The islands are done! :3 news

A MILESTONE HAS BEEN REACHED

After almost a year of working on the biggest part of this game, namely the environments and its puzzle objects, they are now at a point where only tweaking and bug-fixing is left. :3

The biggest part of the island creation process was making it use as few texture atlases as possible to reduce draw calls and to make huge numbers of objects manageable for a small team. The other part was making it so that we could allow to have just one scene for the whole game so that everything is loaded at the same time so once you start playing you will not be interrupted by any loading screens when exploring. This also lead to a long period of graphic style concerns which took a bit of time to prepare for.

ABOUT THE ISLANDS

Catface islands is an island group somewhere in the middle of the pacific ocean. Probably as far away from both Asia and America as you can get without it being uncomfortably close to Antarctica. The main three islands are Catface island, Squeak point and Guinea peak. The first of the three is the main island, in the shape of the number 3. The other two make up a circular dot each, which makes all three of them combined form the smiley :3 known as the colonthree.

Catmouth island is the biggest of the islands, and is where most of the game takes place. It has the majority of the living space, the main industrial area and the town centre. The residential area is called Meow Village, the town is called Catface Town, and the industrial area is called Lion Shores. There is also a mountain range that hosts a windmill park and the odd mountain cottage.

Squeak point is home to a restaurant on the top of it, as well as having the biggest beach area. It has become the recreational island, and is popular with the surfers. Sadly the lack of waves makes surfing hard, but they are trying to see if they can use the wind for something. Maybe attaching a sail to the surfboard or something.

Guinea peak is a tall mountainous island home to two brothers from another mothers. They live in a house right on top of it, which before used to be the look-out spot. Since the only ship that comes into contact with the island group somehow knows the way every time, they have demolished the light house and replaced it with a windmill instead. This island is only accessible by boat, so if you don't have a boat you are screwed.

WHAT IS NEXT TO DO

Obviously we are not done yet. What comes next is populating the islands with a select variety of NPCs, and placing out the minor objects like chairs, tables, signs and puzzle-related objects. A few of the NPCs have been done already, but there will be more! We want to give the impression that this is a living island society, and not just something for show. There will be plenty of things to talk about, and plenty of things to go about.

Further improvement of graphics, performance and keeping the file size low are also key to making this game play good. This is a continuous process that will be going until the game is released. Even then we cannot promise every glitch has been taken into account, but we will do our best to make sure it will not directly destroy the gameplay.

So there you have it, the islands of Catmouth Island. :3