October 27, 2024

I gave my game over to my friend Zach, who was kind enough to playtest the game for me and find all the bugs and grammatical errors.  At first I thought most of the stuff he suggested I wouldn’t be able to fix, but all of it has since been fixed and cleaned up.  I had two different ways to spell “Catcave” and “Key Card” and “Mousekey,” so we made sure they were all the same throughout.  I was also getting the error where apostrophes would disappear and sometimes the end of the dialogue box would override the beginning of the dialogue, which was weird, but I fixed all of those errors.  Also the “9” was not populating when you had nine key cards and Puddle’s secondary dialogue for getting the key card appeared without having to go through the chain of people.  All of that was fixed.

There’s two magician brothers, Tada and Presto.  Tada is invisible and I finally figured out how to make him appear when you find him.  Now after you find him you can return to his brother and his brother gives you a magic wand to enter the Laser Lighthouse on Tortoiseshell Beach.  I also wanted the player to give a little more effort before entering Level 2 - Clover Country sidescrolling level, so I made it so you have to interact with the four cats that live in the box town in Clover Country.  These four cats are actually my friends’ cats, Pico, Venice, Kiely and Roo.  I play video games with these friends every week.

Zach tested everything, and after some fixes they all work great.  A big thing that was not working was the dialogue. The main bad guy says at the end of the game.  This is because the dialogue button and the jump button are the same, so it kept not working.  So I made it so that when you simply collide into the main villain at the end, which you need to in order to reach the exit, their dialogue box comes up.  I was also getting a weird extra frame when jumping out of the water, that too has been fixed.  I thought that I could make the Screwdriver appear when you finish the dialogue chain in Kitty College, but when I programmed it and tested it, it crashed the game, so I just went back to the Screwdriver is somewhere in the pool and you cannot see it, it’s attached to one of the waves.  There were a few walls Zach managed to sneak through I fixed, a few commas and periods that I added and I created a tiled ground for Kitty College which makes it pop a lot more than the bland white ground it originally had.  I also spruced up a bit of the dialogue, added some lore about a Frat of Cats from Kitty College that owned the Mousekey.

I recently created a new logo that, I think, makes it easier for people to read and understand the pun “Catratè.”  I drew a new cover that I love and will use as a retail exclusive slipcover.  The last thing I need to do is create the Instruction Manual, which will include this groovy Development Log.

With Zach’s testing we went from A to G  in terms of versions of the game.  G seems to be the final resting letter, the final build of the game that is fit for commercial consumption.  If you are a fan of Donkey Kong, the greater Donkey Kong Universe and games developed by Rare Ltd., then I put a couple references in there for you to enjoy, namely a tappy fish and grass in the shape of a grass eating cow.  So enjoy Catratè Fighters: Meow Alpha, it was a labor of love. The most fun I have ever had as a gamer was creating this game about my own house cats, Lana Leopard and Artemister, as karate experts who save the world!

• Christopher Bucca Taylor (10/27/2024)