Good day everyone, Nexxtic here. With Selaco having launched two months ago, it felt like a good time to talk about the state of Selacos development. I want to briefly talk about what to expect from the upcoming update, and what to expect from us for the rest of the year. But first

Selaco has been Steam Deck Verified!

Happy to announce that, as of yesterday, Selaco has been verified on the Steam Deck! Getting the Steam Deck to behave according to Valve's quality expectations on GZDoom took a good amount of hard work, but we managed to get it done in the end. Major props to Cockatrice for being able to implement the required features so quickly. Please let us know how the Deck experience has been for you and report any problems you may find!

What will be in the next update?

One thing I want to get out of the way early: we will be very vague with our deadlines. Selaco is already jam packed with content and that's just for the Early Access release. For that reason, we hope you trust us to deliver something great and are willing to give us the time to achieve this. These Development Updates will be straight to the point and will inform you on how development is coming along. However, as you may have noticed, we will not be releasing an official roadmap. Roadmaps tend to have a negative effect on development/work. Experimentation with new ideas takes time, while roadmaps are schedule-focused and don't allow for such things. When something is in the works, we will let you know through these posts! Lets cover a few of the highlights in the upcoming update. We expect to launch this update in a couple of weeks.

- Backpack Reloading

This was a frequently requested feature. This is a system where, after not equipping a weapon for a while, the weapon will be automatically reloaded with a full magazine (provided there is enough ammo for it). This ensures that players will always swap to a loaded weapon in the middle of combat. This system is optional and can be disabled.

- Improved Immersion & Interactivity

The next update adds brand new visual and audio effects, improves rain to look more atmospheric, adds new interactables and more. If you like a world that feels believable and reactive, you will love some of these changes.

- Weapon Rebalancing

Another round of weapon balancing! This also includes making automatic weapons more consistent with their damage output. The current version on Steam has an oversight where there is a solid chance to roll low damage numbers consecutively, making some automatic weapons feel weaker than they are meant to be.

- Stagger improvements

Currently, enemies are less likely to stagger the higher your difficulty is. This ended up being a bad idea because it makes certain weapons lose their usefulness. The next update will address this and compensate with something more reasonable.

- Another round of performance improvements

A large amount of code is being optimized to reduce the amount of strain on your hardware, resulting in smoother frames and less hiccups.

- A slew of other Quality of Life Improvements

Vastly improved Grenade Throwing, new Map Icons, a DMR that respects your Hold/Toggle setting and more.

What else are we working on?

These are not likely to be included in the next update but are currently in development.

- Story Content

This is the big one. Selaco will get a major voice-over pass to flesh out Dawn as a character, the world of Selaco and the general plot. We unfortunately ran out of time to do this at launch, which made certain parts of the game feel more empty than we'd like. This is planned to arrive around the end of the year.

- Randomizer Mode

Another big feature is the Randomizer Mode. This aims to add tons of replayability to the game. It randomizes enemy spawns, introduces a Rarity System where some weapons and enemies are more powerful than usual, repositions ammo pickups and offers tons of customization to tweak the game to your liking. This mode is planned to launch alongside the Story Content update.

- Improved enemy tacticsI

Better Patrol modes, a goal system, cover system and more are planned for our AI. These will take a while, though, and may not appear until Chapter 2. Please bear with us as we give them an additional boost in intelligence!

- Adjustable difficulty during the campaign

We are looking into a system that allows players to drop the difficulty at any time during a campaign playthrough. We wanted to add this earlier, but it was quite a complicated problem to tackle and will need a bit more time.

- Customizable Mutators

We are working on a system that allows players to customize individual mutators before starting a new campaign. For example, tweak Hard-Boiled Mode to disable the additional projectile speed for the enemy, or play Hardcore Mode but with standard Weapon Reload behavior. Mutators that have been customized will show an apostrophe symbol at the Chapter Completion Screen

- Improved Safe Rooms

We are working on additional features to make Safe Rooms more interesting and useful. This includes a free one-time use Health Cache where players can refill their health, and an Armor Station where players can purchase armor. However, the latter might not appear until Chapter 2.

- Chapter 2 is coming along nicely

Chapter 2 introduces a large amount of new systems which we will talk about in a blog post closer to its launch.

Conclusion

Of course, these types of blog posts only cover a fraction of the things that are currently in motion. As newer features and mechanics are nearing completion, we will introduce them here. Ill ensure to post one of them every couple of months moving forward. I also want to give a quick shout-out to all the players who are actively giving us their feedback on the game. The Discord channel and Steam Forums/Reviews have been a fantastic source of information and we cannot thank you enough for these. Do keep them coming! And remember, do give us a Steam Review if you can (or update it if your problems have been fixed!) They are very helpful for the game. If you like these types of blog posts, please consider joining our Patreon Page. Here, we beta test new features and showcase what is currently being worked on; including early concept art, prototypes, openly discuss development obstacles and more. https://www.patreon.com/PlaySelaco/
Thank you for taking the time to read this! If you have any questions, feel free to comment below and I'll try to get back to you as soon as I can. Have a great week! - Nexxtic