2025.03.13 - Small fix to the RSS-Feed

Just a small fix. The RSS-Feed of the Dev-Logs were not formatted correctly. Now the RSS-Feed should work well again.

2025.03.10 - Updated to Godot 4.4 and Jolt 15.0, cleaned Project structure, planed story and NPC's and finished all main City models

The last 2 to 3 weeks I had not as much time as I would have liked too (I was sick lol), but in the free hours I had I still managed to finish quite a few things. I finished all Models that are needed to now fully build the City level aka. Level 2 and replace all placeholders. The interiors will be build in engine with "Interiors Building blocks". They are also already planed out and only need to be placed. The Update to the new Godot and Jolt version was done today and was relatively easy. As usual a few things broke. One overside mine that never was a problem because of a Godot bug now manifested and needed to be fixed. That was easy, just a few Collider issues. Then a few Settings changes and ports to new implementations in Godot and that was it with code changes. A few settings in Jolt needed to be changed but after that it ran fine too. The new improvements showed instantly with the way shades are now faster to execute and THANK GOD Shader compilation is no longer a issue. Just a one time thing and done. Most of the work were the models at the end and I'm very happy they finally are done. A few special Models like Main Story NPC's or a few special assets like Interior parts of special Buildings will be created as needed. They don't take up much time and its easier to make them when everything around them is already prepared. I want to make sure that my ideas around them are fully planed out before creating them to avoid doing it multiple times and make them fit there environment. And also: It's a nice change of pace to create special assets from time to time. The Story and the places are around 90% done planing out. Currently I will need at least 5 new songs for Level 2, 1 for Level 1 and a lot of Dialog Text I'm already very eager to write. Creating dialog for the story is a lot of work but SO FUN. Making music is not my strength sadly xD but I will try my best. I would actually like to look into working with a musician that actually knows how to make good music but that would blow the roof of the budget for the game. This is a passion project after all and I already invested not a minuscule amount of money into it.

2025.03.01 - Level 2 Concept executed and "Blocking Out" done

The concept for level 2 is now fully laid out and the full level has been "Blocked out". For those who do not know what that means: The collision, placement of models and paths are done/reserved and only need to be replaced with the “final” actual model and not just a colored block. Now I need to finish the building models and integrate the NPC's and interiors of the open buildings. Maybe flesh out the underground area some more too. From concept to actually playable is so slow to develop for, but as soon as the Level Environment is inside the Level-Scene everything goes really fast (and then slow again because of the final 90% rule xD). I'm just happy the slow part is finally over and the fun part of actual lore integration can start. Currently everything is going as planed and is inside the predicted time frame.

2025.02.16 - Leaving Pre-Alpha, entering Alpha. Level-Load/Menus/Save/Load/File-Pipline done and way to many fixes.

FINALLY! I am happy to announce that RE//POSSESSED has left the Pre-Alpha stage! All features are implemented and "working". Now in the Alpha stage the playtesting will wramp up a lot and the primary focus lays now on lore, Level designing/building and getting the assets looking as intended (Like menus for example.). Besides that Bugs will be fixed that come up while level building or ticketed by the playtesters. I'm really happy to have come this far! The last goal in development was Save/Load and Level-Load and then it all escalated to the full completion of the menu system, the complete pipeline for loading levels and saves and crushing all bugs in the way of the Alpha stage. Scope what is that (Classic immersive sim dev mindset xD)? This resulted in the leaving of the Pre-Alpha stage. All levels currently shipped with the internal playtest-build can be completed and played as currently intended (they a still buggy probably as you can imagine for a alpha, duh.). A other great unrelated event is the EA release of Peripeteia! We all know what this means: A few days of maximum degeneracy and playing Peripeteia any free minute someone has! My greatest congratulations to the developers!

2025.02.12 - Save/Load System completely done and Level transition code also finished implementing

Finally, FINALLY it is done. Including the UI, integration with the UI and UX, binding's and so on. The level switch code is also done and now only needs the signals connected and testing and maybe a level done screen or something so it is not just press here and next level. The Menu design is not final and only a framework so I can easily improve it with changing numbers later. Now it is Level 2 time and bug fixing for a few thing that came up with testing.

2025.02.03 - Save/Load System nearly done

Nearly everything is working. I got it to behave like I wanted. It literately can be compared to a Save-State in Emulation Software or in Virtual Machines in regard how detailed the amount of information is that gets saved. TL;DR: EVERYTHING. How hard was it? HARD. Like really really HARD. I used the Binary serialization API and the the ResourceSaver and still had to incl. multiple custom ways to save data between running Sessions. Some did Godot just not touch or were reset regardless. Worst were at runtime created Objects and Animation States. Now I only have to fix a few things in the Player and NPC's code that are not set correctly from the start after loading a Save, then the Save/Load Framework is completed. After that the Level-Transition must be tested and integrated into the Save/Load framework too. The code is already done it only must be integrated incl. a Level Exit and Entry Node. That will be very easy. Just must be done cleanly so it must not be touched again. Building the Save-framework was very annoying and harder then it should be in a game engine but it is nearly done and I can hopefully leaf it alone after this. It is very generic and should work with all nodes build in the future and should only need a few flags in the Scene to be working immediately.

On thing I want to add: I did don't use the code linked below but it was a big help in seeing if different approaches would work in how to access Variables and how the officially shared way Godot whats you to save can be used and can definitely help many other developers later too:

2025.01.24 - It's Save/Load and Level transition time

I have finally fixed and/or finished all systems and Backlog things in the way to be able to start testing/implementing the Save/Load system's. I'm really hoping this is gone be not to annoying or I'm in for a ride… . We will see. As soon as I have it working I will definitely post about it. This is not gonna be a easy checkpoint system as many games have. This will fully save the state of a level like in other immersive sim games like Deus Ex, Peripeteia, Prey (2017), also sometimes referred to as “Typhon”, and so on. I really love these save system that let the player do what ever they want and try It as often as they want without wasting time, meaning very quick load times are important. I will try to keep file size, load and save times as low as possible and also, if possible, will also incorporate multithreading to keep the process from hanging.

2025.01.20 - Fixed all backlog bugs and added needed features

Fixed all bugs in the backlog that were still in the way of testing/implementing Save/Load. Added one gameplay-feature from the backlog. Now only one other feature needs to be completed to be able to test/implement Save/Load fully into the framework. With Save/Load also comes the Level-Switch and Data-Transfer code. Meaning the full Save/Load implementation will probably take up some time (or maybe the concept implementation works from the start and it is easier then expected... probably not XD). Culling system works perfect so far from testing. Also did some balancing fixes with the enemy's and NPC's in the finished level.

2025.01.18 - Extended culling system, added Multithreading and fixed bugs

The culling system from the last update had some issues. If you move an Area3D in Godot the Area3D Triggers “body_exited” and “body_entered” A LOT. It is either by design because areas are designed to be moved continuously like this or it is probably just a bug. The fix was to make a custom old detection and new detection method and compare. I also added a separate layer for better performance when detecting and added multithreading for good measure. The performance improvements are now more then I expected. Multithreading makes games run better on low end modern hardware but makes it harder for older low end hardware because of the increased CPU architectural needs. But to simulate may things at the same time and put culling on the top of that, there is now way around it. After that I fixed the last bugs in the current backlog. Only one feature and 3 Bugs are now missing to start testing the Save/Load system.

2025.01.15 - Performance BOOST and fixes

As planed I started fixing bugs, got a few out of the way and then found a bit of a performance issue with the size of a few levels and the amount of enemy's. They decide many things on the fly and that takes a good amount of performance, especially when the player or items are involved. The build-in culling and LOD systems of Godot were not enough. I also use many (often dynamic) light source that also needs a good amount of performance. I plan to offer a pre-backed lights option at some point that will help weaker hardware. Godot makes it hard to get Level Nodes without iterating into other scenes by accident. This made it a little bit of a bigger task to figure out a way to get around that and disable nodes dynamically. I build a system that can disable nodes or parts of them I deem performance intensive and enable them if the player comes into the area. It is fully dynamic, not trigger or area bound but player bound and should work great with the large levels. Below is an example with the setting turned up to max to make it better visible.

A video of it with far better quality can be found here:
  https://bsky.app/profile/catwithcode.bsky.social/post/3lfshuhnrd22i

2025.01.12 - More cleanup and finishing Level structure

Fixing a few Bugs in the back log and added last Level details, the last few enemy's got placed, moved or equipped and the last few structure's in the ending area of the first level got placed. Now I have one fully finished and implemented/build level from beginning to end. Next are a few bugs with player node to fix and then the save/load system debugging/implementing/fixing can begin. After that, level 2 is on the list to be completed, tested and cleaned up.

2025.01.08 - Fixing Bugs and cleaning up

After my well deserved two weeks of Christmas vacation it's time to get back to gamedev. As expected, the game-testing and gameplay testing rounds showed a few bugs until right before release (and even after when just playing). That was what has been mostly been fixed today. I added more Crossair features and cleanups, tightened up the level design here and there and fixed the last few bugs on the list from the trailer production.

2024.12.31 - Rename from ProjectCWC to RE//POSSESSED

After some feedback from the lovely developers of Peripeteia, I decided to change the name and settled on one of my favorite from the possible candidates: RE//POSSESSED or REPOSSESSED. It fits with the theme and lore of the game world and has no direct connection to anything.

2024.12.24 - REPOSSESSED is now officially revealed!

I will from now on updated this log about everything involving the game, to some extend do some promotion and keep building the Levels and extend the story and world building. How frequent I will update this log or the promotional pages and account's depends on the current workload and time I have. I will continue working as much if not even more on the game as the last year and a half. And now the important part: Head over to the main page and have a look at the gameplay trailer.

2024.11.11 - Preparing to publicly announce REPOSSESSED

All the development until now were mostly private. Sometime I did mentioned in posts what is happening in the background on my blog. I also released a few teaser images in my media library. Now the game has everything what is needed to actually play the game. The last two or so months and most of the development from now on is nearly fully consumed by level design, NPC creation, world building, music creation, bug fixing and fleshing out the story.

2024.08.13 - Framework complete

Around that time I was done with the framework of the game. Many library's, systems and interactions needed to build the modules for the game are feature complete. Most of the modules usually needed for in-game interactions and gameplayevents were also nearly done. The custom Dialog system, custom audio system, and custom inventory system is finished and mainly needs the Assets now. Much of the current development time (the last (and next) 2 or 3 weeks) were focused on the audio Assets (meaning SFX, Music and ambiance. Thanks to a good friend for helping me getting all the sounds and ambiance track's) and world building / NPC' and there needs. Items and custom scripts that slot into the framework are build on the way. The framework should allows for fast development on that front thanks to all the exposed API's in the interaction's framework

2024.01.10 - Full commitment

At this point I already hat a very very basic play environment with many mechanics implemented. Thankfully my husband convinced me, while we were on a date, to commit fully to the the development of dream game project from now on. I tried myself on different versions of the game in the past already but stooped development after a few days at the most. The idea of REPOSSESSED was existing for a long time already an vent through many different types of games, from with a 2D platformer, going to a 3D 'jump and run', “text adventure” inside a IDE, and so many more. My love for Immersive sim grew a lot over the years and then one and one came to getter and now we have REPOSSESSED.

2023.10.07 - Started Model and Framework building

The game devolvement did not start at this point yet. I just toyed around with Godot and tried my hand on 3D model creation, music creation and texturing. Here a few models I was building to get familiar with the tools. Non of these models are in the game. I will not put the music from back then here. It did just not sound good. I also tested multiple joint types for arms, legs and body movement. The pre-final joint design can be seen in the last image. The final type I use is far simpler and works better.