Dialogues, NPCs, and Control.

But before all of that, Laura & I confess:  We had to take a day off, after getting our second Moderna shot.  Even answering email was a bit taxing...

BUT, we got back to work, ASAP...

As we enter the home stretch towards what we in the business call "Minimum Viable Product," we're focused on three areas, primarily:

1:  The Dialogue/Quest system.  Without this, an adventure game just doesn't work.  Thankfully, we have two people on the project who know it like the back of their hands, and it has already been integrated into the project.  All we need is to start plugging in content.  

Tangential to this, I've found Laura's white boxes to be downright hilarious.  I wonder what she'd do with Gary's Mod...

2:  The NPC system.  The next generation of geese are due to be fully integrated within our new omnibus NPC system within the next few weeks - No more Gumby Geese!  The other NPC species will follow, sequentially.

3: The new cat controller.  This, by far, is the one thing that keeps me up at night.  Thankfully, we've seen steady progress from the two incredibly talented folks who have taken on this task.  You can check out a new Twitch dev session from our animator here! 

And of course- work on the interior levels continues.  We finally had time to go through our existing scenes, and make scaling consistent, across the board.  This was kind of important, because inconsistent scaling led to some moments where it felt like you were wandering through the set of "Dr. Caligari."

Humans might be gone from the island, but sometimes you've got to bring in a fake one to make sure everything's on the level...

I've still been doing a bit of rough landscaping on and off, but for the most part, things are where they need to be.  What's frustrating to me is:  Each time I go out to take reference photos, I see a million and one things I missed...

For example: In your eyes, what's the one thing that really sticks out in this image?

To me, it's the propane tanks.  They are ubiquitous on homes out on the islands, but I have YET to place them around the houses within the game.  I'm also noticing the pile of bricks: people tend to do their long-delayed home improvement projects in early autumn, when the weather's still nice outdoors.  This needs to be reflected in the game world, as well.

Ah well- perhaps I'll have time next week...

Work on optimizing the "downtown" area proceeds apace.  Each building that is fixed, makes things run just that little bit more smoothly in the most resource-heavy part of the island...

We've also started working with a Peace Island veteran artist on another project that's centered around the history & story of the game - more on that, soon!  Each time I visit the project WIKI, I am reminded of how much of the story has yet to be put up there - but I guess there are only so many hours in a day.

FINALLY:  WE ARE STILL CONFIRMING NAME PLACEMENTS WITHIN PEACE ISLAND - if you have contributed $100 or more to the project, and have yet to choose where your name will appear, please get in touch with us either here, or at peaceislandllc@gmail.com 

THANKS AGAIN FOR YOUR SUPPORT, CONFIDENCE, AND PATIENCE - SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS!