Welcome back to our Devlog!

A long time has passed since the last post, due to the spring vacation and a little game jam at our university. It was good to have a little break from the project but we are glad to be back and motivated to continue on our favourite cat game.

Let me bring you up to date with what happened here during the last 3 weeks:

The Level

The first thing that obviously went through a change was our level. I felt a bit like in one of those reality shows, where people come and renovate your place into something really nice. We are not quite there yet, but it is definetely developing into the right direction.

We now finally have a proper bathroom! I implemented the meshes from Bjorn and added some tiles to make it actually feel like a bathroom. The kitchen got some nice tiles as well, since I barely ever saw a kitchen in my life that had carpet in it! We also affed some decorative carpets in living room and working space to make it feel more cozy. To make the level pop more from the background, I changed it´s color to a dark violett. 

The Human

When looking at the comparison shots of the level, you might have noticed that not only the environment changed. The human character you see, is a different one as well! If you read our earlier devlogs you might be aware of the fact, that until recently we used a free character from the internet. But of course we wanted to have our own, self made character in the game. Say goodbye to Greg, and welcome Stijn! He is inspired by someone we hold dear, let´s see how well he keeps up with the mess!

Replacing the human character actually was some more work than I intially thought, since we had to download all animations all over again and create a whole new animation blueprint for it as well. It all worked out fine in the end though, so the new character is already fully playable.

The Interior

Besides static environment objects, I also implemented more pushables and destructables. They all work like objects you have seen in previous DevLogs, so I will not add a Gif for every single one. But here is a little list as an overview over what´s new:

         Pushables

• Pizza Karton
• Small Plant
• Big Plant
• Rubber Duck
• Soap Bar
• Shampoo Bottle
• Sponge
• Toothbrush

         Destructibles

• New Bottle
• Cup
• Plate
• Different Vases

Need a little Hint?

Objects that can be pushed or destroyed will now have a subtle hint effect, that appears every once in a while. 

The pee

Remember the pee button we introduced last week? So far the human was not able yet to clean up the pee, he had to wait until it disappears on it´s own. Now however, things got a bit swtiched up: The pee actually won´t disappear anymore on it´s own, and instead the human is forced to clean it up, if he doesn´t want his appartment to turn into a giant cat toilet.

Inverted

Cat owners might know the feeling: You are trying to work on your pc but your cat suddenly decides it wants attention. So it walk all over your keyboard to sabotage your work. Because we want to keep this game as realistic as possible, this behaviour is of course something that just can´t miss. So I implemented it! If the cat now walks over the keyboard it changes some settings on the human´s pc. The consequences? Inverted controls for the player who plays as the human.

( You of course can´t see the inverted controls in the gif but I promise it works.)

Plumber Simulation 2022

The last thing I added was an extension to one of the puzzles we already had. Remember how two cats could work together to make the toilet overflow? This still stays the same. But instead of just being able to clean it like that, the human now has to first collect a plunger to be able to unclog the toilet. 

(Written by Sarah)

It has been a while, coming back to cattitude feels like finally being back home from a long vacation, but there is no time to be lounging around! We have bugs to fix.

Bug friendly game

For some time before the break we had been bothered by bugs that ruined the flow of the game. One of those bugs for example was the restarting of the game from inside the game itself. Whenever we did, all mechanics, sound and textures would disappear from the cats. Being a programmerless team it took me quite a while to find the bugs and come up with a fix. But most of them have been found and fixed,... for now.

Mashing contest

The cat catching mechanic is something we wanted in the game since the beginning. The idea is that when a cat causes too much trouble the human can pick it up and render it useless until the cat manages to free themselves. How do they manage to free themselves, you ask? Good question, thank you for asking. By mashing the interact button, mash it hard and fast enough and you will earn your freedom once again. While Sarah took most of the mechanic logic upon herself, I tried to give clear player feedback by adding a Widget that would correspond with the input of the player.

Character selection

An important part of the game for us is the balance between the two different player types. As you know players can both be a cat and a human, but playing the same type over and over will get repetitive and will make it so that ultimately players lose interest. A character selection screen is thus of the utmost importance. For now it is very basic and not fully implemented in the game, but here is a sneak peek nonetheless. I hope to show you a fully functional version next week.

(Written by Glenn) 

The effects

As with the character and level, the effects also got an update with some extra additions to the arsenal.

There has been an addition of:

•  a hit effect that is used for whenever the cat hits an object.
• A notifying effect that shows when the cat gets stunned by the human.
• Some sort of glimmer to highlight objects that the human can pick up.
• A boost circle used for one of the pickups for the human.

And ofcourse reworks to the existing effects such as

• The waterspray
• the ground dust that plays when an object falls to the ground.

There have also been some changes to a titlescreen.

This is still a work in progress but it will steadily get there!

We look forward to keeping you up to date next week!