Latest Dev news.

The holidays are finally over, and we're back into full-swing here.

My personal mission has been to figure out why we apparently lost a measure of visual quality, somewhere along the way - but perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself...

First, I wanted to let you know that we've re-opened our Twitch channel.  This almost didn't happen after it appeared that our first broadcast suffered from the same audio probalems that had plagued all of our previous attempts.  Thankfully, it turned out to be a problem on the listener's side, rather than ours.  

Since then, I've gone live for about an hour each day, demonstrating the rather boring back-end elements of game development.  A good 20% of time is spent looking at loading bars, whether it be in-game, or waiting for the Unity engine to re-load script assemblies.

Not the most exciting of content, I admit.  However, If I were not live streaming myself doing these incredibly mundane jobs, I doubt I would be able to retain focus.  

I reluctantly admit that I am finding the informal nature of Twitch streaming to be preferable to YouTube, so I will more than likely be continuing this daily stream schedule (although I will take an evening off to chat with you guys here!)

Laura has taken on a number of jobs over the past week. She completed our latest sweep through the Island, looking for objects and structures that lack colliders, and tweaked the previous ivy placements.  She also was able to position over 100 "Tightropes" around the island, which will finally allow players to walk along and jump to/from narrow surfaces such as fencetops.

It's the first iteration, so work remains.  We've yet to add this to the Island's power lines - which we will do, once we add climbable ivy to the utility poles.  Also, sometimes, placement is just a smidge off, resulting in a few "floaty cats."

Our systems guy Lance was able to create a new camera controller that was more in-tune with our needs, and made adjustments to the cat controller that radically improves the player's ability to aim-jump.  This has led to a few bizarre situations where our virtual cats procedurally find themselves in places where you would not normally find a cat (just as in real life!)

As I type, He's hard at work creating a component that will allow us to easily add sound effects to just about every object in the game.

As these features are completed and improved, we will be streaming sneak previews at our aforementioned Twitch channel.

So- as I was saying at the beginning: somewhere along the way, Peace Island lost a bit of visual "Oomph."  For example: take a look at this screenshot from a little over two years ago...

And compare with how things were, in the most recent release:

It was impossible to escape the obvious: somewhere along the way, we lost the vibrant colors and atmospherics that made Peace Island so special.  Fortunately, I happened to have a version of the project from years ago with the original settings.  Using that, we were able to locate the problem, and have started recifying it.  

Unfortunately, a full fix will have to wait until we can reconcile our audio system with a revised version of the skybox (which serves as the world's "clock.")  Figure another week on that.

See ya'll next week- thanks as always for your support, patience, and confidence - it means the world to us!

PS - We're a tiny bit behind in confirming in-game name placements.  We apologize for this, and will be confirming all outstanding requests, by this coming Sunday.