Alpha Release News & A Short Note About Our Russian Patrons

The project was "Locked Down" this afternoon - meaning that no new features can be added, and all efforts should now be spent of making sure everything works as best we can.

As usual, I will be tweaking biomes and 100 other details over the weekend.  On monday we convene, and figure out what we can do as far as refinement and playtesting over the next 72 hours.

"The Final Alpha" will be released for the PC sometime between this coming Wednesday evening, and the end of Thursday.  The MAC version will come out within the next few days, pending Unity conversion issues.

I am feeling pretty good about this Alpha - for the first time, we will be delivering features beyond which I expected, such as improved climbing and balance walking.  We even got the tracking system working - this is currently just for demo purposes, but having the ability to track all of this in-game action allows us to more easily create player-triggered events...

We are having issues with bringing in a couple of features I wanted to include, such as the improved furs - but I am continuing to hammer away at those.  The one major system we could NOT include was the dialogue/quest engine, meaning that aside from a few new story elements related through interactable items, there are currently no quests or dialogue.

This was unfortunately expected to be the case, as it is the most important and content-heavy system within the game.  Integration of this system will be the #1 collective task after the "Final Alpha" release...

So- as I have stated in a recent post:  Peace Island has patrons & fans in many countries - including Russia and Ukraine.  I recently got a notice from a couple of supporters in St. Petersburg & Moscow, informing me that Patreon has decided to no longer do business in Russia, leaving these supporters cut off from future private posts and the upcoming releases.

We believe this is unfair.  Both of these individuals - along with several others in that country - have paid enough to gain access to the upcoming Final Alpha, the public Beta, and the final release of Peace Island.  We will continue to honor these commitments, even if we have to send USB drives via the mail - here is why:

Despite my opposition to the ongoing war, I believe sanctions that impact the gamers of that country are ill-conceived, and are targeting the wrong people in this current conflict.  

Understand that the average citizen of Russia has very little say in how their country is run - in fact, current news reports remind us daily that those who DO speak up are currently being punished quite severely.  As I was one of the minority of US citizens who opposed the Iraq war from start to finish, I can only empathize with these people. 

Gamers, generally, tend to be more worldly and media savvy than the average individual - and what is more:  As the iron curtain descends once again, the sources of outside information are being cut off in Russia, leaving only the constant message being reinforced by the powers that be:

"The West HATES you!"

Nothing reinforces that false and manipulative message more than punishment of an individual simply because they are stuck in a position of little or no power - We cannot let a war prevent a game about peace from being released to those who want it.

See ya'll again Thursday, latest!