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ASA - Remastered Edition

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It’s unbelievable to see ASA in 2nd position on the AG store.
I really want to thank all of you who purchased the game, and I hope you like it. If you have any ideas of feedback that could help me improve my future games (Catyph first), please let me know - and forgive me if I don’t reply, but I receive and enjoy all the messages.

SoccerDude, many thanks for your ideas and advice!

     
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Simon_ASA - 03 April 2015 05:15 AM

If you have any ideas of feedback that could help me improve my future games (Catyph first), please let me know - and forgive me if I don’t reply, but I receive and enjoy all the messages.

It’s not much but here’s my 2 cents: Try not to get into the habit of releasing remasters shortly after a new game. People don’t like buying games twice and if it happens too often they will wonder whether it’s worth buying Catyph (or another title) rather than waiting for a better version.

Good luck with your future games, ASA was a fine start! Smile

     

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Oscar, he’s giving the remaster for free to people who bought the original.

     
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Oscar - 04 April 2015 01:20 AM
Simon_ASA - 03 April 2015 05:15 AM

If you have any ideas of feedback that could help me improve my future games (Catyph first), please let me know - and forgive me if I don’t reply, but I receive and enjoy all the messages.

It’s not much but here’s my 2 cents: Try not to get into the habit of releasing remasters shortly after a new game. People don’t like buying games twice and if it happens too often they will wonder whether it’s worth buying Catyph (or another title) rather than waiting for a better version.

Good luck with your future games, ASA was a fine start! Smile

I understand where you are coming from Oscar, but in Simon’s defense the original was made with AdventureMaker. Ran into problems with it, people not able to play it due to compatibility and such. He found a new game engine to work with while creating Catyph (without said issues) and decided to remaster ASA (a project in itself) so people that were unable to play it before could!

     

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Antrax - 04 April 2015 02:05 AM

Oscar, he’s giving the remaster for free to people who bought the original.

That’s good, but some of us don’t like to do much replaying. I rarely re-play a game unless it’s been a very long time (>10 years), even if it’s a remaster.

If ASA was an exception, that’s fine. But it seems to becoming more common (JULIA was remastered twice soon after release if I’m not mistaken.)

 

 

     
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Oscar, honestly you’re absolutely right about Remastered Editions in general, I agree with you, and I’ll immediately confirm that I don’t plan to do a remastered edition of Catyph (I can’t say it will never happen, but I expect Catyph to be good enough in its original version).

A little longer explanation:

The problem of ASA is that the original edition contained in my opinion too many issues that couldn’t be fixed, and the game could not be released as is on a popular platform such as Steam. When the game was greenlit in 2014 (which was totally unexpected), I could have simply re-released the same original game immediately, but I knew it would be perilious: I had already spent a very lot of time doing technical assistance for a lot of people who had purchased the Original Edition, and I was afraid that it would become too much to manage on my own with the Steam release later (it’s very difficult for me to reply to every message or email and work on other projects at the same time). So I decided to create the Remastered Edition in order to avoid technical issues, and I also decided to improve the game for the occasion (twist of fate, there are also several technical issues in ASA Remastered…)

I don’t ask anyone to buy the game twice, even if I really (really!) appreciate the support of people who do.
I announced on several sites (including these forums) that I can offer the Remastered Edition to anyone who purchased the Original Edition before Novembre 2014 and who asks it. Things have evolved a little with The Icehouse getting involved, but the offer is still running, and a lot of people have already asked for - and received - their free copy of ASA Remastered. 

I don’t know if my explanations are clear and easy to understand, but I hope you get the main idea. A lot of games are now Remastered, sometimes very quickly after their original release, but ASA Remastered was an exception in my case.

     
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Thanks for explaining that Simon, it is a complicated situation and I’m sure you know what you’re doing. Smile

One more thing I would like to offer because I’d really like to see this series succeed: the navigation in ASA could be improved as it was very confusing. It was often hard to know where you were taken after moving somewhere, and I was disoriented many times.

I find 1st person games most pleasing to play when navigation is simple. Allow the player to turn in the four cardinal directions, and have a landmark in sight so you know where you are after moving forward. Middle of the screen always takes you forward, left and right rotates it. Also don’t jump too far ahead in each node as that can be confusing. Let us see the doorway and what is in the room before entering it, instead of transitioning from a doorway to a room. If you can move or turn on some screens and not on others, it becomes frustrating and disorienting. You want the player to be able to get the best feel for the location that they can. Look at RHEM for a modern game that does this perfectly.

     
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Yes! I totally agree about the gameplay.
I think it will be much better in Catyph, because you will see exactly where you are moving (with the video transitions). I’ll try to release a demo in a month or two.

     

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Oscar - 11 April 2015 05:31 AM

I find 1st person games most pleasing to play when navigation is simple. Allow the player to turn in the four cardinal directions, and have a landmark in sight so you know where you are after moving forward. Middle of the screen always takes you forward, left and right rotates it. Also don’t jump too far ahead in each node as that can be confusing. Let us see the doorway and what is in the room before entering it, instead of transitioning from a doorway to a room. If you can move or turn on some screens and not on others, it becomes frustrating and disorienting. You want the player to be able to get the best feel for the location that they can. Look at RHEM for a modern game that does this perfectly.

I completely agree with Oscar’s suggestions.
Careful design of the view of what the gamer sees before they click to move in that direction will help more than anything else.
Don’t depend entirely on transitions to make everything clear, because people who get simulation sickness may have to look away from the screen during transitions to avoid nausea.

Still waiting on the DVD version since I don’t have time to play right now anyway.
But I’m looking forward to it, and I appreciate you making a game like this.

     
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Careful design of the view of what the gamer sees before they click to move in that direction will help more than anything else. Don’t depend entirely on transitions to make everything clear

Agreed! The views in Catyph will be much better chosen. In my opinion, they will just be “logical”, while in ASA I tried to create a strange feeling with different camera effects (sometimes far from the ground, sometimes with strange angles, field of view, etc).
In Catyph, cameras will be simplified.

people who get simulation sickness may have to look away from the screen during transitions to avoid nausea.

It should be OK in Catyph. I have nausea when I play FPS games, but I don’t have any problem looking at Catyph. The reason is that the transitions are prerendered (not realtime 3d) and appear just like a movie. On top of that, they are very short (usually 2 - 3 seconds) and will stop moving when you reach the next scene.

Still waiting on the DVD version

Thanks for waiting, and I am very sorry that it takes so long… Frown
I have received my own copy, and the result is nice (I wanted to check the cover and printings).
Unfortunately, we discovered an important bug with the savegame system in specific parts of the game, and as long as it is not fixed, we prefer to delay the DVD release. We are working on it with the Visionaire Studio team. Let’s hope we find a way to fix it soon! I’ll let you know.

     
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If some of you are still interested in the DVD version, I’m happy to say that it’s finally released!
More details here:
http://shop.theicehouse.fr/games-dvd—-asa-remastered-edition.html

I’m really sorry that it took sooooo long. That was not expected at all.
The last major updates of the games were done around the 15th of this month, and we wanted to make sure that the DVD is working well on all systems. The disc might be late, but should allow you to play ASA Remastered in the best conditions.

If you decide to purchase it, I hope you’ll enjoy both the physical retail and its content. The price is set to $17 (+ add shipping costs) which globally covers the price of the game (14.99 on Steam) + the costs of self-publishing. Anyway $17 will probably be the standard price for all discs releases on The Icehouse shop in the future.

     

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I just ordered it! Thanks for obliging us with a physical copy.

     
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Thanks a lot for ordering it! Let us know what you think of the packaging and if it should be improved in the future. There aren’t a lot of options of customization on Trepstar, but they’re the only service we found to create DVDs on demand and ship them worldwide.
The final product is not as great as what you can find on theindiebox.com for example but we hope you’ll be happy. The disc itself is nicely printed and good looking, like on the photos (I just realise that the photo is blurry…).
We’re still hesitating between giving a standard DVD release, or replace it with a custom USB key (like on theindiebox), but we think that most people are still familiar with games on DVDs, specifically with adventure games and Myst-like games.
Well I have the 2 DVDs of ASA and ASA Remastered in my shelf and I’m quite happy, and can’t wait to add Catyph next to them Smile

     
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Anyone ever wondered what it would look like to play ASA in full 3d?
You could be interested in this short technical demo made for #RemakeJam:
https://the-icehouse.itch.io/asa-rj

Let me know what you think, and if you’d be curious to discover more Black Cube games with that kind of engine and gameplay. Thanks!

     
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Simon_ASA - 26 June 2017 10:28 AM

Anyone ever wondered what it would look like to play ASA in full 3d?
You could be interested in this short technical demo made for #RemakeJam:
https://the-icehouse.itch.io/asa-rj

Let me know what you think, and if you’d be curious to discover more Black Cube games with that kind of engine and gameplay. Thanks!


Wow I’m impressed, you made that in 3 days!

 

     

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