On Monday, we launched the very first version of the Selaco Demo. To say that we are excited and happy with all the feedback we have gotten would be a severe understatement. Truly, thank you all very much for the love and the feedback about numerous things regarding the game. Of course, like with any game that is still in development, a good amount of problems were found. The most recurring complaints were "Unfair difficulty" and "Visual clutter". We have addressed them both, but still have ways to go before we are completely satisfied with them. For now, we have made a handful of improvements that should enhance the experience of the game. Summary - Many changes to the visuals to improve navigation, improve encounters, reduce clutter and make things more 'natural' to look at. There is still a lot of work left here, we had to make do with the time we had, but the worst offenders should be significantly better! - Additional rooms have been added to a couple of combat encounters to make them flow better. - Big balance changes to combat. - Ability to pickup and throw live enemy grenades. - Map Controls are now visible on the automap. These will allow you to zoom out and pan around the map, as well as follow the player around. - Performance enhancements, especially during combat. - Quality of Life improvements - Bug Fixes. Added - Added option for 'Reduced' Weapon Shake. This will not eliminate Screenshake when firing weapons completely, but will reduce the duration and amount. - Added a warning system for future updates that will break save game compatibility - Added additional information for the 'Smoke Quality' description - Added the option to disable certain screen effects (Dirt, Healing effect, Armor Breaking and Dash Lines). You find these in Gameplay -> Immersion. - Added an option to link mouse sensitivity sliders - Increased Self Illumination to enemy spritework. This is a temporary solution, we will be redesigning the Rifleman enemy in the future to make them easier to pick out in combat - Added the ability to pick up and throw enemy grenades - Added the ability to slide kick enemy grenades into the direction of the sliding - Automap now shows controls in the bottom left corner. Use these buttons to Zoom, Pan or follow the player character around. - Added voice callouts for soldiers when Dawn loses her armor. Balance We've heard lots of great things here, but there are a couple of things that needed tweaking. We tried not to touch too much upon the higher difficulties because we feel like Captain and Admiral are (mostly) in a great spot, but lower difficulties could go with some improvements to make it playable. Ammo Economy - The amount of ammo dropped from enemies is now dependent on Difficulty. Lower difficulties have enemies drop more ammo. This means that exploration and discovery becomes more important as the difficulty level increases, while lower difficulty players can take a more simplistic approach without being required to explore too much. - Increased amount of Machinegun Ammo from dropped Rifleman Soldiers (10 -> 15) UC-36 Assault Rifle: A well-liked weapon, but hipfiring was a bit too inaccurate and unreliable. - (Hipfire) Weapon Spread has been reduced by 15% - (Hipfire) Recoil has been reduced by 5% Difficulty Changes: All difficulties: - Enemy damage decreased by 15% (Does not apply to Admiral) - Additional ammo pickups have been added (Does not apply to Admiral) - Headshots are far more likely to cause a stagger per shot. (70% -> 90%) - All enemies are more likely to get staggered by regular gunfire on body shots. Ensign: - Enemies are much easier to stagger - Enemy Damage reduced by an additional 10%. - Increased the time it takes for Soldiers to begin firing after aiming at the player - Enemies are far less likely to strafe and fire Lieutenant: - Enemy Damage reduced by an additional 10% - Enemies are easier to stagger Admiral: The difference between Captain and Admiral was noticeable, but not nearly enough. We are giving the enemies some extra juice on this difficulty. - Enemies are far more likely to strafe, and will be more likely to fire while strafing. Melee Combat: - Hitting props while sliding will no longer slow down your slide. Rifleman (All types) - Decreased weapon damage (4,5) -> (3,4) Rifleman (Defending Stance) - Defending Riflemen are far less aggressive and more likely to wait for Dawn to show up, rather than the other way around. Rifleman (Attacking Stance) - Same as above, except they are now less afraid to get close. Engineers - Damage per pellet decreased (5 -> 3) (Does not apply to Admiral) Juggernaut - Now takes 25% additional damage from the Roaring Cricket, which is a weapon with armor piercing bullets. - Shotgun now damages the Juggernaut accordingly. - Reduced Rate of Fire by 25% (Does not apply to Admiral) Hardcore Mode - Gwyn was not satisfied with the amount of money she gained from Saved Games and she has to stay in character. The Saved Game price has been bumped up from 600 to 800 - The game will now save right before picking up the UC-36 Assault Rifle in the patient room. This way, dying means you wont have to re-run the introduction again. You respawn right back into the first combat encounter. Changed - Explosions are a bit more performance friendly without sacrificing their visuals. - Optimized enemy pathfinding to be more performant. - Updated some texture work to contrast better with the rest of the environment - Optimized enemy 'checks' to not happen 35 times a second anymore. They are more spread out and should result in far less strain on the CPU. This was a bad oversight from our end. - End game credits can now be skipped by pressing BACK/ESC three times - Quit To Title menu option added while in game - Backspace can now be bound as a useable key in game - An additional autosave has been added to Level 1-3. Apologies for everyone who had lost significant progress due to a poorly spaced out autosave. - Low graphics preset disables texture caching for cards with low VRAM - Low graphics preset now disables light shafts - Destroying a window will now alert nearby soldiers - Increased the volume of the UC-36 Firing sound to be more in-line with other weapons - Removed 'Enemy Soldier deployed ' prompt. The visuals and dialog from the enemy was already making this obvious enough. - Rebalanced default audio settings to allow more dynamic range Fixed / Improved - Adjusted a string of text that shows underneath the crosshair when your weapon is about to run out ("LOW AMMO" -> "RELOAD") - Fixed an error where the Flashlight tutorial did not show up until after you leave a dark area. Whoops. - Fixed a bug where Teddybears could destroy the MRI Machine door. - Flares now work underwater. I am not so smart. - Fixed a bug where Camera Tilt was not properly applied when killed by Alien bullets. - The flare effect on a flare stick no longer flickers too quickly. - Fixed a bug where animated flares had incorrect offsets. - Fixed an error where plant hitboxes were overly generous. In the future, we will make it so that bullets go *thought* plants, rather than damage them. But this is not something we could fix within a reasonable timeframe. - Fixed a potential crash when sliding into cover objects - Fixed an error where the Door Breaching Sparks got unintentionally bright. - Fixed Dawn's "Get Well Soon!" balloon from despawning. - Fixed some ghost interaction prompts that would show up in 1-2. - Fixed a bug where enemies got confused and thought they fought alone, when they actually still had allies left. - Fixed a bug where Engineers who wind up their attack, just to realize they are out of shells. They are now competent at counting how much ammo they have left before engaging. - Addressed a good amount of texture and scripting errors in the levels. - UC-36 Rifle performance improvements, fixed stacking light effects. - Automap should toggle correctly now when bound to M. - Prevented accidental console spam from the Tutorial handler. - Dawn can no longer open her Codex while dead. Linux - Numpad keys can now be used for in-game keypads - Fixed crashes and issues related to dynamic-library clashes with steam-runtime - Fixed requiring wayland libraries on non-wayland systems - Fixed the game requiring newer OS than stated in the system requirements - Potential fix for audio issues == End of changes == What's next? - Armor rework. We understand that armor is currently a little underperforming and could use some more oomph. After all, armor is more often than not placed outside the beaten path so you should get rewarded for it. - Additional polish to the visuals. - Improved balancing - Add proper Player Icon on the Automap