So, the last time we spoke, I reflected upon the sheer amount of background information the game was requiring. This past week, we branched out from that and started getting serious about assembling more of the various pieces of media and art that the game will require, going forward.
I particularly enjoyed designing the 1820-era "Free Island Republic" currency (don't wor...
2020-03-05 01:51:01 +0000 UTC View PostBefore 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 l...
2020-02-26 02:28:55 +0000 UTC View PostThis week was another one of those stretches where I found myself tackling stuff I never thought I would be doing.
As you might remember from last update, the Free Island Republic anthem's lyrics had been composed. This week, choral and orchestral music was composed for the anthem, and we sent the score over to London to be recorded, just last night.
2020-02-19 01:01:26 +0000 UTC
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It's been somewhat of a busy week- our revised website went up, The AI for the "Invasive species" continues to be developed (video here,) and more buildings have gotten realistic, roughened exteriors:
Int...
2020-02-12 01:06:59 +0000 UTC View PostI'LL BE HONEST WITH YA'LL:
I spent half of the last week down in New Jersey, helping out an old friend and consulting with some old business associates (and YES- one of them was named "Vinnie.")
I used to live in this neighborhood, and it's nice to see that absolutely nothing has changed!
Thankfully, whilst I was away, work ...
2020-02-06 03:31:47 +0000 UTC View Post...because we're getting into the deep part of the Maine winter here in Portland. There comes a time in mid-January where the snows have laid on the ground for weeks, and in places fossilized into a substance as slippery as grease and unyielding as tempered steel.
We take comfort, however, in the fact that we can at least see a bit of light on the horizon after 5:00 PM. 2020-01-22 00:13:33 +0000 UTC View Post
As I have oft stated here, the strangest, yet most wonderful transition Peace Island has taken as a project has been the transformation it has undergone over the past year.
This time last year, it was only myself, Laura, and the few temporary freelancers we could bring on whenever our savings allowed.
Now, we seem to be growing each week as we seek to concentrate r...
2020-01-15 00:43:08 +0000 UTC View PostFirst off, one of our main development machines was offline for two workdays, due to hardware conflict issues. However, thanks to the talented bunch of folks we've assembled, development on the game didn't suffer too much.
Laura has continued roughing out interiors, and Arjuna, who usually handles our character controller development, is giving structures like the ...
2020-01-08 01:03:01 +0000 UTC View Post
While I've long since grown used to the cold and precipitations associated with Maine winters, these are still the weeks I dread: when the sun sets right after 4PM and night falls at an hour you would usually associate with "mid-afternoon."
All of this coincides with the most intense parts of the holiday season in the USA, which adds an an extra bit of stress, and a bit of downtime here at the ...
2019-12-31 23:15:35 +0000 UTC View PostThis week has been a slow one- admittedly, because I believe that all of us have been busting our collective butts, and deserved both the weekend, and at least two days off for the inclement holiday.
However, that doesn't mean that progress hasn't been made! After the recent release of the Mac alpha, a great sigh of relief arose from our office. What is more- we were VERY gratified to see that performance on the Mac OS had improved
I'll start off with Mac alpha news:
We went ahead and priority-shipped our workhorse Mac to our chief backend developers in New York.
Due to the recent increase of interest in the Peace Island project, Laura and I simply don't have the waking hours to handle such deep-tech issues- it was best to send the job over to the guys who are developing the PC backend, because they would have a far better grasp on reconciling these issues than we would, and save inn...
I guess we should first welcome all the new supporters!
The internet works in mysterious ways... We're still trying to figure out the initial cause, but a few days ago, traffic to my personal YouTube account - as well as to our social media outlets - increased dramatically. We're happy to report that this has also resulted in an unexp...
2019-12-10 22:58:51 +0000 UTC View Post
As you can see, Gary isn't too enthused, but for us, this is a GREAT step forward...
The issue here is the project itself...
I had spent about 18 months creating the previous, rather haphazard way the project file had been organized - and each step of the way, it had been gradually adjusted to fit with how Mac did things...
Now, over the past few months- th...
2019-12-07 23:57:26 +0000 UTC View Post...But before we get into that- I want to assure the Mac folks out there: We are getting closer to isolating the issues related to the Apple build of the latest alpha. As I type, we are backing up all data on our development Mac- after which we will be wiping the system clean, re-installing unity, and attempting a fresh build.
You see: I know it is fashionable among the Mac community to adopt terms such as "Mac is V...
2019-12-03 23:59:17 +0000 UTC View PostI am SINCERELY sorry - this further delay is happening despite my best efforts.
As soon as this post goes live, I'm shutting down all work on the project, until we get the Mac version out...
Until then...
Thanks again for your patience & support!
We sincerely apologize.
2019-11-20 03:44:43 +0000 UTC View PostOn the evening of November 17, 2017, a line cook in Portland Maine sat down in front of his PC, took a deep breath, and sketched out the first blobs which eventually became Peace Island.
He wanted to keep a record of his progress, day-by-day, so he could always appreciate that he had always come one step closer to getting the game done.
A few days later, a sun appeared...
Work on interiors has had to take a backseat, because we're spending all of our time these days tying up all the loose ends that are in the way of the Alpha release, next week.
All that remains are a few tweaks on the character controller, about 200 colliders, and perhaps, if we have time, a rough draft of the new graveyard...
2019-11-13 00:40:45 +0000 UTC
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The greatest of our energies at the home office have been spent refining interiors.
Boring on the outside...
But a heck of a lot more complex, on the inside.
Over 80% of the interiors that will be featured in the game are under active development- about 5% are more ...
2019-11-06 02:25:00 +0000 UTC View PostJust about every day, I look up at the big whiteboard above my desk, and see just a little bit more blue and green creeping in. Some days the change is a bit slower than others, but the progress is steady...
We've been addressing the interiors of the island one by one, and I'm coming to the realization that it is entirely within the project's current scope to have literal...
2019-10-30 01:10:00 +0000 UTC View PostFirst, the bad news: The next alpha is being delayed by two weeks. We are now planning to release it on the weekend of November 16th.
We have had to slow down work on the back end of the project for a while while we take care of a number of issues, and catch up with the front end of things.
This week, we finally got our whiteboards, and started cataloging wh...
2019-10-23 00:11:48 +0000 UTC View PostFirst off, lemme tell ya'll about a wacky thing I did, this past weekend:
I took TWO WHOLE DAYS OFF, in a ROW!!!
Talk about walkin' the WILD SIDE - I've not done that in about six months!
I hadn't gone on a decent island walkabout in a while - and couldn't have chosen a better time...
2019-10-15 23:37:06 +0000 UTC View PostBut before I get to all of that, I wanted to again thank everyone who has contributed $25 or more up to this point, and who also sent along their mailing addresses. We've mailed out all your postcard premiums, and you should be receiving them as fast as you respective post offices can get them to you!
The bad news, is that this only means that 40% of all premiums have been sent out - you see, 60% of those eligible for postcard sets have yet ...
2019-10-08 23:51:56 +0000 UTC View PostSo, I guess the big news is that Laura, the original Co-Developer of Peace Island, has joined the project, full-time!
It took her a while to extricate herself from her previous job, but now that she has, she's expanding her role by picking up some SpeedTree skills, transferring the writer's bible into a node-based editor that will allow us to flesh out more details of the...
2019-10-02 00:29:35 +0000 UTC View Post
So, the past week is the first where we've had a full slate of folks working on the project - and no less than three of them were coders! As a result, we made some solid progress on a lot of goals:
1: The two Mikes in NY have been able to integrate pretty much all of the main game world into our sectorizing tools, resulting in a HEFTY improvement in framerat...
2019-09-22 22:55:36 +0000 UTC View PostFirst off, it has come to our attention that certain Radeon graphics cards are having issues with the PC alpha...
A few days after I released the PC alpha, some folks were getting in touch with me, saying that the alpha wouldn't even run, despite their computer having adequate memory, and decent graphics processors. It became unfortunately evident a few days later that there was one common thread among all of these incidents:
The computers in question were a...
2019-09-18 00:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post...was how, as activity on the Peace Island project ramped up, my individual role would become more supervisory, than hands-on...
It's quite a change - for about a year and a half, If we needed something done, It was either up to Myself, Laura, or Alex - our programmer in Greece. In a given day, I'd have to jump from one aspect of development to another about a dozen times:
In the morning, I'd be working with IK motors. By lunchtime, I'd have moved o...
So, after six 11-hour days of work, the conversion of the Peace Island 0.7 alpha is unfortunately no closer to release, than it was one week ago.
I wanted to put that up front, in bold, so I cannot be accused of being anything but honest with our Mac supporters.
Trust me- it sucks on this end, too. Again- the last Mac alpha conversion only required 8 hours of work, and was released almost concurrently with the PC version. I as...
2019-09-06 18:57:12 +0000 UTC View PostFirst off, I wanna talk to the Mac users out there: I've spent the past two days working on getting a Mac build of the Peace Island alpha ready.
That wasn't my original plan. Ya see, the last time we released a port to the mac, it was ridiculously easy. It took less than eight hours, and we made the mistake of thinking it would be that easy, this ti...
2019-09-04 03:48:46 +0000 UTC View Post
Over 100 people weighed in on my last post, saying they were cool with waiting another few days for whatever alpha we can cobble together.
I'll be frank: this past week has been tumultuous, to say the least, and development has advanced and stalled on a dozen fronts, each day. What we believe to be possible one day, becomes impossible the next, and vice versa.