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Development Update 6/18/14

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Koi-Spark
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Development Update 6/18/14

Post by Koi-Spark »

Hello, Dreamers!

As you may already know, Raven is currently out of the country doing a short study abroad. We wish him the best of luck while he spends the next 5 weeks or so overseas. He'll be able to check in with us, but he's given me the honor of trying to fill his shoes temporarily until he returns. I wanted to take this opportunity to update you on our development for Underlight: Clash of Dreams!

We also would like everyone to send their best wishes to the man who has made a lot of our wishes come true, WishBringer. He has been out sick for a little while, but he's also had some serious issues come up in his family that have rightfully demanded his attention away from the Underlight project for now. Please send him and his family your positive energy and keep them in your thoughts while they recover.

Even though our fearless leaders are less available to us for a short time, we have made great strides to completing the development portion and we're moving so much closer to our launch. I know, I know, you've heard it all before but we want to make absolutely sure that everything is performing as well as possible and that we have everything we need in place to best support the loyal community when we do begin.

To update from Raven's last development update, here are some of the milestones we've been hitting to get you closer to playing:
- We are still working the final issues with Windows 8 compatibility. We have a "functioning workaround" that gets us 95% of the way, but we want to really FIX the issues, rather than put a band-aid on them.

- The player account management (that allows you to create and manage both your characters and pmare accounts is nearly finished. We are still scrubbing the last bits of "billing" that used to charge you monthly to play, but since we are going for 100% FREE playtime, there are a lot of things to update. One of the biggest changes is that rather than spending your cash on PMare time, you'll have the option to spend your earned Personality Points in exchange for PMare time credits! The more you roleplay and get involved with the community, the more PMare time you'll earn.

- We have added new content and updated a few other things. We have made some changes to arts and some gameplay features, many based on your suggestions. Be aware we are reading your suggestions and taking them into account as we get things revved up for launch. I wouldn't want to spoil any surprises, so you'll have to wait and see! Personally, I'm really looking forward to seeing some more entries for the Clash of Planesmiths contest we have going on right here.

- Mares. Lots of mares. Lots of angry, vengeful mares! They're running full throttle now and you will be sure to encounter mares from Emphant to Horron (and maybe a few other surprises) in places you've never seen them before. I don't want to give too much away, but be prepared to figure out exactly where they are, how they got there, and - perhaps most importantly - why!

- We've begun the final stages of migrating servers and optimizing efficiency on all of those systems. With any luck, we'll finally have a permanent parking spot for everything and we can avoid downtime while maximizing speed. A huge "thank you" is in order to our system admins and the wonderful folks who have agreed to host and maintain everything for us, which has allowed us to provide the game free of charge to all the players.

To reiterate Raven's past remarks, thank you all so much for being patient with us. I wish it could be as easy as flipping the on switch and everything is ready to go, but we've made a lot of adjustments to account for 7+ years in technology advancement.

We are getting very close to opening additional Beta slots, and not far behind that may be a brief period of open Beta, where we'll welcome everyone to import their old player accounts, create new accounts, and essentially try to break everything for us before it gets the seal of launch approval ;) We'll let you know more details as soon as we are ready to proceed.

If you have any questions or concerns, you can always post on the forums, send us a private message, or join us in IRC.

Thank you all for your continued loyalty and support!
Koi-Spark,
Development Lead
Technical Admin/Support
Level Design, Artwork
Game Master, In-Game Support
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