Emily Marsh IDIA 619 Interactive Multimedia: Analysis Analysis of Cats - doc pdf Ferry Halim – Cats Analysis http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/cats.htm Ferry Halim's game Cats is an elegant implementation of a rather simple game concept; it is an excellent example of what can be done in the Flash programming environment. The following description lies upon an understanding of the game as a piece of procedural rhetoric (Bogost, 2007). Many aspects of the game that will be highlighted coalesce into a unified portrait of tension between opposites. As one plays Cats a dialectic emerges that could not be expressed in words alone. Thus, the game is an instructive example of what can be achieved when programming skill meets aesthetic sophistication and conceptual depth. Overview Cats begins with the stage displaying a brief message that the program is loading, then white text and a white graphic of a cat appear, along with information about the game including its creator and copyright information. If the player lets either the screen sit undisturbed for several seconds or clicks anywhere with the mouse, the next fame appears with gameplay and scoring instructions. This next frame will advance only upon a mouse click. Then the main stage appears and the game starts. The first stage of the game has six horizontal bars outlined in white against a black background. The game's color scheme is the first example of the tension described above. The juxtaposition of white against deep black makes for a clear contrast. The ambient background music is a leisurely tune and conveys a mood for the cats of, "no hurry; no worry". When the music is compared against the concentrated effort required to play the game well, another layer of tension is built. Each of the six horizontal bars contains an image of a white cat. Some cats appear to move across the stage—some to the left and some to the right—because of keyframe animation. The actual movement is a jaunty walk, achieved by combining several frames with the cats' legs and feet in different positions, along with slight movement of the tails, which (along with the feet) are tinged with a very slight pink. This is the only color that stands out against the dominant black and white color scheme. A random function seems to determine the cats' direction facing either left of right. Once the cats move across the stage and out of the frame, they reappear at the opposite end of the stage. While a random number of cats appear to walk, a random number sit still on the stage. Another sequence of keyframe animation is triggered by a random function that sets the cats upright in a three-stage movement and gets them to begin their walk. Another function is triggered at random intervals to move sitting cats. Determination of the number of walking cats, the number of sitting cats, and their respective directions facing either left or right all appear to be set by random functions. Another random function controls the appearance of one of the six horizontal bars. The cat which appears in a bar with a background that turns from black to gray attains a special status and drives the player's actions. Gameplay Overview The main goal of Cats is to determine which of the cats is the leader within the gray bar described above, notice whether the leader is walking or sitting, and then get all the other, "follower" cats to match that condition. The player can change the status of the follower cats by bringing the mouse in contact with the cats. While the leader cat's status is unaffected by mouse contact, the other cats' nature as either walkers or sitters can be switched from one to other by the player. This is another dialectic that is best expressed through the metaphor of "cat herding." The herding function is represented procedurally by making the targets sensitive to mouse activity and by placing them close together. It is relatively difficult for the player to align all of the cats into a single state—sitting or walking—without touching one of the targets accidentally. The position of the leader cat is controlled by another random function, as is the amount of time any one cat spends as the leader. Scoring Overview The initial stage of the game contains six horizontal bars with a leader cat appearing at random intervals in random positions. The game's score is a rather opaque combination of the amount of time the player can keep the followers aligned to the position of the leader and the amount of time spent at each level of the game. The score calculator is tripped when all cats are in the same state: walking or sitting. When this occurs a counter appears as a transparent gray number over the stage that increases with the amount of time the player can keep all of the cats in the same state. The actual procedure for adding points is somewhat opaque. Although the score is tied to a timer, the exact relationship of time to score is unclear. A good guess might be three points for each second. Once the cats no longer match, the counter disappears and the score obtained for that interval is added to the main score, which appears in gray numbers at the upper right corner of the stage. An additional level of difficulty arises from the ability of a cat to affect the scoring function when it is only partially visible on the stage. Thus, a cat with only one half of its body visible is able to change the state of the game. There is a second scoring factor in the game represented by a horizontal white bar on the upper left side of the stage. The longer the bar, the more time the player has left in the game. The bar shortens as time passes in the game; the bar lengthens once the player aligns all the cats and gets more points. The bar reflects the addition of points, it lengthens however only once the points are added into the main score tally. Thus, the player could conceivably run out of time even though all the cats are aligned, since the bar's length is attached to the game play timer and changes only with a difference in the main score. The introduction screen tells the player that time left for play is increased with every one hundred points scored. In fact, the bar lengthens slightly however for incremental score increases lower than one hundred points. The player is given some useful auditory feedback: when all cats match you hear the score counter increase. This is useful, especially when the leader cat is walking and the player must deal with a crowded, moving visual field to find the sitting cats. Once the counter appears and its ticking sound starts (tied to each change in the counter), it becomes possible to stop the frantic scramble of gameplay, relax, and look at the field as a whole. In general, it is easier to align all of the cats when the leader is sitting since the visual field is calmer. This ongoing tension between movement and stillness is another example of the underlying procedural dialectic of the game. The first stage lasts approximately two minutes if the player's score increases enough to keep the timer bar from decreasing to a length of zero. Stage two adds another horizontal bar. The game gets a bit more difficult since there are more cats to track and they are smaller since the size of the stage remains the same. Time given for this level of the game is longer—perhaps five minutes. Again, movement to the next level is determined not so much by the player's score as by the amount of time left as measured by the timer bar. If the player manages time successfully, play advances to a third level with an additional bar, increasing the total number of cats to eight. Given the fixed size of the stage, there is probably a maximum number of cats possible—perhaps ten. Play continues on in this fashion until the timer bar runs out. Then the player is shown another stage with a cat, the message "GAME OVER," the total score achieved for this session, the player's highest score achieved thus far, and an option to continue by clicking the words, "PLAY AGAIN." This is a sophisticated game tied together with a simple, yet elegant metaphor. It uses a vast array of ActionScript tools including a random number generator, several timers, two score counters (one incremental; one total), several sequences of keyframe animation, and several complex stages with may visual and auditory elements. Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.