Crime Doesn't Pay, This Time Earlier this month we released a quick and raw gameplay video showing off an interaction in a rural area of the world. The art in the video is very much in development, but it's a great way to see some of the features and how they work. You'll get a glimpse of a drug production mini-game, the computer system used by police officers, and more. For this dev blog I wanted to toss in a couple clips that didn't make it into the video; all in glorious GIF form. The environment shown in the video is actually quite old. For example, those trees have been in use for a couple years of our development. The character animations (in fact, the entire way you control the character) will also be much different when you get into the Town Square. To give you an idea of how our art has progressed over time, see below one of the older placeholder trees, as is seen in the video, compared to a more recent tree which will be found in the Town Square. The Finishing Touches As you'd expect, our priority for the last month has been getting the Town Square ready for play! We've been working overtime getting everything into place, and it's shaping up very nicely. You'll see from the image above that our artists have been producing absolutely incredible assets. In my own opinion, it's the nicest looking environment I've ever seen in an MMORPG to date. With the original release date for the Town Square quickly approaching, it's become evident that we're unfortunately going to have to push the date back, although the delay will not be long. More work is required to ensure that the launch goes smoothly; we need time to reinforce our server structure and do more internal playtesting. The Town Square will be released to all Founders (and above) one month later on April 23. This is an unfortunate reality of game development, but we want to make sure you get a quality product which isn't rushed out the door too soon. To help ease the pain of waiting for a taste of Identity, we're going to start throwing more media out for you, including a Town Square trailer video overviewing the features you'll find inside. Making it Big! We recently hit the incredible milestone of $1,000,000 USD raised! In fact, right now as of this writing we're in at just under $1,025,000. The support from our community and pledgers has been absolutely incredible. I wanted to take this chance to say thank you; it's because of you that Identity is becoming a reality. The game we've all wanted for such a long time is coming. Around the Studio We're in overdrive over here, working hard to get the Town Square ready to go! As I sit here in my office typing this blog post, Andrew is finishing up the new character creation system. The user interface Artur made is beautiful. I couldn't be happier with the new UI systems he's produced following Scaleform's demise (our old middleware which is now dead). The biggest change here in the office this month is the addition of Mark (who the community has dubbed Marker), our resident graphic designer. He's pumping out amazing art for in-game brands at an incredible pace. This will translate into all sorts of clothing brands and patterns, wallpapers and much more. He'll be bringing you a whole lot of customization options throughout Identity. The real big news, though, is the birth of our lead programmer Henrik's (Sone) new baby boy! Be sure to congratulate him if you spot him on Discord. He's probably too tired to read, though. Liam has been getting a lot done on the new Identity website, too. You'll be seeing the launch of this new website quite soon, and it's going to bring a whole bunch of new options and features for you to enjoy. 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

The character animation and control will be more as you described by the time Town Square comes around. It will follow the player only when a weapon is drawn, otherwise the head will move without the body. I forget the name of the systems off hand, but the computer UI is based off real police systems. It's a blend of two, one called iforce and another which escapes me.

You can restrain people who surrender to you if you have zipties. You can then toss them in a vehicle. You can also call the police if you like. Identity is about freedom, and this is the sort of thing that's possible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum Yes, you'll be able to play as both male and female.

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.

Your apartment in Town Square will come with such things, and they'll be placable in the environment where you choose much the same way as you'd place down furniture.

Happy Holidays From Asylum! The holidays are upon us, and the team at Asylum begins their short rest! We've been busier than ever, and this coming January is shaping up to be one of our biggest months in a very long time, if not ever. Our expanded team has been working hard on game features beyond the Town Square, and you're finally going to be getting a glimpse of true Identity gameplay very soon in the new year; that's just the start. Keeping it Real Primary systems in Identity such as weapons and vehicles are being developed to operate as realistically as possible. Last week a few of the developers braved the freezing temperatures at a local range to record audio directly from a slew of real firearms in all sorts of conditions. It's very important to us that the weapons in Identity look, sound and react as close to reality as possible. We've even modeled the ballistic physics based on real-world mathematical formulas. Powerful weapons are going to be rare in Identity. Assault weapons, for example, will likely be used in major circumstances. For the most part players will have access to less powerful weaponry; melee, hand guns, hunting rifles, and so on will be the norm. Here it Comes! With the Town Square development moving along, we're not far off from showing the world real Identity gameplay! Like I said up there, January is going to be a big month. For us in the studio, we're excited to get our hands on a few new technology demos that might have a huge impact on Identity! For our fans, January is going to be the month you see the first true world gameplay video. Not only that, but soon after we're looking to release a Town Square trailer! Keep your eyes out on Identity's Twitter and Facebook. 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 (except on this coming week due to holidays). 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

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 hope so, but we don't know for sure. It's a little tight in that there's only a week and a half before the guys are on a short break for the holidays, but they're hard at work!

Family matters It was just a month ago that we announced the official release date for the Town Square module. Since then, we've been hard at work turning that promise into a reality. Team expansions, UI drama, family additions and a whole new Unreal Engine amounted into a crazy time! For me, the biggest news this month was the arrival of my second beautiful daughter, Aria, on the 19th. It's been a lot of fun and not as sleepless as I expected. It meant a week off for me although the team in the office hadn't skipped a single beat while I was away. My week away was the first week of work for two new developers here at the office. Andrew (McWOLF), a gameplay programmer, and Artur (Archer), a UI/UX designer and developer have joined the team. Both have already proven themselves to be great at what they do! You've got questions, they've got answers Identity's community members and YouTubers have interviewed the developers. Your questions have been asked; check it out to see what the developers say about the way Identity is played! IDENTITY RPG DEVELOPER Q&A NOVEMBER, 2017 Identity Game - Podcast - Developer Q&A - #2 Join us on Twitch at 4PM EST on Tuesdays and Thursdays to watch Identity's developers at work. Most of these streams also have other developers present to answer the questions of those watching, live! Are you interested in hearing answers to other questions? Our developers have been answering questions on live streams for some time now and Brandon (BeachBall), our community manager, has compiled an enormous list of questions and answers. Check out the TWITCH CLIPS DIRECTORY forum thread. The little engine that couldn't We're really excited to show you gameplay footage, not only of the Town Square module but what you can expect to see beyond the modules! We've been hard at work on this, but our aging build of the Unreal Engine just couldn't cope with the advanced vehicle physics systems we're implementing in Identity! This meant it was time for the dreaded engine merge, something our lead programmer Sone has been fearing for years! Every once in a while (usually every year or so) we have to merge all of the modifications we've made to the core Unreal Engine into the latest release. It's an absolutely enormous undertaking, but it's done and good to go. Now that we're running the latest version of the engine, we can support more advanced technologies and we can bring you a more immersive experience, even in the Town Square. Just wait 'til you see what we're doing with vehicles! The UI disaster! Early in the month we hit a road-block. Our licensed middleware system for the user interface in Identity, Scaleform, was discontinued! The industry leading system would be no more, and we had to make the tough decision to abandon it now to save grief in the future. It was like a slap in the face. All of our user interface code had to be scrapped and replaced! While Scaleform was a Flash based system, our new UI would not be. We've signed on with Coherent Labs, and the new UI is under way. While unexpected, it's actually a blessing in disguise! Our new Coherent system allows for faster development, and while it's a minor setback now it'll speed things up considerably going forward. Our new guy, Artur, is dedicated to the user interface in Identity and our UI will be stronger now because of it. With Artur's help, I don't expect this to affect development time for Town Square even at all. We have more hands on deck to cover the added work. On the horizon With our expanding development team, we're able to focus our efforts in more areas of Identity's development. With vehicle and weapon systems now getting attention, we're once again progressing towards a short but feature packed gameplay video for you guys to check out. Keep your eyes out on Identity's Twitter and Facebook! -- John VanderZwet

I'm always impressed by the art produced by the Identity team! That talent is pretty undeniable.

You'll find board games and more in Identity. In fact you might even find a chess board in the town square if time permits.

The current upkeep time is set to 1 month and it applies only to houses, not apartments.

Our reasoning for this is that we don't want people who can afford to buy apartment spaces through microtransactions to have an advantage in the game. If you were able to rent out the apartments, which you may have gotten through a pledge/MT, you could then translate that into in-game currency through rental income. We've got to consider all angles to make sure everything remains as fair and balanced as possible. You can have multiple people living in an apartment, though! And you can have more than one apartment for access to your stuff in different areas of the world.

Poking @BentBot! He's our web guy. He's in yelling range of me but it's easier to just do this because lazy.

Since I might have re-railed things just a bit, I'll give you a more serious response! You will, definitely, see tasers and shotguns in Identity. There will be several less-than-lethal weapons available.

Is it, though? Is it?!

It seems like your one problem might not be much of a problem after all. In Identity, it's mostly just low influence (mostly cosmetic) items which cannot be lost. Things like your debit card, your clothing, and so on. Items which don't give you a strength but instead offer convenience. Most other things can indeed be lost. If you die out in the woods because you thought you could fist fight a bear then you might not have lost much, as there's a good chance you could get back to that place before everything despawns. When someone else is around though, they can loot your corpse and take what's dropped. This is mostly an issue of convenience, and we go for a balance of such versus risk. We fully understand that for life to be exciting, death has to be scary. At the same time, why make people go back to their closet and change their outfit over and over again?

In the earliest days of Identity's release, most people will likely start with bicycles for transportation. The bicycles can, for the most part, hold only a single person and are clearly not as quick as a motorized vehicle. They also don't have trunk space. Now imagine trying to make some early dollars by doing odd jobs around town. Gathering, delivery tasks, and so on will be a lot easier if you can both get around quicker and carry larger hauls.

About 1,600 sqft. Not huge but large enough to house our team with some room to grow. People in Ottawa will be free to schedule a drop by and meet the team once things are going.

The office looks great, but it's more of a budget space than it looks. I've been busy there for weeks as I assembled all the furniture, cut and hung the decor.. we've saved a lot of money by doing everything ourselves. In fact, we're a very frugal bunch and our funding is quite healthy.

Yep. Read the summary near the end. I explained that.

That's right. The proximity voice system in Identity is fairly advanced. Walls and such between your head and the speaker's head will affect the sound. Furthermore, there are devices (loud speakers, microphones, etc) that can affect how far your voice can travel.

As @Villasenor mentioned, it really depends on the server. On official servers, with the stress system enabled and at default settings, that depends on their current stress level. On private servers, which can completely disable the stress mechanic, a headshot from most calibers will likely result in death.