CAT Interstellar News

I try not to fill the announcements with BS but this is a pretty big deal. The discovery of gravitational waves is on par with the Higgs Boson. We've not only explained how a fundamental force works but also gained an entirely new way of viewing the Universe. Up to this point astronomy has been based on observation of the electromagnetic spectrum (mainly light). Now we have another way. This vindicates a lot of Einstein's predictions and essentially proves that black holes do, in fact, exist.

If you want to read more here is a goo article from NPR:
Scientists detect waves in space time as black holes collide

Increased the cave size and opened it up so that you can see exactly how far the cave development has gone. I'm trying to find the balance of how unpolished an environment can be before people get upset. You'll literally be able to jump off the map...


Added an orbiting spaceship to the opening scene (it's slow so keep an eye out for it). This spaceship will play a major role in the story and you will actually board the ship towards the end.


The main reason I wanted to push this update early in the month is to give you a better idea of the scope of the game, the state of development, and a timeline for when to expect stuff. We knew we were pushing it with how vague we've been about the direction this game is headed in. While I don't want to reveal the story just yet I do want to tell you about the timeline we're looking at.

March Update: Completed back story on the monitors. It doesn't seem like a lot but there are 20 different displays scattered around the base and surface level and each will tell a portion of the back story. The Cave environment will also be flushed out and connect below the skylift anchor. This is the last stage of the terraforming process and involves them(the androids) trying to reignite the core of the planet.

April Update: The Cave environment will be populated with events and dialog similar to the first level. This will explain the importance of the bacteria. The spaceship level will also be available.

May Update: Will have the spaceship level events added. The spaceship is the last level and will bring everything together. On top of the major update this month there will also be a number of smaller ones as we work out all the bugs before the June release.

June Update: Hopefully a bug free version of the May Update.

I also want to cover something we were really hopeful about but failed to do and that is a 3D menu. This was really something that was important to us but we just couldn't pull it off. The problem rest mainly in the fact that you can not interact with Wigdets (UI) using raycasts in UE4. This basically means you have to use a mouse cursor. It's possible to do 3D menu but it would be severely limited in scope and you wouldn't be able to enter any custom text in the boxes (like resolutions).

Thanks for all the support and as always, we really appreciate any and all feedback about either the game or the development.

P.S. 'Num 7' will enable a spectator view. Someone requested it and we really need to redo the trailer. If you're interested in contributing a scene you think would be awesome for the trailer (besides throwing the androids around the map) just upload it to the videos section and we'll check it out. We'll obviously ask permission before we use anything but I'd love to see what areas you liked the most.

You can set the Field of view using the command line "FOV [new float]"
so pressing the '`' key and then typing "FOV 120" will give you a field of view of 120 degrees.

Gameplay:
Dramatically shortened in-game dialog.
No more “missions” but instead encourages you to explore.
Reverted back to the original controls where dog sprints when you hold shift.
You can now toggle between your graphite sensor and flashlight in the caves using the ‘F’ key.
The menu now pauses the game like a normal menu.

Content:
Splash Screen the accurately reflects the current state of the game.
Added a main menu level to set options and toggle VR (this was inspired by the lobby in Natural Selection 2).
Expanded the cave section.
New DOG Model!!!
Additional effects when hovering over water.
Recorded new audio dialog (is isn’t good but it’s better).

Optimizations
The levels now stream in from the main-menu level, drastically cutting down on the initial load time.
Loading screens.
Fixed some problems with the AA so VR experience should be a lot smoother.
Added Vsync options to the Main menu.
Updated to UE4.10.
A number of back end improvements to how menus and variables are passed from level to level.


I wanted to include a statement about how development is going, the status of the game, and also try to get feedback on what you think.

Development
Currently I couldn’t be happier with how development of CAT Interstellar is going. It is the work of myself and another writer and started off as a gamejam submission that just grew. This is not the conventional type of development since both of us have normal jobs and do this on our free time. The downside to this is that development is much slower. The positive is that we actually get to make the game we set out to make without having to worry about financing it or compromising the original story. We’ve learned a lot over the last couple months of development and I’m happy to confidently announce a release date of Jun 1 2016.

Status
With this latest update the core gameplay, game mechanics, state machines, animations, AI, shaders, and modelled assets are complete. The rest is primarily level development of the caves and a “master” texture used on the base’s monitors to explain the back story. On the Steam side we are 1 review short of 100 positive reviews and currently sit at a 78% recommendation rate (an overall thumbs up). We’ve also gotten incredibly lucky with the vast majority of negative reviews in that they are mainly (and understandably) complaints about the length of current game. I think a lot of those reviews could possibly change to positive recommendations when the full game is released.
Sales of CAT Interstellar have essentially dropped to 0. Normally this would be detrimental for a developer and is usually when people jump ship. For us, it’s literally the best thing that could happen. We have a very healthy community that provides consistent feedback on updates. Until the game is complete there really isn’t any reason to market the game. We have everything we need to make an awesome game and none of the pressures that seem to lead to a rushed release. For the next couple of months we'll be developing in the shadows of Steam.

Feedback
I say this every time but I sincerely want your feedback. Not just on the updates but also on how we prioritizes updates or handle announcements like these. We had a little hiccup with last month’s release because it was flagged by AVG but we should stay on track from here on out. I’m also going to try to get the other writer, slowmath, active in the forums. He’s been creeping for a while but could probably give a little more insight into some of these discussions.

Thanks again for all your support-
Ionized Games