CAT Interstellar News

This update includes additional dialog, a remapped version of “The Surface”, numerous bug fixes, and Ansel support. This update probably doesn't warrant a fresh play-through if you've already been through once.

First off, I want to welcome the massive influx of players during the Steam Summer sale. Thank you for giving this little game a shot and hopefully you stick around for the ending. Your feedback is truly appreciated and encouraged. I’ll try to maintain a weekly update until our launch date.


The surface level has been remapped to be a little more efficient in its layout. The mine is now on the far side (since it is the final destination) and the entire map has been opened up. I was also able to cut out huge segments of the map that were rarely visited (like behind the base). This should drastically reduce the load time for the largest level in the game.

I’ve also added guide poles to help make it a little more intuitive as to where to go. Please try not to run into them since the androids spent a lot of time installing them.

• Added dialog to the “Main-Menu” level as well to “The Base” level.
  
• Reworked the “Main-Menu” with layout and an additional audio cue to make it more intuitive.
  
• Added an additional conversation to The Base as well as numerous environmental ambiences to add a little more life to the level.
  

• Fixed the issue with players not being awarded the “chapter 0 “ achievement (Sorry).
  
• Fixed a bug causing the locker door to freeze up and not allow the player or the android through. This effectively blocked the “Chazz” achievement (Thanks LigH).
  
• Fixed numerous collision issues making DOG’s engines freak out.
  
• Adjusted numerous graphical errors such as over clipping decals and overly reflective volumes (Thanks XBL Laberbacke).
  
• Lastly, I finally tracked down one of the most elusive bugs that occasionally made it difficult to “drop” objects. This one was unique because it was so hard to reliably reproduce. The ultimate cause of the bug was how DOG’s gravlift ray traces to objects. If the ray trace is beyond a certain distance (10-meters) it will disappear. This inadvertently nulled out the “drop” command if you were holding an object AND your line of sight was beyond the 10-meter threshold.
  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mvmHwCxw5A

• Key rebinding. This bug is caused by how the action manager is passed around. I have a very good idea how to fix it but didn’t have time before this update.
  
• A few of the subtitles got jacked. I plan on streamlining the subtitle system to go in line with audio dialog instead of a bunch of beeps and boops. I’m sorry I’ve made you suffer for this long.
  

We’ve supported Ansel for a while now but just recently got whitelisted by Nvidia so it should work for everyone (with and Nvidia card). Pressing Alt+F2 in game will bring up the Ansel HUD and let you get some amazing screenshots. This system is very simple and straight forward but still gives you a lot of control.


You’ll notice that the cave collapse scene is cut a little bit shorter. This scene is about 90% complete but I don’t want to add it in until I have fixed all the nitpick timing issues.

The dialog for Signals is also almost completely recorded and edited. There are a few additional animations and events that need to be added to pull the whole thing together but we are making very good progress on it.

The next set of updates should be focused almost exclusively on content.


Thank you again for all the support, feedback, and troubleshooting. I could not have done this without you.

Introducing DOG-VI, the final update to the main character. DOG has been through a number of iterations from the original game jam submission, to the first public build, to a version that was actually textured :), and finally the current style...

Epic Game Jam Submission

First Public build

DOG-V - Textured

DOG-VI Final Version


Animation Improvement
There were a lot of limitations to the animations the previous version of DOG could use because of the simple bone structure. Some of the new features include height adjustments for the engines to give better feedback from the terrain you’re on.


The clipping problem was also solved similarly by adjusting the engines horizontally.

There’s an assortment of improvements but, in general, the character should feel a lot more responsive to controls and reactive to the environment.



If you haven’t noticed, the release date has been pushed back from May 26th to August 11th. The main reason for this is to fix some of the aspects of the game that still bug me. Here's an idea of what need to be done:

Bridge collapse – The logic behind the original version was this:

• Spam particle effects (burn up the GPU)
  
• Enable physics collisions on each part of the bridge (burn up the CPU)
  
• Spam radial impulses to kick all the pieces around (make sure they're fried)
  

Obviously, it was a mess. The new version (still a work in progress) makes much better use of the particle system as well as more optimized objects like destructible meshes and physics hinges.

There are also some map placement issues. These aren't game breaking but they lead to a lot of confusion about where to go. The Base level has already been remapped and should be a little more intuitive. The Surface level will also get remapped.

Lastly, there's some key audio segments that will really help try the story together. I know there's a lot of androids now... but we need even more!!! Why are you in space, then a cave, then back on Earth?!?



Part of the reason for the redesign of DOG was to create a sort of "platform" for a VR character. The perspective will be a ~enclosed 3rd-person, like you are in a mech. I've gotten very positive results from the Android character and the DOG character but I'm still working on the cat character. I hope to at least have a fully playable prototype available for testing by the release date.


We live in a totally different type of game development world than we did even 5 years ago. There's a much more mutually beneficial relationship between developers and users. If you’ve been following this game, it’s pretty obvious I've gotten a lot of help from the community and I want to try to repay some of that with more than just free keys. I’m going to start releasing the project files used in CAT Interstellar. I'll start with the DOG character (skeletal mesh, animations, and code).

DOG isn’t animated like most video game characters. Instead of multiple frames making up an animation over a set amount of time, DOG uses single frame animations and linear interpolations between them during runtime. This allows for DOG to react to her environment much more realistically. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of information in animating a character this way so hopefully these files will help.

I’m currently putting it an easy to read UE4 project file and should have it up as DLC in the next week. I'll keep the DLC updated as I add more boring things like shaders and loading screens.


Updated DOG model and fixed map layouts. This update probably doesn't warrant a fresh play-through if you've already been through once.

Introducing DOG-VI, the final update to the main character. DOG has been through a number of iterations from the original game jam submission, to the first public build, to a version that was actually textured :), and finally the current style...

Epic Game Jam Submission

First Public build

DOG-V - Textured

DOG-VI Final Version


Animation Improvement
There were a lot of limitations to the animations the previous version of DOG could use because of the simple bone structure. Some of the new features include height adjustments for the engines to give better feedback from the terrain you’re on.


The clipping problem was also solved similarly by adjusting the engines horizontally.

There’s an assortment of improvements but, in general, the character should feel a lot more responsive to controls and reactive to the environment.



If you haven’t noticed, the release date has been pushed back from May 26th to August 11th. The main reason for this is to fix some of the aspects of the game that still bug me. Here's an idea of what need to be done:

Bridge collapse – The logic behind the original version was this:

• Spam particle effects (burn up the GPU)
  
• Enable physics collisions on each part of the bridge (burn up the CPU)
  
• Spam radial impulses to kick all the pieces around (make sure they're fried)
  

Obviously, it was a mess. The new version (still a work in progress) makes much better use of the particle system as well as more optimized objects like destructible meshes and physics hinges.

There are also some map placement issues. These aren't game breaking but they lead to a lot of confusion about where to go. The Base level has already been remapped and should be a little more intuitive. The Surface level will also get remapped.

Lastly, there's some key audio segments that will really help try the story together. I know there's a lot of androids now... but we need even more!!! Why are you in space, then a cave, then back on Earth?!?



Part of the reason for the redesign of DOG was to create a sort of "platform" for a VR character. The perspective will be a ~enclosed 3rd-person, like you are in a mech. I've gotten very positive results from the Android character and the DOG character but I'm still working on the cat character. I hope to at least have a fully playable prototype available for testing by the release date.


We live in a totally different type of game development world than we did even 5 years ago. There's a much more mutually beneficial relationship between developers and users. If you’ve been following this game, it’s pretty obvious I've gotten a lot of help from the community and I want to try to repay some of that with more than just free keys. I’m going to start releasing the project files used in CAT Interstellar. I'll start with the DOG character (skeletal mesh, animations, and code).

DOG isn’t animated like most video game characters. Instead of multiple frames making up an animation over a set amount of time, DOG uses single frame animations and linear interpolations between them during runtime. This allows for DOG to react to her environment much more realistically. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of information in animating a character this way so hopefully these files will help.

I’m currently putting it an easy to read UE4 project file and should have it up as DLC in the next week. I'll keep the DLC updated as I add more boring things like shaders and loading screens.


Updated DOG model and fixed map layouts. This update probably doesn't warrant a fresh play-through if you've already been through once.

This update deals exclusively with optimizations to the game. The three principal areas of optimization are draw calls, Texture memory, and dynamic lighting improvements.

The benchmark goal I have kept with this game is a minimum of 30fps at 1080p on a gtx 750. With this latest patch I’ve been getting 60fps for most of the game.


One of the CPU bottlenecks I found was the number of draw calls for static meshes and their materials. To address this I “merged” certain mesh groups together. In the image I've combined 6 static meshes into 1 (the yellow circles are the bounds of the object):

• This will also help with artifacts caused by turning corners quickly.
  

I down-sampled a lot of textures from 4k to 2k. I did this individually for each texture to make sure there weren’t any noticeable changes to the environments. Here’s an example:

• If you can’t tell a difference between the 2K textures and the 4k textures it means I did it right. It’s also important to note that, unlike purges in the past that cleaned up unused textures and models, this was specifically targeted towards textures used in-game. Because of this, I’ve shaved off ~1.3 Gigs to the game size and cut load times by ~50% on the benchmarking system.
  

https://youtu.be/QEzhxP-pdos



This is a lot less amazing and mainly concerns adjusting the configuration files inside Unreal Engine 4 to match the environments of CAT Interstellar. For instance, I placed every light in this game and I know for a fact that there are only five instances where more than three dynamic lights overlap. All of those instances are because of a light in an adjacent room that is blocked anyway. There is no situation where 4 dynamic lights need/should be rendered so I’ve removed the option. Similarly, I made adjusts with Particles Effects, Screen Space Reflections, Anti-Aliasing, etc...


I hate to call this a downside but I’m not sure how you all are going to take this:

• The graphic menu has been simplified to 3 categories with 2 options each: “Fast” or “Detail”.
  

Being a lifelong PC gamer/modder I completely understand why removing options from the player is generally frowned on but I feel like this one is at least partially justified. I’m honestly curious what you think though.

P.s.
These adjustments can all be changed in the console and I’ll never take that away from you.

• Faster load times
  
• Higher frames per second
  
• Less menu options
  

This update deals exclusively with optimizations to the game. The three principal areas of optimization are draw calls, Texture memory, and dynamic lighting improvements.

The benchmark goal I have kept with this game is a minimum of 30fps at 1080p on a gtx 750. With this latest patch I’ve been getting 60fps for most of the game.


One of the CPU bottlenecks I found was the number of draw calls for static meshes and their materials. To address this I “merged” certain mesh groups together. In the image I've combined 6 static meshes into 1 (the yellow circles are the bounds of the object):

• This will also help with artifacts caused by turning corners quickly.
  

I down-sampled a lot of textures from 4k to 2k. I did this individually for each texture to make sure there weren’t any noticeable changes to the environments. Here’s an example:

• If you can’t tell a difference between the 2K textures and the 4k textures it means I did it right. It’s also important to note that, unlike purges in the past that cleaned up unused textures and models, this was specifically targeted towards textures used in-game. Because of this, I’ve shaved off ~1.3 Gigs to the game size and cut load times by ~50% on the benchmarking system.
  

https://youtu.be/QEzhxP-pdos



This is a lot less amazing and mainly concerns adjusting the configuration files inside Unreal Engine 4 to match the environments of CAT Interstellar. For instance, I placed every light in this game and I know for a fact that there are only five instances where more than three dynamic lights overlap. All of those instances are because of a light in an adjacent room that is blocked anyway. There is no situation where 4 dynamic lights need/should be rendered so I’ve removed the option. Similarly, I made adjusts with Particles Effects, Screen Space Reflections, Anti-Aliasing, etc...


I hate to call this a downside but I’m not sure how you all are going to take this:

• The graphic menu has been simplified to 3 categories with 2 options each: “Fast” or “Detail”.
  

Being a lifelong PC gamer/modder I completely understand why removing options from the player is generally frowned on but I feel like this one is at least partially justified. I’m honestly curious what you think though.

P.s.
These adjustments can all be changed in the console and I’ll never take that away from you.

• Faster load times
  
• Higher frames per second
  
• Less menu options