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Humming and Hawing

Dear Insane Children,

What do you do when you've run out of things to do? Hum a tune? Whistle a diddy? Twiddle your thumbs? I don't know about you but I can't remember the last time I even had a chance to practice whatever-it-is-I-do... Between being a daddy, running a company, working on a variety of projects, and... oh, yeah, overseeing an Asylum of Insane Children... I hardly have two seconds to rub together! 

Same goes for our ward of insane artists - all of whom are busy knocking down tasks inside Monday - the project management software Alex is using to kick our butts into collective organization. 

Norm and Joey are working through the animation/move library (see gallery of images above). 

Omri and Dario are working on aspects of the game intro from Slumber to Denial and then heading to The Queen's Domain. A lot of the work for these areas has already been done. So the main focus right now is on filling in those major elements that still need to be finished. Then the whole team will continue forward into areas of the game where we've not yet started to explore and work. 

The goal with all of this is to have a Design Bible finished by the end of 2020. And to then use that Design Bible (along with the license from EA - still working to secure that!) to attract the money we need to build a new game. I've got news on all of this and things are looking good... but as usual, it's all stuff which I can't yet share. Frustrating! 

Anyway, it's one foot in front of the other. Get the Design Bible done and by that time I think there will be more to reveal. Fingers crossed!

Live Stream This Week

We will have a live stream (on Twitch) this week at the usual time (Thursday morning, 10AM Hong Kong Time). I'll set up a scheduled stream time for that and send out a full notice tomorrow. 

How Are You Doing?

Hope everyone is doing alright these days... 

Wherever you are does it seem the situation is improving? If there was a lockdown... is it ending? Are you able to get outside? Go to work? 

Curious what it's like for everyone out there. 

Here in Shanghai... it really feels like things are back to Business As Usual (with a number of important caveats). Still tons of people wearing masks at all times - even when driving. Though it seems lots more people are becoming lax about wearing them all the time. Lots of smaller businesses still closed - perhaps permanently - but almost all of the larger restaurants, cafes, stores, etc - are all open for business. Traffic on the roads seems to be back to pre-pandemic levels. Dunno... are we heading back to normal? 

Look forward to hearing how you are in the comments below. 

From Shanghai with Sunshine,

-American

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Comments

In Minnesota we have laxed the shelter in place order but I'm still unemployed and avoiding humans. I can feel that second wave right around the corner. I love the idea of Alice becoming more nervous and humming as the player sits idle. I'm a Psych Major so that little detail is perfection in my opinion.

Stephanie Groth

quarantine hasn't changed my life much being an antisocial essential worker

I wait purposely sometimes to go through the idle moments - I too, really enjoy it !!! Stay safe everyone. I work the frontline in a rural health clinic in West Virginia - We are reopening in our state pretty slowly, Remains to be seen what effect it will have. Luckily we have only had 60 or so deaths statewide. Even a few are too many.

I always like subtle touches like that in games. Whenever I make one, I add little details like that. I think the weirdest idle animation I've ever found was when Sonic commits suicide in Sonic CD if you wait around too long but still a fun easter egg. Iranaryluch pretty much nailed it. Things are expected to start relaxing this week around here on the east coast (different days depending on the area). I don't think "normal" is going to be something we see for a long time, in my opinion. There are going to be changes to a lot of things. When you hear things like movies may no longer be going to the theatre because the Troll movie had a good return on going straight to some form of on-demand, that's disheartening. Personally, I don't think that will actually go through - I mean the spectacle of the theatre is the whole reason for that format to begin with. But this does show that there are things that could possibly change going forward to develop into a new "normal" but we'll see, I guess.

At least down the east coast the U.S.A. is starting to open back up, rather idiotically. There have been a lot of cases of misinformation/conflict of information even locally between official statements, I can only imagine the larger scale. It seems like a short sighted move to try and get people working again. The long term, some of us are estimating, is going to send the states into lockdown again because we're not clear of the virus and people are still being stupid about things. Basically, we're looking to have done everything just right to make this thing hit in waves instead of just addressing the problem in one shot. Nobody wants this to be the case, but that's how it looks. I wouldn't be surprised if the continental U.S. was blacklisted from travel to other countries once they've otherwise cleared in the time coming.

Yay idle animations! The previous two Alice games had pretty awesome ones. I'm liking these sketches!

Rosuav

Gotta make sure I read the fine print so I don't miss out on the stream due to my idiocy. πŸ˜‚

Wendy Jaa

I was one of the unfortunate souls that graduated college when everything started getting crazy. The amount of jobs is low, and the ones I can apply to are bombarded by other applications because of unemployment. I'm crossing my fingers for the job market to ease up soon. For now I obsess over Alice and tackle my gaming backlog. I just finished Assassin's Creed Syndicate which was a great history lesson of Victorian London, set mostly in 1868. Also, I hope the business isn't stressing you guys out too much. Looking forward to the stream!

My hours at my job are finally starting to pick up again. Woot! I was fortunate enough to remain employed because of the nature of my job.

Laura Fowler


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