blades on grass surfaces).
• Improved footstep sounds and completely reworked ventilation footstep sounds.
• Boosted the volume of most ambient effects. They were too subtle and barely audible without headphones.
• You can now rip posters apart by interacting with them. This adds nothing of value to the game but it's fun.
• Hundreds of new sound effects have been added, and many outdated sound effects have been reworked to match our newer standards.
• Added true fall damage for props and decoration actors. For example, bumping a mug off a table will now shatter it once it hits the floor. Prior to this, this was only possible when the player threw them manually.
• Added vacuum cleaning sound for VAC-Bots
• Added proper death sound for Sentry Guns
• Added oil-like decals around the floor for killed robotic enemies

Muzzle Flashes

• Player muzzle flashes now fade out a little slower than usual. This makes them more appealing to look at in darker areas
• The Lighting Quality setting now determines the size of the muzzle flashes.
  • LOW and MEDIUM will produce a slightly smaller light effect
  • ULTRA will now produce a brighter light effect

• Added rain puddles.
• Added Sound Effects when walking over rain
• Added additional rain splatter effects.
• Added a 'Rain Quality' setting. Higher values add more rain and spawn additional effects.
• Added proper directional wind sound effects.
• Other smaller enhancements.

Explosion Effects

• Explosion effects now take the floor type into consideration. Explosions on a metal surface will spawn pieces of burned metal, wood will spawn plank pieces, etc.
• Added shattering wood sound effects when explosions happen on wooden surfaces.
• Enemies killed by grenades now have death animations and no longer always gib.

Bullet Impacts

• Greatly improved impact effects when firing at wood surfaces.
• Added a 'Metal Chunk' particle effect that occasionally appears when firing at metal surfaces.
• Improved particle effects when firing at reinforced windows.

Captain Difficulty

• Increased global enemy damage by 10% to compensate for the vastly increased stagger chances.

Admiral Difficulty
The goal of Admiral is to provide a challenging experience even for veteran players of Selaco. Given the changes in v0.85 that make the game slightly easier, this difficulty needed some further tweaking to maintain its high challenge level.

• Enemies can now deal Critical Strikes. Every bullet has a 10% chance to be a Critical Strike, dealing 25% more damage than regular attacks. Engineers cannot deal Critical Strikes.
• Increased global enemy damage by 15% to compensate for the vastly increased stagger chances.
• Enemies are 10% more likely to throw grenades.

Juggernaut
A while back we removed his explosive resistance. This was a bad idea and made them pushovers.

• Juggernaut now has 75% Damage Resistance against Explosive Damage.
• Juggernauts no longer take full damage from Ice Grenades. The main draw for Ice Grenades against Juggernauts is to cripple his movement abilities and reduce his rate of fire, not dealing damage.

Riflemen

• Increased enemy grenade chance by 5%
• Ammo Drop Chance reduced from 25 to 20

Hard-Boiled!

• Reduced chance for enemies to drop Weapon Parts.

UC-36 Assault Rifle

• Significantly reduced damage randomization. Damage now ranges from 24-32, rather than a dice roll selecting between 14, 32 or 48 damage. This makes the UC-36 more consistent and reliable.
• Decreased hip fire spread (320 -> 290).
• Very minor increase (0.1s) in reload time to make the animation look better.
• Added an improved sound effect when ammo for the UC-36 is running low.
• FRAMEWORK UPGRADE: Gives slightly more bonus damage (1 -> 2).
• INCREASED CALIBER: Gives slightly more bonus damage (1-> 2).

UC-11 Compact SMG

• Like the UC-36, reduced the amount of randomized damage per bullet to be more consistent.
• MAGNETIC ROUNDS: Increased damage against small robots from 30% to 60%.
• ZOOM: Improved zoom accuracy.

GRAV-VI Plasma Rifle

The plasma bolt hitbox was very small and did not match up with the size of the sprite, making it far too easy to miss targets. This has been fixed.

• Increased Plasma Bolt hitbox (7 -> 17)

S-8 Marksman Rifle

• DMR now respects the zoom/toggle zoom setting.
• EXTENDED ZOOM: Now requires the melee button to be pressed to zoom further instead of the Zoom button.

Roaring Cricket

• Knocking enemies over is no longer baseline.
• Added 'Knockback' Upgrade. This will be the first upgrade players can get in a Safe Rooms for 60 Weapon Parts.
• HAIR TRIGGER: Now requires 250 Weapon Parts instead of 60.

24mm HW-Penetrator

A powerful weapon with a near guaranteed chance to stagger enemies. However, given the Stagger rework, its value has dropped a bit. Upping the damage to compensate!

• Increased base damage (28 -> 33).
• NAIL BOMB: Decreased damage per nail (28 -> 23)

Landmines

• ANNIHILATION MODE: Explosion Range reduced (50% -> 15%)
• ANNIHILATION MODE: Explosion Damage reduced (25% -> 15%)

Flashlight
It was a bit too short.

• Increased Flashlight Battery Capacity (100 -> 135)
• Increased Flashlight Battery Recharge Rate (10 -> 20)

The battery was indeed a bit too short, but we do want to briefly explain why we went with a limited battery.

1. GZDoom is not good at utilizing moving light sources, especially around richly detailed environments. We've taken steps to make the engine utilize cone-shaped lights better, but it's unfortunately still far from perfect. A more casual player is not likely to manage their flashlight usage, so they'll likely turn it on and never turn it off again. A battery ensures this wont happen and is the reason why the recharge time is almost instant.

2. Selaco relies heavily on atmosphere and lighting compositions. While it is, of course, up to the player whether they choose to keep their lights on or not, there's a solid chance players will never turn their lights off and potentially ruin some moody areas that benefit from being lit 'normally'.

However, if you want an infinite flashlight, we have created a mod for you that's safe to use and will not kill achievements:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3258941092

Space Bro

• Removed difficulty scaling. Space Bro will now play identically across all difficulties.

Enhanced Grenade Throwing
Grenade throwing logic for enemies has been improved.

• Soldiers can now throw grenades at the player's last known position. This allows the soldier to flush out the player if they choose to hide.
• Soldiers are much better at ensuring the grenade lands near the player.
• 'Hot Drops' have a slightly longer fuse timer to allow more time for the player to evade.

Stealth Kills

• Stealth kills are now more reliable, and melee kills from the back will now insta-kill the enemy.
• This will become more useful later on in development when enemies have a proper patrolling system.

NOTE: A large amount of stuff has changed. A lot of it unfortunately went undocumented. You may notice plenty of changes while playing through the game again!

• Moved Exodus Mall Gwyn Station to the entrance of the mall for easier access
• Fixed a lot of texture alignment errors
• Fixed numerous soft locks
• Continued to make improvements toward navigation, signposting, and the general quality of the game.
• ...And at least a hundred other things.

Performance

• Further optimizations have been applied to smoke and particle effects.

Misc

• Added controller rumble when running through glass.
• Improved visuals when throwing trash in dumpsters.
• Combat VAC-Bots are now replaced with a regular VAC-Bot when destroyed. However, their turret is gone.
• Picking up a Combat VAC-Bot will no longer have Dawn point the barrel towards her face. Instead, she will always point it towards the enemy.
• Added a proper voxel model for dropped miniguns.
• Added version number to the main menu.
• Added 'Steam Workshop' info screen to the main menu.
• Reduced the file size of the game by cleaning up unused assets. This may have saved a bit of VRAM too!

General Fixes

• Attempted fix for floors and ceilings being black. If you've used the 'vk_device 1' fix before and suddenly have this problem again, you may have to return to 'vk_device 0' to fix the issue again.
• Fixed an oversight where some secret items could not be picked up when Manual Pickup Mode was used.
• Fixed 'Stutter Stepping' problem with enemy soldiers.
• WorkShopDownloader.exe will now properly launch without Steam.
• Removed 'Fullscreen' setting on Steam Deck which caused the game to become unplayable.
• Fixed a bug where the DMR bipod would attach while zooming.
• Fixed a bug where the DMR bipod animation could cancel important animations.
• The 'Subtitle' option now actually works.
• Fixed an error where the Headshot Death animation for Siegers would not cause them to explode.
• Fixed an error where Siegers would not explode when something obstructs them on their way down.
• Fixed strange infinite-zoom glitch when exiting out of a slide.
• Fixed an error where the UC-36 Auxiliary Launcher would not fire without a loaded magazine.
• Fixed an error where dying with the Weapon Kit prompt open would lock your game.
• Fixed an error where one of the enemy voice lines would not play.
• Fixed scaling error where the keybinds on the automap would not show up correctly on 4:3 monitors.
• Burning people will no longer awkwardly run on desks and other pieces of decoration/furniture.
• Kickable doors no longer become unkickable after being lit on fire.
• Dawn can now kick doors while on fire.
• Fixed trash bin duplication glitch.
• Fixed an error where destroyed trash bins were very likely to clip into the wall when shot.
• Entering a new level while crouching will now keep you crouched.
• Fixed the achievement 'NotEvenRemotelyFair.wad' not triggering as intended.
• Fixed a crash when soldiers tried to call out a dead player without a squad.
• Fixed an error where fast weapons would cause Shooting Range targets to get knocked over further than intended.
• Fixed an error where Dual SMGs would miscount the 'Shots missed' stat.
• Fixed a crash when reloading the grenade launcher while on a ladder.
• Fixed a bug where Dual SMGs firing sound would keep looping when unequipped during firing.
• Fixed a bug where melee kills were not correctly displayed on the Stats screen.
• Fixed a bug where grenade launcher ammo would not properly return when leaving the shooting range.
• Shooting Range dummies no longer spin into the floor when hit at high rates of fire.
• Burning aliens no longer spawn red blood decals.
• Fixed a rare crash that happened when landmines exploded when the player was dead.
• Tweaks to sound engine to not play 'empty' sound effects.
• Fixed an error where throwables could 'sleep' unintentionally.
• Fixed a really silly bug where Iron Fury did not do anything.
• Fixed a visual error where the ''1'' in the upgrade menu was poorly aligned.
• Nailgun alt-fires now properly alert enemies.
• Fixed a bug where numerous gibs would spawn out of bounds.
• Removed Gas Mask breathing sounds when Dawn is dead.
• Fixed a typo in the credits (Sorry, Nick Palsmeier!).
• Combat VAC-Bots no longer shoot at dead targets endlessly.
• Fixed an SMF error where an entire encounter would refuse to alert themselves if the player attacked them from one specific sector.

• Tons of functions are now virtual, allowing modders to override them and/or make changes to the code for their mod.
• Modders can now add mutators and put them into categories

We posted this on Twitter a few weeks ago, but we might as well include it here.

We've put together a Fanart Kit consisting of high-resolution art references!

This includes character, weapon, and environmental art, as well as tutorial illustrations, key art, and the source image of the Burger Flipper icon.

The assets belong to Altered Orbit Studios and are copyrighted.

You can use them for any non-commercial projects, including mods and fan games. For anything else, please contact us for approval.

You can access the Fan Art Kit here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1McPTDRhzzTy8W2we3ctF66pIW18mnUNk

Randomizer Mode & Story Content
I (Nexxtic) will continue to work on the Randomizer Mode and the Story Update, both of which are still planned for the end of the year.

The Randomizer Mode has gotten a little out of hand and has become a much bigger project than originally intended. It adds a ridiculous amount of replay value to the game, and it's not something I want to rush.

The rest of the team will resume development on Chapter 2.

Chapter 2
Speaking of Chapter 2, it's coming along really well and I strongly wish I could talk a little more about it. All in due time though! I'll slowly start posting some teasers on our Twitter page.

Modding Documentation
We're truly sorry this is taking so long. With this patch out of the way, progress on this will vastly increase. I'll post an announcement about this in the near future!

Steam Cloud / GeForce Now support
We are looking into this! I am not able to currently give a definitive answer on whether we will/can use it or not.

New Pain and Death animations for the enemies
Because variation never hurt anybody!

AMD Vulkan issues
A recent driver update has apparently broken Vulkan support. We have a lot of data on this and have began figuring out what is going on here. Once we have a fix, we will launch a hotfix.

For now, please launch the game using OpenGL!

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 'version_v0.84 - Version before the 3-Month Anniversary Update'
7. Wait for the download the finish

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

And.. That's it!

We hope you like the list of changes we've made.

As usual, if the patch fixes any problems you may have had, please consider updating your review! We work really hard to address valid critiques and aim to make Selaco a fun experience for you.

If you have any suggestions for future ideas, let us know in the comments.

We thank you all for your continuous support and for spreading the word about Selaco's existence. Us little developers wouldn't be here without you!

Now, time to work on the anticipated Randomizer Mode and Story Content.

Have fun! <3