Possession (formerly Possession 2) - Release Date: July 18th!

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Rickton
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Re: Possession 2 - Latest preview release November 6, 2016

Post by Rickton »

Crossposted from weirdfellows.com

These past few weeks have actually been very productive, last week especially. In fact, this past Sunday I actually worked pretty much a full 8-hour workday, which I don't even know if I've ever done before on a personal project. Definitely not since I've been keeping track.

I've completed animated and non-blurry images for the majority of the creatures who already had images, helped in large part due to switching over to Pyxel Edit, which is a program made for animated pixel art. It's helped with that workflow tremendously over the last program I was using, Pixelmator, which is also a great program but more of a photoshop-lite than a pixel art and animation tool.

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It's a really nice program. It's still in beta, but it works great. I swear I'm not being paid by them, but if you're interested in making sprites, I'd recommend checking it out.

One big thing I was putting off for a long time was working on the final level and the final boss fight. No spoilers here, but the final boss requires special AI code unique from all other creatures. It seems to be a rule that whatever you put off because you think it's going to be really hard and time-consuming, ends up not being that big a deal once you actually get down to it (the downside is things you think are going to be quick and easy sometimes end up being hard and time consuming). Writing the boss's AI was actually pretty simple and only took about an hour. Of course, it might need to be changed due to testing, but we'll see.

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What happened here?!

So the game is *this close* to being actually winnable. Which I'm sure would be a huge psychological boost for me because it'd make it feel that much closer to being done. On that note, I've been doing a lot of interface "juiciness" work, as well, and everything I do on that front feels great too, because it makes the game seem more and more finished. I'm sure someone else has said this before years ago, but UI work seems like exercise or meditation: it kind of sucks while you're doing it, but really does make things feel better in general.

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You can highlight and target creatures on the sidebar now.

Now, there's still quite a bit of work to do, a lot of the levels need polishing (some more than others; the tavern for example is probably going to stay pretty much as it's been). But these days every step seems like it puts the game closer to being finished, unlike before where sometimes adding things seemed like it was just adding more work to do.
Possession - Escape from the Nether Regions, my roguelike made in LÖVE for the 2013 7-Day Roguelike Challenge
And its sequel, simply called Possession , which is available on itch.io or Steam, and whose engine I've open-sourced!
Rickton
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Re: Possession 2 - Latest preview release November 6, 2016

Post by Rickton »

Crossposted from weirdfellows.com

A while back, someone cautioned me about naming the game Possession 2, since the first game was just a quick project I made for the 7-day roguelike challenge that I never really spread around after the challenge, and almost nobody has played it or heard of it.

As we get closer to a point where releasing this game actually looks like a thing that might happen, I've been thinking about it, and I kind of agree. This game's going to have enough against it with the programmer art graphics and my total inexperience with marketing, I don't want anyone who might be interested passing it up because they'd never heard of the first one, or because it seems like a shovelware sequel to some crappy shovelware game.

The name of the original game was Possession: Escape from the Nether Regions, which I could potentially use for this one since the premise is the same, but they're different enough I'd like the original to stand as its own thing. I'm considering Possessor: Escape from the Nether Regions, but that might be too close as well.

I'd like to keep something along the lines of "Escape/Return from the Nether Regions" in there, because

1) Escaping from the Nether Regions is literally what you're doing

2) I think a tagline is more interesting than just a single-word name

3) It's weird, so hopefully it'll grab attention for at least a second or two

4) It shows that the game's tone is not 100% serious

But I could be misguided on that, too, because maybe that would turn people away, maybe they'd think it's nothing but sex jokes or something.

Anyway, I'm probably overthinking this, but I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts. Hell, if you have some other name suggestion unrelated to anything, I'm open to hear that too. Any and all thoughts welcome!

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Possession - Escape from the Nether Regions, my roguelike made in LÖVE for the 2013 7-Day Roguelike Challenge
And its sequel, simply called Possession , which is available on itch.io or Steam, and whose engine I've open-sourced!
Rickton
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Re: Possession (formerly Possession 2) - Steam page up!

Post by Rickton »

A couple of announcements.
First of all, I've finally decided to just call the new game Possession, for reasons detailed in my earlier post.

Second, and more exciting, the Steam page for Possession is live! If you're a Steam user and you're interested, go ahead and wishlist or follow it to be notified when it comes out!
On the "when it comes out" note, on the page I've put down a tentative November release date. I'd like to actually get it out in October, but I'm also getting married at the beginning of October so I'd basically have to to have the game done in September to release in October as soon as I get back from my honeymoon, and I'm not sure that'll happen. Things are coming along, but I have no idea how long testing will take.

Although I haven't been posting here much, I am posting about Possession more regularly on twitter and the Weirdfellows Facebook page, so give those a follow for more regular, shorter progress notes.
Possession - Escape from the Nether Regions, my roguelike made in LÖVE for the 2013 7-Day Roguelike Challenge
And its sequel, simply called Possession , which is available on itch.io or Steam, and whose engine I've open-sourced!
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raidho36
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Re: Possession (formerly Possession 2) - Steam page up!

Post by raidho36 »

That looks pretty cool! How did you got it on Steam though?
JoshGrams
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Re: Possession (formerly Possession 2) - Steam page up!

Post by JoshGrams »

They've phased out greenlight and are using Steam Direct now. Basically you just pay a deposit for each game you publish instead of going through the voting thing.

So you fill out the paperwork with payment/tax info. Then for each game you want to publish, at least 30 days before launch, you pay a US $100 fee (which you get back when/if your game has $1000-ish in adjusted gross revenue from sales and in-app purchases). And you're supposed to have a "Coming Soon" page up for 2 weeks before you can launch?
Rickton
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Re: Possession (formerly Possession 2) - Steam page up!

Post by Rickton »

Well, I did actually go through Greenlight, but yeah, getting on Steam's the easy part now.
Although if you mean "how did you interface it with Steam achievements/etc," I haven't actually yet, but I know there are a couple of other LÖVE games on Steam, I believe they used FFI to do it but I haven't really looked into it yet. Worst case scenario, Steam does actually let you publish games that don't use Steam features.
Possession - Escape from the Nether Regions, my roguelike made in LÖVE for the 2013 7-Day Roguelike Challenge
And its sequel, simply called Possession , which is available on itch.io or Steam, and whose engine I've open-sourced!
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Davidobot
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Re: Possession (formerly Possession 2) - Steam page up!

Post by Davidobot »

Rickton wrote: Fri Jul 14, 2017 10:26 pm I haven't actually yet, but I know there are a couple of other LÖVE games on Steam, I believe they used FFI to do it but I haven't really looked into it yet. Worst case scenario, Steam does actually let you publish games that don't use Steam features.
You could totally contact the devs behind Move or Die or Luminosity - the former used FFI to integrate, the later used a custom-built version of LOVE.
PM me on here or elsewhere if you'd like to discuss porting your game to Nintendo Switch via mazette!
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Rickton
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Re: Possession (formerly Possession 2) - Steam page up!

Post by Rickton »

Davidobot wrote: Sun Jul 16, 2017 5:18 am
Rickton wrote: Fri Jul 14, 2017 10:26 pm I haven't actually yet, but I know there are a couple of other LÖVE games on Steam, I believe they used FFI to do it but I haven't really looked into it yet. Worst case scenario, Steam does actually let you publish games that don't use Steam features.
You could totally contact the devs behind Move or Die or Luminosity - the former used FFI to integrate, the later used a custom-built version of LOVE.
Yeah, I plan on looking into how Move or Die did it. I don't know C++ so a custom-built version would be more work than I'd really like to do (not to mention maintaining it with new updated LÖVE versions).
Possession - Escape from the Nether Regions, my roguelike made in LÖVE for the 2013 7-Day Roguelike Challenge
And its sequel, simply called Possession , which is available on itch.io or Steam, and whose engine I've open-sourced!
ceana
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Re: Possession (formerly Possession 2) - Steam page up!

Post by ceana »

Oh my God I only want to say just Oh my God !
because this type is my fav :nyu:
Rickton
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Re: Possession (formerly Possession 2) - Steam page up!

Post by Rickton »

So a few weeks ago we hit a big milestone. After nearly four years in development, Possession is finally winnable! The final level and final boss have some special mechanics going on, but now they're implemented (at least as a rough first pass, I'm sure when testing comes in there's going to be a lot of tweaking).

I don't want to spoil that, though, so instead he's a screenshot of the stats and achievements screen, which is something else that's new since last time:

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Since my last post I have actually managed to get a lot done, but the last month or so have not been very productive, because I got married. Turns out that helping plan a wedding is a lot of work (go figure, right), so development had to fall by the wayside.

I'm still hoping to have the game done by the end of the year, but unfortunately the last few months of the year are generally near-constant game sales on Steam (that's not a confirmation they *will* be, because I don't know and even if I did I wouldn't be allowed to say, but that's the way things usually go). I really don't think launching when last year's AAA games are on sale for $10 is a good idea, so no matter what happens release won't be until next year.

I am hoping to have closed beta testing started this year, though, so keep an eye out for that, although that might also be a bit too optimistic given family holiday stuff that's going to be happening as well.

Remember, Possession is now on Steam, so be sure to check it out and wishlist it!
Possession - Escape from the Nether Regions, my roguelike made in LÖVE for the 2013 7-Day Roguelike Challenge
And its sequel, simply called Possession , which is available on itch.io or Steam, and whose engine I've open-sourced!
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