Readjusting

Welcome back to the Cattitude DevLog!

This week we need to start with very sad news: Our developer Pjotr left this group. As you might know, he was the only developer among us and his drop out forced us to face a very difficult decision: Either split up and discard Cattitude, or keep working without him. 

One thing was clear for all of us: We definitely don´t want to split up. And we believe in our game! Sooo, may I present to you, our new developers: Me (Sarah) and Glenn. Instead of coding in C++, like originally planned, we will create our game in blueprints now. Of course we will also still contribute to the art, but for now our job will be to make the game functional, while Bjorn is going to be responsible for most of the art. It´s a very unexpected situation for us, and we will need some time to get adjusted to it BUT like Rick Astley said, we will "Never gonna give you up."

In the beginning of this week we had a bunch of restructuring to do. We looked at Pjotrs tasks and recycled them to be used in blueprinting. We had discussions about what to keep in, and what to throw out, since our scope needs to adjust to the situation as well.

The Code

The first thing I did, was restructuring the code. I worked over how our Items are build up to guarantee a smooth workflow from here on. Some parts had to be redone, but luckily we were able to keep quite a bit of what we had so far.

I also adjusted some things regarding the gameplay, we experienced as flawed during our playtest session. This includes fixing the inverted controls in our newest level and making sure the spray mechanic is not spammable.

The Level

Our level is on an endless journey towards perfect design. Even tho it may never reach its destination it progresses further each week. We decided to iterate on each others work, so this week it was my turn to experiment with the level design Glenn created last week.

Fitting an isometric room perfectly into frame is really not as easy, and one of the hardest tasks to tackle was to make sure no elements are blocking each other when you look through the camera. I also took a closer look at the lighting. We had a very hard shadows before while some parts were clearly overlit. I tried to soften it up and give it a cleaner overall look. In the end I created our new Status Quo:

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In addition to the current level and the added meshes in the living room, We also have more objects to interact with at the ready.

Pushable objects such as different books, plants, candles, etc...

Next in line are some extra meshes that will have to be made to fill in the scene more and fixing some of the existing meshes their colission.

The destructable meshes and their shattered versions will also be made along with some improvements to the particles.

(Intermission by Bjorn)

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The Meow

In a game where you can play as cats, what is the one thing you want? Correct: A button that let´s you meow. It´s there now, and not gonna lie, it´s really cool. I can´t include it in this log, so I advice you to test it out yourself!

Puzzle Elements

You´ve already seen Pushables, Destructables and Pick up items so far. But there is another type of object that has been missing so far: The puzzle object! While most items can be interacted with by a single cat, puzzle items need you to cooperate. They will only fall, or break, if two cats work together, since they are either too heavy or to complex. This week I implemented two examples:

• The TV

The needs two cats to fall over. Graphically I made a video material that standardly plays on the tv and if it is broken it changes to static. In the following gif I included a second tv to show off the static effect on the broken tv.

• The Toilet

The toilet works after the same concept, but instead of falling it flows over with water.

Doors

Another important gameplay mechanic we hadn´t implemented yet were the doors. So I made it my mission to make them work. There are two rooms in the level with a door. The human can interact with the door to close, giving him the possibilty to lock in the cat. The cat can then interact with the door as well, but before it is able to leave the player has to pass a quick time event first. If the button sequence is given in correctly the door will open, if not, the player has to try again.

Outlining

Another little thing I added is an outline effect to the items as soon as they turn into their broken state. This is supposed to help the human see easier where he needs to pick up things.

Welcome to the Circus

Last but not least, I designed the logo for our team. One of our strongest characteristics is that we take everything with humor. So here I present the logo of "Clown Creations":

My dear teammember Glenn will now tell you what he has been up doing!

(Written by Sarah)

Sarah sure did a lot this week! and boy does she deliver. 

I spent this week refining a lot of elements that had been in the game for a while now and gave them some much needed attention with either a visual upgrade or by doing some bugfixing

Rechargers

Last week You could see how we improved the water spraying mechanic by tweaking the effect it had on both players. But we soon found that with the added "time-out" of the mechanic it was unclear to the player when it was available to them and when it wasn't. So how do we solve this? we already solved this problem once before when tackeling it in the context of the stamina. So we decided to adopt the same solution. when the human would spray the water bottle the meter would be depleted, then the meter would start recharging and after 5sec the player knew exactly when it was ready for them. 

After the water spray bottle recharger, it was time to give the original stamina charger a makeover. Before the meter would always be colored red when it was not at its full capacity. In this new and improved version, the charger will now transition smoothly from green to red.

Making the game winnable

Up until now, when you played our project, there was no way to win. So, to make you feel like you are playing an actual game I added some winning screens, one for a human victory, one for a cat victory and of course a Draw. You win by getting the mess meter as close to your side as possible before the timer runs out.

Next, I made the timer that would determine how long a round would take. on top of just a basic timer I animated the text so that when the timer would hit 30 or lower it would pulse and blink red, to let the player know that they are out of time.

Door buttons

Sarah did a fantastic job on making the doors work, my job was to translate the information for opening the door to the player in an easy-to-understand way. So, I made arrows for the possible combinations and added them above the door. For now, they are far from perfect and in the coming weeks we will be sure to keep you updated on the arrow progress.

Cats in every color

If you played this game with 4 players, you might have thought “what cat am I again? The yellow one or the yellow one, or maybe the yellow one”. I got you covered, now every cat has a different color so you can easily keep track of your self during the game.

Pee button

We really want to give you the full experience of being a cat in this game, and while the meow button was a huge step in the right direction something was still missing. So, from now on you will be able to pee with just a press of the button! Don’t like what’s on tv? Pee on it. Does the human’s food smell bad? Pee on it. Did you finally get that painting down and want to show it who’s boss? Pee on it.

Intro screen

Now that we have a cool team logo, I wanted to get it into the game. An Intro screen is a perfect solution for something like this. So, I added a new level, put a widget over it, added some sounds and animations, and voila. You will now be able to enjoy our wonderful intro every time you start up the game.

That was it from me this week, here is the next team member to tell you what they did this week.

(Written by Glenn)