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!

While Identity will have microtransactions, they're entirely cosmetic or low-impact. By this I mean items which will not give you a competitive advantage. We're not selling good vehicles for real money. If you look at those currently for sale, you'll notice they're all toward the low end. The advantage is only for the early game; when you first start playing you'll have an easier time getting around. However, after playing a while you'll move on to bigger and better things which you purchase with game currency. We're extremely careful here in that powerful items will never, ever, be sold for real money. Apartments will only be sold for some areas of the world, mostly in large cities, using microtransactions. They're also unlimited in availability and mostly social in nature. They can function as storage, which is their only advantage, but that's precisely why they're not located in areas near important resources. This is something we take VERY seriously and we're being quite careful about how they're implemented. These microtransactions are designed to make your first days more convenient, but in no way will someone who spends more real money ever have a competitive advantage.

I just realized that's in metrics, but Identity's world and economy is based in the US where we use Imperial units. Although I suppose it will be a choice for the player as an menu option.

From the dev blog, It was emailed out. The official post will be here today on the forums.

Thanks guys! Canada has been good to me so far. The cold weather is an tolerable tradeoff for all the other perks I didn't have at my old place! Shopping and all the restaurants I could care for are practically right next door to my apartment within walking distance. Can't complain! If you liked that UI from the sneak preview, wait until you see what Archer has been cooking up for the Town Square. I'm excited to see it in action! The video is also looking great. We're just waiting on a couple animation and clothing weight painting tweaks as far as I know, and it will be good to go as soon as we get that back from the animator. Wolf has been working on this for over a month now and he's ready to be done with it and move onto character customization for the Town Square. So so excited to see everything coming together this past month, and I can't wait to finally jump into the Town Square and meet all of you for the first time using voice chat!

Beginning of a new era Wow, what a month; busy and exciting and full of promise! While the developers have been hard at work getting the Town Square module ready to go, I've been preparing our new office space and interviewing potential Asylum developers. We've raised almost $800,000, allowing us to expand in a big way and bring on loads of new talent. Asylum Entertainment's new home If you read my last dev blog you'll remember that we had just scouted out office space and had narrowed our search to one. Now we have the keys and I've been working hard to get it operational. I never want to see another hex key again! It's almost hard to imagine that we've been working on Identity with a team spread out around the world. The talent of our small team has astonished me. It's exciting to consider how finally working in a formal setting is going to boost productivity. Not only is working in an office such as this going to make it easier to work together, but we've been on a hiring craze. Having sifted through hundreds of applications over the past few weeks and interviewing dozens of skilled individuals, we've selected most new developers to join our team. Our programming manpower is now three times stronger. Finally, after all this time we're now able to afford a full-time community manager. Joining our team at the new office location next week is Identity's community manager, Brandon! You'll be hearing from him very regulary. We're committing to keeping you in constant contact with the development team. Keep an eye on our website as well as social media! Town Square on the horizon! With our new studio starting up next week and the new programming talent coming on-board, our goal of the Town Square release is getting nearer. It's big news: the official Town Square release date will be announced in the month of October. With all of the changes affecting our productivity in such a positive way, we need to see how everyone works together over the next few weeks. This will allow us to give our fans a date with which we can be confident. We've got the Twitch We wanted to give you a glimpse of the game development process and have been streaming on Twitch to show you how it's done. Four hour (or more) long streams have gone live since my last dev blog; keep an eye on Identity's Twitter for future stream announcements. We try to have at least one development stream per week. As a fan of Identity, one of the things you're going to enjoy most is the flurry of videos which will be coming soon showing off the social features of the Town Square. For a simple social module, there's a good bit of fun things to do! New in the Town Square Our lead programmer, Henrik, has been hard at work these last couple of weeks refactoring our housing system to make it more stable and better performing for the Town Square module release. Everything's looking great at this point and he's very excited to get a bunch of new help over the next couple of weeks. With more great talent joining our art team, we're producing assets and new environments at an astonishing pace. Interiors we only hoped to have in Town Square by its release have gone from concept to reality very quickly. Last dev blog I showed you the concept art pieces produced for the police station. The police station was something we didn't expect to be available in the initial Town Square release, but with our art team hard at work we're getting a lot done. Below you'll find the lobby as it is in-game. The police station in Town Square will be a place for you to learn about the policing career, but it will also eventually feature a shooting range for you to test the weapon systems in Identity. Police station lobby in Town Square Our character and clothing team has also been adding a large variety of things to wear in the Town Square. Both clothing and accessories are being added all the time. Note the attention to detail and excellent quality of the clothing pieces in Identity. New sweater clothing What's to come In summary, we've been moving along with Identity's development at a great pace considering the size of our team; however, our team is growing in a big way right now. New developers are selected and some are starting at the new office as early as this coming week. Once the new guys have been oriented and we get an understanding of their work, we're going to be able to analyze the tasks remaining and give you a release date for Town Square. This is a big deal; Town Square isn't all that far off now and we're already preparing and planning for the next module: SWAT. I hoped to release a video showing combat systems already, but most the remaining work for that falls on myself as the other developers are busy with the real systems for Town Square. I've not had much time over these weeks from preparing the office, so that's on hold a bit; my priority is getting the Town Square module into your hands as soon as possible. Because we're getting further along now, and with the added manpower, we're going to soon start releasing small gameplay videos showing off the different aspects of Town Square. Finally, Brandon is joining Asylum as a dedicated full-time community manager! Brandon will be keeping you up to date constantly. Our silent days are soon to be over! -- John VanderZwet Deja Vu! (I've just been in the place before...) Salutations again! This time it's Brandon talking. John's been too busy to update the site, so I'm here to finally add the 10th Developer Blog to the corresponding section of the forums! You've most likely seen this update if you've been active in "The Town Square" section of the site, so I apologize for not having anything new to share in terms of screenshots or stuff like that. D: No need to get the pitchforks out though! I might have a few things to tide you guys over! (Please don't poke me aaa.) Charles (the game developer sitting beside me in the office) is currently in a skype call with another programmer on the team getting the 411 on the current build of Identity. They're walking through some stuff in regards to the Unreal Engine and talking about all sorts of things that are t o t a l l y beyond me. I took some java and C programming courses as electives when I was in University and MAN, I've had a newfound appreciation for coders ever since. I'll see if I can get some tangible information about the specifics of what Charles is working on after the call, because all I see is a mixture of math and player models! In other news, I've been hanging around in the discord, answering questions where I can and seeking advice from the higher-ups when I'm stumped. It's been going quite well actually! There seem to be a lot of fans enthusiastic about seeing more of the office, so I'm going to try and get a picture or two up on the @Identityrpg twitter. Charles has a 3 monitor setup that looks pretty sick, the lucky dog... Oh! Have I mentioned that there's a channel dedicated to posting small WIP models and other treats in the discord? It's #new_media! Check it out when you get a chance! The fiber internet for the office has also finally been installed! Like, completely! No more router issues or anything, I'm typing this up from a wired connection right now! With this, I should be able to join the stream later today so I can finally speak with the other developers. I'm very excited, and I hope to see some of you there! I don't think I'll actually be playing a game (I'm absolutely trash at most shooters but I swear I'm gunna train up for module two), but I'm very interested in getting my voice out there and meeting some of the developers that I haven't had a chance to speak with yet! Thanks for sticking around everyone! I'll get more information to you ASAP! Have a good one! -B

Here are the stream notes for Identity's twitch stream on January the 30th. Remember - Certain elements are subject to change, especially specific numbers, etc... -- Sorry I haven't done any steam notes for the past 30 days, have been really busy, but hope to start again now so people who can listen to the dev steams have an easier way of viewing them. -- Not much on this one as unfortunately the lead Devs had to be somewhere for half of it. DLC: None really planned, and only will be decided on after full release, as there are a lot of things to add before that. If there is DLC, it will probably just be new Islands that you can possible fly to / take a boat to. Module Language: English only for first module, as they want to get everything out first. In full game, there will definately be many language options, and there will be servers that people will go to depending on how close they are to them geographically. This could mean that there may be servers with their own languages, such as French servers developing. FAQ: FAQ coming soon in discord, for an easier way to find info on the game. FAQ is currently here: http://www.identityrpg.com/community/topic/7-frequently-asked-questions/ New site: in development, with new FAQ and more. In game purchases: You can not purchase in game money with real money, only things you can buy with real money are cosmetics, such as wallpapers for your house. Possible vehicles and apartments may be purchasable, but they will be lower-end ones, not good sports cars etc.... Nothing good will be purchasable, and the Devs are strongly against Pay To Win games. Price of full game: Planned to be around $40-45. The Devs want it to be cheap, but not too cheap so cheaters can keep buying accounts. System Requirements: Optimisation will be a main focus to make sure most people can play it, but with very realistic looking items it may be a bit hard to run. It is too early to say, as a lot of optimisation is still to come, so it’s hard to tell. Possibly GTX970+ Can the community contribute to development?: Not planned to have community help with making textures, and nothing is set in stone, but there could possible be events where people make textures for a contest that could be put in game. Clothing Types: Lots of different clothing types, e.g. baggy, type. In Town Square, there will be mainly generic clothes from modern culture. Past then clothes from different social groups clothing, such as what you would see people wearing in high school, will be implemented. Production of clothes: You can craft clothing and with a corporation you can mass produce clothing, e.g. with company logos on. Clicking on clothes in the inventory will give some info on it, such as who created it / what corporation created it. Clothing Layers: You can wear shirts, jacket, pants, shoes, gloves, 3 accessory slots (rings, necklaces) and a hat simultaneously. There will be outfits that will be the whole clothing slots filled in one. Religious Clothing: Undecided still, as not only could it be used in offensive ways, but it could break immersion, with for example an armed nun robbing a bank. Still undecided and could still be added. Day/Night: Day/Night cycles will be in Town Square Module in March. Jail/Prison Visits: You can try and visit people in jail as jail is not instanced, but prison is so you can not just walk in there. Pardoning: It’s still undecided if governors can pardon someone of their prison sentence. It will be hard to implement due to possible abuse of power. XP: There will be a sort of progression system, where for example if you cut a lot of wood, you can learn to cut wood faster. The game will not implement people having an advantage over other people due to experience, and you won’t have to grind to your friends level to be able to play / do stuff with them. Animations: Animation that require two parties require consent from the other person, e.g. kissing/hugging/ high-five. Marriage: You can get married in game, but it won’t make much of a gameplay difference. Negotiator: This job in the police force won’t be its own job but police can send one in to negotiate, and cops will receive penalties for harming/killing hostages. Self Defence: If someone pulls a gun on you, and you kill them in self-defence, at the moment they haven't got a plan for it, as it’s hard to detect who the gun is aiming at, so its very difficult to tell if it was a murder or self defence. A method will hopefully be added. Healthcare: You will have to pay for doctors, but it won’t ruin you financially. If you can’t afford the fee for a broken leg, you will have to find a way to fix yourself up, or go for a hop. Robbery: When being robbed, there will probably be a pop up window to give the robber the money from your hand, that he is demanding. Skiing: There are snowy mountains, so it can be added but probably on full release. Fishing: Definitely a planned way to get food, and sell fish. Link to Twitch Vod of stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/224047930##

OK so this isn't a very important question, but I was wondering if you can put your hands up in the game. Like for example if your doing a bank robbery or some other crime and a cop tells you to put your hands up or get on the ground is there a way to do that?

thank you sounds awesome!

IDK if a light will turn on but yes cars can break down indeed, the cars can catch fire but won't blow up. Also if it randomly caught fire it would be a rare event and not common.

I , Pippo Frastangela, pledge my loyalty to the Luprano family. Dovrete passare sopra il corpo per farmi parlare...

Hola a todos! gente que hable español, para preparar una comunidad? Hi everyone! somebody who talks spanish to make a community?

Hey Seis, Welcome! To answer your question on agronomy; while there isn't a specific job or career in Identity for this, players can farm, care for (water, fertilize), and cultivate plants in a field, much like Farming Simulator or Facebook's Farmville (but in 3D). The food you recover from this process is mostly used for eating only, but individual ingredients can be used to craft recipes that offer different benefits to the player. It's not a very complicated system, as a design decision. We wanted to keep it rather simple, so you won't be able to breed plants, or required to maintain a spreadsheet of soil types for the best yield, or use the plants you collect for anything other than food. The type of seed you use, as well as how active you are with watering and maintaining the plants as they grow will determine how long you have to wait to harvest. Some will take longer than others, and won't be realistic. It ranges from 15 minutes to potentially even a full day depending on the type of plant you're growing.

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As I said before I more can't wait to play it then see the video. (Before in the thread of this that got deleted.) I also hope what they show is for both sides of the character. Just to confirm that both genders will be playable in the town square. (As I said before I only worry or wonder if both will make it in goes back to seeing games where the female character model gets added in later in development. I just hope it does not happen here.) As I said before I hope these delays didn't affect the release date of when the town square was announced to be released. (If it does then it would be understandable honestly.)

Nope. If you pledge for beta or modules you get a steam key via email, only way to purchase on steam is full release

The reason you didn't find anything was because it can be found under VOIP: Voice Over IP. Voice chat is the main way to communicate between players in the game and if you watched the trailer found here: http://www.identityrpg.com/info/ You would instantly get the answer to the question because it is one of the first things mentioned. However I searched in the forum "Voice chat" and I have found lots of answers including one which is in the Twitch Clip Directory. Here is a gyazo .gif: https://gyazo.com/be6c3a0f192bebeacf8f8c1cd52c8748 Here is the twitch clip directory:

Condolences from the Français National. Take all the time you need, we all respect and support you at Français National and we will be here for you, if you need ANYTHING! Kind regards, Marie-Clare Bouchard.

Nothing in life that is worth anything is easy to get. That is what makes it WORTH having. Maybe the game play for some is actually working to get things in game and when you can just throw cash at it, it DE-VALUES the assets. Everyone will enjoy different aspects of the game but that is what drew me to the game personally. Working the jobs will be fun to a degree but when you see someone whiz past you wearing that outfit that you have been saving for on day one, it defeats working for anything. I actually laughed out loud at this. I am 39 years old with 4 kids, I know money doesn't last forever. That is why I said charge more for the game up front instead of microtransactions. Develop other ways to get money along the way. Monthly subs where you get access to an exclusive resort / behind the scenes artwork or something...

They never said ban, theres things in place that will demote or fire you from your job

They make money selling the game. That is why we buy it. Selling items that you work for for real world money de-values the efforts in getting them in my opinion. What about user created content? Can those be bought with real money? I played and enjoyed Arma life greatly. Without micro transactions. I know this is a much more ambitious effort. Overall it is their project and it is their choice but i am concerned about not only the longevity, economy but the gameplay itself.

Hey all! I'm new here! The Name is 'Stimo' I'm 28 years old and from Nottingham, UK! I have a huge interest in role-playing and started out on GTA V on a server with over 150 players! I have around 6 months experience in the RP Medical/Fire Department and this is something I look to hopefully be involved with when playing here at Identity. I'm really interested in how the mechanics/features of the game differ to those of GTA servers and that's one of the reasons I want to experience this upcoming game. I have just pledged so I'll see you all hopefully soon in the Beta! Thanks for having me!

1. I disagree, The servers won't be dry just because cops have to do their jobs. That's actually quite absurd to assume. Many cops will play cops because they want to protect citizens, and make sure people obey the law, many players will play criminal because they want the easy cash or adrenaline of running from police. Not everyone wants a shootout to happen or to have the ability to pay someone off to make criminals job easy. This game is not supposed to be crimeRP with AI police. It is supposed to be a life-based game where players can choose from a multitude of roles. Also, Lucky never said they would be banned, he said the server mechanics will handle it. 2. Please elaborate on how criminals, the ones who have the ability to perform many tasks such as robbing banks, smuggling drugs, selling drugs, making illegal weapons, and more, will be bored compared to the police who will drive around doing traffic stops until the CRIMINALS decide to give them some action to respond to. Sorry for any repeats to lucky's recent post, it was posted while I wrote this

And you should, given that we have never said that it'll be released before the new year. This is our final week in the office before we're off for the holidays and the video content is almost ready to go, so we're still pushing hard to get it out right away. That said, you'll most likely be seeing it first thing in the new year. We'll go into this more in the next dev blog on Friday!

We found that out the hard way.

a whip does always help.

Looks well created, properly made thread and you seem to have a few drivers. I wish you the best of luck with your company and hope you will succeed with your company. -Arcanion

>Buy parts from shop >Load them onto a rented van >Drive to your garage/mechanic >Load everything off >Drag the parts to your vehicle and have an animation play out for removing and replacing the part/section Would be fun to get a friend to come along and help you build up your vehicle.