Geisterhand on hiatus - new game project

After months of silence, we decided to return with a new game.
Yes, a new game... which means, Geisterhand is (at least for the time being) still on hiatus.
(probably even forever? but  who knows...)

First of all a short explanation for everyone who's curious as to why Geisterhand is on hiatus:

Simply said, adding the hentai-sprite animations made it necessary to change too many things on the already existing game, furthermore the translation process and the implementation of the text was too tiresome...
And yeah, while those are just a few reasons, I think that they are the most important ones.

Well, we haven't worked on the game for the past 6 months or so, so it's kinda difficult to pick it up.
(Cres improved her drawing skills as well, so there would be another big difference in the quality, which kinda... leaves a weird impression, at least if we continue the work, and the new stuff looks way better than the old stuff)


So, what about the new game?

Instead of presenting you a wall of text in this post,
I thought it would be better to do several smaller posts in the upcoming days.
So stay tuned!

One more thing though...

Possible new heroine:

Slow progress and stuff

Well, I guess calling it "slow progress" is really optimistic.
We had all our hands full with real life stuff, so we didn't do much on Geisterhand the past weeks.
(jobs, problems, other stuff that has priority)

Just in case people might wonder:
We are currently not working full time on this.
But we did in fact work full time on this, as long as the money raised from Paperheads allowed us to.

The reason I'm saying this is, so people hopefully understand why we did a lot of stuff a couple of months ago, and why progress is getting slower and slower lately.
So don't expect any announcement of a release date, as this game will most likely take a couple months (at least) until it's done.

We also planned to add some stuff, so the developement time is being longer than originally planned.



Planned additions for the future:

First of all, we decided to include hentai sprite animations for every enemy.
But keep in mind, that since I don't like this to interfere with the gameplay itself, the animations ONLY happen when Sheylas HP drop to zero.
(so when she is K.O)
Instead of respawning automatically, you will have to press a button to do so.
So you can enjoy the animation as long as you like.
Also, we need to do voice recording for this, I guess.

The CG scenes only come up, if you lose all your continues.
(so this stays the way it is)
Also there will be a "skip CG scene?" question at the beginning of a CG scene.

Regarding the controls, there will be an option that lets you switch controls between 2 preset settings.
Controls A - will be the regular controls as they are now
Controls B - will be modified controls, based on the feedback I got from several people

Since I can't really cut down on the number of buttons for the skills etc. (since it just feels awkward, in my opinion, but I understand that everyone sees this differently) it's just a different button layout.
But no changes in the number of buttons or gameplay.

I mean... I don't want the player to hold down a button to charge an attack up.
(since holding down too many buttons is bad, and might cause trouble on certain keyboards)
And I also don't like the idea of letting the charged shots charge automatically, since they use up SP (energy) on use, thus lowering the SP with every shot, making the player unable to use the SP for the bullet time/time alter mode.


Well, that's everything for now.



I updated the links on the right side once again.
If you haven't done so already, you probably should check out the hentai games from cheshireCat and Kajio.
They both released their games some time ago.

cheshireCat:
http://dreamingofcheshirecat.blogspot.ca/?zx=e9007938276229f2

Kajio:
http://hkajio.blogspot.ca/?zx=a6fcb807aa0b86a

Geisterhand trial version

Since everything seems to be fine, I think it's safe to release the demo version.

You can download it here:
[Geisterhand Trial]


Aside from several missing sound effects (mainly for the boss),
everything is implemented into the game.
The CG for the boss isn't included, but of course it will be included in the full version.
(it's just that we decided that having 4 out of 13 CG scenes in the trial version, should be enough)

If you're not able to read japanese, you can switch the language setting in the main menu.


Known issues:
- there are some typos in the CG scenes
- on "very easy" there is a bug with the respawn function, but it's nothing critical
(respawn does work, but sometimes you respawn right on the spot)


Taken out of the readMe file:
(there is also a japanese readMe file)

===[Controls:]===

* Arrow keys for movement.
* When you're caught by an enemy or a spider net, randomly hit ANY keys to free yourself.
* Press [Arrow Down] + [Space] to fall through certain platforms.

* Perform wall jumps by pressing [Space] when you're clinging to a wall.
* Press [Arrow Up] + [D] to shoot upwards.
* Press [Arrow Up] + [W] to shoot charged special shots upwards.

[Space]    - jump
[A]    - bullet time/time alter/slow time
[D]    - shoot
[W]    - charged special shot (only available after beating one of the bosses in the full-version)
[S]    - change ammo type


Btw. clinging to a wall in order to enable wall-jumps does NOT work if you're falling too fast.
This means, if Sheyla starts to drop (losing height) after jumping, or if you fall down into a pit etc.
This is also the case when trying to wall-jump over too long distances.
It's no bug, it's fully intentional the way it is.
(2 out of 10 testplayers wondered about this, so I thought I should mention it)

Simply said: "if you fall too much, you can't cling to a wall."
And yup, this means a broken wall-jump-chain makes you fall all the way down.

Have fun playing the game, and please report bugs and other issues!


P.S:
Just in case someone is bringing the topic up again:
No, the DL link is not broken, I uploaded the trial version on Mega, that's all.
I've read the ToS of several other hosters, but everyone seems to prohibit adult stuff... so yeah...
Mega is the only choice right now.

I'm okay with people uploading the demo version on other hosters, as long as they link to this wegblog.
But I'm not doing it myself, since I don't want to deal with deleted files, blocked accounts etc.
(well, that would be the consequence for uploading adult stuff I guess... at least that's what happened on mediafire last time I did it)

Music implemented - final testing of the demo

Good news, everyone!

We've got all the important pieces of music for the demo version.
So the critical release condition has been fulfilled!
I'm just doing some final fixes, small adjustments, as well as... uh... yeah... "blocking" some of the content that's not supposed to be in the demo version.

I also implemented some sound effects, but lots of sound effects are still missing.

After I'm done with these things, I'll hand the demo-version out for testing.
If no critical bugs get reported within 48 hours after handing it out, I'll release the demo-version on this blog.

So... yeah... I'll finish work on the demo-version today or tomorrow.
That means it'll get released on this blog in about 3-4 days, I guess?
(if no critical bugs get reported... otherwise it might take a couple days longer, but I believe this won't happen)


P.S:
Geisterhand still needs only ~250 MB Ram on my notebook.
The game also starts up pretty fast.
So yes, I'm convinced the final version will run on nearly any computer ^^

I also want to thank everyone who helped correcting the tags on the Paperheads gallery.
(the stuff I mentioned in the last post)
Thank you very very much!

Good news & funny facts

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Geisterhands heroine: Sheyla

Today I wanted to tell you guys (and girls) something about Sheyla,
the main heroine of "Geisterhand".

Geisterhand is german and means "ghost hand" in english.
And yup, it's the name of our second game.


Unlike Paperheads which was a spin-off, Geisterhand is the real thing.
Uhm... maybe I should explain this a bit more in detail.
While Paperheads featured some of the characters you might see in future games of us,
they were almost all out-of-character in Paperheads.

For example:
Verdani wouldn't dress herself like she did in Paperheads.
(originally she doesn't even like makeup)
Also Neamera would never even want to be the boss of such an organization.
While Chao wouldn't work together with Neamera,
and Ledun is "originally" some guy that transforms into a werewolf.
Furthermore the world of Paperheads has nothing to do with the "original story",
or the world the original story takes place in.
(in Paperheads all the characters had been depicted as "normal" humans,
but in the original story all of them are not regular human beings)

That in mind, lets get to the core.

Geisterhand

Geisterhand plays in a world similar to ours,
were demons and monsters appear occasionally.
The story takes place in a modern world,
similar to our world as it is right now.

The main character 'Sheyla', isn't an everyday human being.
Aside from firing regular bullets,
she's also able to focus soul-power into her bullets.
This way she's able to fire strong shots with special properties.
(yes, you can view this as "magic", though I refer to it as "soul-power" (SP),
basically I guess it's the same as MP, Mana, whatever you want to call it)
After defeating the bosses she absorbs their powers,
in order to be able to use a new type of charged shot.

Sheyla is really swift and agile,
in fact she's one of the fastest beings on earth.
She accomplishes this by using soul-power to boost her movement (and the speed of her bullets), though she can only keep this up for short periodes of time.
If she uses this ability, her senses are also sharpened to keep up with her movement speed.
The bullet time/time alter mode shows this by reducing the speed of everything except Sheyla and her bullets by 50%.
This means that she's able to move twice as fast as normally possible.
(as well as shooting twice as often,
in the same period of time that the enemies experience)


What's not directly shown in the game:
Sheyla is a trained and experienced assassin,
and she's mainly working as an agent for the government.
Taking on risky jobs is pretty normal for her,
as well as killing all sorts of opponents, including demons and monsters.
Though being send onto a monster infested island is a completely new experience for her.

Sheyla is a pretty sweet girl, naturally friendly and cheerful.
(though beware, some of this is only faked, since well... she's an assassin,
and being "underestimated" is always good)

She's really brave, though she's not that self-confident.
Wait what? Brave but not that self-confident?
How does that work out?

Well, view it like this:
She tends to be brave, but she knows her limits.
Especially because she's an assassin, she likes to pick her enemies off guard,
or surprise them with her swift movement.
If she somehow fails, she's tending to escape quickly.
She likes to pick fights with strong enemies,
but she's not dumb enough to keep on fighting when she's at a clear disadvantage.
Hence she's kinda brave, but not too confident in her skills in a head-on engagement.
Well, since she's a woman she has a disadvantage in strength against most enemies anyway.
At any rate, she knows what she's doing,
and she's being successful the way she's doing things.

If you've got any questions about her, feel free to ask.

On a side note:
Sheyla is the very first character I ever created myself, this happened more than 8 years ago.
I've also used to draw her myself, but currently Crescentia is drawing her.

Small status report

The last 2 weeks we made no real progress,
since Crescentias notebook broke down and it had to be repaired.
Well, everything is fixed now.
Since we do backups of everything on a regular basis, nothing bad happened.
It's just that no graphics had been made during this period.

We also decided to not do any hentai animations for the bosses,
because the character sprites are way too small.
You can't even see anything specific on them...
so creating those sprites is just wasted energy I guess?
(well, maybe for some people it's still good despite being such small sprites, but it's hard to satisfy everyone without making compromises, and we rather invest our working time into something else)


Since we're short at least 2 weeks, we decided to cut down from 15 to 13 CG scenes.
(well, we want to get it done as soon as possible, while being as good as possible, and I doubt that those 2 scenes would make a big difference in game quality, but it allows us to finish the game in less time)

Well I'm a bit clueless about the CG scenes narrative as well.
So it's better if I only have to come up with scenes for 13 instead of 15 CG scenes.

I guess I should try to explain this a bit more detailed:
I don't know if my CG scene texts are good enough, and I find it especially difficult to write non-repetitive text, since well... it mostly happens the same.
The biggest difference is that on each CG a different enemy has sex with the heroine.
And while on some CG scenes she enjoys it, on others she doesn't.
It's not that it's the same text all the time, but you could say that there is a similar feel to it.
At least that's what one of the testplayers told me, and I think she's got a point.

Well... it's always:
Heroine loses --> gets captured --> gets fucked etc.
Since the monsters mostly can't talk, there isn't that much room for dialoge.
(it's mostly just Sheyla saying something or thinking)

The biggest thing I learned out of this is, that in future games,
I'll do the CG scenes more as part of the story, so I can avoid this repetitive feeling.
E.g. if the heroine has to rescue some girls from slave traders,
and she fails, she gets sold as a slave herself etc.
That way the CG scenes narrative, as well as dialoge during CG scenes, isn't repeating itself.
Because it's not just being fucked, it's also happening something else, at least in theory.

But of course this means, that doing one CG scene per enemy isn't quite working out.
(it's more of a "one CG scene per stage" then, well... this cancels out the need to lose all the time, so the player just has to lose once to get the CG and then he/she can concentrate on winning the stage)

It's just an idea right now, and I'll have to think more about it.
At any rate, this only matters for future games.
(the current game is fully planned out and it's on it's way to completion)



Good news is, that we found someone who is supporting us by doing music for the game.
I can't share that many details yet, but I'll give out some information as soon as possible.
So I guess it's not that long until the demo will be released.
(and yes, we suck at doing music ourselves... we completely wasted our time, but well... you never know unless you try)

Originally I wanted to write about the improvements I made to the game while Crescentia's notebook was being repaired.
But this post is already too long.

Well, I'll do that some other time.
Tomorrow, or maybe in the next couple days I'll write an article about the heroine.
And yup, I'll also post a nice artwork of her which is NOT in the game.
(well... it actually is... but in the game it doesn't have all the colors it originally had, so the version of the artwork I'll post here is better than the one in the game, because it has full color instead of being yellowish)