Posted July 10, 2018 The finishing touches Greetings, and again thank you, to all of Identity's backers receiving this dev blog. Everyone's been hard at work putting together a game that can change the industry, and you're soon going to be getting your first taste. With the Town Square (Identity's first social gameplay module) nearing release, we're hard at work testing and putting the finishing touches on two of the major features. Everything's been progressing very well and I'm quite proud of the team. These last systems are the art/canvas mechanics and the player housing. Both of these have been functional for a long time, although a couple tweaks need made before we push Town Square out the door. A few minutes of decorating an Ash Hill penthouse We've added a new button in the elevators to allow you to visit a public version of any apartment. You can run around and see them in their default state before committing to buying them for yourself. This will be a very useful way to explore the available options, given that some of the floorplans will be very rare to come across with other players. Above is the penthouse after a few minutes of quick decoration. I'm not exactly a decorator, myself, but you can get a good idea of the way it looks now! It's a huge space with three large bedrooms (which means you and two friends can use it as your home) and tons of storage. We've had to refactor the backend of the housing system a good bit, but the end result you see is everything you saw in the prior Identity Insider apartment video. All features shown then will be ready for you soon in the Town Square! We have lots of other cool features coming for your house parties that you haven't seen yet, too. In case you hadn't seen that video, or you want to see it again, I've linked it below. Identity Insider: Housing - CLICK TO VIEW VIDEO Town Square gameplay live stream With my last developer blog post I included a link to gameplay video from our live stream showing character creation and the exterior environment in the Town Square module. Recently, I joined in on another development live stream to show about 20 minutes of more Town Square gameplay. This time I showed off interior environments as well as a few of the gameplay mechanics you're going to come across in the Town Square. YouTube Town Square preview live stream 2 - CLICK TO VIEW VIDEO The team and I are so very excited to show you guys what we've made in the Town Square and beyond. The Town Square isn't enormous on its own, but it's a very good way to give you an idea of how the world looks and feels. The task master The Task Tracker is a new tool on our website which displays up-to-date data pertaining to how much work is remaining for the Town Square release. If you've been following our progress through the tracker, you'll have seen that just a couple of days ago it progressed to its current point, with only two tasks remaining at the in-testing state (the ones I described above in this blog post). Keep your eye on the tracker to get the best idea of when we're ready to go. You will of course also get notified by email when the Town Square is published on Steam! The future of the Dev Blog This may be one of the last couple developer blogs being sent out in this format as we're planning on soon transitioning to more frequent developer video blogs! In the past, it's always been myself who wrote these blog posts. They've been a great way to reach out and letting everyone who doesn't follow us on social media know what we've been up to. That said, I think I speak for most people when I say video is more interesting and entertaining! Look forward to meeting the team face-to-face in short but frequent videos. Some will be general updates about our work on Identity and some will be focused on certain aspects within the game. Also, on that note, you're going to be getting a very interesting Identity Insider very shortly, covering criminal activity and gameplay. It's a major part of the game and we've surprisingly not been asked many questions about these systems in the past. You'll be getting all kinds of juicy new information and ideas of what you're going to encounter! 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 46 13 3 7 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
