This month in development Another month and another dev blog to keep you updated! I want to start this one by giving a thank you to everyone who's receiving this blog post by email, our backers who are making Identity a reality. It's an exciting time as our team is growing and our pace quickening as a result. Identity's beginning to get more exposure and every pledge we receive helps us produce content faster. It's been slower than we'd like in the past because our team has been tiny, but this growth we're seeing as of late has been opening doors and propelling us forward. As of this month we've now raised over $700,000 USD; a large amount of money and what we've needed to bring on more talent. Talent we've lost to other studios and existing contracts in the past, some of our absolute best, is now returning to Asylum Entertainment to work on Identity full-time. We're really looking forward to the work from those being added to our roster, which will result in more clothing options as well as much prettier environments. We're also looking to pick up another programmer and a new community manager very shortly, to improve our PR situation and give you guys a more transparent view into development. Case variations for one of three phones in Identity With our art team growing with top industry talent, we're also making some good progress in content programming. Our elevator system has been finalized after being re-hashed. This elevator system is used in the Town Square, and throughout Identity where apartments exist, to bring players up to their lofted homes. The interesting part is these function like real elevators, and you'll see other players in them going to and from their floors. They act as loading zones, so instead breaking your immersion with a loading screen we load the apartment and it's customizations in the background while you ride the elevator. By the time the door opens everything's in place and you don't even notice that you've moved into a special instance of the world. Art of the Town Square When creating new environments, we first have our concept artist draw up a layout and artistic design. From there, environment artists create the 3D assets from that piece and a level designer places them in the world you inhabit. We're pleased to have our incredibly talented concept artist, Alexander, back in full-swing as we prepare the final pieces of environment necessary for the Town Square. Clothing store concept; hotel and art gallery in rear The clothing store is interesting in Town Square because it's operating on a system we've created for many computer-controlled shops in Identity. It has a fully functioning shoplifting mechanic. In most games you walk up to an NPC (non-player character) and interact to purchase items. You then simply walk away with your items. Stores in Identity are a different story, and are unique in the gaming world. You'll add items from racks and shelves to your cart. You can then walk into the dressing room to preview those items (assuming it's clothing) or walk up to the register to pay. What if you don't pay and simply walk out the door with your cart? Shoplifting is a reality in Identity, although it's often not recommended. If you're not skilled, and most people won't be, you'll set off alarms and have a hard time getting away. You'll likely spend time in jail for the attempt. Expensive items can also not be shoplifted for game balance purposes. Even something so simple as using a shop gives freedom and oppportunity not found in any game before. Last month we showed you a bicycle which will be ridable in Identity. Below you'll see the bicycle shop concepts for the Town Square. While you won't be able to ride them in Town Square, you'll be able to browse many options which will be available to you. Bicycle shop concept for the Ash Hill town square These final two interiors are being created by our artists as we speak, and are the last environments required for Town Square's release, along with some minor systems programming and polish. Art gallery/library concept art, previously shown Art gallery and library in-game, without player art The near future One of our top priorities right now is to give all of you who have been waiting a glimpse of real gameplay in a video. Identity's funding and progress has exploded since we showed you the workings of the housing and apartment systems on YouTube, and now we want you to see vehicles, drug production and weapon systems. I can't promise any dates on this video, but it'll be soon. In fact, I expect you to watch this video before you receive the next dev blog. This coming video is sort of a catalyst, and I can't wait to show you what's in store after it. The Town Square is also getting near the point where we're going to be able to start showing off videos of the gameplay elements you'll find within it, leading up to the public release of the module. These videos will be coming after the previously mentioned video. We do regret how little we've been able to show you thus far. We're a tiny team stretching a small budget to its limits, so things take some time. Now that much of the core exists and other supporting pieces are falling into place, I'm excited that we're now really making progress that can be witnessed. -- John VanderZwet

The dev blog will send out around 8PM EST tonight.

When you store your vehicle in a garage, it's stored away and disappears. When it's actively in the world, you'll park it in designated parking locations. And yes, you can get a parking ticket if you leave it in a zone marked as no-parking. It's done this way as there will be thousands of vehicles on each server. It's impossible to display every one of those when they're not in use.

Let me expand on that a bit so nobody gets the wrong idea. In any city or town there are "shops" set up around which are player ownable. If you lease one of these structures you can make them whatever you like: a clothing store, or a restaurant/bar in your case. If you get a beachfront property to do this then yep, it's possible! They'll be in high demand, I'm sure. You can swim in water and there's beer and other drinks.

All of the above!

I'll take a stab at this! 01. We need to do proper play-testing and experimenting before I can answer this one, one way or another. I can say it'll be considered, but it comes down to gameplay and balance more than anything else. 02. Yes, eventually you'll even have access to it for playing around in Town Square. 03. Yes. 04. Not a different headquarters. The way that SWAT works is that when an event occurs which warrants SWAT reaction, SWAT officers will be notified and can report to a nearby HQ. While at the HQ they'll gear up and then deploy together via a SWAT APC/truck. This truck isn't a drivable vehicle, it's an automated system to deploy the SWAT people to the scene. SWAT is limited to the area of the event, as their equipment is very powerful.

With the current configuration, which also applies to civilian phones, people won't hear what the police are saying in response, but they will hear what the cop standing near them is saying. Just as it is in real life if you're standing beside someone on a phone.

5 and 9 aside, you can do all those things! As for #10, I know Motown plans on being homeless. Given that he works on Identity for free, I think he's just planning for his real future.

Phones and cars can have a GPS. Houses DO each have a unique address, just like each player has a unique phone number.

Yes, there is alcohol use in Identity. Drugs, too. And as you suspect there are criminal charges associated with their use.

The design of one person per room is one for gameplay. Sometimes gameplay has to outweigh standard logic, and this is an example of that. This lets us balance the apartment/house value based on it's usability. If it were the beds placed which determined this, everyone would pool into a tiny apartment to make it their home for next to no expense. That's just not healthy for the game economy.

Our servers can hold an immense number of players. It's going to come down to play-testing internally; servers will be limited based on population density which we believe is ideal for the gameplay. So, it's too early to say, but we have the ability to have enormous servers.

There will be quite a few servers for Town Square, located all around the world. Town Square servers have a player limit, but we'll have a whole lot of them active for the first days of the release and we'll add/remove them as we see demand requires. We'll try to make sure that if a queue does happen, it won't be a long wait to get in.

Yes, to all of the above!

The voice in Identity currently does work in all the ways you've described, with the exception of character breathing. It's difficult to hear someone breathing near you unless they're very winded in real life. Walls and such will block sound, and even the material of the wall or object affects the impact on sound degradation.

Wow, what a month. It's been busy here at Asylum as usual, so let's get down to the interesting stuff! As expected, our current focus is on the Town Square so that we can get it out to you as soon as possible. We're finalising the interior of the library and art gallery (shared within one building) and adding polish to the environment. Once the clothing store interior is complete following that, the Town Square environment is ready to go. We'll continuously be adding more art after release though; specifically for house furnishings, decorations and clothing. In addition to the environment art, Miroslav (character artist) has been creating all sorts of hair assets which allow us to show hair appropriately when wearing a hat or helmet. This is a big task for him as it means making variations to match the hat options for each length of hair, but in the end it'll ensure your hair always looks as you'd expect when wearing headgear. Hair under a hat; work in progress Right next to the clothing shop you'll find a bicycle store where you can get a sneak preview of some of the bikes you'll be able to ride around in the full Identity release. We showed you a bicycle work in progress last blog post and now you can see the finished result of that below. This image will give you a rough idea of the detail level you'll see in Identity's vehicles. Ridable bicycle With more final systems coming online for the Town Square release, we now have functioning phones. Each player will start with a cellphone, although you'll be able to upgrade it with three mobile OS options available. The phone OS' each have a unique and interesting style. Characters also have a designated phone number assigned when they're created; you'll be able to get a custom number for a fee. These phones work just as you'd expect. You're able to dial up another player and speak with voice remotely. Businesses can even get a business line which, when called, will contact a member of that corporation who's online. Shot from an internal system test: advertising While the art of the billboard above isn't final, it gives you a very good idea of what you can expect in Identity for advertising. That's right, you can really publish messages around the world through billboards and other means. Corporations and those running for government office can purchase billboard space to help get their message out. You'll select a graphical template from a large list of options and then attach a brief message or other customization to make it your own. These billboards can also be moderated by the server operators. There are other similar advertising systems, too. For example digital road signs can be made to show custom messages by the current government. We can't wait to show you more of Identity, and we'll soon have that opportunity with the release of an overhauled website. Those current pledge packages are about to go away forever, and some of the rewards won't be available for purchase again after the new website changes. Also, follow us on our Twitch channel if you'd like to stop in and ask questions of the developers. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday you'll find a few developers playing a random game from 4pm EST to 5pm EST. Ask any questions and they'll be happy to answer on stream. Catch some of Identity's developers hard at work and see how they make the magic happen: we'll be providing development streaming dates and times on Twitter, soon! -- John VanderZwet

Identity's development has been moving at a pace we've never experienced in the past. With added full-time programming and art talent, we've been able to produce more content in a shorter time than expected. With all of the base features of Town Square in place, we've now been building up the supporting systems; the menu interfaces, server selection systems, character creation and more are well underway now. You'll get a good preview of the character customization soon! Ridable bicycle; work in progress Some exciting progress is also being seen beyond the Town Square! Our vehicle systems are starting to get fleshed out. We found the integrated Unreal Engine vehicle subsystems to be inadequate for the realism and fidelity we seek, so Identity will run on an entirely rebuilt vehicle physics engine. With this you can expect extremely realistic handling of bicycles, cars, vans, motorcycles, semi-trucks and more. We've got the Twitch Game development is an exciting career that many gamers aspire for. Just a couple of weeks ago we had test run streaming our development live on Twitch. In our first stream, our character artist Miroslav added different eyebrow varieties to Identity character head models. These are some of the eyebrow options you'll be able to choose when creating your characters; get an inside look at the work which goes into even a small detail as this. While the task Miroslav had at the time might not have been the most exciting, we're in the process of setting up a schedule for very regular streams from a variety of development departments. Keep an eye on Twitter and Facebook for stream time announcements. Click the preview below to watch the recorded stream. It runs at just under an hour in duration. Identity's first Dev Stream: Miroslav's Eyebrows You can find our Twitch channel at Twitch.tv/IdentityRPG. Follow us there to get notified when an Identity developer starts streaming! Path to the Town Square Town Square early revision; work in progress A lot of Town Square work has been accomplished since the last dev blog! From interface to animations and more feature polish, the Town Square is shaping up into a genuinely interesting social environment. We've been making everything we can in the environment interactive. If it looks like it would have some sort of purpose in reality, we're making it useful (or at least entertaining) in Identity, too! Grab a newspaper for the latest happenings, toss a coin into the fountain or grab a can of soda from the machine. Visual dynamics have been added as well. Simple things bring immersion to the environment. The clocks on buildings and towers show the real in-game time, the cinema marquee sign shows the movies playing with real times (which can be adjusted by owners of community servers in retail Identity) and more. We're making the Identity environment, and thus that in Town Square, feel alive and interactive. A hotel lobby at night -- John VanderZwet

DATE POSTED: March 24th, 2017 Big changes for a bigger world! What a crazy time for the Identity development team over here at Asylum! We've been running all over the place for conferences and expos this month, including both GDC and PAX East, where we met all sorts of new talent and potential technology partners. We've unfortunately had to push back the release of the Town Square module from our original Q1 2017 release with all of the big developments here, but most systems are in place and it's not far off! The biggest and most exciting news we're officially announcing today is a new partnership with Improbable, the creators of SpatialOS! The Identity team has been testing the waters with SpatialOS for a couple of months now and we're incredibly excited about what it's going to mean for Identity. Identity can now be what we all hoped it would be, a true MMORPG in scale. SpatialOS is going to power Identity behind the scenes, allowing absolutely enormous scale for our world and the people playing in it. While we had originally hoped to be able to get 300 people into our servers with decent performance, with just a tiny bit more effort we're going to be able to expand that as far as the game needs. Instead of 300 players in a single server, we could now potentially have thousands. The size of our servers are now going to be set based on what we feel is ideal for a fun and immersive environment and we're not limited technically like we were expecting in the past. It opens more doors than simply the number of players on a server, too. With these changes we can now afford to have a more dynamic and interactive world. We've gained some freedom in manipulating the world and we can create features which we never imagined possible in a game of Identity's scale. This is all extremely exciting for the team. This technology is a scope-changer and Identity is going to be far better for it. Not only will our world grow, not only will the population be denser, but you'll even be able to leave your mark in many new ways. Development charging forward Concept art for Town Square art gallery and library, featuring player content We're working and expanding at an incredible rate. All key gameplay features for Town Square are now functional as we add polish and work to support SpatialOS in Identity. The development team has expanded with terrific new talent: Antoine joins Identity's 3D art team, Cody comes on board as a new systems and gameplay programmer and Liam comes in as our first dedicated web developer. Antoine and Cody both bring experience in their field to hasten development for Town Square and Identity as a whole. Liam's talents mean exciting new features on our website will be popping up soon. We've had plenty planned for our website for some time but haven't had the resources to bring these to you, until now.

The Town Square module takes place in a tiny piece of a city called Ash Hill, which is in many ways based on a real city in North Carolina called Asheville (the same city the above photos are from). It's not the largest city in Identity, though. It's the second largest. The city hall you see above is modeled after the Savannah, Georgia city hall. Identity is inspired by much of the south-eastern United States.

The delay is true, although the reason that you're learning it here is that the announcement is scheduled to go out tomorrow. You've just gotten it a little earlier than planned. There's more information involved which you'll be getting details on. There's a lot of good stuff in the delay, too!

The rocks you're mining can break, but you won't dig holes into the ground. Most of the mining will take place in mine shafts!

You'll need to contact Sean/Motown here on the forums. If we are able it'll likely be delayed as we're both going to be in San Francisco at GDC.

Yep.

What a crazy several weeks since the last dev blog post! The increased exposure and attention from the apartment video has resulted in a surge of additional funding for Identity, which has translated into an expanded team with two new full-time developers coming on board and more to join soon. Work has been going very well. Motown, your community manager, has started transitioning into the role of producer to help manage our expanding team. This has helped to reduce some of the work-load on myself so it's been a very welcome change and he's proving to be great for the role. Our lead character artist, Miroslav, has been hard at work on numerous enhancements including building our makeup and blemish systems. This will give us the freedom to add all kinds of makeup options, especially for females but also for men. Your options at character creation will be a bit limited, but a vanity table will let you customize your makeup much further. Blemishes allow us to modify the skin in a whole lot of ways, from just a little blush on the cheeks to full-body freckles and more. Miroslav has also done an excellent job expanding eye customization for your characters which won't just tint the color of the iris but change its entire pattern to properly match the styles seen in those eyes in reality. He's also expanded our options for hair and facial hair. Feature development has also been going quickly and smoothly. Among others, we've built the contacts and friends systems which will be available in the Town Square module. When you meet people in the world you'll be able to exchange contact information, adding their number and name to your phone. This then acts like a friends list in other games, but you can even text or phone them with real working voice systems. It's also integrated with your Steam friends to make finding them easier. Environment art is also moving along, with several artists working full-time to give you beautiful environments. We've hired on some more artists and are even reworking some of the earlier assets we produced to bring the up to our now higher standards. Identity YouTube channel PowerGaming7 had the chance to speak with myself and Motown for a while after asking his viewers for a bunch of questions to ask. The result was an almost one hour long video where we shared all sorts of information you may not have heard before. You can find the link to this video right here. Once again, I want to thank every one of you for your continued support! Every pledge that comes in goes straight into the development of new features and helps us get the game to you a little bit faster. The attention we've seen over the last couple of months has been staggering, and we are excited to show you more of the gameplay soon!

Drug production and drug trafficking will be a very big part of Identity's economy!