I try to give everyone who works on the project US Federal holidays off - and as you might know, July 4th is Independence Day here in the USA. I took advantage of the pleasant weather to catch a ferry out to Cliff Island, where they were enjoying a free concert out by the d...
2022-07-05 22:51:41 +0000 UTC View PostAs anyone who played the previous few releases knows, in order for the cats to boost their "food" or "fun" levels, they had to wander into a number of colored "bubbles" that one found scattered around the main exterior. This was, of course, never expected to be a permanent ...
2022-06-21 01:09:57 +0000 UTC View PostWe've almost arrived at a milestone I have long dreamed of: an end to "stuck cats!"
Lance has been making great strides with the controller, over the past week. Not only has he greatly reduced the "mid-jump kick," he's gotten the IK on the cats to the point whe...
2022-06-13 23:10:00 +0000 UTC View PostThis past week has been one of those where I spent far too much time waiting for Unity to "do it's thing." I believe about 15% of a given day was spent waiting for a progress bar to fill. This was all in pursuit of ensuring that the new reactive foliage was fully impl...
2022-06-07 00:09:34 +0000 UTC View PostSo, as I detailed last week, we had begun our first steps of improving the IK. In case you are not aware, IK is Game-Developer-ese for "Inverse Kinematics." Generically, it is best described as this:
Imagine holding a whip. Note how that ...
Got word that we've been able to get a real improvement the IK (Inverse Kinematics) on the cats' legs, so that they will be far more responsive. I know the image below doesn't look too impressive, but it represents something we've been trying to implement, since day one. 2022-05-23 00:06:06 +0000 UTC View Post
I know I said we were going to update ya'll tonight on the progress we've made over the past week.
Unfortunately, this morning, I had a relapse of whatever infection I caught during my recent "vacation," and I was bedridden for most of the day.
We've made good progre...
2022-05-21 00:48:47 +0000 UTC View PostSome of ya’ll were so kind as to tell me that I was free to take a bit of extra time for this update, so I did. There’s more news about last weekend’s incident below - but for now, let’s go over what we’ve been able to add, recently!
Firstly: 2022-05-13 23:26:35 +0000 UTC View Post
So, last time I posted, I mentioned I was going on a very long-overdue working vacation. This was something I had wanted to do for years, and had planned for six months - it was to be a working vacation out on one of the islands in Casco Bay, where I could do research for P...
2022-05-10 20:39:09 +0000 UTC View PostAs anyone who has played the alphas can tell you, one of the shortcomings we've yet to fully address is reactive foliage. The current, rather primitive system we have in place only affects grass, and when you head into thicker woods, the camera is sometimes obscured by leav...
2022-04-29 23:38:33 +0000 UTC View Post1 - Colliders: Yeah, we fell short, again. I think once the new month comes, we will be asking some of our new volunteer testers to make a comprehensive list of every last building, prop, and NPC that is somehow still lacking a collider.
2022-04-22 23:41:47 +0000 UTC
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We have a stable Mac alpha!!! However: In order to prevent the embarrassment and clumsiness of the PC release (which had three iterations over three days,) we are not comfortable releasing it until we make sure it does not suffer from the same problems.
We will be p...
2022-04-16 00:12:21 +0000 UTC View PostWow- boy, did we miss a lot! I confess that about 10% of them are reporting stuff that I remember being fixed, and verified as fixed - but that has been a consistent problem: Occasionally, one person's work (usually mine) gets "rewound" when someone else on the projec...
2022-04-11 00:36:42 +0000 UTC View Post1: For some reason, we're getting WORSE performance than our previous release, across the board.
2: Some players are reporting that their cats just run away on their own.
WE APOLOGIZE FOR THESE PROBLEMS- WE WILL BE FIXING THEM AND RELEASING A PATCHED VERSI...
For the 11th month running, we could not produce an alpha.
This was avoidable. Unfortunately, a forgetful member of the team insisted on inserting one non-tested/non-functional object or system after another into the build, literally DAYS after I told...
2022-04-02 06:05:38 +0000 UTC View PostLast-minute bugs with the AI.
Tomorrow.
The project was "Locked Down" this afternoon - meaning that no new features can be added, and all efforts should now be spent of making sure everything works as best we can.
As usual, I will be tweaking biomes and 100 other details over the weekend. O...
2022-03-25 23:26:45 +0000 UTC View PostWhile we have climbing pretty much solved, we still have to add climbable ivy prefabs to various structures around town. This was something I wanted to take care of this past week, but was delayed temporarily by a collider issue that has since been addressed. I plan o...
2022-03-13 22:28:43 +0000 UTC View PostIn the light of this week's events, we felt it important to say: There are patrons and fans of Peace Island in both Russia and Ukraine, and over the course of the project's development, we have been fortunate enough to work with talented people from both of these great coun...
2022-03-06 00:21:43 +0000 UTC View PostWe are very fortunate to have many patient supporters who repeatedly assure us that they are willing to wait "as long as it takes" for us to release The Final Alpha. My goodness, I wish I had their patience...
The fact is that Peace Island has not rel...
2022-02-26 00:16:07 +0000 UTC View PostAs I have often mentioned recently, we've been working on tying up all of the loose ends in the final act of Peace Island's storyline. However, we were running up against a problem: How to relate all of this analogue information from the WIKI and hundreds of pages of ...
2022-02-19 01:21:36 +0000 UTC View PostSorry about being a day late in updating - as you probably know, I live in Portland, Maine. While I love the city, they do a very poor job of maintaining sidewalks. If you don't own a car, there is a solid month where you will either have to walk on the roads, or risk...
2022-02-13 23:13:34 +0000 UTC View PostI 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 c...
2022-02-05 00:47:44 +0000 UTC View PostThe family of deer that patrol the highlands of Peace Island is now complete, with the addition of a fawn - although you can see there's a bit of a scaling issue! But then again - wouldn't we all like to have a deer the size of a cat?
2022-01-28 22:55:52 +0000 UTC
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I am sorry that I have come to all of you a few days late. We sat down with our lead coder, and put together a list of the 18 things we required for the release of the "Final Alpha."
Out of those:
- Nine are done
- Five are either ac...
I realized just this past week that we’ve never shown off the cat’s swimming action that we added a few months back!
Now- before you ask: No - the cats will not be ford...
2022-01-14 23:49:12 +0000 UTC View PostLast week, the new computer FINALLY arrived, and while the core refactor is in its initial stages, we are already seeing results!
While it might not sound like much, the first improvement was the return of properly-shaded rocks. This was a particularl...
2022-01-07 23:52:32 +0000 UTC View PostWe made a great deal of progress, and are blessed with fantastic supporters - many of whom have assured us that they understand that “The best laid plans o' mice an' men oft go awry.”
That having all been said, I am personally disappointed that we could not reac...
2021-12-31 23:09:48 +0000 UTC View PostI must confess that my severe ADHD makes me forget the date occasionally - this is why this update was delayed. I had completely forgotten that was Christmas Eve, and while Laura & myself don't make a fuss over doing much for the traditional holidays, we usually do take...
2021-12-27 00:14:45 +0000 UTC View PostAfter a bit of feedback, we realized that the "Cat Switch" UI that we featured in the initial version of the Steam trailer was just not visually or tonally consistent with the rest of the trailer.
That design might have been neat, when we initially sketched it out almost t...