Pet Me!

Pet Me!

I wanted to introduce you to a project that I started a little while ago, called Pet Me!

It’s a text based adventure game where you are trapped in a house, and you have to pet enough cats to escape. But the cats are not that easy to catch! You have to solve puzzles before they will come to you.

The beginning! This is what the game looks like when you play it.

I am using a website called textadventures.co.uk and a program hosted there called Quest to write this. The website does the complicated work, so you don’t strictly write code while using it, but you do have to understand which commands to use to create the effect you want. I chose this because I wanted to start with something simpler, where I can practise the art of creating puzzles and a little bit of the logic behind coding.

Are you crazy?!?

But I’m kind of pleased to say that it is actually a little more complex than I thought. In doing this I am devising the puzzles, writing the text, programming the game, sourcing assets, bug testing and fixing and project managing myself. One thing I am definitely learning here is that making a game on your own is a very difficult task, and it is clear why the majority of games are made by specialists in teams. Even for my very small and rough game, I am having to develop a huge range of skills

My creativity is being used in many different ways. Sometimes I'm feeling literary, so I will do some writing, sometimes I feel impatient and want to make progress so I do some of the programming, and sometimes I am feeling particularly focused and so I do some of the bug fixing. This is probably the hardest part. It is very east to just plough on when you get stuck and move on to some new part that hasn't become infuriating yet.

Under the hood...how to make a cat purr.

Sometimes I find Quest to be a little rigid in what it can do, the functions that are provided within it will almost do exactly what I want, but not quite. This is probably because of my inexperience. I often find that when I encounter a tricky problem that I need to step right back and start again, because the solution I have gone with is not the right one, and never will be! It is like pushing a square peg into a round hole and thinking that it you rotate it it will make a difference.

So another thing I am learning is that you have to be very patient and not to give up.

I am about 7-10 hours away from making the first version playable, with the win condition being that you have to pet 12 cats. Unfortunately at the moment I can't get the win condition to actually trigger 'winning', so about 5 of those hours will be spent on stepping back from that, and then stepping back in again.

At the moment I have this...but it doesn't work. Maybe you guys have some ideas!

Why. won't. you. just. work.???

Bye for now!