Sorry it’s been quiet recently! I’ve been hard at work trying to polish up some features and get the game closer to beta. I wanted to at least give you an update on the state of the game’s development since there hasn’t been a new version in a while.

On Tuesday of last week (3/18) I was let go from my full-time (well, part-time recently) job as a QA tester. Losing a job is never fun, but it has actually worked for the better because now I’m working on the game full-time! I’m not making any money right now, but I have enough saved up to last me for a little while and hopefully I can put the game up on Early Access really soon to start covering the costs of development (mostly living expenses).

The game itself has been getting polished this past week. Here’s a list of things I’ve done recently:

Added the ability to make objects breakable. Currently, vases, plates, and poster frames can break into several pieces.

Added a new font and art for the GUI. No more default Unity buttons!

Added a new in-game “How to Play” screen.

Remodeled the furniture objects to have a little more detail.

Reworked how the textures on objects to use a new, more optimized system rather than using old 7DFPS work.

Started populating another room with physics objects.

Some other reworking of the art pipeline.

Cleaned up the game’s website to look a little simpler and scale better for different resolutions.

There’s still quite a bit of work to do before I put the game up on Steam Early Access, but it should happen faster now that I’m putting all my time towards the game. Here’s a list of things I want to get done before releasing on Early Access:

Build the metagame/level select structure. I feel like this is the biggest task that needs to get done so that levels can be played and unlocked via menus. Code and UI art need to be made for this task.

Create Mission Mode and Cat Ops game logic. Should be simple and straightforward.

Finish placing objects in the default house level. Right now, only 2 of the 7-ish rooms have objects in them. Placing objects is easy, it just takes some time.

Fix some bugs with the player controls. There are two major bugs right now: the player gets stuck in a weird state when pouncing into objects and sometimes the right paw keeps swatting on it’s own.

Polish all the things! Object models, textures, UI art, controls, shaders. Anything that still looks rough should get some polish.

On top of that, there are some more logistical things to figure out, like business and marketing matters. I’m currently doing some research into running a Kickstarter campaign which would provide publicity and a way to cover development costs. I’ve also been brainstorming ideas for involving the community more, such as level design contests.

Oh, and I’ll also be at PAX East this year on all three days as always. This year, however, you’ll be able to play the latest version of Catlateral Damage on the expo floor at the Mass DiGI booth (#499)! I’ll be at the booth from 12PM to 3PM on Saturday and 12PM to 2PM on Sunday. Come by and say hi! :)

-Chris