
Little T
PURRR.... Cat Obstacle
I've been tweaking the cat to make it less aggressive but still an obstacle; our game's tone just doesn't fit a fearful stealth vibe, and we keep getting feedback that the cat's a bit too much. I've done a number of things to help with that:
Pounce radius reduced (400 -> 150)
Pounce speed reduced (400 -> 200)
Vision cone reduced (90 -> 70 degrees)
This is measured from their forward vector in all directions, so the field of view is now 140 degrees
Vision distance reduced (3000 -> 750)
This is about 60% of the kitchen's width; on the table, the cat can see to the island counter but not all the way to the farthest counters
Vision begins at cat's eye level (64 -> 20)
Basically, its perception was acting like the cat's eyes were a few feet above the cat, so hiding was really hard
Less aggressive sounds (meow -> purr, screech -> meow)
Now it just sounds playful and cute instead of terrifying
Cat bats player instead of respawning
The player is now batted around a bit instead of respawned, so getting "caught" will probably disrupt your platforming or send you to the floor, but it won't reset your progress directly
I think this fits the game's feel a lot better, but it is a significant change to our previous designs. Unless we have playtesters strongly preferring the respawn, I'd like to keep this new behavior.