Dev Blog #016 - Committed to the Asylum

[Paratus 2,230]

Committed to the Asylum

Wow, what a month. This has been the busiest, craziest month we've ever had at Asylum Entertainment and the hard work is really showing. Most of the guys here at the office have been putting in a lot of overtime hours to get the Town Square module ready as soon as possible. I myself have been working half my time as a programmer, tossing some cool new systems together. I really, really can't wait for everyone to see what we're putting together!

For the past few days my personal pet project has been a total overhaul of the character control and animation system. We're working on getting new animations entirely, but it's amazing how much nicer character movement looks right now after some extra TLC.

In the past Identity videos, you'll notice the camera is always locked behind your character and you rotate the character with the mouse. Now, movement is a little more like games such as Grand Theft Auto in which you can run toward the screen or parallel to it, too. If you're holding your forward run key/stick, it'll play like before. It really adds a much better sense of control. Alternatively, when you're in combat mode (weapons or melee), the view is again locked behind your shoulders. None of this applies to first-person view, of course.

We've been putting a lot of time into polishing and enhancing character creation and customization in preperation for the Town Square launch. I wanted to share a screenshot to give you an idea of the extensive customization options available. You can control your gender, race, blemishes, hair and a ton of facial modifiers. You can select from a couple dozen pieces of clothing to start in, too, but most will have to be purchased at a shop.

Character creation work in progress

 

I've been waiting a very long time to see Identity in the state it is right now. We have a powerful new server making nightly builds for testing on Steam and everything is beginning to have that good polished feel you expect in a real, released game. There's still work to be done but it's an incredibly exciting time for us here.

Sooner rather than later

There are all sorts of features we want for the Town Square which were always planned to be added months after release. With art development moving at a faster pace than I ever anticipated it would, given the relatively tiny size of our team, it seems that we might be able to include some of these features sooner than I expected.

Some of these features, which should be ready somewhat soon after Town Square is available, include tattoos, haircuts and even the shooting range.

Tattoo shop (WIP)

 

Tattoo design and development progress (WIP)

 

A look inside the Asylum

In keeping with our committment to transparency and open communication with the community, our new website will soon be launching (even before the Town Square). The new website will have all sorts of shop options for you to check out, but one of the more interesting aspects will be our development tracker.

We're going to be showing you exactly where our development stands in regards to each milestone, such as the Town Square release. You're going to see live data showing what we're working on and how long we expect each element to take. Then, following the Town Square release we'll keep this going for each future development milestone. It'll sort of be like looking over our shoulders in the office yourself.

 

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!

-- John VanderZwet