A Week’s Delay, Why, & What Will Be In The Beta/MVP (Patreon)

Simply put, we need just a few more days - seven, to be exact.  I have never believed in “crunch time,” and while I might be able to push myself to do a few extra hours of work daily, I cannot ask anyone else in our group to match that.

We’ve worked hard, and accomplished a LOT over the last two weeks.  After our visit to the MEow Lounge, we reviewed our latest build along with the latest bug reports. We calculated what we needed to get the MVP/Beta together, and started with a list of 30 items and bugs. I considered 10 absolutely essential, and 20 to be “negotiable”

Over time, the list grew.  As you might remember from the previous update, we reported a total of 87 fixes and bugs, with over 60 taken care of, and 24 pending.

Some of these changes were trivial - such as making sure antialiasing was working properly in all scenes.  This is a camera effect that slightly smooths out jagged edges by blending the colors at the boundary of an object. This effect is particularly important at lower resolutions, as it prevents object edges from looking too “chunky.”  Fixing this, and uploading the changes to the server required all of about 30 minutes.

Other changes were far more involved, such as re-shooting the intro animatic.  This was mainly done because in the existing intro, Liz was pretty much motionless, the cat model was one we stopped using three years ago, and it didn’t use our updated fur system.  All told, it required about six to eight  hours to get things more or less right.

When I now look at our list, it stands at a total of 139 identified Issues, of which 19 are still pending:

10 are essential (example: Shadows are suddenly not working!)

9 are desired, but not considered “essential” at time of writing.

Four of the above are currently being addressed, and should be finished by EOD Sunday, bringing us down to fifteen total by this coming Monday.

We have addressed no less than 120 issues over the last two weeks, averaging over eight per day.  Taking this into consideration, I believe the remaining work - even all of the so-called “Non-Essentials” - will be taken care of by mid-week.

AND WHAT OF THE MAC VERSION?

We bear good tidings, where that is concerned!  Our lead coder Lance was able to figure out the persistent error that had been plaguing us for the past few weeks.  We understand that our composer Richard has gotten the project open & running on the Mac, but it is currently re-building the project’s library - a process that sometimes requires as much as 12 hours.

This means we have high hopes of releasing a Mac version concurrent with our PC version, next week!

SO - WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN “ALPHA” AND A “BETA”, AND WHAT WILL BE INCLUDED?

All of the previous “Alpha” releases of Peace Island were “rough drafts.”  Expressed in the terminology of illustration, these were all “concept sketches,”  where we were trying to figure out what worked and what did not.  Systems and features were routinely switched out with others, and performance was all over the place - I think our first alpha maxed out at 8-12 fps!

This Beta release is the first in which all of these systems are now included, and hopefully working (more or less) in concert.  It’s when - in the terms of a sculptor - the figure has finally emerged from the stone.

Here is what you can expect in this release:

ALL SYSTEMS ARE PRESENT

• Quest Engine
• Dialogue
• Skybox
• Reactive soundtrack
• Activity tracker
• Reactive foliage
• Persistent, streaming world
• Stat & Mood system
• NPCs
• Radio show
• Interactable objects
• Readable books
• User Interface (UI)
• Weather
• Minimap
• Cat switch
• Collectibles
• “Costumes”
• Save/load system
• Player controller
• "Mushroo"
• Butterfly "Huntables"

NOTE:  The above systems are still not 100% bug-free, nor are they in their final state (for example: we have yet to integrate rain, and the UI needs adjustment.) However, they will be functional, and - mostly - crash free!

The entire island is navigable, with the exception of the northern “Greenwood Gardens” area, and the area inside the Laflamme Mansion walls.

NOTE: Playtesters still sometimes slip through our colliders, and are able to gain access to these areas - which are not supposed to be accessible until the second and third acts of the game!  Further, there might still be areas where the cats can get stuck - we’re addressing both issues on a case-by-case basis.

THREE CATS

• Elizabeth
• SueSea
• Boy

NOTE:  Our animator skipped out on us, and thus the jump animation is still not 100%.  Sometimes, the cat launches itself a bit too high, when at an initial angle.

FIVE INTERIORS

• Liz’s house
• Mayor’s house (Ground Floor)
• Library (Ground Floor)
• Police Station (Ground Floor)
• Utilities Building

NOTE:  These are NOT the final interiors - there might be navigation issues - we will provide a way for players to report these issues, so we can refine these, going forward. We will have ten total interiors in the full Public Beta, some of which will feature multiple levels. More about the aforementioned full public beta, below.

DRIVABLE GOLF CARTS

Initial access to the carts is actually something that is not consistent with the game’s current narrative.  We included them, simply because they were very popular with the folks who tested the game at the cat cafe!

NPC SPECIES

• Geese
• Deer
• Beaver
• Chickens
• Seagulls

NOTE: All of the above species, with the exception of the Seagulls, can be interacted with.  We still have yet to add two more NPC species - the Snail and the Crow.

REFACTORING:

After our elimination of the persistent memory leak, the game’s performance has dramatically increased,  with frame rates reaching into the triple digits.  We anticipate this will be most noticeable for those with lower-end systems and graphic cards, but it will benefit everyone overall.

CONTENT:

Currently, there is about 20-30 minutes of content.  Just about all of it remains in the Alpha state, with a few simple fetch quests and dialogue choices.  The main attraction will still simply be exploration of the island.

However, I must again stress, this is still not the full game - that is why it’s a “Closed Beta.”

The full public beta will require a few more weeks, as bug reports & stats flow in from the Steam release.  We will use that time to refine what we have, and include more content (which will be dynamically updated on Steam - and yes - we’re probably gonna have it on Itch, as well - for supporters who prefer that platform!)

WE ALSO NEED A COUPLE MORE DAYS, BECAUSE…

In addition to this being our first Beta release, it’s the version we will be sending to publishers.  We need to get our pitch docs together!

SEE YOU ON THE 17th - THANKS SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT & PATIENCE!