A Sneak PeEk Environment out-take from coming video; player-ownable farmstead I'll get right to the bits which I know you're all excited for and wondering about: the upcoming gameplay video. We'd really hoped to get it out in January, but I sit here at 10pm on the 31st finally getting time to write up this dev blog. It won't be tonight, but it's going to be really, really soon. We did run into some delays for animation content which set us back almost two weeks on the video content. The delayed art was external and out of our control, but it's all handled and now we're polishing it up to show you first-hand. It's days, not weeks, away. Around the Studio It was an incredibly busy month for everyone on the team. My last bit was consumed with ever-so-exciting annual tax preperations and hunting for new blood. Andrew's been hard at work getting the last bits of technical content for the video flushed out and Henrik has accomplished some really big things bringing the Town Square together. Prototype UI design for inventory and shop transaction As you can see above, Artur's new UI design overhall for Identity and the Town Square module is looking fantastic. After Scaleform (our old middleware for UI) was abandoned by Autodesk, we had to rebuild our UI from scratch. In hindsight I'm glad that happened as I really like our new systems much more! Also of note is a very heavy overhaul of foliage (trees, bushes, grass) and other environment bits using photogrammetry. This is a fairly new method used in creating incredibly realistic art assets. You're going to be blown away by the results our resident photogrammetry guy, Philipp, has achieved. We've begun working with another studio to hasten art development for Town Square and other parts of Identity. Some of these guys have worked with us in the past, and the art we're getting back is some of the best in the industry. Full Steam Ahead After years of effort, I have to admit it's pretty fun and exciting seeing the Town Square module coming together. In the last weeks we've both launched our development game servers on the Google Cloud as well as a working development client on Steam. Internally, we're now at a point where we can prepare for access to the game world just as you'll be experiencing it in the Town Square. With the release of Town Square, all Founder package holders are going to be issued a key to redeem Identity on Steam. Town Square will be played through Steam and your Steam friends will be able to join you in the same game instances. Committing to the Asylum Finally, after more than two years of trying, the Canadian government has granted a work visa to our Executive Producer, Sean (also known as Motown) and he's been here at the office for the last couple of weeks. We've already seen a boost in productivity having one of our key developers on site, and I'm excited to see where it leads! There's still some room in the office, though. We're looking for talented technical artists, Unreal Engine generalists and animators especially, but we always love to meet talented individuals no matter their field of expertise! If you, or someone you know, would be interested in working for Asylum, check out our careers page. The Twitch Clips If you've been following Identity's development closely, you probably already know that developers stream their work live on the Identity Twitch channel every Tuesday and Thursday. We also use that time to answer almost every question that gets asked about Identity's development and gameplay. Now that we've been doing this a while, we've answered a lot of questions. Our awesome community manager, BeachBall, has taken the time to compile a massive list of questions linked to clips where they're answered by a developer. Get comfy and head over to the Twitch Clips Directory forum thread. If you haven't found this already, be prepared to spend a good bit of time listening to all sorts of awesome information. This is the best place to get to know the fine details Identity!