Esports30 Oct 2022Spooky Halloween EventThis is totally random but, if you want to try something totally different check out our new game The Backrooms This wasn't exactly planned but when working on Episode II there were a number of new features we were trying to implement surrounding dozens of AI perceptions operating in a single environment And of course dynamic water A single player horror survival game that places you in a maze…
This is the first major content update in a while. I've been primarily focusing on CAT Interstellar: Episode II but development has taken a little longer than I expected so I thought I would push some more content to the original in the mean time. So, UPDATE 6.1.0 (Win/Linux) THE CAT!!!! The Cat character in Chapter 5 has been totally revamped from the ground up. New meshes, new logic, and even…
Purpose So, CAT Interstellar: Recast was an effort to explore and learn all the new features in Unreal Engine 5 in the hope of using it for Episode II ... I don't want to say this effort was a mistake (it wasn't) but: · It took a lot longer than expected due to bugs in the early access version of the engine · Ultimately doesn't offer as solid of a build even with increased system specs · Higher…
New DOG VII model We commissioned Ionut, the original designer of DOG, to make an ultra hi-poly version that leveraged Unreal Engine 5's nanite mesh Technology. The resulting model is about 500,000 polygons and is a huge improvement in terms of fidelity and detail. Screenshot tool We were able to implement PULSAR BYTES Cine Cam as a screenshot tool so players have a lot more control over their…
We're going to be live streaming development of the upgraded CAT Interstellar. Working on the cave environment. We're gonna stream here for an hour then switch to RECAR
CAT Interstellar: Recast is now available on the Steam store. Broadcast link We'll be doing broadcasts for most of the day so feel free to drop in even if it's just to tell us what we did wrong. Seriously, If you've followed this game for any amount of time you know that I genuinely appreciate your feedback even if it's bad and respond to everything.... You could also just say "Hi". I don't wan…
So, you might have noticed we launched a Steam store for a Remastered version of CAT Interstellar using the Unreal Engine 5. I will now attempt to explain · Why we decided to remaster the original · Improvements made to the game · Why we made it a separate application · How owners of the original can get access before release This post goes out to GraVE . Feel free to comment on any of his thre…
Encrypted Message from Colonel Alexander - Sergeant Gary Freeman, your leave request has been denied indefinitely. I’m sure you expected as much but I hate to be the one to officially decline it. I understand you have a son back on Earth but we require your immediate attention. We do not yet know all the details that led to the collapse of our Martian SkyLift network nor the likelihood of the c…
I've never done one of these live streams before but we have to gin up support somehow so... Let's do a Face Reveal!?! Ionized Games face reveal for 1 million followers and a billion dollars!!! Ziggy, Our Chief Financial Officer might even make an appearance! We'll take an inside look at Episode II And even see how close I've gotten to porting the Episode I over to UE4.26! April 26, at 7:15 CST…
Finally I am so flippin excited to announce what everyone probably already guessed: CAT Interstellar: Episode II That's right, we're officially developing the second installment of the CAT Interstellar series and it's gonna be nuts!!! We got Martian Rovers, Marines hunting Android 42, possibly the ability to fly this thing and best of all - some closure to the story arc ːDOGV4ːːDOGV4ːːDOGV4ːːDO…
Price hike You read that correctly, against all conventional thinking I’m actually going to raise the price of this game to $9.99 USD . The one thing I want all the newcomers here to know is… we have no idea what we’re doing. Seriously, not a clue. BUT I’ve learned a little bit over the last 5 years releasing this game on Steam and the PlayStation Store and I can assure you I won't make an extr…
Turing Canyon A favorite site among Martian Advertiser selling the idea of a terraformed Mars. Turing Canyon was formed from millions of gallons of defrosted water runoff caused by the initial nuclear bombardment stage of the planet. The storm pressure above the canyon raises the barometeric pressure to 9psi allowing for larger Earth origin fauna and flora to live without pressure suits. Rovers…
Ziggy , our junior programmer, has shown incredible potential in economic theory and so we’ve promoted him to Chief Financial Officer. His first act as CFO is to dramatically increase profits by making CAT Interstellar a Pay-To-Win… er… I mean, Free-To-Play game. It is worth noting that Kitty , the Treasurer at Ionized Games, has concerns that a single player game with no microtransactions, str…
Barring any major bugs discovered this will be the version used for the full release. Why do a Full Release? CAT Interstellar was always intended to be about an hour long and tell a very short story about an unfortunate event on Mars. I think it meets the requirements of the original design document. Regardless, doing a Full Release has a number of benefits, one of them being my psyche, with th…
TL;DR this is the full story of CAT Interstellar with the subtitle system re-vamped. This build is worth another play-through from beginning to end. Content · Cave scene ending with all triggers and key events. · Signals full sequence of events. · Credits completed. · Added additional dialog sequences to “The Base” and “Credits”. Adjustments · Added a second Android type. · Adjusted mechanics o…
TL;DR This update includes additional dialog, a remapped version of “The Surface”, numerous bug fixes, and Ansel support. This update probably doesn't warrant a fresh play-through if you've already been through once. First off, I want to welcome the massive influx of players during the Steam Summer sale. Thank you for giving this little game a shot and hopefully you stick around for the ending.…
DOG-VI Introducing DOG-VI, the final update to the main character. DOG has been through a number of iterations from the original game jam submission, to the first public build, to a version that was actually textured :), and finally the current style... Epic Game Jam Submission First Public build DOG-V - Textured DOG-VI Final Version Animation Improvement There were a lot of limitations to the…
This update deals exclusively with optimizations to the game. The three principal areas of optimization are draw calls , Texture memory , and dynamic lighting improvements . The benchmark goal I have kept with this game is a minimum of 30fps at 1080p on a gtx 750. With this latest patch I’ve been getting 60fps for most of the game. CPU Optimizations: One of the CPU bottlenecks I found was the n…
The main purpose of this build is to get feedback on the new cat mechanics. I’ve purposefully left out the fate of DOG and Android 42 as well as the ending of Signals because I need to keep some suspense for the final release. Update/Fixes · The Signals level has been significantly expanded. There’s some story centric pieces missing (Like dialog) but the general layout is in place. · The contro…
VR Plugins Disabled Unfortunately in the last update I left the Oculus libraries and SteamVR API plugins enabled. I've been doing a lot of work with VR lately and forgot to disable them. Most users wouldn't have noticed but if you had Oculus Home or SteamVR installed it was most likely causing a headache so I wanted to patch it as quickly as possible. Community Screenshot Challenge This is also…
Update Notes: · Voice Acting - You now how the option to switch between voice acting and subtitles at the main menu. Thank you to all the community members who submitted voice acting for the game. If you don’t see your submission in the game yet I’m still processing the audio files and it will be in the next update. · Destructible meshes - The rock animations for opening up new cave sections wa…
Don’t be deceived by the title this is more of me trying to get your opinion than an update. I was hoping to get this out yesterday but Colorado has had some pretty crazy winds the last couple days (100+mph) and the internet has been in and out. I’ll go over the update notes, Community, and then a little bit about development. I’d love to get your input on any of it. Update Notes: · Android 42’…
First As Always, thank you for all your support through this project. I’ll give the details about the current update, an update on development, and another community key give away. Update 1.9 Full Linux support* *until proven otherwise. I’ve traced down every build error and shader issue. The game currently runs as well on Linux as it does on Windows. All Linux testing was done on: Ubuntu 16.10…
First off If you don’t know how to program you can still help. This can be thought of strictly as a logical problem. There are dozens of ways to solve this problem. I just thought it would be really interesting to see what you all thought. Just leave a comment here or start a thread if you want to get crazy. I'll hand out keys to everyone when we decide on a solution. The Problem Android 42’s d…
Update 1.8.2 This is a smaller update dealing with the transition from the Mine to the Cave along with some generic bugs like the text box audio not being attenuated. If you’ve already played through the current build, there isn’t much new so I wouldn’t recommend playing through again until the next update. I’m going to hold off on pushing the rest of the cave system until the next update. It’s…
Update 1.8.1 This isn't a huge update but I want to get back in the routine of pushing what we have roughly every other week. There's a lot of little things like grammatical errors and objects in weird places that we fixed but most of the dev time was spent on events, VR, and Android 42's movement. Level Design The Surface level now requires you to complete the SkyLift mission before continuing…
V1.8 Update Thank you for sticking with us while we fixed a few things. Here are the update Notes: Environments Levels The Base and Mine environments have been expanded into their own levels. The environments are one of the stronger aspects of CAT Interstellar and the Base and Mine just weren’t up to snuff. We also hated the idea of confining the player to long corridors of dialog. Now the game…
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Announcements are the developer’s own posts to the game’s Steam news feed: updates and their patch notes, in-game events, releases and sales. The important ones are marked on the players chart.