Tonight's top topic: Alpha Schedules - but first, news.

THE EXPANSION HAS BEGUN.

Today, we upgraded to Unity Pro, and they were gracious enough to grant us four seats for the price of one.  This means that we can have four fully-connected folks working on the project, instead of just us two.  This costs the project one dollar per day, per person - not a bad deal!

We have also gotten in touch with a local computer expert who, after lengthy consultation, DEFINITELY knew his stuff.  He will be constructing two custom machines with far better architectures than our current dev machine.  What is more:  He is doing so at a GREATLY reduced price, with 100% iron-clad assurance of the top quality of the components going into these machines, and as he is local, he will be able to provide immediate, on-site service, should one machine go down. We should have these, in 7-9 days...

And that brings us to the subject everyone has been asking about:  

WHEN IS THE NEXT ALPHA DUE?

Understand firstly that games are made by people.  In this case, we're talking about a game made by two people who are (still) both working 40-plus hours a week on jobs that we are currently disentangling ourselves from.

I only have three shifts left, and we're laden with meetings with boring people like lawyers and business managers.

Despite our attempt at immediately bringing on a social media manager, we only FINALLY got on top of all the incoming traffic, just within the past 48 hours.

Needless to say, this means that development on the game itself had to take a short hiatus while we sorted it all out.  

The Hiatus ended today with our upgrade to Unity Pro, but we really cannot start full-time development on the project until the 4th of August, after my last day at the kitchen.

Your first month's patronage should arrive within the next 36 hours after.

WE WANT TO SHOW YOU WHAT YOUR FIRST MONTH OF PATRONAGE HAS BOUGHT.

We don't want to send you the same alpha we had planned, two weeks ago, when we didn't have the equipment, funding, and talent that your patronage has brought to the project.

We want to integrate a better character controller, more animations, and get rid of bugs, to make sure that the new alpha will run faster cross-platform.  We want to improve the soundtrack, and bring in world mechanics like ocean tides.

We can do all of these things, and a LOT more for the next alpha, if you can give our small team three weeks, allowing us to release the next closed alpha on August 21.

We understand that some folks won't want to wait. 

After the first month's patronage has been received, we are still willing to distribute the older alpha to those who contributed.  

Just understand: the new alpha will be worth the wait!

In the meantime, we will of course be posting more news - but after full-time work starts on August 4, we will be cutting updates back to 2 per week - we want to use the time you guys have bought us, to maximum effect!

More news on Tuesday!