Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Selaco - A Doom engine FPS inspired by FEAR and the classics - coming to Early Access in May

Curratum

Guest
It's supposed to be based on Fear, not Doom, so i don't see why anybody would expect a Doom clone.

Because Fear doesn't work in that engine?
 

Bad Sector

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
2,223
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
The boss is pretty easy, and also lame tbh. Just take cover, wait for him to stop shooting, then hit him with a meaty shotgun shot. Repeat. He signals his jump way in advance for you to slide away.

I had ran out of shotgun ammo by that time, the shotgun was too good to not use it :-P. The other guns seemed to barely do a scratch and there wasn't any feedback - i think i did most of the damage with a (single) grenade i had. I tried to take cover but he always jumped next to me almost instantly when i did that :-/. At the end i only beat it from inside the box where i would get little damage. Regardless i can't say i liked the boss fight much either.

Because Fear doesn't work in that engine?

It is supposed to be inspired by the game FEAR, not the engine FEAR used. While the engine can affect some things, at the end of the day games can change it since it is open source (and GZDoom is very customizable without modifying it) - i hope you don't expect to shoot demons in Sonic Robo Blast 2 because it also uses a modified Doom engine :-P.

Though i can't really see the FEAR inspiration myself, aside from the demo map being a bunch of offices (and considering how high tech and sci-fi everything is, even that is stretched). Perhaps when the project started it was closer and the "inspired by" stuck with it.
 
Last edited:

Berg DK

Novice
Joined
Oct 16, 2021
Messages
9
I couldn't force myself to play past the first combat scenario, worst feeling combat I've experienced in a doom engine game
and the protagonist feels so out of place I cant take the game seriously.
 

kepler

Novice
Joined
Jun 1, 2022
Messages
43
Location
Lechistan
I really liked that demo. Shotgun is fun and gibs satisfying. Animu asthetics are massive decline tho. Will have to alt tab when someone enters my room while playing this.

Wishlisted with a hope that some things will play better in the final product.
 

toughasnails

Guest
It is supposed to be inspired by the game FEAR, not the engine FEAR used. While the engine can affect some things, at the end of the day games can change it since it is open source (and GZDoom is very customizable without modifying it) - i hope you don't expect to shoot demons in Sonic Robo Blast 2 because it also uses a modified Doom engine :-P.
Just wait till he finds out about Total Chaos lol...
 

Retardo

Learned
Joined
Jun 26, 2020
Messages
206
I wonder, what made them think that using gzdoom engine would be a good idea?
Dusk used Quake-like aesthetic on purpose.
Prodeus does all the 2d-pixelated-sprites much better, than Selaco.
Amid Evil did clever thing, in reproducing how we boomers remember Hexen and Heretic - all pixelated, bustil amazingly beatiful.

Selaco, however, is weird. It does not copy any of the old games, and thus can't have the benefits of nostalgia. And without those rose-tinted goggles its just a pretty ugly shooter with Fear-like gameplay, while the original Fear itself looks much better.
 

Tacgnol

Shitlord
Patron
Joined
Oct 12, 2010
Messages
1,871,734
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Grab the Codex by the pussy RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
I wonder, what made them think that using gzdoom engine would be a good idea?
Dusk used Quake-like aesthetic on purpose.
Prodeus does all the 2d-pixelated-sprites much better, than Selaco.
Amid Evil did clever thing, in reproducing how we boomers remember Hexen and Heretic - all pixelated, bustil amazingly beatiful.

Selaco, however, is weird. It does not copy any of the old games, and thus can't have the benefits of nostalgia. And without those rose-tinted goggles its just a pretty ugly shooter with Fear-like gameplay, while the original Fear itself looks much better.

GZDoom engine is pretty powerful from a scripting perspective. Might have been the ease of customising things.
 

toughasnails

Guest
GZDoom engine is pretty powerful from a scripting perspective. Might have been the ease of customising things.
This plus them already being familiar with the engine & tools. The people behind these commercial GZDoom projects generally have a lot prior experience in the Doom modding/mapping scene...
 

Bad Sector

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
2,223
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
AFAIK pretty much everyone uses Doom Builder nowadays which is a very easy level design tool.

Also i 100% disagree that it looks ugly - or that it plays like FEAR.

please don't tell me there is a slow motion mode i missed
 

udm

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 14, 2008
Messages
2,752
Make the Codex Great Again!
At Level 3 now and enjoying myself more as the demo progresses. I'm having fun, but it's not the best boomer shooter I've tried. The level design is lacking due to too many pointless corridors and rooms, but occasionally there are some interesting locations like the office section with lots of glass windows. The game has some good ideas, but doesn't make full use of those mechanics (eg flipping objects to provide cover).

Sound is punchy but lacks enemy feedback so you don't know when an enemy is nearby apart from their footsteps. The music is eh. Sometimes it plays, sometimes it cuts off (presumably to add tension in certain areas).

One thing worth mentioning, however: it's nice that it isn't an arena shooter. As enemy fire is deadly (at Captain difficulty), you get ripped apart in 3 seconds even at full health and armour when caught in a crossfire. Yeah fights have a good deal of intensity to them, and even a single stray bullet eats 15-20hp when you're without armour. In a way, it reminds me of the deadliness of Blood's enemies. You can't just rush into a room and RIP AND TEAR BRUTAL D44M STYLE.

Also, Dawn is perfect waifu.

f2D03pg.jpg

:love:

TLDR: Would buy, but probably at 20% off. I prefer Ion Fury to this, but I think Selaco can still stand on its own merits. I just hope the later levels are more intriguing than the earlier ones.

How about that FEAR AI, is it 'inspired' enough to include that?
The AI is pretty good. Enemies flank so you can't camp and cheese them. There is still room for improvement though as they sometimes get stuck while pathfinding around geometry and objects.

Also, I did not find a "walk" button. I understand it's a fast paced shooter, but I like to walk when exploring. Maybe I'm blind, but where do I change the blood color to proper red?
You run by default, so the walk button is actually the "Run" button in the controls.
 

HansDampf

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2015
Messages
1,471
I played through the demo again on Admiral (before today's update). I think I'm getting the hang of this. The pistol is ideal to interrupt shotgunners. It always stuns no matter where you hit them. Combat is "dynamic" in the sense that you can rarely camp it out. It's better to keep moving and be more aggressive, in my experience.
The demo leaves me wanting more, so that's good. But I have a few issues with it.
1) With all the smoke and particle effects it's sometimes hard to see anything. It's better when I set the effects on Low, but that's kinda lame? I didn't have this problem in FEAR either. The devs seem to be aware of this and are working on it, according to the patch notes. It would be nice to have more audible and thumpy bullet impact sound effects when you hit enemies. It's better than relying on the crosshair indicator, and it should make the weapons feel more powerful.
2) Cut the amount of secrets in half (at least)! This seems like nitpicking, but I hate this inflation of secrets. I hate it in Ion Fury. And I hate it in Doom maps. I went through the level with a fine tooth comb, and at the end it says I'm still missing 10 secrets. I have no motivation to go back and find them all. There is no way any map designer has 20 cool ideas for secrets per map. Most of them are going to be pointless trash filler to annoy completionists. With the size of the first demo level, 3 secrets with useful rewards would be enough, imo.
3) Get rid of the youtubers. I have no issue with a few pop culture references in retro shooters. But seeing the face of "critics", who are supposed to review the game, everywhere in the demo looks no different to me than:
ME3_Diana_Allers.png

Also, Dawn is perfect waifu.

f2D03pg.jpg

:love:

Despite having similar outfits and being supposedly more serious/realistic, Dawn looks way hotter than Shelly.
 

Dayyālu

Arcane
Joined
Jul 1, 2012
Messages
4,466
Location
Shaper Crypt
Finally managed to play this and I discover that everything I could think of has already been said.

Basic gunplay is decent. That's the most important part in a shooter, and Selaco kinda nails it.

Weapon design is boring but functional. Sound is decent, nothing exceptional. The music is mediocre, feels almost random, System Shock 1 it ain't.

Enemy design is.... peculiar: I like how they're pretty reactive for Doom enemies and the enemy chatter (one of the few FEAR inspirations that they kept, I guess) but they're visually weak, difficult to identify properly in the level, little feedback when you hit them, the purple blood is ludicrous.... for once the level of detail and clutter in the levels work against the game: I'd prefer a visually clear industrial area where I can easily see enemies and cover.

HansDampf nails hit, too many secrets, many of them asinine, sign of a level designer that's more in love with pointless detail than with solid basics.

I have nothing against animu style for shooters - I survived Hedon's mess and I fully appreciate stuff like La Tailor Girl - but.... it feels off. I don't even know why, must be that the art is somewhat inconsistent at times or something, I had the weirdest feeling that I was replaying one of those oldass 90ies early 00ies weirdo western-animu games like Oni or SHOGO.

And I seriously don't want to remember Shogo
.

I get the horrible feeling this could end up like Ion Fury: a lot of lovely work with mediocre basic design.
 

Curratum

Guest
sign of a level designer that's more in love with pointless detail than with solid basics.

That could be said about the level design as a whole. The game would play so much better if the detail was embedded in the walls, behind blocker lines, sort of like how you'd have exaggerated collision meshes on modern games, so you don't snag on every little piece of it.
 

Bad Sector

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
2,223
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I had the weirdest feeling that I was replaying one of those oldass 90ies early 00ies weirdo western-animu games like Oni or SHOGO.

Oni has good visuals though, the only visual issue the game has is that the environments look too empty.
 

Morenatsu.

Liturgist
Joined
May 6, 2016
Messages
2,578
Location
The Centre of the World
I had the weirdest feeling that I was replaying one of those oldass 90ies early 00ies weirdo western-animu games like Oni or SHOGO.

Oni has good visuals though, the only visual issue the game has is that the environments look too empty.
Oni is a Crapintosh game with consistently off-model animu art. Though that's at least still better Shogo's DeviantArt trash drawings.
 

Bad Sector

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
2,223
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Oni is a Crapintosh game with consistently off-model animu art.

The game was also released on Windows.

Also i disagree with the "off-model" art, the game has good looking art, especially the 2D art.

I agree with Shogo's drawings too, you'd expect professional 2D artists to make something that at least looks decent. Amusingly, the only decent art in Shogo was made by a Japanese artist (on the left side, though the 3D model was... let down):

mfKcYVR.jpg


(left side is Shogo, right side is Oni)
 

Morenatsu.

Liturgist
Joined
May 6, 2016
Messages
2,578
Location
The Centre of the World
Oni is a Crapintosh game with consistently off-model animu art.

The game was also released on Windows.

Also i disagree with the "off-model" art, the game has good looking art, especially the 2D art.
And on Playstation 2, but it's still a Macintosh game made within Macintosh limitations. Hence the simple lighting and sparse environments.

The 3D models and cover art look as good as they do, but the other bits of in-game art look a little odd. It's not a big problem by itself, but combined with the dub-acting, unnecessarily realistic level design, and Crapple graficks, it's a strange game to play. But then again, every Bungie game is like that. Marathon, with its funny sounds effects, and Halo, with its copypasta level derpsign, and all of them with checkpoints only because why not.

But, liek, Shogo, holeh sheeit. It's not really any better than Blood 2, it's just less frustrating/tedious. Brain-dead RNG combat and horrendous animu fartart instead of damage sponges and reused levels. I guess it's a slightly more finished game, but that's about it. Slave Zero was much better (but that's less animu and not first-person).
 

Bad Sector

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
2,223
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
And on Playstation 2, but it's still a Macintosh game made within Macintosh limitations. Hence the simple lighting and sparse environments.

At the time Oni was made Macintosh didn't have any limitation when it comes to graphics, they were basically PCs with a PowerPC CPU instead of an Intel one, at the turn of the century OpenGL was at its peak in terms of both performance and features and Macs used Nvidia-based GPUs which always had the best OpenGL implementation.

It wouldn't be until years later when they started focusing too much on "the thinnest ever" stuff and weird designs that performance would actually start becoming an issue, but that'd be a decade after Oni was made. Even the 2009 Mac Pro could get some very beefy GPUs (and in fact people who wanted high end graphics on a Mac preferred to buy refurbished/used 2009 Mac Pros with high end GeForces - Nvidia kept releasing drivers even after Apple decided to go with AMD).

Being on PlayStation 2 while being in development before the console was released was a more likely reason for the sparse environments than being on Mac (though i'm not sure if that was actually the case - i just think it is more likely than Mac being the issue).
 

toughasnails

Guest
Funny thing, the boring environments in Oni were probably what the people complained about the most but they were actually marketed as a selling point before the release. They were boasting that the levels are designed by pro architects. Turns out that the sort of architecture you see in modern office buildings and the like doesn't make for something that is interesting to look at in your game.
 

Bad Sector

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
2,223
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
TBH i think that "designed by pro architects" was kind at the same level as how Valve's facial animation system was supposedly designed by psychologists - which does have some kernel of truth at a level (AFAIK it is based on some system from psychology which predates the game -and the vast majority of computer games- by decades) but at the end of the day IIRC the system was made by the same guy who did the skeletal animation system in HL1.

I think the main reason Oni levels feel empty is that for the gameplay to work you need a lot of space to run and do various combos (and throw people, etc), so they had to made the areas large for that, but they didn't try to add any additional detail that wouldn't affect the gameplay. That could be technical limitations (PS2) or manpower limitations (AFAIK it was more of a side project and was developed when MS bought Bungie so it is possible the team that actually worked on it was too small). Though that is just me guessing here.
 

Dayyālu

Arcane
Joined
Jul 1, 2012
Messages
4,466
Location
Shaper Crypt
I think the main reason Oni levels feel empty is that for the gameplay to work you need a lot of space to run and do various combos (and throw people, etc), so they had to made the areas large for that, but they didn't try to add any additional detail that wouldn't affect the gameplay.

Oni has a good combat system, truth be told, but the level design is subpar and even the enemy design isn't that good. It tries tho, it's kind of a weirdo version of a fighting scroller (a genre that died a few years before Oni). Bungie never had a knack for good level design. Marathon is nice for the ambience and Halo needs three games to get properly into gear, and half of Halo CE is recycled content. SHOGO has decent robot sections, but the on foot sections are worse than Blood II by far, and that's a feat.

Rethinking about Selaco, I've realized that there are essentially just two decent fights in the entire demo: the warehouse fight and kinda-sorta the boss. The boss barely passes , I understand it's a miniboss but it's incredibly simple, but the warehouse was legit fun, while all the other combat encounters are always 2-3 riflemen plus shotgunners in a corridor, it gets old incredibly fast.
 

Morenatsu.

Liturgist
Joined
May 6, 2016
Messages
2,578
Location
The Centre of the World
And on Playstation 2, but it's still a Macintosh game made within Macintosh limitations. Hence the simple lighting and sparse environments.

At the time Oni was made Macintosh didn't have any limitation when it comes to graphics, they were basically PCs with a PowerPC CPU instead of an Intel one, at the turn of the century OpenGL was at its peak in terms of both performance and features and Macs used Nvidia-based GPUs which always had the best OpenGL implementation.

It wouldn't be until years later when they started focusing too much on "the thinnest ever" stuff and weird designs that performance would actually start becoming an issue, but that'd be a decade after Oni was made. Even the 2009 Mac Pro could get some very beefy GPUs (and in fact people who wanted high end graphics on a Mac preferred to buy refurbished/used 2009 Mac Pros with high end GeForces - Nvidia kept releasing drivers even after Apple decided to go with AMD).

Being on PlayStation 2 while being in development before the console was released was a more likely reason for the sparse environments than being on Mac (though i'm not sure if that was actually the case - i just think it is more likely than Mac being the issue).
It's something one of the developers said, that their target platform at the time was the iMac G3, which mostly only came with an 8MB ATI Rage 128. And I don't think you can rely on the people who would upgrade to sell your game to the people who wouldn't. The PS2 being involved later on in development doesn't help, but I'm not sure how much of a factor that really was.

TBH i think that "designed by pro architects" was kind at the same level as how Valve's facial animation system was supposedly designed by psychologists - which does have some kernel of truth at a level (AFAIK it is based on some system from psychology which predates the game -and the vast majority of computer games- by decades) but at the end of the day IIRC the system was made by the same guy who did the skeletal animation system in HL1.
It was always talked about as being based on pre-existing research, no one said anything about psychologists literally programming the animation themselves. But the claim of Oni being ‘designed by pro architects’ doesn't make any sense if that isn't literally the case. The reason for that is you need to run chkdsk on ur brian
 

Bad Sector

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
2,223
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Oni has a good combat system, truth be told, but the level design is subpar and even the enemy design isn't that good. It tries tho, it's kind of a weirdo version of a fighting scroller (a genre that died a few years before Oni).

Oh yeah i agree with that, the levels are essentially a series of big rooms to fight in with some locked doors that you need to unlock and a secret item stashed in a corner here and there but they are done in the simplest way possible.

It's something one of the developers said, that their target platform at the time was the iMac G3, which mostly only came with an 8MB ATI Rage 128. And I don't think you can rely on the people who would upgrade to sell your game to the people who wouldn't.

That'd be for the low end requirements, similarly to how any PC title of the time would need to work more than on the most high end PCs. In fact, out of the box the many iMac G3s had RAM below the game's minimum requirements (which would need an upgrade) and for some the CPU wasn't even fast enough.

But as i wrote, there weren't any Mac-specific limitations, the Macs of the time were pretty much as powerful as the PCs of the time. It wouldn't be any different from a game developer targeting old PC specs so your "Macintosh game made within Macintosh limitations" is wrong. There were no Macintosh limitations aside perhaps from using OpenGL instead of Direct3D but OpenGL was also on PC and as i wrote at the time it was at its peak in terms of both performance and features.

It was always talked about as being based on pre-existing research, no one said anything about psychologists literally programming the animation themselves. But the claim of Oni being ‘designed by pro architects’ doesn't make any sense if that isn't literally the case.

I explicitly remember reading in interviews (that was 2003 at most, before the game was released) that Valve hired psychologists so they get the game's NPC interactivity right. It was something that i also remember being referenced at some point in a YouTube video as a joke. That was years ago though, so unless i go sleuthing to find the source of that (which i'm not feeling like doing as it is pointless), i can't point to anything off the top of my head and a quick Google search has a ton of false positives.

But this is beside the point, my point was that i'd take both of these with a grain of salt since PR -even back in the innocent 90s- tends to overexaggerate things. Being designed by pro architects can mean that they hired some architect to create a few concept art-like pieces for how the buildings would look but the actual design was made by the level designers at Bungie. Or it could mean that one of the level designers also had some architecture knowledge - you may not know it but at the time architecture was sold to level designers as something that was very useful for them to know.

Of course it could also be that they hired an architect to design the levels but i'm pretty much certain that wasn't the case.
 
Last edited:

toughasnails

Guest
SHOGO has decent robot sections, but the on foot sections are worse than Blood II by far, and that's a feat.
I might actually agree. Blood 2 at least had some more visually or thematically interesting levels compared to Shogo's on foot parts and the latter's weirdo RNG critical hits (combined with p much all enemies being hitscan) made those parts even worse.
With mech sections you had huge amounts of HP so critical hits weren't event that noticeable whereas in the on foot parts you could go from I think 70-80 HP to dead in one hit. And the urban mech levels looked legitimately good unlike the on foot ones.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom