New Approaches and Old Factories.

Before I get into the meat of things, I wanted to share a particularly nice piece of art we got in for Peace Island - The game's title in Arabic Calligraphy, in the shape of a cat:

Stuff like this makes this job so VERY enjoyable!

Now- this week has been an odd one.  We made solid progress in a LOT of areas - the main roads & paths were more or less laid out:

Richard (who creates our AIs) has really been knocking it out of the park, in his work on the "invasive species" spawner.  This is especially exciting to me, personally, because I thought this was going to be one of the more complicated elements of the game...

Work on updating the textures within the game is proceeding as well, and just about every day, new content arrives - music, graphic art, voiceovers - it's quite thrilling!

That having been said, we've had to take a TINY step backwards, on two fronts:

1: The rigging and animation on the cats requires refining.  As I type, in order to make the cats' movement more responsive to the surfaces upon which they walk, our animator is working closely with our IK expert to ensure we have a more efficient "skeleton" going forward.

2: The RPG engine we were planning on using turned out to be inefficient.  It was slightly over - engineered for our needs.  After all, as the game is non-violent, we had no use for a combat system, nor did we require the extensive inventory/crafting mechanics.   Fortunately, it only took us about a day to switch to a more practical and efficient system that we just happened to have waiting in the wings...

IN THIS WEEK'S "PEACE ISLAND LORE"...

We take a look at the now-abandoned Laflamme Fishworks.

The southern shores of Peace island were favored by the islands natives for centuries.  The bounties offered by the seas were initially shared freely with early European settlers.  Unfortunately - after the fall of the Free Island Republic, native tribes were pushed to the side as new residents from the mainland claimed these shoals for their exclusive use.

A tenuous balance between the needs of man and the regenerative ability of the local seas was maintained for a few generations, until the arrival of Civil War veteran and aspiring mogul "Grenadier LaFlamme," who bought and subsequently destroyed the entirety of the tiny fishing village in 1869.  

Upon this ruin, he constructed a state-of-the-art factory and company town - complete with shops, dining halls, and - of course - his own private police force (just to make sure the migrant workers "topside" stayed in THEIR part of town...)

LaFlamme oversaw this small empire during its heyday from atop his gated mansion, when he was the island's largest employer, and his goods valued and sought worldwide for their exceptional quality.  

Unfortunately, the senior LaFlamme never lived long enough to see the result of his assault on local fisheries, which were decimated within two short generations.

Just 45 years later, in 1920, the Fishworks were shuttered and the residents of the company town slowly drifted away.  Many remnants of the LaFlamme family could not sit idly as nature re-claimed their inheritance, and decided to leave for the mainland - better to find places to spend their grandfather's legacy, after all.

Today, the old settlement lies mostly abandoned, aside from the odd tourist looking for cheap, leaky ocean-side lodging, and the two remaining LaFlamme brothers - whose absolute disgust for each other has been the source of local amusement and controversy for decades.

MOAR IN 8 DAYS - BUT ONE LAST THING:

As we approach the 0.9 alpha release, things are getting SERIOUS around here.  Over the next two months, I will be gradually scaling back Patreon updates to every two weeks,  These updates will be, of course, FAR more substantial, as we get closer to the Beta release!

THANKS AGAIN FOR YOUR SUPPORT, PATIENCE, AND CONFIDENCE!