This development plan has been re-written as of January 5, 2022 - -

Pre-Alpha Development - Completed December 2020

In this stage, the basic infrastructure of the site is constructed such that it is in a playable state. Pre-Alpha art asset work began in September of 2019, and Pre-Alpha development began in December of 2019. This phase was fully completed in December of 2020.

Social Features and Account Core: Forums, Messages, Notifications, Moderation Features, Logging in and out

- Players can log in and out, as well as sign up for the site.
- Players can friend and block/report each other.
- Players can post in the forums, featuring bump, lock, and pin functions.
- Players can edit and customize their profile and settings.
- Players can send each other messages, friend requests, and ping each other in the forums.
- Admins and moderators are able to log warnings, ban or suspend users, and review reported content.

Gameplay and Account Core: Weather & Seasons, Introductory Sequence, Cats & Apparel, Scenes & Decorations, Inventory System

- The weather changes each day, and the weather forecast updates throughout the week. Seasons change every 7 weeks.
- Players will see the introductory plotline and be prompted to create their first cat, and choose five randomized friends for their cats.
- Players will be able to view and organize their cats, dress them in apparel, give them trinkets, rename them, and edit their bios.
- Players will be able to view and organize their scenes, apply buildings and decor, place cats within those scenes, and edit the scenes' descriptions.
- Players will be able to view their inventory of items.

Daily Tasks Basics: Daily Item Pull from the Meeting Grounds, Occupations and Gathering Resources, Crafting System

- Players will be able to visit Nestor once a day to be given either one random item or encounter a cat that they could recruit to their village.
- Players will be able to assign their cats day jobs and send them out to gather resources (based on their skills) once per day.
- Players will be able to build buildings to unlock crafting stations where they can change resources into useful items, decor, or apparel.


Alpha Development - Completed February 2022

A small number of alpha testers in this stage are invited to play the game while the remaining main gameplay features are implemented. Alpha development began at the end of December 2020.

Daily Tasks Expanded: Feeding Cats, Cat Social Interactions & Intercat Relationships/Kittens

- Players will be able to feed their cats once per day to boost some of their stats, depending on the meal.
- Players will be able to socialize with their cats, and allow them to befriend each other, fall in love, become rivals, and otherwise interact.
- Cats will be able to have kittens, who will age and grow with time.
- Nestor will occasionally present cats with kittens in need of adoption.
- Cats can create and use specialty items that add or remove relationships.

Map and Travel: Ability to Send Cats Traveling, World Map

- A world map becomes available which will change as the world develops
- Players can send their cats out traveling, which removes them from taking up village space and prevents them from interacting with the site. These cats have a rare chance of sending home letters and gifts, which could even contain unreleased items before their release date.
- Players can permanently remove cats from the game by sending them to the city. Cats leaving for the city will leave behind small gifts.

Market and Trades: User Sales/Trades of Items and Cats, City-Specific Daily Market/Shops

- Players can list their items in a marketplace to trade with each other
- Players can initiate private secure trades or send gifts.
- Players can adopt cats from other villages in a Cats for Hire area.
- Players can visit the city market and shops, where they can buy a daily selection of goods, or sell a daily selection of crafted materials for a currency.
- Players can place items in a secure place for safekeeping so that they are not accidentally used or sold.

Adventuring Part I: Main Adventuring Infrastructure, Monster/Area Design, Party Creation and Gear

- Seven classes and over 60 different skills and abilities are designed and implemented.
- Players can set up their adventuring team and assign classes and skills to parties of up to four cats.
- Players can craft gear and other items or equipment to be used in adventuring.
- A collectables system is added where users can try to complete various sets of special items and put them on display.


Beta Development - Active

An additional, slightly larger group of beta testers will be invited as the site is rounded out with the remaining core features and prepares to scale up in size.

Post-Alpha Clean-up: Village Lodge and Leadership Positions, Unlocking New Scenes, Additional Specialty Items, Moderation clean-up

- Players can build the village lodge, unlocking mayors, the purchase of new scenes, and additional special leadership jobs
- Additional specialty items are added, such as the Catmint tea item to make cats start a family
- The systems for moderation, friendship/blocking and other social pieces are cleaned up as they are one of the oldest parts of the site.

Adventuring Part II: Adventure System with Combat, Leveling, Loot, Skill Challenges, Ability to Ascend Cats

- Parties of four can now actually go adventuring to the first location, The Heart of the Woods, where they will encounter monsters to fight, or skill challenges to face (such as hidden objects, encounters with other cats, river obstacles, and much much more.)
- Parties of four, when they reach the last stage of each adventure location, will face a boss and unlock one-time rewards such as more cat slots, items, and so on.
- Cats when adventuring will bring home loot and treasure.
- Cats at a certain level with a Heart of Nestor item can ascend, altering their appearance and granting them permanent stat boosts, but preventing them from being able to perform day-jobs and other functions as a trade-off.

Seasonal Events: Four Different Seasonal/Cycling Events

- Snowmelt: First week of spring, Cats are more likely to start new relationships and have kittens, there are special holiday collectibles and decor/apparel.
- Midsummer: Fourth week of Summer, Cats can participate in themed athletic or skill-based events and tournaments for badges and prizes.
- Leaf Day: Fifth week of Autumn, A harvest festival where food is much more plentiful, and there are special holiday collectibles and decor/apparel.
- Candlelight: Fourth week of Winter, Ghosts come out and leave mystery gifts and coins which can be exchanged for special decor/apparel.

End of Beta Round-up: Preparation for Scaling Up (aka Funding Servers) with Premium Currency, Usermade Clothing and Decor,

- Premium currency and items are added. This includes the first alternate cat species: Mercats, along with some aquatic themed delights. There may or may not be some kind of fundraiser in order to actually get a server that can handle more players.
- Players can submit and make their own usermade clothing and decor for cats and scenes.

Cat Relationships Expansion: Mentors, more dynamic family, and more. This is technically complicated, and so is late on the list due to logistics issues that need to be worked out.

- Introduction of a new intergenerational relationship called Mentor/Fosterling, where a much older cat can give personal guidance, advice, support, and more to a younger cat.
- Family can also be friends, best friends, mentors, and rivals!
- Found family! Make two cats found siblings, etc.
- Tentative: Surrogacy/adoption system where cat couples can have beans for another cat couple, without having to wait for Nestor to RNG up some beans


Post-Beta Development - Distant Future

At this point, the site should hopefully be stable, so I can resume work on the exciting larger planned features I have, that were fun but not necessary for the site to exist. The hope is that the site will have a collectively progressing world plot, with lots of special exciting events and changes along the way.

Secret Societies: Quests and Tavern, Guild-like system

- Players can join one of an assortment of super secret cat societies, which function like smaller playerbase groups to build a special sense of team camaraderie
- Players can take on regularly-refreshing group quests at their secret society's tavern, which provide goals and things to acquire in adventuring and can be exchanged for currency and special group rewards.

Magic: New Adventure Location, Unlock Magic System and New Magic Classes

- Players can visit the Glowbug Cave adventure location where the final boss is replaced with a magical gemstone that they take home.
- Players can visit this gemstone once per day, upon which each of their cats has a small chance of developing a magical power based on one of the magical aspects.
- New magic classes are unlocked for adventuring
- New magic leadership positions are unlocked by building the magic spire
- The first major cooperative world plot event takes place. :3

Alchemy: World Plots, Increased Cat Customization, and Non-Natural Cat Colors

- Players can use alchemy to craft potions, which are transformative / special items (For example, to change a cat's wind, colors, fur length, and more)
- The second major cooperative world plot event takes place. :3
- Non-natural cat colors are added. (Black/Grey & Orange/Cream groups will be accompanied by: Purple/Lavender, Blue/Ice, Burgundy/Pink, Gold/Yellow, & Green/Teal)
- Players can change their village's allegiance away from Nestor and to someone new

Assorted Long-Term Ideas: More Goodies that are Planned

- Players can move their locations to new regions for a new choice of backgrounds.
- Alternate species / cat designs in a similar pose, like folded ears/bobtail, and other such things. It's a very important goal of mine to push the boundaries of how far I can push a cat away from being a "cat" before it stops being a cat. You can expected extra tails, legs, interesting anatomy, and things that only tangentially resemble cats, to all be future additions.
- Mechanic job to build clocks, steam-powered things
- Achievements and user/cat badges

Links to Suggestions & Threads of Note

This does not include hub posts pinned to the top of the forum. Please look at those first before starting a new thread or your thread will be locked and redirected to one of those!

Bug Log - Contains a list of currently on-the-table bug fixes and quality of life fixes.

Blanket Fort - This is my adoptables thread that was the inspiration for this project. It can be used as a good source of my previous pixel art work!

Development Plan Update: Happy New Year 2022! Since it has been a year since the site first entered alpha, it's time for me to remodel my development plan. The front post has been updated with this new version of the timeline.