Quadolor Dev Blog has moved!

For those who are still here, I moved my blog to this address:

blog.quadolorgames.com

Previously, the above address would redirect here, but it for some reason you've been getting here via the blogspot.com or .whatever URL, please update your bookmarks to the new address.

I'm On the Weird Part of Game Dev Again

These last two weeks have been a bit weird. Maybe it's because I've been focusing on working in game mechanics into "Cat Project" and I was getting a bit tired of it, but I've been adding in sillier things into the game recently.

Last week I added a crouch action to the game, mostly as an excuse to turn Kitty into a catloaf:

Loafing around.

The "loaf position" with serve other purposes in the future, other than being cute.

This week I added two things. First is a, uh, cat paw to the (interim) main menu:

This is silly.

The above GIF is just me testing the cat paw being drawn at different angles and lengths. It will be part of the finalized main menu.

The second things I added this week is a new passive enemy type: the balloon:

Balloons! Kitty is pleased. *smack* *smack* *pop*

Like the laser pointer, balloons do not harm Kitty, but he can smack them around using uncharged swats. Charged swats will destroy them. They'll probably serve as bouncy item containers in the final game.

The Cat Came Back

I took a break from posting updates last week because 1) it was very late and 2) there wasn't much to post about. Oh well, that just means more updates to show this week! Here's what I've been working on the last two weeks.

New Health UI

I have replaced the old rectangular health meters with rows of health icons:

For your conveience, here are the icons close-up and isolated:

I realize that this isn't the best background
colour in the world to use in this case.  

The player's health is represented by cat heads while the enemies' are represented by gears. The smallest unit of health (1 HP) is represented by half an icon. And on a related note, I've also added healing hearts to make your sad, monochrome cat heads happy again.

<3 x 0.5, <3 

Doors

Cat goes in and reemerges somewhere else:

Non-Euclidean geometry. How does it work???

I like how the door-swinging animation turned out. The power of trigonometry! The doors not only allow you to move quickly between two points in the same room, but they will also connect different rooms together in certain multi-room levels, as demonstrated in the video below:

The game is getting closer and closer to becoming a stand-alone playable demo, but it still has some ways before getting there. Needs a lot more polish.

And now that I'm finished, just for fun, here are some outtakes:

Kitty and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Doors

A Glitch in the Matrix Pause Function.
Aww, kitty thinks he's The One.

Cat Concerto - Now with 80% less yowling!

(No, "Cat Concerto" is not the new name for "Cat Project".)

I haven't had much time to work on "Cat Project" this week; I had to take care of a friend's dog and bird (no cats though, except for a surprise visitor in the backyard). So the game is pretty much the same as it was last week. However, I did get a chance to work on some of the background music for the game, which I've neglected to talk about since I started this project.

Currently, I have two tracks to show. To give a bit of background, both of them are "hand-me-down" tracks; music that was composed for other projects that got cancelled that I fixed up and remixed for this one. No point in letting them go to waste. The first one is the title theme:



I don't know if it is technically a waltz (maybe it's a minuet, or some perverted fusion of the two, who knows?), but I just call it that out of habit. In any case, it's a fuzzy, lighthearted track that sets the mood for the game.

Next up is a level theme track thing; it's a work-in-progress:



The vaguely "meow"-sounding lead synth in the second half of the track is a patch I accidentally made with fiddling and twiddling around with the knobs on the Dreamstation DXi2. It seems appropriate for the subject matter at hand and I kinda like it. I just hope the novelty doesn't wear off to quickly.

Kilkenny Kitty 2 - When Cats Attack

Meow!

M.S.T.O.P. here with some new updates on the "Cat Project". I'm going to try to make my updates weekly, syncing them with Screenshot Saturday. Here are this week's updates:

New combat mechanics

Last week, I demonstrated some changes to the combat mechanics: faster swats, tougher enemies and hitstun.

*smack* *smack* *smack*

This week, I made some more additions to make "Cat Project" even more action-oriented: knockback and attack-cancelling.

Kitty is not amused by practical joke. Also, an innocent
laser pointer gets caught in the crossfire and the toothbrush
begins its new career as part of a  juggling act.

Weak swats now push enemies back slightly; they can also be cancelled into another weak swat if it connects with an enemy, like in many beat 'em up and fighting games. Strong swats push enemies back further (though the hitstun the same, at least for now), but cannot be cancelled.

ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA

Increased kitty health

Begone, evil spirit of good dental health!

Don't get too attached to it, the GUI will definitely change in the future. Health meters now show that both kitty and his enemies are no longer one-hit wonders. I haven't worked out how kitty's increased stamina will interact with the powerup system. (Previously, the powerup doubled as an additional hit point that was lost when kitty took damage, like in Mario games.)