Hey everyone!

So, this is a 1-week game I made.  It's kinda dumb.

The idea's that you're a guy who disguises himself as a cat in order to enter a cat talent competition and win the prize money.







The controls are explained as you play, but it's keyboard only.

It's pretty short, and can probably be beaten in about 5 minutes or so.  There are three ending screens depending on how you do.

You can download it here: http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/games/193671-cat-show

Just kinda interested to see what people think of it!

Thanks for the name suggestions, guys.  Haha, probably won't be going with "The Wonderblaze", but both suggestions got me thinking, and I'm actually kinda digging something along the lines of "A Journey of 1,000 Years".  I haven't decided yet, but I also came up with a few quick ideas:

"And Time Flows On"
"A Tragedy Through Time"

The second one is too downbeat, I think, and also feels like it needs a prefix, but I like the first one a bit.

Anyways, I gotta think about it more.

I've been making lots of progress, and it feels good.  Here's a new screen.  Now that I look at it, the top of the trees are kind of an ugly green.  I might change that real quick.



I've gotten some new screens drawn out, and I just added portrait swapping support for conversations, so now people can change expressions and such.  I'm still shooting to have the "tutorial" done by the end of tomorrow, and I feel on track for that.  It won't be completely polished up, but it should get the job done.

I am the enjoyings of looking this is.

Thanks!

Also, some new progress.  Here's a WIP shot of the village.  Probably will add windows, and I'm gonna add doodads in front of the houses too in addition to a few other things I want to play around with.



Dialogue's just placeholder, by the way.

Oh, and I need a name for this game, or at least a working title.  It's gone too far without one.  I gotta start thinking about this.

Bleh, the last month of school was a little bit ridiculous.  I've done a little bit of stuff, but nowhere near as much as I'd have liked.  Here's a few screenshots though.





Both of these are actual in-game screenshots for once.  No more mockups! Woo!  That being said, I'm still going to be adding lots of stuff to both of them, so they're far from final.

I've been working more this weekend, and I should have a decent amount of stuff to show during this next week.

This is amazing.  Good job, keep it up.

Thanks so much!

Just a quick update on this because I'm not dead.

I had to take two weeks off from this project to prep an IGF entry with some friends.  I've been back to the game this week, however.

Here's a list of some things I've done:
Screen transitions.
First two screens are roughly mapped out and the art's been started.
The inventor who made you has been designed and is in the game.
Started some dialogue and game flow.


Don't wanna show any screenshots yet because things are very rough and sparse right now.  I'm trying to alternate between art and content so I don't get too burnt out on any one of them.

[@Falmil]

@Falmil 
I plan on allowing the user to abandon tasks, or skip things altogether.  The story's not going to be super dynamic, but currently I'm planning two results for each task, depending on whether you did it or not, some of which will have an effect on the story and what future tasks you can receive.  I also have three different endings planned depending on how "correctly" you do things throughout the game.

@SirNiko
That's a pretty good idea; thanks!  I'll definitely start playing around with that.

Wow, I haven't updated this in a while.  I've been working on the game, but there isn't much concrete stuff to show.  I've gotten a lot of the game and story laid out, and I'm excited about how it's coming along. 

I've also been doing some work on the art.  I did a walk cycle for one of the people.



Now that I know how they walk, it'll be easy to apply it to other guys if I need to.  I also have a new level mockup.



I like the way it's looking, but I'm not sure what to do with that empty space on the bottom of the screen.  Might move the camera point so that you get more sky and less ground.  Might lower the line thickness on the background objects too. 

Also been working on a walk cycle for the robot, but I'm not happy with how it's turning out, so I think I'm going to scrap it.  I need a way for him to walk that really shows off his character.  Thinking of having him toddle around.

btw I had an idea incredibly similar to this one some time ago (3~4 years or so), so best of luck and I'd like to see it go well! o-o

Man, it's crazy how that happens, right?  Hopefully I can do the idea justice!


Also, devlog update.  Did some work on the screen loading, and now you place start points and exit points from the level editor.  Before it was all dynamic and kind of funky.  Also, before you could only exit screens on the right, not left, so this is better.

Tonight I'm going to be doing some more design work to lay out the actual game.  What puzzles I want in the game, which go where, how the overarching story fits into it all, etc.

This makes me happy. I want a robot buddy.

<3

That robot is awesome!

I vote you at least try it leaving the spark in, before you spend too much time on taking it out or other solutions.  A lot of games get by just fine with abrupt animation state changes.  People are pretty good at filling in the gaps in their head.  Even if the spark only lasts 1 frame instead of 3 or whatever, I give it a good chance of still looking ok.

Glad you like it! 

I'll definitely wait until I can test the transition between animations before deciding on what to do with the spark.  That's a good point about people's brains filling in the gaps, and hopefully it applies here.  Thankfully, the spark'll be really easy to take out, since it never touches any other part of the robot, if that's what I end up needing to do.

One thing you could do without directly adding a mechanic is to just make it super satisfying to blast them.  Give them a nice enough death animation and sound effect and the player will kill them even if there's no direct advantage to doing so.  Feedback is key!

Other ideas:

Have the enemy's blood permanently color the level or maybe reveal previously invisible objects.

Have plants grow wherever enemies die.  Could use the plants as herbs for varying status effects or maybe as platforms, or even just as an aesthetically pleasing backdrop.

Killing certain amounts of certain kinds of enemies changes the way other characters in the game act towards your character.

Kill enemies and push their bodies into ditches to cross over them or into water to raise the level.

You character's vision is constantly fading unless he's killing things.

If you kill an enemy you can skin it and wear its skin which affects how other enemies act towards you.

Hopefully something there is sort of useful! 

That's adorable :3

The spark could be a separate animation, simply overlaid?

Aw, thanks!

Yeah, I think that would be pretty simple to do as long as I don't make his bobble move around too much.  I'll see how the transition looks once I get his run cycle in and then go from there.

Got the game working with its new resolution.

Also decided to shrink down the graphics a bit based on that mockup.  I did a little idle animation for the robot to make sure that the graphics would still look nice in the size I was thinking. 



I'm mostly liking the way it came out, but I'm thinking that spark might have to go, because it might look weird during animation transitions, and making it line up isn't really something I want to spend time on.

Second post for today.  I hope that's not horribly taboo.

I made a small mockup.



This is if I went 800x600.  I might still shrink all the assets a bit to give myself a little more screen space, but I think this could work nicely.  I'm a little concerned that there's not enough depth to the screen.  I might need to add another layer or two to get more stuff packed in the background.

The art style on this is fantastic; I'm really excited to see it in motion!

Been doing some fairly steady work.  I just got the menu finished for when you shut down and advance time.  Obviously some temp graphics in there, and that right 'OK' button is actually the cancel button.  This menu took me way too long to do because I couldn't keep myself working on it for any decent amount of time.  I really hate programming menus; it's soooo boring.    

It's exciting though, because the completion of this feature means that I'm at a point where I can actually start making the game itself.  I should be able to start adding content now!  I just have a few more things to work out with the art style and then I'm good to go.



I decided against having the player be able to advance to any point at all on the timeline, because that would either require about a million more assets, or a sacrifice in the believability of the world, neither of which sounded like good things to me.  I might re-visit that in the future, but for now I'm proceeding with the assumption that the player can only sleep until specific events. 

I've also thought a bit about the resolution.  It's currently 640x480, but I'm thinking I might bump it up to 800x600.  Not sure yet.  I think I'll try to throw together a mockup tomorrow with that new art style to figure it out. 

One important thing to keep in mind is the strength of the main character.  You could give your game the creepiest atmosphere ever, but if the player has access to a minigun and can just spray bullets everywhere, the level of fear is going to be pretty minimal.  I think it's pretty clutch that there's some limiting mechanism on the character's strength.  There could be extremely limited ammo, the enemies could be extremely hard to kill, or you might not even let the player kill anything at all.

Sorry it's been so long in between updates!  I've been pretty busy this past week with school.  I'm hoping to get a substantial amount done on this over the long weekend.

Anyways, progress.  I haven't done much programming that I can show.  I added a small icon that appears above the player's head when he can interact with something, and I started working on the time travel menu. 

I *have* done some concept art, however.  I'm thinking about maybe doing the game in this sort of style.  As I've said before, art's difficult for me, so thoughts are much appreciated!  I did these all without references, but I still have this horrible feeling that I've subconsciously exactly copied an existing game's characters, so please let me know if that's true, because I would feel horrible if it was.

This one looks excellent.

It's not clear from your description: will the robot have a time limit of 150 years to reach the mountaintop, or is that simply background story and you will have infinite time to actually reach the mountain?

Will the game be linear, or do you expect branching paths for the player to reach the goal? It could be fun if a fast player might reach a bridge before it collapses from disuse, while a slow player might find a tunnel has been constructed that allows them to take a new route.

I get vibes of Majora's Mask, where it would not simply be the player's position that matters, but also the year.

You should also consider breaking the game into multiple levels / scenarios, such as the robot spending years ending a feud between two families / cities or helping to repopulate an endangered species several generations at a time. The Asteroid scenario would then be the grand finale.

Hope to see this make some progress!

Thanks so much! 

Sorry I didn't make it too clear; there will actually be a 150 year time limit to stop the asteroid.  Time's always running while you play, and you'll be in control of advancing the time simulation when you need to.

I'd love to have branching paths, but it's going to all come down to how much work I want to put into content that not every player will see.  I'm doing this game as my senior project, so I need to make sure I set a reasonable scope!  It's a great idea though, and I really do want to explore it if I think I'll have the time!

I'm not, at least right now, really planning on breaking the game up into multiple levels, but the way I'm imagining it right now is actually pretty similar to what you mention.  The asteroid thing is the overarching goal of the game, but doing things like ending feuds and repopulating endangered species (two awesome ideas, by the way) are going to be things you can/need to do along the way.  So, in a way the game will be made up of multiple levels, but all of the levels are going to be happening during the same 150 year timeline, if that makes sense.