Posted November 30, 2017 Family matters It was just a month ago that we announced the official release date for the Town Square module. Since then, we've been hard at work turning that promise into a reality. Team expansions, UI drama, family additions and a whole new Unreal Engine amounted into a crazy time! For me, the biggest news this month was the arrival of my second beautiful daughter, Aria, on the 19th. It's been a lot of fun and not as sleepless as I expected. It meant a week off for me although the team in the office hadn't skipped a single beat while I was away. My week away was the first week of work for two new developers here at the office. Andrew (McWOLF), a gameplay programmer, and Artur (Archer), a UI/UX designer and developer have joined the team. Both have already proven themselves to be great at what they do! You've got questions, they've got answers Identity's community members and YouTubers have interviewed the developers. Your questions have been asked; check it out to see what the developers say about the way Identity is played! IDENTITY RPG DEVELOPER Q&A NOVEMBER, 2017 Identity Game - Podcast - Developer Q&A - #2 Join us on Twitch at 4PM EST on Tuesdays and Thursdays to watch Identity's developers at work. Most of these streams also have other developers present to answer the questions of those watching, live! Are you interested in hearing answers to other questions? Our developers have been answering questions on live streams for some time now and Brandon (BeachBall), our community manager, has compiled an enormous list of questions and answers. Check out the TWITCH CLIPS DIRECTORY forum thread. The little engine that couldn't We're really excited to show you gameplay footage, not only of the Town Square module but what you can expect to see beyond the modules! We've been hard at work on this, but our aging build of the Unreal Engine just couldn't cope with the advanced vehicle physics systems we're implementing in Identity! This meant it was time for the dreaded engine merge, something our lead programmer Sone has been fearing for years! Every once in a while (usually every year or so) we have to merge all of the modifications we've made to the core Unreal Engine into the latest release. It's an absolutely enormous undertaking, but it's done and good to go. Now that we're running the latest version of the engine, we can support more advanced technologies and we can bring you a more immersive experience, even in the Town Square. Just wait 'til you see what we're doing with vehicles! The UI disaster! Early in the month we hit a road-block. Our licensed middleware system for the user interface in Identity, Scaleform, was discontinued! The industry leading system would be no more, and we had to make the tough decision to abandon it now to save grief in the future. It was like a slap in the face. All of our user interface code had to be scrapped and replaced! While Scaleform was a Flash based system, our new UI would not be. We've signed on with Coherent Labs, and the new UI is under way. While unexpected, it's actually a blessing in disguise! Our new Coherent system allows for faster development, and while it's a minor setback now it'll speed things up considerably going forward. Our new guy, Artur, is dedicated to the user interface in Identity and our UI will be stronger now because of it. With Artur's help, I don't expect this to affect development time for Town Square even at all. We have more hands on deck to cover the added work. On the horizon With our expanding development team, we're able to focus our efforts in more areas of Identity's development. With vehicle and weapon systems now getting attention, we're once again progressing towards a short but feature packed gameplay video for you guys to check out. Keep your eyes out on Identity's Twitter and Facebook! -- John VanderZwet 18 6 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
