#portalfoxestd — Public Fediverse posts

I sell copies of #PortalFoxesTD from time to time, which is cool, but as far as I can tell, almost no one is actually playing the copies they buy. I don't think anyone besides me has ever seen the ending. The last 6 levels really push the mechanics and story. They're the best part of the game, and it makes me sad no one is playing them. #indieDev

#PortalFoxesTD is on a deep sale for the Steam Tower Defense Fest. It's a virtual reality tower defense game with 3D maze building and eccentric elemental foxes. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3485250/Portal_Foxes_TD/ #indiegame #videogames #steam #steamsale #towerdefense

Portal Foxes is on the #SteamWinterSale for only 4$ this week. It's a tabletop VR game where you defend portals with elemental foxes by building 3D mazes to control enemy paths. There's also a free demo available. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3485250/Portal_Foxes_TD/ #indiegame #towerdefense #portalfoxestd

Got text working using #SDL3 TTF. Pretty easy since it's the same as what I used for #PortalFoxesTD. Spent most of the time tracking down a bug. Turns out I wasn't alpha blending the alpha channel correctly, which only comes up if you blend into a texture and then blend that texture into another one. Anyway, I can layer translucent elements on top of each other on a translucent panel now. I see a lot of games do that actually. Translucency seems like an "easy" way to make a simple UI look a little slicker.

#PortalFoxesTD is still half off for one more day on the #steamautumnsale #VR #Towerdefense #voxel #fox https://store.steampowered.com/app/3485250/Portal_Foxes_TD/

Portal Foxes is on sale 50% off this week. It's a tabletop style VR strategy game where you defend portals with elemental foxes. It's tower defense, but there are no numbers or upgrades. It's all placement strategy, where you control the enemy path by building elaborate 3D mazes. #indiegame #steamautumnsale #portalfoxestd https://store.steampowered.com/app/3485250/Portal_Foxes_TD/

I don't really like puzzle games, and I probably wouldn't like Moss if it wasn't a gorgeous VR game with a cute mouse. Puzzle games revolve around deducing the creator's intended solution, and I really prefer systems based games that allow creative solutions. I'm always annoyed when someone describes #PortalFoxesTD as a puzzle game.

More #Vulkan progress. I got the particle system from Portal Foxes TD working. They're just translucent ellipsoids, but they're shaded as true 3D, so they look right in VR. Unlike in #PortalFoxesTD they're properly GPU instanced now and the quad poses are computed on the GPU as well, so they're very, very cheap. I can make a lot of cool effects with a few thousand of these.

I made a #devlog retrospective about what I think went wrong with the development and release of #PortalFoxesTD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-lLNU3EUzc

#gamedev #IndieGame

@foone #PortalFoxesTD uses the open GLB format for models, WAV for audio, and the levels and story are loaded from plaintext JSON files. Nothing is even compressed, and the whole game is still only like 30 MB. I wasn't trying to make it hackable. I just don't want to deal with that shit either.

One advantage of leaving up the large #PortalFoxesTD demo is that it gives me a good response to the "influencer" spam I've been getting since release. You want a free key to stream the game to your followers? Great, stream the demo, send me a link to that, and I'll pass a key along for you to continue. Haven't gotten any takers yet unsurprisingly. It's a pretty good deal for anyone with any intention of actually playing the game. Portal Foxes has specific technology to make it extra streamer friendly for a VR game, so it's not crazy to think someone might want to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndFRXlfC9J0

#VR #spam

If anyone played #PortalFoxesTD in the playtest rounds or played the demo and liked it, it would really help out if you could give a positive review in these first few days.

Before anyone asks: I wrote the #PortalFoxesTD story before #Trump invaded LA. That line about how the military should derive its authority from those it protects wasn't intended to be topical. I wasn't trying to make a specific political statement about immigrants with Aylin's story. Trump is just cartoonishly evil. Anyway, Portal Foxes comes out tomorrow.

#woke #IndieGame #VR #uspol

I'm not planning to change my behavior. If anyone wants a free review copy of #PortalFoxesTD, just show me your VR capable reviewing account (on Steam or YouTube or wherever), and I'll send a key to the listed contact info there, no strings attached, say whatever you want. People who just look at the game tell me it's bad, but everyone who plays it says it's good, so giving out free copies is the obvious marketing strategy.

I'm giving #Steam #CuratorConnect a try. Sent a bunch of keys for #PortalFoxesTD out to all the curators I could find that made any sense, and some that were kind of stretch. Personally, I think it's a shame that "Are there foxes?", the curator that reviews games based solely on whether they have foxes, doesn't have more followers. https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45624034-Are-There-Foxes/

Spent the day playing through the release candidate for #PortalFoxesTD from start to finish, and it's good to go. So good. I can't wait for people to get their hands on the full version. 4 days.

#IndieGame #vr #towerdefense

I pushed an update to the #PortalFoxesTD demo that adds this comic to the tutorial, and I also moved around some other messages to make the tutorial in level 3 easier to parse.

#PortalFoxesTD has an official release date! It's Monday. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3485250/view/503954252358483972

After I posted that message, I got playtest footage of someone who missed that it was even possible to pull blocks out of crates and just thought the game was really hard, and now I feel like a dick. I think I need to change something in the tutorial to make it VERY clear, that you're supposed to build mazes. You are not supposed to find perfect positions to place the foxes that happen to work without any blocks. #PortalFoxesTD is not a super challenging puzzle game. It's a building game.

Me watching players try to beat #PortalFoxesTD levels without placing any blocks.

I plan to leave the #PortalFoxesTD demo up indefinitely. There's a demo flag in the build, so it's easy to push demo updates whenever I update the base game. Using all game footage for marketing materials and having a demo longer than some #VR games likely hurts my sales, but I'm hoping it'll help my reviews. I know the graphics aren't great, and so does everyone else before they spend any money. If you're on the fence, play the demo. If you like the demo, then you'll like the game because the demo is just the first 20% of the game. Saves and achievements carry over. if only people who already like the game buy the game, then my reviews should be positive, right?

I haven't gotten much feedback on #PortalFoxesTD from #NextFest. What I have gotten boils down to "it's fun" and "the graphics are bad". Nothing actionable and nobody has mentioned any bugs or technical problems. I submitted a build to Steam for release review. I'll set a hard release date after I get through review, but it will be basically immediately. Final levels are looking good. I just want to do one more editing pass on the story script.

Right now the median playtime for the #PortalFoxesTD #NextFest demo is 1 minute, but the average playtime is 40 minutes. 🤔

I built the final level for #PortalFoxesTD this morning. It's not quite as epic as the castle, but it is completely different. I think that's more important. I want players figuring out new things about how the game works right up until the end. I still need to write the dialog and put a few playtesters through it, but I think I can release next week. There's a free copy for any #NextFest player who has beaten the demo and thinks they can beat the 25 level campaign and give feedback within a week.

#IndieDev #gamedev

I could release #PortalFoxesTD next week. If I don't get any feedback from #NextFest, I might do that. It could certainly use some polishing, but I don't want to keep working on something everyone has already decided to ignore. I need to do a little cleanup on the last two levels, but there's more than enough to be considered a complete game as is.

#gamedev

I'm not super optimistic about how #PortalFoxesTD will do in #NextFest, but there is one thing that gives me hope. Of the 22 demo players I got before the event, about half bounced in the first minute (probably due to not having #VR), but 3 of the remaining players played for over 2 hours, and it wasn't me, any of my friends, or anyone I've spoken to.

Supposedly there are only 32 #VR games in #NextFest, and only like 3 strategy games, so maybe #PortalFoxesTD will get some organic traffic from the event. https://www.roadtovr.com/32-new-vr-game-demos-coming-to-steam-next-fest/

I hired someone to do a small amount of marketing/market research for #PortalFoxesTD ahead of #NextFest. Really hoping they have more success at getting attention than I have.

I've started collecting #VR #influencer contact info for sending out early access #SteamKeys of #PortalFoxesTD, and I do not understand this ecosystem. I see a cool looking channel and it'll have a thousand subscribers, but a channel with a ton of horrible BS will have a million. I'm trying to get a good mix of big and small and cast a wide net, so if you know anyone who might be interested let me know. #boostsappreciated

It's not pretty, but if you disable IK and shadows, #PortalFoxesTD can run on a toaster now. #gamedev #graphicsdev