The time draws near! In the last dev blog I sent out, I mentioned that we were going to announce the release date for our first playable game module, the Town Square. Those of you who follow our Twitter and Twitch streams will have already learned this date. It's a very exciting and important time for Identity; we're fast approaching the time where you'll first step foot in Identity's grand world. We've crunched all the numbers and can now say with fair confidence that the Identity Town Square module will be released, to all backers with a $30 or higher pledge, on this coming March 21st. What will you find in the Town Square? The Town Square is a social game module. You'll be able to create your character, which may be transferable to the retail game after release, and meet hundreds of other Identity backers in the town square of the clean and quaint city of Ash Hill. You'll be able to talk to those around you, add them to your phone contacts and have full phone and IM support to stay in touch. You'll find a completely functional cinema playing full movies around the clock, a karaoke bar to show off your skills (or see me making a fool of myself), a working restaurant, art gallery, shops and more. The biggest single feature is the housing system. You're getting a taste of the full and complete player housing mechanics that you'll find in Identity. Everyone will have access to a tiny apartment, but those who pledged for higher rewards will be able to check out and decorate their larger spaces. It's a preview of what you'll have in the full game. Invite friends to your place and party it up! After the initial release of the module, we'll continue to add features to the Town Square as they are completed in development for Identity. Barbershops and tattoo parlors will let you customize your character further. A garage will let you sample your vehicles. You'll even get to test your ability with firearms in the police shooting range before the SWAT module is released. For me, one of the most exciting parts of Town Square is just to get inside the game and finally get a feel for Identity and how it plays. Check out a few of the Town Square work-in-progress shots we've released in the past. It's been a long road for the development team here at Asylum, but we're almost there! Flexing our new manpower Productivity has skyrocketed with our new office. We're working better and there are now many more of us knocking out code and assets each day. Our programming team has expanded with Charles and we're still hiring more. We've brought three new and incredibly talented 3D artists on board as well as a new technical artist. Brandon, our new Community Manager, has been hard at work keeping you in the loop. These guys are all proving their worth each day and I'm extremely excited about where Asylum is going. Looking to the future With some of our Town Square art wrapping up now, we're beginning to shift a bit of our focus to the second module: SWAT. The SWAT module will be a team vs team competitive shooter using the combat mechanics you'll find in the full Identity release. Expect combat to be slower and more realistic than most similar games. You'll learn much more about this module as work progresses. Above is an MP5 sub machinegun which will be used by the SWAT forces. This particular model was created from scratch in a matter of days by one of our new artists, Dan. The awesome talent of our art team is undeniable! -- John VanderZwet

A recently expanded team getting settled in and up to pace, good things coming in time. I can wait.

Since I might have re-railed things just a bit, I'll give you a more serious response! You will, definitely, see tasers and shotguns in Identity. There will be several less-than-lethal weapons available.

I recently made a poll asking the community here whether or not they thought that the Town Square Module's release date was going to be announced this month as promised or not. Well, it has, on a recent post on Twitch it was announced as March 21st, 2018. My original poll was taken by some to be negative, and some people voted negatively on it as well. Two people going as far as voting for 'The module and the game will never be released.' This post now is mostly an appreciation post. If we only talk about the things that the Dev's do wrong, or don't do right, we're not being very supportive. I would like to thank the developers for keeping their promise and trying hard to get everything ready enough to announce a formal release date for the module. It was a great thing and deserves some attention.

I think it should be called Atlas, as a small wink to Altis.

The Democratic Realist Party - Let's Get Real! Vote Jack Lester for governor! The DRP is a centrist political party founded to oppose the now aging ideologies of socialism and conservatism by striking a balance between the two. Socialism has a track record of causing recession and debt, whereas conservatism involves austerity and leads to inequality. Founded in 2017 by Jack Lester, the DRP is a direct response to the political shifts occurring in Europe & the USA, and seeks to prove that moderate politics should be as important as the recent right and left wing movements. We believe that centrism can benefit every member of society equally by keeping taxes on individuals and small business low, and making large corporations pay their fair share towards the development of our society. Policies: Economy: Support the free market - avoid government intervention in most areas Subsidies for business startups Tax: Income tax of 3% for all earning under $25k per year Income tax of 6% for all earning between $25k-$50k per year Income tax of 8% for all earning between $50k-$200k per year Income tax of 10% for all earning above $200k per year Low corporation tax of 6% of profit for small business Corporation tax of 30% of profit for large corporations Heavily tax alcohol, tobacco and legalised marijuana Transport: State controlled rail & bus services to keep fares low Healthcare: Create a nationalised healthcare service similar to the United Kingdom’s NHS Those who can not afford healthcare will have their fees paid for by the state Costs of healthcare for those that can afford it will be added to their taxes Housing: Encourage members of our society to own their own homes/apartments with a first time buyer "help to buy scheme" - paying for 10% of the cost Ensure all homes have access to energy, water, internet and waste services and introduce a small service charge to the provision of these services Policing: End the war on drugs - decriminalise possession of Class C (steroids/tranquilisers) & B (cannabis/amphetamines) drugs, impose fines for class A (heroin, cocaine, LSD) possession Legalise medical and recreational marijuana Zero tolerance policy on Police corruption Firearms: Ban the sale of all automatic weapons License, minimum age and background check requirements for legal firearms Legalised firearms: handguns, shotguns and hunting rifles Social Issues: Support gay marriage and gay rights Pro choice abortion - emphasise use of contraception & that abortion is not a form of contraception Champion equal pay for all Allow freedom of religion however allow no religious opinion to influence politics Law: Identity will have a punishment system for if residents commit a crime. If an offender repeats their crime within one week their fine/prison time will be doubled. Possession of illegal substances: 1 hour/$1000 fine Possession of illegal firearms: 2 hours/$2500 fine and weapons seized Petty theft: 2 hours Burglary: 5 hours Mugging: 5 hours Organised crime/theft: 10 hours - 3 days (depending on severity) Murder: 2 days "Together we can root out the corruption & abrasive ideologies in politics by voting for a voice of moderation and reason - The Democratic Realist Party." Jack Lester - 2017

Fair Market Merchant Bureau The FMMB's purpose is to assure fair marketing across various vendors and merchants. We aim to keep a stabilized economy by insuring fair market prices for or customers. While at this junction in time the FMMB does not have any legal authorization, we WILL be seeking government backing for the project. How We Operate The FMMB will operate by holding meetings with participating merchants to assure no particular merchant is over charging for their goods or services, based against an average cost of similar products and services. This will help keep the economy stable and keep prices from being gouged or sky-rocketed. Incentives To Join Here are a few reasons why merchants will benefit from joining the FMMB: Help maintain and stabilize and a balanced and fair economy for everyone. Customers will KNOW you are a participant in FMMB and will feel both financially protected and reassured about spending with your store. We will provide FREE merchant advice or help to any merchant members. (This does not include financial help) We will work hard to shut down any competitors that are manipulating their prices in any direction away from fair market value. About Us The Fair Market Merchant Bureau is a non-profit organization that seeks to keep the economy stabilized and balanced for all citizens. We believe the prices of goods and services should be fair for all citizens. No one person should be getting rich off the sweat of the brow from another. To inquire about joining the Bureau and participating in making a better economy today please contact myself and have details pertaining to your business on hand. DISCLAIMER: The Fair Market Merchant Bureau is backed and supported by legitimate businesses ONLY! We will not help, assist, maintain, or support illegal companies or companies correlated with illegal actions, goods, or services.

The game will not come out earlier than the date given, that is only for the 1st Module.

WOW, I just looked through the site and it is absolutely amazing! The detail, clean design and stunning artwork is just something else! Well done Hamilton, you are leading in the world of website politics for sure! I'll have to follow suit! -Marie-Clare Bouchard -Founder and President of "The Front National.

The overflowing creativity is astounding.

You won't be able to make money in the first module, but you will have limitless money to test out everything like the apartment customization (hype!), go into shops and everything like that.

Earth

The release date of the first module will be on, March 21st, 2018. Make sure to get on the discord in my signature, updates are done there and the developers and staff team are there!

Still though, we have to wait 4 more months for the module that should have been out already by now its ridiculous. Especially since this is only a social module, no jobs or crime..

Halloween Update: It is finally here, Sneak peaks galore, Let's all cheer, Open your apartment door, See Town Square shine so bright, Aegis Wishes You, A Haunting Night! Stay safe tonight Identity...but just remember, Aegis Security has got you when the spooky scary skeletons send shivers down your spine!

I can only imagine!

Only known politicians that came before me are Thomas Hetch and my partner and friend Joel Keys!

It'd be unprofessional not to! I'm looked at more as the veteran of politics that's been around a long time and he's more of a new face (or rainbow heart) with modern likings!

I understand that!

Beginning of a new era Wow, what a month; busy and exciting and full of promise! While the developers have been hard at work getting the Town Square module ready to go, I've been preparing our new office space and interviewing potential Asylum developers. We've raised almost $800,000, allowing us to expand in a big way and bring on loads of new talent. Asylum Entertainment's new home If you read my last dev blog you'll remember that we had just scouted out office space and had narrowed our search to one. Now we have the keys and I've been working hard to get it operational. I never want to see another hex key again! It's almost hard to imagine that we've been working on Identity with a team spread out around the world. The talent of our small team has astonished me. It's exciting to consider how finally working in a formal setting is going to boost productivity. Not only is working in an office such as this going to make it easier to work together, but we've been on a hiring craze. Having sifted through hundreds of applications over the past few weeks and interviewing dozens of skilled individuals, we've selected most new developers to join our team. Our programming manpower is now three times stronger. Finally, after all this time we're now able to afford a full-time community manager. Joining our team at the new office location next week is Identity's community manager, Brandon! You'll be hearing from him very regulary. We're committing to keeping you in constant contact with the development team. Keep an eye on our website as well as social media! Town Square on the horizon! With our new studio starting up next week and the new programming talent coming on-board, our goal of the Town Square release is getting nearer. It's big news: the official Town Square release date will be announced in the month of October. With all of the changes affecting our productivity in such a positive way, we need to see how everyone works together over the next few weeks. This will allow us to give our fans a date with which we can be confident. We've got the Twitch We wanted to give you a glimpse of the game development process and have been streaming on Twitch to show you how it's done. Four hour (or more) long streams have gone live since my last dev blog; keep an eye on Identity's Twitter for future stream announcements. We try to have at least one development stream per week. As a fan of Identity, one of the things you're going to enjoy most is the flurry of videos which will be coming soon showing off the social features of the Town Square. For a simple social module, there's a good bit of fun things to do! New in the Town Square Our lead programmer, Henrik, has been hard at work these last couple of weeks refactoring our housing system to make it more stable and better performing for the Town Square module release. Everything's looking great at this point and he's very excited to get a bunch of new help over the next couple of weeks. With more great talent joining our art team, we're producing assets and new environments at an astonishing pace. Interiors we only hoped to have in Town Square by its release have gone from concept to reality very quickly. Last dev blog I showed you the concept art pieces produced for the police station. The police station was something we didn't expect to be available in the initial Town Square release, but with our art team hard at work we're getting a lot done. Below you'll find the lobby as it is in-game. The police station in Town Square will be a place for you to learn about the policing career, but it will also eventually feature a shooting range for you to test the weapon systems in Identity. Police station lobby in Town Square Our character and clothing team has also been adding a large variety of things to wear in the Town Square. Both clothing and accessories are being added all the time. Note the attention to detail and excellent quality of the clothing pieces in Identity. New sweater clothing What's to come In summary, we've been moving along with Identity's development at a great pace considering the size of our team; however, our team is growing in a big way right now. New developers are selected and some are starting at the new office as early as this coming week. Once the new guys have been oriented and we get an understanding of their work, we're going to be able to analyze the tasks remaining and give you a release date for Town Square. This is a big deal; Town Square isn't all that far off now and we're already preparing and planning for the next module: SWAT. I hoped to release a video showing combat systems already, but most the remaining work for that falls on myself as the other developers are busy with the real systems for Town Square. I've not had much time over these weeks from preparing the office, so that's on hold a bit; my priority is getting the Town Square module into your hands as soon as possible. Because we're getting further along now, and with the added manpower, we're going to soon start releasing small gameplay videos showing off the different aspects of Town Square. Finally, Brandon is joining Asylum as a dedicated full-time community manager! Brandon will be keeping you up to date constantly. Our silent days are soon to be over! -- John VanderZwet Deja Vu! (I've just been in the place before...) Salutations again! This time it's Brandon talking. John's been too busy to update the site, so I'm here to finally add the 10th Developer Blog to the corresponding section of the forums! You've most likely seen this update if you've been active in "The Town Square" section of the site, so I apologize for not having anything new to share in terms of screenshots or stuff like that. D: No need to get the pitchforks out though! I might have a few things to tide you guys over! (Please don't poke me aaa.) Charles (the game developer sitting beside me in the office) is currently in a skype call with another programmer on the team getting the 411 on the current build of Identity. They're walking through some stuff in regards to the Unreal Engine and talking about all sorts of things that are t o t a l l y beyond me. I took some java and C programming courses as electives when I was in University and MAN, I've had a newfound appreciation for coders ever since. I'll see if I can get some tangible information about the specifics of what Charles is working on after the call, because all I see is a mixture of math and player models! In other news, I've been hanging around in the discord, answering questions where I can and seeking advice from the higher-ups when I'm stumped. It's been going quite well actually! There seem to be a lot of fans enthusiastic about seeing more of the office, so I'm going to try and get a picture or two up on the @Identityrpg twitter. Charles has a 3 monitor setup that looks pretty sick, the lucky dog... Oh! Have I mentioned that there's a channel dedicated to posting small WIP models and other treats in the discord? It's #new_media! Check it out when you get a chance! The fiber internet for the office has also finally been installed! Like, completely! No more router issues or anything, I'm typing this up from a wired connection right now! With this, I should be able to join the stream later today so I can finally speak with the other developers. I'm very excited, and I hope to see some of you there! I don't think I'll actually be playing a game (I'm absolutely trash at most shooters but I swear I'm gunna train up for module two), but I'm very interested in getting my voice out there and meeting some of the developers that I haven't had a chance to speak with yet! Thanks for sticking around everyone! I'll get more information to you ASAP! Have a good one! -B

Yet you bothered to comment on a thread about it. Good job, you screwed yourself there Also, "I could care less" implies that you do care or at least a little bit.

Updated Added: - New Bylaw: Rape is a no, harm to kids is a no - New patched member, Former President of the BCR MC New York Charter @Micky_Tohmpson! Removed: - Known Criminal Activities: Contract killing

Oh I wasn't expecting to get housing that fast at all. I fully expected to be a vagrant for a good while.

Just so you know I hope you're aware that prices in identity will heavily reflect real life, if you're going to grind a job and save up you aren't going to just get an apartment within a week, you'll be spending ages working a job just like real life

Ah, I didn't know that Both?

From what I've been able to notice, the like function has changed to "reaction" and it looks alright, and I can't stand the white headers with a shadow effect, it's so freaking hard to look at and read. Truthfully I don't care as much with the reaction, but the white borders just look terrible.

Hi. I'm Jack from the UK. I'm the founder of the Democratic Realist Party, a centrist party founded in 2017 (more details to follow). See you out there - Jackomac43

Done.

@Killed_IRL Yep. From iZombie. Found the image on Google. And figured out which show it was from. It's what actually got me hooked on iZombie.

Twitch is for a freestyle like feel Eskymo is talking about being a content creator, I'm all for both but YouTube has my hart because I control what my audience will see.

*committed

Just bare in mind, the information that the site holds isn't necessarily accurate as it says that they expected Town Square to be out in early 2017. http://www.identityrpg.com/info/faq/

Utopia? or Aydee (sounds like ID, short for Identity) ... eh. or despacito falls.

Pretty close are they guys?? March 2018, thanks for the help, not.

You'll get the whole game when it comes out (on Steam), but no beta or module access till then.

Drugs have not been confirmed in Town Square yet but Cocaine, Meth and Weed have been confirmed in the full release of Identity.

Yeah but it's the release date for the first module....

I want in. Put my past away, now I'm back.

If you are a licensed gun owner then you will be able to own nearly any gun..plain and simple. Licensed means we trust you to be safe and not a threat to other citizens, so may that be.

Yo Im in Wellington Good to see another kiwi on here!

Welcome to the lawyer group! Can't wait to see what kind of lawyer you aspire to be in the game! Us lawyers need to get along (most) of the time!

THE ROYAL FAMILY FULLY SUPPORTS NBA2K GAMES AND WOULD LIKE TO SHINE LIGHT AND EXPRESS GRATITUDE FOR THE GREATNESS OF DETAIL PLACED INTO NBA2K18! GOOD JOB!!!

Well, he accredited his party to The Royal Family...many of their view are derived from our orgination!

Long live the King... Been slow with the forums lately, I'm mainly waiting on the launch of Identity Life. Most of my interactions have been through pm, however, to people that don't know the name Lucious Times and what I'm about feel free to ask.

Im in Ohio, is that close enough?

Hey, i'm based in Auckland.

There will be no NPC cars, this is not going to be a new GTA 5. This game will be mostly player run, with a select few NPC's controlling shops and boring jobs. There won't be roaming NPC's, all people that are driving and walking, are actual real players. I suggest to you that you read up more on the game. There is plenty of information around the site/ forum.