2018-01-08 03:09:48

SO the discussion in another topic got me thinking, and I want this cat sim thing. I was thinking to my self for a while before that, it would be awesome to have, but my programming skills, if any, do not stack up to the challenge. Here's my idea for the game. You play as a cat, you may randomly be allowed out, like, as an indoor / outdoor cat, or kept in all the time, unless you sneak out tongue. As a cat, you will be able to run around, jump and climb up onto things, and do the things cats do, but the game isn't free for all, it has some challenges. Cats have needs, I have a cat, and while I might not be an expert in them, and certainly have misinterpreted my cats wants / needs before, I can give you an outline of that the major ones are. Food, water, litter box; these are the basics, then you get onto more harder to define needs. Cats like to hunt, and they manifest that in different ways being that they're domestic, and don't really hunt, unless you took in a stray from the streets or something, which, incidentally, is what I did. Just to dampen the possible outrage, my cat is perfectly healthy, she's been spayed, is current with flea treatments, etc. Is due for shots but I have an appointment next month to get that taken care of. Anyway, cats can display complex behaviors, like the desire to play, and the seeming need to scratch. I think these are part of the hunting reflex. They play to keep their skills sharp, as that's probably instinct. I would say definitely the need to scratch and play should be in the game. Also, balancing out the need for interaction or affection, with the desire to be alone / in dependant.

What I envision is that you're placed in a house with a family, so a husband and wife, and then the cat. You run around and try to be a cat, satisfying any needs that come up, before they become a problem. If they do become a problem, and say, any of the needs if they start out at 100, hit 0, you lose control temporarily while the cat acts out this need. For food or something, maybe there will not be consequences, as they would just seek out their food bow.. But for scratching, the game would have the cat go to the nearest things that seems scratchable, and scratch it for a while. Now, say the family is away every day, so maybe a day is like 10 minutes game time, and so you have a small period of that time to go wild. if you do scratch up the furniture, either because you failed to satisfy this need yourself, or because you literally went over to it and hit the key to scratch, you would then be in trouble, yelled at, etc. You would not be yelled at for scratching things appropriate to the purpose, such as scratching posts, cat trees, etc. I also think there should be the possibility to climb onto surfaces the family doesn't want you on, like the counter tops, stove tops, refrigerator, dining table, etc. Also, I think you should have the ability to knock stuff over by walking into it.

SO, maybe the game has challenges, but its hybrid sandbox, hybrid meaning you can, for the most part, do what you want as long as you're willing to accept the consequences. Maybe this could be a scolding, to in home obedience, or obedience classes, to, if you're really really bad, they give you up, and the game would end.

It would be great if the husband and wife were voice acted, and we had a game that was like this, you could walk or run and jump, climb, scratch, eat drink, piss shit, claw fight, bite, etc. etc. etc.

I would love to see a game come out like this, but I don't have high hopes of it becoming a thing sad

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2018-01-08 03:59:09

I already see the greatest problem with the Husband and wife voice acting aspect of things... You'll want your cats to have a name, so unless you get someone who's exceptionally devoted to the project who is willing to pre-record like, a kagillion different names at least 10 different ways to show different types of connotation and emotion and such, you certainly won't have a very believable experience.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2018-01-08 05:25:21

"Kitty" "Cat" and that "Ããñ" noise so popular in the Southern US and French can go pretty far, ne? "AINT! Mal Chat! Te jets de lá!"
This would be hard to do without actual 3d, because cats live in 3 dimensions more than most of us. I want it anyway. sad

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2018-01-08 15:24:00

I am not sure how you can get a good cat sim in terms of something new but a couple things to hold you over that I know about.

Choice of the Cat from Choiceofgames is an interactive fiction where you get to do all sorts of things as a cat in an interactive story. It's 600,000 words which means there's a lot to do as most choiceofgames titles are 200,000 or less. So you might get a little kick out of that playing through it a few times.

Huboodle has just come out and Battlecats, a reskinned version of APP A11y's first game "Word War" is also present in this one with their other games and it's a wordsearch game with cat themed visuals and sound effects for your enjoyment.

That's all I got for you on the cat front that I know of. I'd be happy for a much better pet sim on IOS or Android than  Hatchy or a couple like that that was accessible. Who knows, maybe App A11y will do it as they are trying to make all sorts of stuff for huboodle and I see more chance of success for them as they are not aiming at our niche directly as many developers do and are aiming to catch both sighted and blind gamers in their thing and so they've made the games accessible, but also had plenty of pretty visuals for those that can enjoy them.

2018-01-08 15:52:47

exploding kittens is also a thing.  though unless you buy a kit from 24 oz games, you'd have to get help playing.
thanks for the reminder to try choice of the cat!  I'm really behind on choice of games again. sad

2018-01-08 17:44:06

Cats have the need to scratch because it helps stretch out their paws and claws.

2018-01-08 18:55:03

also, come to think of it there is Animal Acres at animalacres.net and that has some cat stuff in it as one of the base pets you can get. and that's a pretty cute and time-wasting pet sim too.

2018-01-08 18:55:58

@Nocturnus If someone could integrate text to speech somehow, you could code a network that can show emotion. I'm not sure how well that would work, but in theory it's possible. It would also give you the advantage of choosing what you want your cat's name to be. Personally, I'd like to have a full on  pet simulator, i.e, dog, cat, parrot, goldfish... you get the picture.

Discord: dangero#0750
Steam: dangero2000
TWITCH
YOUTUBE and YOUTUBE DISCORD SERVER

2018-01-09 12:22:33

You could always make a female and a male version of a cat. After all, you don't choose your name. I guess going back to post 3, what I'm saying is, there are work arounds against the naming issue. Just include 2 names as parts of the story line, and that will take care of it.

2018-01-09 15:38:17

if the game even has a story though. Some games that are sims are open-ended sandboxes which seems to be what is wanted here. In that case you could have a female and male couple set of generic names, or you could simply used kitty nicknames.

We had this horrible white cat when I was a kid, though how horrible she was doesn't come into this example and her name was Snowball. However, after a time she simply just became "kitty" as we called her that so much.

So what could be done if you had voice actors is have them record for a few things like Kitty, tiger, girl, and boy and you could pick one when you started.. You could also have some stock names if you really wanted something specific, but only a few of the most common for cats.

2018-01-09 17:25:24

right

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2018-01-15 11:56:42

Thanks for the reminder about "Choice of The Cat."