Mac update, Bugs, and Distribution.

So- let's get this out of the way first:  I spent ten days trying to get the mac to accept the project through traditional means.  However, the project always locked up in the initial stages of opening, saying that it was "Waiting for Cache Server."

There are work-arounds for this problem.  I implemented all four of them - in tandem and separately.  Each attempt required between 4-12 hours, and every last one of them failed.

Now- this has happened before - we've released about nine Mac alphas, and sometimes the translation goes less efficiently than others.  The next step was to create a create a completely blank project, and then bring everything over piecemeal, as individual packages, to see if we could at least OPEN the project.

I am happy to report that the initial results are positive - however, it will unfortunately take another week, before we have a distributable Mac build.

Why it is taking so long this time?  Well- remember that "Refactor" we were talking about for all of those months?  Well, these delays are a by-product of that.  

MAC USERS: JUST KNOW THAT THIS IS MY #1 PERSONAL CONCERN AT THE MOMENT. MY PROGRESS IS ONLY HAMPERED BY THE HOURS THAT IT TAKES FOR UNITY TO PARSE EVERYTHING.  

In the meantime, I've started working on doing some fine-tuned landscaping, and experementing with initial "cave" concepts.  This won't be a huge thing within Peace Island - don't expect dungeon crawls in any sense- I just wanted to be able to add some hidden nooks & crannies on the rockier, steeper eastern coast that would make them more worth exploring.

We've addressed most of the bugs that became apparent after the most recent release.  In a way, the Mac folks are lucky, because they didn't have to deal with all of that.  We are, of course, obligated to send out a new release to the PC folks, as well - and that brings us to another issue:

Our current policy of simply handing out links on our Patreon Feed for alphas that are stored on third-party sites (such as google drive) is no longer practical.

- People don't want to just download a file from someone's personal server.  I might have the best intentions in the world & clean files, but I understand that a lot of folks have security concerns about such.

- Thanks to our new lead coder, substantial updates are now coming at a near-weekly basis.  We want to share these, but creating & disseminating a whole new "Alpha" version for download each time is just crazy.

- As we get closer to public Beta, we need a service that allows us to handle the volume of demand.  Releasing Peace Island for our 5 thousand supporters past & present is one thing - handling tens of thousands of downloads in a single day is an entirely different thing.

We have had a presence on Steam for almost a year at this point, and in coming days we will look into migrating the playable builds onto their service, and distributing keys to all elligible patrons & supporters.

We understand that a significant number of gamers object to the virtual monopoly that Steam enjoys in game sales.

So we established a NEW ITCH.IO PRESENCE. where we can offer keys to those who don't particurly like Steam.  We encourage you to head over there and add it to your collection!

By moving distribution to these two services, we address all of the concerns listed above, and many more.  News on this in days to come.

We're running out of postcard premium sets - shipments might be delayed for a week or more.  As always, if you have not received your premiums, please reach out to us at peaceislandllc@gmail.com.

NEWS ON THE MAC RELEASE, AS SOON AS WE HAVE IT!