Cat rescue and death — devblog 87
Another iteration of the cat rescue system.
New stray cats will no longer just wander around the forest. They need to be rescued, which means I need to show that they’re in trouble and require the player to actively do something to save them.
For example, you might need to dig out a kitten that got stuck.
Cats can be trapped in a bag, a box, mud, rocks, or thorny bushes. Some situations will be easier to rescue them from, while others will be more difficult.
(The yellow text is for technical purposes.)
The player can dig out or break through the obstacle themselves, or send one of their existing cats to do it.
If a kitten isn’t rescued within a certain amount of time, it disappears.
And a couple of visual improvements.
You can now throw a potion at a monster. The player makes a throwing motion, the potion actually flies through the air, and when it hits, it turns into a splash of the corresponding color.
You can also throw potions at cats, with the same visual effect.
(The trees also sway now, but I’m not sure yet whether I’ll keep that effect.)
And my favorite improvement recently is the way items are collected. At first, an item would immediately appear in the inventory. Then I added a collecting animation — once the animation finished, the item was instantly added.
Now it looks even nicer. The collected item jumps a little and then slides toward the player, if the player is close enough. Once it reaches the player, it is added to the inventory.
And when the player walks through a bush, the bush shakes.
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After that, I reworked the player’s stats.
They weren’t really being used for much before, so it was time to change that.
First of all — mana and energy. After sitting down with a pen and notebook and filling a couple of pages with ideas, I came to the conclusion that I don’t need both mana and energy. The player will only have energy.
Energy is restored by sleeping and by using energy potions, and it is spent when performing actions with certain tools — for example, digging or hitting a tree stump with a hammer. You know, the usual. Energy is also required for running. No energy? Then you’ll have to walk calmly. In the experimental version, energy is currently also used for crafting.
When the player runs out of energy, nothing dramatic happens. They don’t collapse from exhaustion or fall asleep in the middle of the forest. They simply can’t perform certain actions.
But spending all your energy in the morning and then walking around all day unable to do anything wouldn’t be very fun. Especially if you run out of energy far from home, have no way to restore it, and then suddenly come across an interesting crate that needs to be opened, but you don’t have enough energy left for the last couple of hits.
So I’m going to try this: energy slowly restores itself over time, but only up to a certain limit. Right now, that limit is 10%. It should be enough to finish something you were already doing or to handle something if you really need to. But it’s not enough for bigger things, for that, it’s better to sleep.
And this is where the cats come in. If the player has cats with whom they have a good relationship, the maximum amount of energy that can be restored this way increases by 5% for each cat.
Since I was already working on the player’s stats, it was time to deal with health too.
Until now, nothing happened when health dropped to zero. But there needs to be some consequence, and some kind of “penalty”, to give the player a reason not to die.
Now the player can die. Not permanently, the game doesn’t end, and it’s not game over. But the current day ends, the player is teleported home, and wakes up the following morning. They have low health and low energy, but they’re otherwise fine and ready to continue playing.
For now, the player doesn’t lose money or items, and I’m still not sure whether they should.
So what happens to the cats?
The cats accompanying the player are now divided into two groups: survivors and fallen cats. Cats that were still alive when the player died are also teleported home, safe and unharmed.
But cats that were lying unconscious on the battlefield are not taken home with the player. Instead, some NPC takes them away, or rather, rescues them. The next day, the player needs to visit that NPC and pick up their cats.
There are still a few unanswered questions:
Should the player have to pay the NPC for taking care of the cats?
What happens if the player never comes to pick up their cats?
What if a cat staying with the NPC is supposed to die of old age?
What if a cat staying with the NPC is pregnant and it’s time for her to give birth?
If you like the game — you can add it to your Wishlist on Steam.
