Sectors, Corgis, Flags and Cyan.

I have a feeling that by mid-february, the second-largest sector within the game will have been baked.  Right now, our environment artist Arjuna is tackling the final two buildings: the Historical Society, and the Maison De La Paix.  Both will have to undergo a slight change in architecture to become more practical from a game design point of view - not to mention more accurate...

Last week, in response to our post about NPC species, someone mentioned that there were no dogs in Peace Island.  This is actually not true.  Since the earliest days of this project, we have planned to include a canine NPC "Faction," and those plans have not changed.  

The reason they have not been prominent in our posts about the project is that for lack of a better term, they are a "Minor" faction, and their big role in Peace Island's story takes place in the third act.  

Further: while we absolutely love Dogs, they are sometimes not as interesting to write.  As Laura & I have spent a lot of time this week tying up loose ends in the game's first act, we've considered the outlooks every other NPC species might have towards the world, and towards the disappearance of Humanity.  

As anyone who shares their life with a dog knows: they are perhaps the most transparent species when it comes to such matters.  While it took a couple of sessions to figure out the  Crow's full place within the world, it took less than ten minutes to determine such for the Dogs of Peace Island. 

As much as we would love to spin their presence within the game into something akin to "Chariots of the Gods," it simply does a disservice to canine-kind to depict them as anything more or less than the creatures that they are.

So, dig this:  Earlier this week, the aforementioned Arjuna got in touch with me on our project Discord, and said "Hey - displaying the Maine state seal on any commercial product is illegal, apparently - so we should do something about that."  

Considering that the Maine state flag is simply the seal against a blue field, this was indeed something we had to consider.  However, after about two minutes of googling, I discovered that there were literally hundreds of image banks selling bitmap and vector versions of the Maine State seal.  

However, this was yet another instance of "The Letter Of The Law."  Yes- you can sell millions of digital copies of the Maine state seal - but as soon as any of those are put on something so innocuous as a birthday cake - that's when the knives come out.

One of the last things I thought I'd have to do in pursuit of this project was to mock up a slightly-altered version of the Maine state flag in order to avoid state prosecution, but gamedev takes you into odd places.

February is the snowiest month in Downeast Maine, and this month is proving to be no different.  As a result of this week's inclement weather, the majority of the premiums we wanted to send last week, did not go out until today.  This was due to our printer being apparently unwilling to print a plain black & white list of addresses, because it felt that it was too low on cyan.  

The only store in the Portland area that carried the brand we needed was out, due to the ongoing shortages - meaning we were stuck with ordering more online, and hoping we could get them faster than the store.

OH - AND ALSO:

I want to try another stream on YouTube this coming Sunday, but after the last few attempts, I'm loathe to advertise it too broadly.  We'll see...

I believe next week, we're going to have good news about progress on the character controller - thanks as always for your support, patience, and confidence!