My part in Cat-Life has always been fairly administrative.  I run the website and kept the project around until BiGToM was ready to assemble his team.  After that, I write news posts, maintain the Cat-Life page and ModDB profiles, and offer suggestions/any other aid that I need to provide.

However, with the lack of a full-time coder and the likelihood that the Open Beta would be basically a map pack with some new sounds and such details, I have also assumed the role of temporary coder.

I re-installed my old Visual Studio 6 for the first time in years and found out just how rusty my C++ has become.  Even so, I tracked down a few tutorials and toyed with the code, creating some cheap and ugly hacks to help give the game a better change to game play.

Even so, there is more work to be done and we really need a good coder to clean up my ugly mess.  You see, I’ve done all that I can without taking more time to refresh my C++ and study the GoldSource code to truly understand the details.  I have some 20 or so projects around the BWL site that I have put off for a few nights of coding, and even then I have used more time than I would have preferred.

I am sending my current work to BiGToM.  The code features wall jumping, wall climbing (modified wall jumps), 2 attacks, a dash button with short stamina bar, simple dark vision, and spawn with long-jump.

The attacks are weaker.  The cat makes 50% less noise for monsters to hear.  Some monsters have been changed to see the player as less of a threat and the houndeyes are now predators and will attack headcrabs and the cat alike.

Unfortunately, there are known bugs.  Sometimes, the attacks can loop unexpectedly making them very potent in that instant.  Sometimes hit detection on dead bodies is a little off.  The Enhanced IR Night Vision Goggle idea I planned to use for DarkVision wasn’t very good.  I considered using it for a “catnip” enhanced vision mode pick-up, but that didn’t really work either, so that feature was disabled.

DarkVision works nicely, but can sometimes stop the player briefly after level change.  Wall climbing works wonderfully, but is also limitless.  It’s not really a bug, but as long as you are on a wall, you can go up as high on that wall as you like.  We plan to use clip brushes to limit players in-game.

Overall, playing this new code has been a lot of fun even with the bugs.  Players will need a replacement set of dll’s in order to play the original Half-Life as the hull changes in Cat-Life require custom hulls.  Basically, Cat-Life works with one set of dlls and playing regular Half-Life with the cat code will require a replacement set of dlls.  I plan to offer the over-writing dlls as a separate download.

In-game, much of the game play will have changed.  You will need to run for your life more often then stand and fight.  The pace is considerably faster and more hectic, yet a fairly experienced player will be able to really play around and make use of the new code for some fun battles.

Here is a short video for your viewing pleasure.

I’ve made some fairly small changes to the site over the past few weeks.  Most notably, I removed the Team Blog forum.  Since our site is using WordPress again, I see no reason to continue making journal posts in the forums.

Thus, I am creating a new category here… the Journals.  My own little feature is “From The Wildcat’s Notebook”.

With that explanation out of the way we really should get started with this entry.

For close to a month now, I have spent my spare time working on the Cat-Life code specifically trying to edit the player POV.  :SysOp: from ModDB was helpful and offered up the location of the hull definitions.

And I also, only a day or so ago, discovered an old tutorial by omega and Corvidae regarding player scaling in GoldSource.

All of this new information has been helpful and I think everyone involved.  With that said, none of this help has been exactly what we need for Cat-Life.  Valve’s prediction system tends to trash the constant vectors we set for our hulls and defaults back to the standard 72 unit height.

I posted a thread in the forums showing off the easily controlled POV [ Link ] back on the 22th of October.  At that point, I had spent only a few hours on the idea.  It was after that post, and with a few more hours of work in my free time, that I learned the useless nature of hull definitions.

In short, they made a cat with an invisible six foot clearance.  Toying with the code, I learned that setting the variables could affect what the game rendered, but did little else.  The collision system itself is a part of the aforementioned predictions.  So… I need to override prediction without learning every tiny detail of the Half-Life source code… right?

Well, no actually.  I simply needed to find the tutorial by omega and Corvidae.  With it, I could basically override the hull reset using a simple module and a custom hull file for compiling.  But that’s where this matter again becomes tricky.

The tutorial is for scaling the game in full… not simply the player.  So I’ve had to make a few truly ugly hacks and some of the stupidest… silliest… worst use of hard-coding I have ever done.  Why?  Because, as I said before, I don’t have time to really study the code.  That’s precisely why we want a coder specifically and BiGToM was willing to offer a reward for that coder.

More specifically, using the custom hull and hacks shrank the player while basically maintaining the other monsters in full size.  But… their origins are now lower.  This means that they seem to sink waist deep into the ground.  To fix this, I am simply modifying their individual hull settings.  Of course, I’m not finished with this and the dead bodies still fall under the ground so I have some more work in my future.

Honestly, this really is a poor coding job on my part.  It works just fine… I’ve even managed to turn a bug into a fun little feature… the monsters can effectively step on the player and hold them in place while attacking.  It’s not perfect and really is just a bug, but it’s pretty fun.  You’d better not let them get too close now. XD

Once I finish this ugly mess with the hulls, I still plan to make a secondary fire bite attack and possibly work some clones into the code for Cat-Zombies, Juvenile headcrabs, and military dogs into the code.  I also do plan to try to add wall jumping, sprinting, and DarkVision to the game.  Nevertheless, I’m making no promises as this has already taken up more of my time then I would have liked.

Seriously, we need a full coder and not just me toying with the code in my spare time.  I have a number of other projects to work on besides this code and once I’m done with my part, I’m sure there will be bugs that will need cleaning up.

Outside of Cat-Life, I’ve been re-assigned at work again.

Another false accusation that a client made while half-asleep and angry that he couldn’t eat during the night due to diabetes.  Long story short, I should have been cleared by now.  The client recanted on his accusation the next day.  The state investigator cleared us that same day and by the end of the weekend the investigation was back in our facility’s hands.

This also was over in a day.  I was a float… which means I was working on a different home then the one I am actually assigned.  And I was only working on that other home for 2.5 hours, never worked with any of the clients, and never really did anything.  I was reassigned because the client wanted to report all of the on-duty staff at that time for a false abuse allegation.

I really don’t understand why I am still reassigned.  I’ve learned that the two men that I worked with didn’t properly document all of the client’s behaviors that night, and that is the only reason I am still working in the campus laundry.  They wanted to basically punish us for not writing all of the client’s behaviors down.

Shameful isn’t strong enough a word to describe this facility and it’s parent government organization.  Politics is too important to these people.  Enough so that they ignore their employee’s rights.  Is this supposed to be a long and disgracefully stretched-out investigation?  Are they really supposed to punish us without conviction?  Should I even be included in any of this?

Of course not!  This business is, for lack of a better word, retarded!

This is a big part of the reason I’m taking so long to make the Cat-Life code… I don’t feel like working on it most days of the week.  And when I do, I have a very short time to do so.

This madness gives me limitless stress, physical strains (as I stand all day long on a conveyor belt digging through soiled linens and clothing ),  a disrupted sleep schedule, and prevents me from maintaining my daily lifestyle (exercise, proper eating, sleep, etc).

Nevertheless, I have been looking at some changes to make on the site.  I have four video projects planned and Syrus, Radu, and BiGToM have all already volunteered.  I will go into more detail on those projects in a video update soon.

I am archiving the GargArena mod.  I will be archiving the old “Friendly Garg’s site” stories as well.  They’ll still be available to view, but will be in an archive area instead of the main story pages.

These and some other changes are directed at moving the site forward.  I want BWL Development to stand on it’s own instead of relying on FG’s old content.  We have several stories now from the BWL era and I want to help shift the site focus more toward creativity, gaming, and so forth because I feel the site is a bit mired in the old days as a Half-Life fan site.  We’re more then that.  And I believe that its time we started to act like more then a fan site.

I still have two pages of Operation: Save the Friendly Garg to color and assemble, and I plan to make that more of a series.  Yes it’s a half-life fan-fiction of sorts, but it’s a good project and is intended to be a series of sorts.

I also plan to continue An Average Citizen.

However, Errant Pixels will move away from Half-Life and become more about our active members.

I also have a possible story/comic/mod concept in mind for my Trinegate Universe (Mature rated Sonic The Hedgehog storyline – It’s considerably more grown up).  Also, I plan a Duke Nukem project due to the failure of 3D Realms to produce Duke Nukem Forever.  All of this is the subject for a different entry though.  A few companies and their projects have provoked me now and my pen is ready to show them how it’s done.

Of course, I have some completely original works too.  As I make progress on them, I think I’ll offer samples in the VIP section of the forums and eventually even the main site.  Once those original stories are finished, I’ll offer the full product for sale in book form eventually.

I’ll be looking into BWL, Cat-Life, and Ambition & Honor T-Shirts much sooner.

And the Ambition & Honor Forum RP will be prepared as time allows.  The A&H comic will also eventually be properly posted and as issues are finished, I’ll consider selling printed copies of that too.

Back on the Half-Life front, all four of the upcoming machinima projects will be made with GMod.  One is a mock trailer for “The Most Epic Game Ever Made”.  Two of the projects will be on-going series concepts with one based around “The Source” and our active forum members in an action-adventure format.  The second series will be more of a clip show… but… well, I can’t say much but it will be different from everything you’ve watched on YouTube in that format.

The fourth project doesn’t have a forum in the Studio Offices yet, but it does have a name.  “Team Play” will be a running series of videos based around the Half-Life 2 story-line.  The details are both complicated and secret… so… moving on.

I’m still working on the second of “The Source” stories, The Corrupted.  That series is turning decidedly more serious, but without forgetting to have fun.  I’ve completed some 39 pages so far and have a number more already shot.  They simply need assembly.  The rest of the story will be completed and the entire project posted when I have the time.

VIP’s can check out the first 30-pages of that story in the VIP Lounge forum.

After The Corrupted, I plan to continue that series, but first I plan to make my new version of Barney Time.  This is a project I sort of quietly announced some time ago.  FG and I discussed it briefly on deviantArt, but I’ve kept it quiet.

I’ll be “re-imagining” the Barney Time series rather then continuing FG’s stories.  You may recall that the Barney Time Source stories were short and a little limited given the age of the original series and the drastic changes of events between HL and HL2.  You can thank Valve for ruining that series. =P

My re-imagining will be a new story based roughly on the old.  Written in a marginally more serious light yet incredibly outlandish in concept, the story will incorporate the HL2 series of games from the start and will likely be easier to follow then the original.  This story won’t be a series though… it will be one stand alone “epic”.

Conundrum, my “novel” crossover fan-fic, will be completed over time.  I must apologize for the amount of time this story is taking, but I only work on it one chapter at a time in its own turn.  With all of these other projects, it takes a while for the line to circle around again.

The forum RP threads are moving pretty slow now.  I restarted “Downfall” some time ago, but it has yet to see any interested players… which is just as well.  I’m a little busy at the moment and wouldn’t get around to updating very often.

Such is the case with Cataclysm.  That RP has been much slower as I have deliberately waited for the “do nothing” responses from each player.  Basically, that has been an excuse to put that game aside while I work on other projects.

I’ll update it again pretty soon weather Syrus posts his move or not.  The story is about to take a fairly dramatic turn and we’re about to enter the build up for the climactic battle.

My, but that is a lot of text.  Since you’ve probably all stopped reading this already… let me just say that the first “tl;dr” comment will receive a quick and painless (mostly) death.

I think I’ve spoken enough about the current goings on as I have a number of future posts that will address these matters in better… more focused detail.  Hopefully, the business with work will turn around and/or I will find a better employment option.  I certainly hope to get more project work done soon such that we can start having some regular new content that expands on this site’s true purpose.

Until next time… see ya.

Of Cat-Life, there has been one problem more troublesome then any other.  The want of a coder.

In all the years that the mod has been in development… about six now… the team has seen several coders sign-on long enough to get their name on the team list.  Then they either leave due to outside circumstances or they simply were not seriously interested in coding for our mod.

The video that BiGToM posted showing the early cat-code was mostly hard-coded map tricks and coding.  The actual game code has yet to see any significant changes.  This mod would probably be in beta phase by now had any one of our coders remained on team long enough to complete the Cat-FOV coding.

So… BiGToM contacted me yesterday on Steam for help with yet another coder request.

Team Cat-Life needs a coder.  The mod itself is not going to develop much further without custom source code.

Cat-Life, for anyone that doesn’t already know, is a single-player Half-Life mod.  The player will be tasked with surviving the Black Mesa incident of the original Half-Life, but from a new point of view.

This is NOT playing Half-Life but with cat replacement models or replacing Gordon Freeman with a cat.  Rather, Cat-Life is the story of Newton… a scientist’s pet cat.

During the incident, poor Newton’s master is killed and the little fella has to escape the base alone… without being eaten or the ability to pick up the usual weapons.

You play Newton.  You eat cat food.  You try not be be eaten by the aliens.  You claw, scratch, and bite your way through six chapters and a new hazard course.  There will be more then 30 custom maps.

This is possibly one of the most unique and interesting mod concepts ever attempted and we ARE serious about completing it.

But we need your help.

Cat-Life needs a good, experienced coder for the GoldSource engine.  Specifically, we need someone to lower the Field of View to a Cat’s eye level.  That is the number one priority at the moment.  Without such code completed for internal testing, the mappers can’t test their maps properly.

We also would like to add a Cat’s night vision, modified jumping, sprinting, pouncing, and such movement options… if these sorts of items are possible.

The original HL 1 C++ is freely available for editing and will be our source.  BiGToM has said that he can offer a C++ program to work with and a simple file share program to make this easier for the new coder.

He also said that a reward is available for the coder.  He couldn’t give me an exact dollar figure due to not knowing how long recruitment may take or how much will be donated, but he estimated anything from $10 to $60 US.  Potential applicants need to discus this with BiGToM directly.

And when I said “We need your help” I was being very literal.  If you can’t code, but you know someone who does… point them in our direction.  We need experienced help here.

It’s high time we got past this one trivial problem and moved this mod into it’s final development stages.  We need a coder.

Contact BiGToM on MSN at sayrken@hotmail.com, email him at sayrken[AT]gmail.com, or stop by our forums at bwldevelopment.com and leave a message.  You can even send a private message at ModDB if you like.

BiGToM has posted a new video for Cat-Life today.  This one specifically is intended to show some of the current “cat code” work.

The video begins with a run through of a map in traditional Half-Life code.  Normal player height, jumping, ducking, etc.  Then it offers a view of the same map using the cat’s settings.

There isn’t any combat in this video.  Instead, it focuses on the current “buggy” code work and showing how the game “looks” at it’s current level of development.

The video ends with a couple of new map locations revealed from the cat POV.

Also… yea for tiny kitten! =P

Cat-Life Current Coding