Wake the cat - New Demo - with a cat - Day 16.

 Been a busy weekend - lots of new work.

On the windchimes side I'm really getting somewhere - this demo has easy working access to all kinds of windchimes tuned by culture and soundscape - I think it's pretty cool and the general topic of culture and musical keys is really interesting. I'm happy for this as a background soundscape solution for different levels.

On the game side I made a couple of extra pieces: a rotational ring thing that goes round and round; a static cat platform; the ability to draw text in the world on signs ; and I finally made a cat!

I'm not really happy with the cat shape (bull-terrier-shape?) nor the implementation and I hope I'll have time to do it again. However I am pleased with the generated fur textures, the eyes  and ears, and the ability to make different cat-coats (although the tabby pattern is a bit weird still).

The system can also generate different levels from a level factory and has a 'wake the cat' success outcome (which just logs to console so far). So I'm getting there, but it's day 16 so I'd better be!

So here is a demo of the latest 'test level' with a whole whack of different objects. 

The big outstanding technical hurdles are: VR hardware integration (I've got a pretty good idea how to do this but there is time, technicality and work here); design for another 10+ levels (long, hard, detailed work); sound FX for moving bits and the cat (no idea; but hope to mostly vibe code it with the Web Audio API);  and setting up a tool chain for compression (I've done it before how hard can it be?).

So far so good but my other life is looking busy!

    

Wake the Cat - Demo 2 - It Moves! Day 15

 Got the movement and some mechanical pieces for my new game. 

This demo shows my piston like piece (three state expansion), a simple moving needle and an static cat basket.

The pistons demo how pieces can be attached to each other; and the needles are set up to test the detection of collisions between objects (which causes them to 'bounce back'), finally the system of passing through clicks allows the basket to activate the needle beneath it. All important bits for my game.

Still no cat though!

Wake The Cat - First Demo

 Have been getting some work done on basic elements for my puzzle game - here is a demo showing a cat basket and some pointy knitting needles - all textures generated using canvases at run time and the bump textures looking pretty good.

So no actual games yet but a working camera, lighting and world.

Windchimes for Wake The Cat

 All my previous attempts at js13k have been pretty weak in the audio department - I rarely play games with sound on and it's always a problem with the 13kb limit (no samples so everything sounds a bit chip-tuney).

This year in order to break this streak I thought I spend some time on it early. My game 'O' had a beautiful, haunting soundtrack (not made by me) which might best be described as ambient, dreamy piano - just the sort of thing I love.

For my new abstract game I was hoping for something in the same spirit; but generated by algorithm. I had in mind the quiet ambient sounds that a large, well tuned windchime might make (if you hate windchimes you've probably only heard the small, tinkling badly tuned type). With that in mind I set up a little demo of a set of Pentatonic chimes here. I'm kinda liking it and think it might take me a long way towards background sound. You can play with it here if you like.    

JS13kGames 2025

 The time has rolled around for a new js13k games - it started while I wasn't watching a couple of days ago but I had planned to enter this year.

The theme is Black Cat which appeals to me - I've entered almost every category over the years but never their 3D webVR section so I thought that is what I'll do this year. 

It has been more than a decade since I used Three.js which it a tribute to flexibility and maintainability of that project.

But the last time I did use it I made one of my favourite games ever called 'O' - this non-verbal non-text puzzle games was a really cute and efficient piece of programming and I'd like to set up a similair abstract puzzle games for js13k this year - I think I'll call it 'Wake the Cat'.