Moving On From URP Fail As I Turn 53.

I'll be straight-up with ya'll:  My attempt at upgrading the project to Unity's URP did not turn out as planned.  Despite all of the systems within unity REPORTING that everything was URP-ready, it turned out that not a one of them were working, despite us following all conversion protocols and procedures.

Everything from the fur on the cats, to the skybox, to half of the 3d prefabs within the game refused to function properly, and were throwing up thousands upon thousands of compiler errors.  While it was clear that - given time - we could address each system's complaints and bring the project - grudgingly - over to URP/HDRP, we currently do not have the surplus of time such would require.

We reverted to a backup, and are moving onward.  Thank goodness we always keep local backups - I cannot even begin to think of how hard the recovery would have been, had we relied on our version control system.

As we move on from this distraction, we continued with our pre-beta systems review, and consequently, systems that were due for review are in a state of flux that doesn't lend itself to good screenshots - as you can see:

Currently, I'm doing a final review of the island's foliage, which should be finished by this coming weekend.  This review of the "outlands" of the island is every bit as exacting as the review of the buildings.  I'm correcting a lot of long-standing errors that escaped my sight, over the past few years - and even found time today to add four trails that had been added to our vegetation masks, but not the terrain shaders.  

As you can see:  I've also moved the grass over to a type that allows for the "Cat width" trails.  I'll be moving upwards in scale from here - I really want to give the player the feeling of how tight these maine woodland trails can be.

Lance will be bringing in the first door/window locks in coming days, and Laura has been working on story, as well as "door portal" placements (these are the triggers that will allow players to enter buildings.)

Friday is my 53rd birthday - I will be forcing myself to take two half-days off, so that I can take a ferry somewhere far away from my computer, and clear my head for a few hours.

I have a LOT to think about. We will be releasing the closed Beta of Peace Island in July/August. This is something that - of course- fans of the project have been waiting for.

It is also the "Minimum Viable Product" that publishers have been asking for, since the early months of 2020.  When we sign on the line with one of these entities, a LOT is going to change - given how tumultuous the journey has been so far, we'll be dealing with stuff that I cannot currently publicly speculate on.

Thanks so much for your continued support, patience, and confidence!

BTW: Olivia has now lived in our apartment, longer than she has anywhere else in her tumultuous early life.  She's settled in, quite well!

See you next week, with awesome screenshots!