You may have noticed that the world around you has changed. Almost everyone has become obsessed with "stuff" on the internet.
Toddlers, teens, adults, and grandparents all have their favorite online websites for information or fun.
Purina, the manufacturer of Friskies cat food, doesn't want your favorite feline to feel left out so they are launching three new online games made just for cats.
You may wonder how a game is created that is just for our kitty-friends?
Well, each game has been researched and tested to provide the best movement, colors and game-play action to entice the most reluctant feline to enjoy some fun. Based on a cat's senses and how they react to different stimuli, Friskies says the games have been “tested for maximum feline fun.”
All three games are based on a cat's natural instinct to swat at a moving target.
- In Cat Fishing, your cat trolls clear blue waters for a fishy prey.
- Tasty Treasure Hunt presents kitty with the challenge of chasing Friskie treats across the screen.
- In Party Mix-Up, the cat is presented with multiplying images of Friskie treats.
Technophiles need not fear the combination of sharp kitty claws and pristine screens. Purina says bare glass screens fare fine under feline nails, though a swatting cat could do damage to plastic screen protectors.
The free games, found at GamesForCats.com , are available for iPad and Android tablets, and can run in the Safari web browser.
The bare glass screen on the iPad® stands up to cat's claws with no problem, |
Technical Details
Friskies® Party Mix-Up, Tasty Treasures Hunt, and Cat Fishing were developed for the iPad® using HTML5/CSS3, a cutting-edge programming technique that allows for amazing animations with a much shorter development timeline than the traditional
Objective-C®-based iPad® apps. Additionally, HTML5-based apps can be released directly to the public as links, with no required user account at the iTunes® store, and they also work on other tablet platforms, like the Android.
The iOS™ Safari® Browser uses hardware acceleration for specific CSS3 webkit animations, and this is the best way to get smooth animation on iPad® Safari. The challenge is that these CSS3 animation techniques are not particularly well suited for game development, as they are asynchronous in nature, instead of frame-based.
CSS3 webkit animations work more like Flash™'s motion tweens; which means you need to know the starting and ending point of an animation before it even begins. By dynamically overlapping, canceling, and recreating CSS3 transitions, we were able to create smooth animations that respond to user input and change with the game state.
