We decided to push the current status of our progression towards the beta (0.6) live. It's mostly a collection of "a little bit of everything".
Major Features
Light
Finally, the game became a proper (real) lighting. This helps creating specific moods in specific areas. You'll most likely notice this in the forest. But it's not only darkness and light, it's also shadows, color tones of light, etc.
See one example of how the forest has changed with this update:
Objects enhancement - Pass 1
We enhanced the first batch of interactive objects we were not happy with so far. This includes: New models and textures for the food bowl, the sand castle, the water bowl and the scratching tree. Additionally, all food items are now consumed, meaning: Kitten drinks the water from the water bowl, eats the food from the food bowl and also eats the toppings of the pizza.
Floor material enhancements
The floors in kitchen and bathroom were remade. The other floors were enhanced. For example the carpet in the living room is now really fluffy on High Quality Settings.
See these two examples of new item models and floor materials:
New Intro
We create a new intro that (not literally) takes the hand of the player and guides him through the setup process. The new intro depends on the playing mode (plushy or hand mode), automatically detects when the player sits on the cushion, tells the player how to fix the plushy and shows only the warnings that are necessary. Also, the "hand-mode" is now the new default mode when starting the game for the first time. We hope to get new players more easily involved into the game. A full tutorial will follow in 0.6.
Additionally, the game returns back to the intro, once you change the play mode in the settings.
New buttons - 1st pass
The first set of buttons were remade. We changed all buttons in the shed (the other triggers & switches will follow). These buttons now have high res textures and a on & off state.
Other UI enhancements
* We remade (the third time, so annoying ;) ) the progress bar of the action plate. (The circular thing that shows the progression when the kitten is doing an action.) It's now a real-time created 3D object that should not flicker or vanish any more. Additionally, the color of the progress indicates if the current action is good (green), neutral (yellow) or bad (red) for the kitten.
* The Exit button was removed from all areas except the settings menu. To quit the game, go to the Shed and place the kitten on the exit button.
* Floor Calibration is now done progressively, so immediately the floor is positioned appropriate and then only finetunes during calibration process.
* The "hold me like this" icon is now a real 3D Icon.
Animation Optimizations - Pass 1
* We rewrote the whole internal animation triggering system. This was painful but necessary.
* There is now a dedicated “carried” animation, when the kitten is held by the player. So the kitten now really looks like being carried. When it's getting close to the floor, it changes back to the "standing idle" animation.
* The "Meow" now only happens when the kitten is standing on the floor without doing something else.
* The exit animation of the kitten was also slightly enhanced.
Other Usability Enhancements
* The calibrate button has been redesigned and is now a floating text in a column. This shall symbolize that the game does not know where the real floor is (which was implied by having a button on the floor).
* Object colliders have all been remade. Kitten should now have less issues with object actions not starting.
* Starting the game in demo mode will now teleport you directly to the settings after the intro. This shows the "how to play" board to all players in demo mode.
Performance Optimizations
We've done a lot of performance optimizations including texture atlasing, mesh baking, mesh complexity reduction, static batching, using mesh terrains, etc.
All of them were done to boost performance without reducing graphic fidelity. Although a big part of the gained performance was eaten up by adding the lighting, the game now still runs much better.
"High" is now the new default quality settings and should run fluid on most machines under most circumstances.
Bugfixes
* Fixed a bug that pulled the cat back to the balloon when grabbing the cat during the balloon ride.
* Fixed a bug that changing the fur color or shirts of the kitten did not work proper.
* Fixed a bug that corrupted the rotation calibration of the kitten, when removing the plushy too early from the balloon.
* Fixed a bug that instantiated the same objects multiple times in the dress room.
* Lots of other minor bugfixes and enhancements