May Devlog - Catgirl Demo Almost Ready (Patreon)

Hello again! Welcome to another devlog about my catgirl game, Catgirl Care.

I've been making a lot of progress on the game - so much so, in fact, that I almost decided to put off making this devlog so that I could focus on finishing up the demo. In fact, let's start with that.

The Demo

The first public demo for Catgirl Care is almost ready, but I want you to keep your expectations managed. This demo is an alpha which means that most of the game isn't done yet. This demo is primarily focused on the catgirl customization and free roaming gameplay. The core gameplay loop for raising catgirls is going to be the focus of the next public build.

There's a part of me that thinks I can get the demo ready to play within a week or so but the reality is that a demo will likely take me a bit longer than that. Currently, I still need to finish the playable environment and polish off a few more quirks, but everything's manageable and should be ready for playtesting soon.

I expect the demo to release in June. When it does, it will be released through itch.io as a Patreon exclusive build (like with my previous projects). After that, I want to get back to work on Rockin' Resort where I hope to prepare the first public release of that project.

So what's been added since the last devlog?

Main Menu

I decided to start this month's work towards releasing a demo with making the game feel a bit more like a proper release. One of the biggest missing elements for that was the main menu.

Up until this month, Catgirl Care was only the character creation menu and the debug room. The two scenes can transition between each other, but there was no root starting point for the game or a place to adjust game options.

Now the game has both of those! The main menu is a bit barren at the moment but it does its job fairly well. The settings menu is where I've put in a bit more work.

If you've played Catgirl Care Chibi (which you should!), you may recognize the layout of the settings menu. Settings menus aren't the most glamorous part of gamedev but they're extremely important to get right, especially for PC games like Catgirl Care.

I've made a few settings menus at this point and there's a few things this menu does that I'm happy with. One of the main things is that the UI works well for both controller and keyboard. Usually there's a tradeoff - I have to pick which one I'm prioritizing. For this game, the sliders + spinboxes give enough options for both input methods which works really nicely.

The other thing I like (which I've done a few times now but never really discussed) is the "Additional Sliders" button. I often see streamers lower game music or sound effects while on the main menu of the game and as an audio engineer it infuriates me a tiny bit. You haven't started playing yet! How could you possibly know better than the game's audio team before even hitting play? Main menus are almost always not representative of the in-game music/voice/sfx mix.

I understand wanting to lower the volume of a game (especially as a streamer) but all games have a way to control the application volume without impacting the creative decisions of the audio team. Usually this main volume slider is labeled something like "Master Volume".

While it's tempting for me as a dev to remove the ability for players to modify the submixes for my games, I also recognize that some players need these options for accessibility reasons.

For my games, I implement a tiny bit of friction with the submix sliders by having them hidden away behind an "Additional Sliders" button. I also label the master slider just "volume" to avoid confusion. My hope is that this system encourages well-meaning players and streamers to reach for the main volume slider instead of the submixes, allowing me to keep the dynamic relationships I planned for intact while still allowing those who need the submixes to still have access to them.

While I'm on the subject of UI improvements, I've also been improving the catgirl editor's UI. The biggest change is Godot's FoldableContainer node (this node didn't exist when I first made the menu), which I think clarifies what each option edits while also making navigating large parameter lists easier.

A lot of the changes I've mentioned here aren't super big by themselves but I felt like bringing them up since UI has become more and more of a focus for me over time. Games are software just as much as they are 3D/2D experiences and their menus should be as intuitive to navigate as their worlds.

It's not much but I want this level of attention to detail to carry across Catgirl Care's development. I've been planning to make this game for several years, so I hope I can do it properly now that I'm finally here.

Catgirl-friendly Environment

Catgirl Care was never intended as a grey cube with a bridge so, while the debug room is nice, it's time to make a serious environment. Eventually the game will have a number of different places to visit but to start with, I want to make a section of a park.

The park is still an early work in progress, but I'm pretty happy with how it's starting to come together. It's a simple area with a small field, a restroom, and a big roadway blocking access to the rest of the park (so I can add more park later!).

The environment is still missing most of its textures and things like lights or foliage (expect a bunch of trees) but I feel like the area already reads as "park". I'm planning to finish this area in time for the first public release so look forward to that!

I've also added a fun park ambiance system. There's a handful of looping park soundscapes that the game will transition between to create a pleasant atmosphere. It's a cool effect, I think, and it keeps the world's sound from being repetitive so I'll probably port this system over to Rockin' Resort too.

Speaking of things I plan to port to Rockin' Resort, let's talk about the new sky!

The sky shader I wrote for Rockin' Resort works really well but I always felt the clouds were kinda ugly. That said, I never wanted to do a fully volumetric system for performance reasons so I've been keeping an eye out for a while for an alternative system.

Well, I finally found Yui Kinomoto's cloud shader and realized I could do something similar. After taking a look at their open source code, I've combined their concepts with my existing sky shader to make what I think is a much better cloud system.

The way it works is by drawing multiple layers of layered value noise with small perspective offsets. The "higher" clouds receive the main color while each "lower" layer adds in more and more of the cloud's shadow color, creating a detailed cloud without any real textures. They even move across the sky!

What's Next?

My main focus is going to be on getting Catgirl Care's first patron-only demo out. That'll require me to finish the park environment and a couple smaller additions. I expect that'll be done this upcoming month!

After the demo is out, I'd like to get the current patreon-only Rockin' Resort out for people to try out. I'll need to make a few changes to make a SFW build of the game and a NSFW patch but that shouldn't take long and I'll be back to developing Rockin' Resort after that.

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Thanks for supporting my work! This has been a big month for development and my art. I don't have any plans on stopping this momentum and it's all thanks to your continued support. I'll likely not have a devlog this upcoming month due to the releases so I'll talk to you again after you get a hand on Catgirl Care for the first time, so I hope you all have fun! Thanks again for your support!