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TOPIC | Welcome to Early Alpha

Not-cat with a black solid shorthair coatno white markings neutral eyes. aaaaaaaaaaObsidian SmokeWhite Wildflower CrownBlue Wildflower Necklace

Squid

The Not-Village

(they/them)

admin

Dec 21, 2020 16:49:17
welcome to alpha!!

Hello there and welcome to the first day of alpha testing for Cat's End! Approximately 10% of the site's features are now implemented, which isn't much, but we're here just to check that the base level features are working while I begin to work on and implement the rest.

At this point in development, the site is completely closed and is only usable by me and a few trusted friends. Read more to learn more about what actually exists right now, see some potentially frequently asked questions, and find out a bit about what the next couple of months will look like.

For a full development plan, please visit this post here in the Dev Corner.

Read more about this update
-- Last edited on Oct 28, 2021 11:36:44
teahug
Cat's End Artist/Developer
Hope all of you are enjoying your cat time!
Not-cat with a black solid shorthair coatno white markings neutral eyes. aaaaaaaaaaObsidian SmokeWhite Wildflower CrownBlue Wildflower Necklace

Squid

The Not-Village

(they/them)

admin

Dec 21, 2020 17:03:35
tea Summary of Development Roadmap

On Cat's End, users are able to decorate and customize their collections of cats and the villages in which they live. Cats can be assigned jobs so that they can gather materials and craft new decorative items, and in the future will be able to go on tabletop-inspired adventures to battle monsters and take on other challenges.

Please visit this thread for a full and detailed development plan/roadmap.

Alpha will be divided into two phases:

Part 1. Implementation of Daily Activities (Gathering Resources, Crafting Items, Social Interactions, Kitten and Baby Mechanics)

Part 2. Implementation of World-Level Activities (Adventuring System, Market & Trading Systems, Quest Systems, event systems)


sparkles What is Implemented?

- Account Features (profiles, visibility settings, moderation settings and features)
- Forums and Pings, PMs, Profiles & Profile Comments, and other social features
- Cat Profiles (cats can be given jobs, dressed, and edited)
- Scenes (scenes can be decorated and given descriptions)
- Meeting Grounds (users can receive new cats and items from Nestor once per day)
- Gathering Resources (each cat can go gathering each day and bring back materials and other items)
- The framework for the Crafting System (with only a minimal number of items necessary to test it)


eyes What is Coming Soon?

Coding Short-term Goals:
- Some fun fun role testing adventures
- Making sure what exists now isn't totally broken
- Preview Center / Sandbox (a place and way to preview items a user doesn't currently own)
- Allowing users to re-order their scenes
- Un-hecking the language filter
- Other small tweaks and fixes

Art Short-Term Goals:
- Finishing the backlog of base craftable items (clothing, furniture, etc.)

Next Long-Term Phase:
- Feeding cats
- Daily socialization encounters
- Cat relationships
- Cat beans, kittens & families
-- Last edited on Oct 28, 2021 11:37:59
teahug
Cat's End Artist/Developer
Hope all of you are enjoying your cat time!
Not-cat with a black solid shorthair coatno white markings neutral eyes. aaaaaaaaaaObsidian SmokeWhite Wildflower CrownBlue Wildflower Necklace

Squid

The Not-Village

(they/them)

admin

Dec 21, 2020 17:04:30
rally Information for Alpha Testers

Oh boy is it a lot, but here are some things we'll start with:

The Mistakes: I ran into an issue where behavior on my personal computer during development differed from behavior on the live server because they have different operating systems. I tried to do some cleanup, but it's possible something got missed or forgotten when I was trying to fix this, so keep an eye out for general weirdness.

Sign-Up Process: Did it make sense? Did you feel lost at any point or need more information? Did you feel like you had some idea of what to do once you escaped from the sign-in sequence?

Along those lines, are interfaces at least somewhat comprehensible? The site can be navigated fully using only a keyboard, and this limits some types of interfaces. Most notably: I struggle to use drag and drop and thus struggle to test it as well. For now, there is nothing that requires drag and drop or things like that.

Item Droprates: A significant number of items may feel like you're not getting enough in the first few days. When Adventuring appears, many of these high-use items will drop as battle loot, which will significantly increase the amount you have. The same is true of Trinkets, which will appear in Adventuring, and also will be brought back by Kittens. It's very plausible that you will not see a single trinket during this early time. They are out there, I swear.

If you're like me, you're probably crying for more sticks. Oh god there aren't enough sticks. I will take down a whole tree for sticks. I'm hungry for sticks.... Anyway, those will drop like candy in adventuring. Sorry for your suffering in the meantime.

Crafting Prices: I basically threw in random numbers for kicks. We'll definitely need to do some re-balancing as time goes on. If you feel like you are crafting items too quickly, this is something we'll want to know!

I am Drowning in Food Oh God Oh No: Feeding is next on my list of big features to implement. Soon your cats will feast. Until then, prepare them... For the feast of all feasts.

Cat Capacity: There is currently no way to get rid of cats or increase your capacity. If we get to a point where we're within 10 of the cap, I intend to skip ahead to the map and travel section as that should be quick, so that you can yeet some of them out traveling [temporary remove from game] or to the city [permanent remove from game].

Winter is Coming...: Bad timing from the universe, really. A lot of stuff doesn't drop in the Winter, and winter may feel pretty sparse and long. You'll probably find that you long for the affectionate gaze of a flower.

The winter features just aren't here yet, but they will be. I do plan to add some more winter-exclusive items to make winter feel less hollow, and in the distant future there will be a very fun and exciting winter event involving befriending ghosts! Hold on to your little cat boots and we'll get through this.

The same will be true of Autumn. My test building items use a spring/summer-exclusive kind of leaf. I plan to get autumn recolors up for the autumn leaves asap.

Broken Links / Incorrect Access: Try to keep an eye out for things that you can see but don't let you access them, or things that you probably shouldn't be able to access but for some reason can.

Attempt to commit crimes. See how that goes.

Graphic Design is not my Pasion: Always love to receive color and design tweaks or changes because CSS and I have this relationship where we fistfight each other in a parking lot until someone gives in (and usually the one giving in is me.)

You may also want to test things out on various browsers and on mobile. My test site was exclusive to my computer and I definitely did not test everything in every browser. I wasn't able to test on mobile at all so that should be interesting...

Pixel art and mobile don't always get along, but we'll see what we can do.

A Tour of the World: This is a really fancy way of me saying that I'm going to be bringing my couple of alpha testers on a tour of each role level. You'll get to take turns being suspended or banned or in a mod role. Oh boy!

You'll also be encouraged to friend, unfriend, and repeatedly block and unblock each other. Better to be able to skirt a block of a secret friend than to have someone creeping on your profile on a live site.

Data Wipes: I will be trying my absolute best to not wipe data at any point. You'll have your cats and such from here on out unless something terrible happens. I don't want to make promises, because it is possible something terrible happens or needs to be fixed, but you don't need to anticipate a full data wipe at any point.
-- Last edited on Oct 28, 2021 11:38:29
teahug
Cat's End Artist/Developer
Hope all of you are enjoying your cat time!
Not-cat with a black solid shorthair coatno white markings neutral eyes. aaaaaaaaaaObsidian SmokeWhite Wildflower CrownBlue Wildflower Necklace

Squid

The Not-Village

(they/them)

admin

Dec 27, 2020 11:11:20
hi Information for Prospective Users

When will I be able to join? I would expect alpha to last at least another year. The main limitation here is that I do not yet have the means to fund a proper server and I need to focus my attention on building rather than on playerbase support. I may let a few more people in, depending on what it's able to handle, but for the most part it will be closed to the public.

When Beta happens, I may start bringing in small groups of people to test how things scale up, but more news on that is a long way off. I don't intend to have a fully open beta at any point, and even in the full release I would prefer to run via registration windows. I'm just one person doing this for fun, and I know that a site that grows too fast would quickly become overwhelming for me alone and could be hard to wrangle.

let me in im crying meme.jpg In the meantime, you can follow my social media for updates, check the site and see what people are doing here, and even hit the random button on the front page to your heart's content. I don't know that I will be particularly active on social media as it a bit scares and confuses me, but I'll post little bits of things I'm working on along with updates over there.
-- Last edited on Oct 28, 2021 11:38:53
teahug
Cat's End Artist/Developer
Hope all of you are enjoying your cat time!
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