The Cat Lady

[Bogdan]

Wow... this game is so creepy, and so horrible and so violent... so much blood... that trailer was sooo disgusting...

I LIKE IT!!!1

[Dualnames]

Feels like a sociopa-, oh, it's Cat Lady. 

[Darius Poyer]

I caught that trailer on the front-page of gametrailers.com and I was surprised to find myself interested in it. Your doing some good work Mr. Harvester.

[Grim]

pmartin: So you're the guy who posted a comment on my Youtube channel? I'm sure there's room for another horror game with this kind of animation... I don't know how far into production you are, but after having made over 3.000 sprites this way I've learnt few things and will happily share some knowledge with you ( PM me?).  One important fact is that no matter what, you will always have to do some editing and post-production tweaking to the sprites to make sure there are no sharp sticking out edges or add some details. It is also a great way to experiment with all sorts of motion blur effects- sometimes it's just a single frame that adds a lot to the visual quality of the whole animation.

Surdy: I think I can remember that as well- I spent a lot of time playing Diablo on my Playstation 1 with my brother. Good times:) 

  I shouldn't really reveal who that nurse is yet ( spoilers!) but you will find out soon enough. I can only say  that as I said in the other thread, there is a part of game that pays a direct tribute to Maniac Mansion. So..... do you remember any nurses from that?.... And the swimming pool in the backyard? How about a little refresher:



As for a Devon Axeman... well, yes and no. There are several characters that pose a threat to the player in TCL. This is just one of them.

And the voices are only used in trailers at the moment. I am planning to do va for all speech ( not hotspots descriptions) in the game at the last stage of production. Temporarily, different actors have been used. The voice in the first trailer has been kindly recorded for me by a New York actress who does some work for Dave Gilbert. The nurse, on the other hand... I got fed up and did it myself:) Yeah, I know...

Cleanic: Thank you kindly:) There will be more about the game in the upcoming months before release!

Bogdan: They're all gonna hate me for all this violence, aren't they?... I'm glad there are people like you who like it, but I can already predict an awful lot of problems with publishers saying: " It's too much. Cut down on the blood and the swearing. It's too risky"). Well, I'm not gonna bloody cut on anything! This is my game and there's tons of blood in it, amongst other things. After having played Dead Space 2 recently, I find it very hard to understand how my depiction of violence could offend anybody while games like DS2 feature a man taking some woman's EYE with a SCREWDRIVER, and than WAVING it around like a trophy. I think I'm not at that kind of level with TCL yet....

Dualnames: You- shut up:) I will need your help soon, actually, to make this game great:)

Darius Poyer: Oh, yeah:) Thanks for reminding me. And more positive comments this time, too! Have people really finally tired of playing COD all over again?... Also, I probably should play that ClockTower game they're always bringing up, just so I can understand why....

[micamic]

Grim, in second trailer You are trying to attract people with gore and blood but it’s not the right way. As a tester I played a lot of this game and I must say the game has much more to offer than just guts and meat spilled around â€" it’s just accessory and the gameplay is based on incredibly intriguing and compelling story. But the game-fun comes from figuring out what the hell is going on. And WHAT is going on is much more terrifying than we can see in second trailer…

[Mr.Dream]

When a new, about this game?

New teaser? Or Screenshot for Halloween?


What's happening after the Second Trailer?
Mystery...

Ps: Sorry for The bad English. I'm French.

[NickyNyce]

Yes!    That would be a good idea, since this game looks very haunting!!

I'll second that

[Mr.Dream]

So, for Christmas...

A new?

A screen?

A Trailer?

A demo (this is a big wish) ?

Or Nothing x)

[Sughly]

I have to admit, despite loving the look of the screens and falling in love with the original trailer, I never really took the time to read through the whole introduction you wrote for it. That setup though... phwoar, amazing! The five people, and the one person, and, and - gah! Keeping a very close eye on this for sure.

[Grim]

Thanks for all your kind comments! And just to reassure everyone the work is still very much in progress, I'm giving you 2 new screenshots. It's not long now before TCL is finished.... Then testing and voice acting, which I still am on the line about- should I do it or not...? There is soooo much text in the game it will be a massive job. If I get it wrong, it will actually make the game worse... and even if I get it right, it will still look odd without lip sync. If only I had a million dollars...

There are currently 145 rooms in the game, and over 3400 sprites.
I'm pretty sure it will be, at least size-wise, one of the biggest games ever done with AGS. The story takes course over a few in-game weeks and features a cast of over 40 characters and varied locations (and colour palletes:)) There are over 100 inventory items... and a very cool control system that Dualnames has created for me. We have polished it massively over the course of the last 3 years.

Well, just to say, I am hoping the 2012 will be the year of the Cat Lady!!!





EDIT: Rare updates mean I try to focus on making the game rather than on talking about it.... But today I felt this update was long overdue anyway;) Hope you like the screenies!:)

[Mr.Dream]

BEautiful!

This is a very good present for the new year!

I hope I can understand the game x)

But, it's me? Or sometimes the head's characters is a little bit big?

Good luck for the next!

[Grim]

Mr Dream: Thanks;) I too hope you can understand the game! If it's any help, there will most likely be different translations available. German and Russian for starters. I'm looking at these screens trying to see if the heads are too big... and I don't know, maybe  they are? But at this point I could never change it, because so much work went into all the sprites. Unless of course, you meant the head character, as in main? ...

[Mr.Dream]

Finally, i don't know. Sometimes it's little or big but i think when you play it's not present.

French version (i don't know if my sentence it's correct):
Finalement, je ne sais pas. Parfois c'est petit ou gros, mais je pense que lorsque l'on joue ça ne se voit pas.

On this; http://i.imgur.com/6V5Rm.jpg the Head is small

and on this;http://i.imgur.com/scqCg.jpg it's normal x)

But do not pay attention on my stupid remarks, continues your excellent work

[SquirlyGirl]

LOL I have been, well I guess you can say sorta obcessed with this game for awhile now, I have shown the trailers to probably 100's of friends... Posted them on my facebook wall, I always get responses of either : OMG that looks so awsome! Or "Wtf is wrong with you Beth!? why you play stuff like this?"

Lmao what can i say, I like games that are made by people who think outside of the damn box, and I do enjoy being terrified from a game/movie that has a awsome story. I am so happy I got to see some new screenshots here!

I am so excited to play this 

Grim, I know this is a little early but, do you consider like making any kind of preorder bonuses for when you release this?

[Grim]

Mr Dream: haha this must be some optical illusion, because this character's view is built in Maxon 4D Cinema using flat textures and a set camera angle for all her animations. I assure you the size of her head is exactly the same on both image #1 and #2. If I drew each frame seperately then yeah, it could've happened, but basically her head is a 3D object (well, a plane, but still)  

SquirlyGirl: That's great! When Downfall was released few years back I always suggested to people who got in touch with me that I would really appreciate if they spread the word... for a simple reason that I could never afford to spend money on advertisement;) There's a film called "Pay it forward" with that little boy from the Sixth Sense, what's his name... Anyway, it was about doing good deeds and in return asking people to do something for others and spreading the word around. The idea of 'paying it forward' was something I always liked and hoped that perhaps could be adapted as a PR model for a small developer like myself. I don't know if it works... Probably just on a minimal scale;) But it was still worth the effort, I guess.

One day in the future I will get a billboard.

But until then, thanks for telling your friends about the game and posting it on your fb page. Every little helps. It's people like you the 'underground' is built of!

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

On a different note, I don't know whether I mentioned it already or not ( could scroll up and check? -nah...) I often think these days what's gonna happen when this game is finished...
   Susan Ashworth, the Cat Lady, has been in my life for nearly 3 years, always there when I needed to hide behind her. It's been a shit year. Bad things happened. Sure, we all take punches, we recover and carry on, but it's good to have something to fall back on, this constant thing in your life that makes you think it's gonna be alright...

Well, if it wasn't for Susan I don't know how things would have turned out. It's odd. It's like I've got some switch in my head; I can flip it and think about the game for some time and distance myself from other problems. Without sounding like Ann in S.King's Misery  (who used to run to her 'happy place' when things were going wrong) Susan has been my escape, and a friend of some sort. Though she is just a game character, being such a big part of my life made me care about her. There's going to be a big empty space in my heart when I'm finished with her, I guess.


But until then. when I go out for a smoke, I'll still think a bout things like: " So how is Susan going to cut through that damn electric cable?... And will I let her have a happy ending, or should she be denied that luxury, like all great heroes of our time?... "

[WHAM]

Too long thread, didn't ready everything: Is there any idea when this will be released? I've been keeping an eye on this for a while now as it keeps bobbing on the GiP area, but there isn't much info in the first post.

In any case: This looked awesome when it was first announced and it still does, perhaps even more so! Keep it going!

[Grim]

WHAM: If everything goes well- in about three months...

[Surdy]

Hi Grim, 

What's up doc ?

Can you give us a bait or some new graphics ?

Can you update your Harvester Games Facebook or give us a date of release?

If you are interested in a french translation, I am your man.  8)

[Mr.Dream]

Ha! An another french gamer want to play to this game!

I'm not alone! x)

If you want wait, you can play to the old game of Harvester Game; Downfall. A great, no it's better, an amazing video game!

[Grim]

All right, then. Especially for French fans, a midnight drop of screenshots from different stages of production, mostly shots of some locations from the game taken from odd angles;)  



Oh, yeah. I'm just working on the final scene now;) So.... just another few yea... weeks, and then I can start TESTING PHASE!!!!

edit by darth - shrank and linked to those HUGE images!