Playing every stage, then every boss
With the art installed, the whole game was played through by script: every stage from start to goal, all nine boss fights, and the world map. All 24 stages reached their goal and all nine bosses reached their win. Ten real problems turned up on the way, and each was fixed and re-run.
The ones with a lesson in them:
- A spring that stopped working. Climbing out of each of the three trenches in 2-3 relied on a charged spring-jump in the long grass. That spring quietly stopped working once cats started flattening the grass they walk through, so the way out needed a double jump. Each trench now has two stones to climb out on: three light taps.
- An intro that froze the cat mid-climb. The 3-3 boss intro started while the cat was still on the ladders below the top shelf. It now starts when he reaches the top. In the same stage woodlice and earwigs walked over the tops of the ladders, so a climbing cat hit his head on one and the scripted cat lost three hearts on the way up. The enemies now stay clear.
- A checkpoint in tacky sugar. In 4-3 the checkpoint at the foot of the jar rack stood in sugar, so every restart there began stuck. It moved to clear floor.
- A head you could not jump on. When the first boss was dazed beside the tumble dryer, his head sat inside the machine. His head now always stays where you can reach it.
- A gap at a shelf edge in 3-3, where a boss hit could drop the cat 36 units to the floor, is closed.
Bosses beaten with only a player's moves
A test tool can trigger the last hit of a fight, but that proves nothing about whether a person can get there. So the harder test is a boss beaten with normal controls.
- Duchess was beaten with no hearts lost. The cobweb rack needs a half-second charge off a web and then a hairball at the hook. Measuring the web showed that holding about 0.5 s puts Mittens at the right height.
- Snookums took a real stomp: a hairball fired from the ground blinded him, he crashed into the mower, and a full jump over his back landed on his dropped head (3 to 2 hearts). It also explained why earlier attempts never blinded him. A hairball only reaches his face when you fire from the ground; every raised spot in the yard fires over his head.
- Pip, Skip and Bruce were each beaten outright, Skip and Bruce without losing a heart. Bruce's café counter was moved one unit west so its top sits against the boards, which makes the climb onto it a straight 1.25 hop; before, quick and medium presses both missed.
- Roo Roo (a real dive, 3 to 2) and Barnaby (real sugar traps, 3 to 1) work as designed. The test script does not yet dodge Roo Roo's charge or Barnaby's grab, so it could not finish those two fights. That is a limit of the script, not the layout.
Nothing traps you any more
Several places let a cat fall into a pocket whose only way out needed a jump plus an air jump. Under the lean-to roof in 2-3, every pocket now has thin boards to climb (a four-board ladder by the west post, two boards in each other pocket), each a light tap tested at 90 and 120 ms presses. In 1-1 a step at the far end of THE GAP makes the 2 unit climb out into two short hops. In 5-1 the climb from the fallen brick sat under the walkway's lip, so a quick tap dropped you back on the brick; a small wooden ledge halves it.
Couch co-op: whoever goes in takes both cats
Joel played co-op, had fun, and said some of the warping felt strange. The owner rule that came out of it is simple: in couch co-op, whoever goes into a warp box takes both cats to the other side. The warp code was read line by line against that rule.
- Riding Samus. A partner on Samus's back used to be left behind, because Samus kept snapping him back onto her saddle on the far side of the level. Now he hops off for the trip, Samus is brought to the exit while the screen is dark, and he comes out riding her. If she cannot fit (a low room, a narrow shaft), she waits and he walks out on foot.
- Stacked cats. Ceiling boxes dropped both cats at the same spot so they landed as one. The partner now drops a unit to the side, and the tight 2 unit pockets in 4-2, 4-3 and 5-1 have room for him beside the leader.
- A partner far away no longer slides across the screen and through walls into the box. He waits and vanishes as the screen goes dark.
- Held by something else. A partner in Barnaby's mouth, or in a catnip flurry, was being held in place by that. Barnaby now lets go.
It was tested with about 280 warps in 11 stages, covering floor, ceiling and wall boxes, the secret rooms and the narrow pockets, with the partner standing beside, far away, in the air, rolling, just hit, on Samus, in Barnaby's mouth or dead. In every case he arrived at the exit beside the leader, on solid floor, facing the same way, with no hearts lost.
A constant from an older map
The scene where Samus stops at the mud-room door, whines, lies down and walks in first had been attached to Samus herself, set to x 159.5. That number dates from when World 1 was one long level. Now that the mud room is the end of 1-3 and its doorway is at x 133.5, the scene never played in 1-3, while in three stages with no such door it could fire whenever a cat walked past 159.5. The scene is now added only by 1-3, using that stage's real doorway.
Small art lessons
- A grey patch from too many darkening steps. Samus had a small grey smudge under her chest in 45 of her 154 frames. It was the cream toes of a tucked paw: every lighting step that darkens cream did its job, and together they pushed the cream all the way down to grey. Those pixels now become her own dark brown coat. Two other ideas for her shoulder, a curved line and a highlight patch, looked worse up close than simply removing the flat planes, so the simpler fix stayed.
- A glow with no lamp. In the sewer boss room a soft pool of light had nothing above it. It belongs to the one open manhole, but its light column hung from the pavement 14 units up and was only six units long, so it stopped in mid-air. A full-length column now runs from the street lamp down the shaft to the floor.
- A fault that was the screenshot's. A reported "lamp post in the water tower" came from an editor capture, where background layers do not move. In play the water towers never line up with a lamp. The clock towers did, though, so two in 8-1 and one water tower in 8-3 were moved a few units aside.
- An outline that disappears. A very large character did have a dark outline, but a bright pixel sat right inside it, so at normal size the line vanished. Every part now steps to the same dark value wherever it meets the background.