New Content Incoming
FRIDAY!
I wanted to reach out and let everyone know what I have been up to and what is upcoming for CAT & MOUSE. Most of these changes surround the feel of the game and update the workflow I use to create content to decrease time I spend waiting and increase time creating. This is much longer than my usual update, so be warned, its a lot of woooords.
I have been hard at work making new player models for the Cat and Mouse along with new animations. Cats will be given an overhaul on their animations to better telegraph where their attacks are going along with changing the root of the animation and adding Inverse Kinematics. These changes will be slight but will increase the believability of playing as a Cat instead of sliding/ flying around like some weird genie. With these animation changes I will be adding abilities such as wall running/jumping to Cats while removing their buggy infinite attack/fly bug (This will be an option to enable in advanced server settings). Mice will have all new animations as well as an improved climbing mechanic (you wont feel so slippery on walls and will be able to freely look around while climbing) and two new abilities: the ability to hide under small physics objects to use as protection and the ability to teleport from one mouse hole to another (this way you can't be blocked off by multiple Cats from leaving an area). Also, with these new animations comes a sprint ability; Cats and Mice will both have a crouch, walk and sprint speed, giving players more fine control over what they are doing. Mice will have almost instantaneous acceleration while Cats will have some build up time, meaning sprinting from a Cat that just spotted you wont feel futile.
One of the harder changes I am working on is creating a new workflow for maps. Old maps were created with multiple assets (each with very specific UV's for baked lighting) like a bunch of Lego and then had to bake gigabytes of baked lighting maps; This approach cost way too much time on each asset, took forever for my single PC to bake lighting, and increased the amount of GPU RAM needed. This also meant that I had to be way too specific about where and how I placed items, if the walls weren't perfectly lined up I would get light leaking through (which is why on some maps there are weird glowing parts to walls or would get stripes along the boarder of two walls).
My new approach essentially removes all baked lighting, all bounced lighting, and optimizes the entire game. Instead of creating a house with blank walls so light can bounce and fill rooms I will be placing dynamic lights and paint in shadowed areas (Mouse holes, under beds, stuff like that). Instead of creating a section of wall at a time I can now create entire buildings as one asset and simply light it, meaning I can now have a dynamic time of day, make changes to maps in minutes rather than hours or days, and kickstart the ability to download and play workshop maps. CAT & MOUSE relies heavily on contrast so Mice players can hide in plain sight or behind a wall, but it also makes it difficult for Cat players to see anything at all. These changes will increase the contrast so when Mice are in the open Cat players will be able to spot them more easily but when they are hidden (say in a wall) it will be like they just walked into a void, making hiding feel safer.
CAT & MOUSE has always been a 'Play with friends' game, but I feel like requiring players to each own the game limits who you can play with, so I plan to expand this to include the ability to play locally with multiple controllers (Couch co-op), solo against AI and eventually allow Couch co-op multiplayer (multiple players on one PC can play online against multiple players on another PC, think original HALO). I have very simple AI currently and I was concerned about Mice not being able to climb properly, but I have decided to tackle this to make CAT & MOUSE playable for solo players.
The last thing I want to talk about are game modes. I have had many players suggest some kind of 'score' game mode where Cats get points for killing and mice get points for surviving. This will be one of many new game modes I plan to release this year but it will require all the other items mentioned before to be done first. I have no doubt CAT & MOUSE would benefit from more game modes, I simply need time to create them and balance them so players can't easily exploit them. Currently I am working on a slight change to the Survival game mode because if you hide as a Mouse with cheese at the 1 min mark you can just sit still until the game is over, meaning 1 minute of time is just two or more players waiting for the match to end- The cure to this is at the end of the timer, Mice must make it to a randomly selected mouse hole to win, making the last dash for the exit the real goal.
Not all items will be with the next patch but I will attempt to have as much as I possibly can in the next update. Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions by reaching out through Discord.
Thanks for playing my stupid game.
-ProzackPH7
Here is a little peak
I wanted to reach out and let everyone know what I have been up to and what is upcoming for CAT & MOUSE. Most of these changes surround the feel of the game and update the workflow I use to create content to decrease time I spend waiting and increase time creating. This is much longer than my usual update, so be warned, its a lot of woooords.
I have been hard at work making new player models for the Cat and Mouse along with new animations. Cats will be given an overhaul on their animations to better telegraph where their attacks are going along with changing the root of the animation and adding Inverse Kinematics. These changes will be slight but will increase the believability of playing as a Cat instead of sliding/ flying around like some weird genie. With these animation changes I will be adding abilities such as wall running/jumping to Cats while removing their buggy infinite attack/fly bug (This will be an option to enable in advanced server settings). Mice will have all new animations as well as an improved climbing mechanic (you wont feel so slippery on walls and will be able to freely look around while climbing) and two new abilities: the ability to hide under small physics objects to use as protection and the ability to teleport from one mouse hole to another (this way you can't be blocked off by multiple Cats from leaving an area). Also, with these new animations comes a sprint ability; Cats and Mice will both have a crouch, walk and sprint speed, giving players more fine control over what they are doing. Mice will have almost instantaneous acceleration while Cats will have some build up time, meaning sprinting from a Cat that just spotted you wont feel futile.
One of the harder changes I am working on is creating a new workflow for maps. Old maps were created with multiple assets (each with very specific UV's for baked lighting) like a bunch of Lego and then had to bake gigabytes of baked lighting maps; This approach cost way too much time on each asset, took forever for my single PC to bake lighting, and increased the amount of GPU RAM needed. This also meant that I had to be way too specific about where and how I placed items, if the walls weren't perfectly lined up I would get light leaking through (which is why on some maps there are weird glowing parts to walls or would get stripes along the boarder of two walls).
My new approach essentially removes all baked lighting, all bounced lighting, and optimizes the entire game. Instead of creating a house with blank walls so light can bounce and fill rooms I will be placing dynamic lights and paint in shadowed areas (Mouse holes, under beds, stuff like that). Instead of creating a section of wall at a time I can now create entire buildings as one asset and simply light it, meaning I can now have a dynamic time of day, make changes to maps in minutes rather than hours or days, and kickstart the ability to download and play workshop maps. CAT & MOUSE relies heavily on contrast so Mice players can hide in plain sight or behind a wall, but it also makes it difficult for Cat players to see anything at all. These changes will increase the contrast so when Mice are in the open Cat players will be able to spot them more easily but when they are hidden (say in a wall) it will be like they just walked into a void, making hiding feel safer.
CAT & MOUSE has always been a 'Play with friends' game, but I feel like requiring players to each own the game limits who you can play with, so I plan to expand this to include the ability to play locally with multiple controllers (Couch co-op), solo against AI and eventually allow Couch co-op multiplayer (multiple players on one PC can play online against multiple players on another PC, think original HALO). I have very simple AI currently and I was concerned about Mice not being able to climb properly, but I have decided to tackle this to make CAT & MOUSE playable for solo players.
The last thing I want to talk about are game modes. I have had many players suggest some kind of 'score' game mode where Cats get points for killing and mice get points for surviving. This will be one of many new game modes I plan to release this year but it will require all the other items mentioned before to be done first. I have no doubt CAT & MOUSE would benefit from more game modes, I simply need time to create them and balance them so players can't easily exploit them. Currently I am working on a slight change to the Survival game mode because if you hide as a Mouse with cheese at the 1 min mark you can just sit still until the game is over, meaning 1 minute of time is just two or more players waiting for the match to end- The cure to this is at the end of the timer, Mice must make it to a randomly selected mouse hole to win, making the last dash for the exit the real goal.
Not all items will be with the next patch but I will attempt to have as much as I possibly can in the next update. Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions by reaching out through Discord.
Thanks for playing my stupid game.
-ProzackPH7
Here is a little peak