Monday, December 1, 2014

They already have the christmas music on the radio, someone please shoot me.

    Winter is upon us.  As I type this, it is currently 23 degrees (-5 for the civilized world) outside, and the weatherman says that it isn't getting much better.  Try as I may, Ibrahim Ferrer is doing little to change me to sunnier states of mind.  The good news is, now that I can't escape Lunch, I have to actually sit down and write for a change.

    Speaking of.  It should be pretty clear to anyone reading this that we weren't able to meet our Fall release goal for our first demo, and for that we're really sorry. It's been a crazy last few months for almost the entire team, and, unfortunately, real life has to come before all-volunteer collaboration projects. But now, things have largely settled down enough that we'd like to announce that our new goal is to have this demo out by Christmas. Will it happen? Let's find out!

    As we patch our paths together, we've spent a lot of time thinking about the mechanisms of the titular ship, the HMCS Familiarity.  One of the biggest challenges so far is to convincingly create a steampunk universe that is both factually sound and unobtrusive to the actual story.  This is something I personally have a horrible time with, because, as my cohorts will tell you themselves, I am just as happy dissecting a facet of our universe as I am to actually WRITE about it.  The historical aspect is even worse, because we can (and have) spent entire nights discussing just what the political landscape of our story is like, stopping occasionally to tell a dick joke or to say “Hey, wasn't there a character route we were talking about?”

    The short of all that is, holy crap is there a lot of little stuff we can play with.  Steam power may have gone away before even my father's time, but learning about it gives it life anew.  Writing this story has brought romantic images of tramp steamers, locomotives, and factories from a time where the world was still very much large, mysterious, and exciting.

    Anyways.  The holidays are right around the corner, and my path isn't going to write itself (as Lunch will be sure to tell you), so stay tuned for something new.

10 comments:

  1. Hooray for the newest update! I can't wait to see if you guys make the Christmas deadline you guys set for yourself, or if that'll end up completely nullified, either way is fine for me. I'll read it the second it becomes available, either way.

    I'm glad to hear about the dynamic and interesting setting you guys have been creating. However you run with it, I'm sure you'll use it to breathe life into the story.

    As for the art, it's been beautiful so far, Chocojax, Rinbro, Emi's Waifu, LordFryingPan, and last but not least, Urn (If that list is up to date.) I could never make anything close to the quality of the stuff you guys keep churning out, trust me, my art is shite. (On the other hand, Morial looks like she's made of ice in this picture, I'm not sure if that's what you guys were going for or not.)

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  2. It's important to remember that Morial is cold-blooded. When she's cold, she's COLD.

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  3. Hurray! was starting to worry that you may all have died or abandoned the project.Iv been following this for a while now so will be nice to see how it turns out. I will be eagerly awaiting the demo and wish you all the best of luck.

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  4. Hey everyone. We're sorry we haven't been on in a while, but things have been kind of nuts for all of us. We've all been traveling a lot--separately, but we'd have racked up some decent sky miles. The project is progressing every day, mostly because of our tireless coders. We expect to bring you a big, BIG update soon(ish). Thank you for still following us. Our small group of followers (that's you guys) remind us that this project is something we want to see succeed more than anything else.

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    1. We're working all the time to get this done, so please spend your holiday with us

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  5. If traveling and time consuming is an excusable issue, why did my dad having a stroke not matter?

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  6. Anon from December 9th checking in once again just to say I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and that you enjoy the rest of the holiday period.

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    1. Hey! Thanks for both the well wishes and the support, right back at you.

      Although our coder has been working himself half to death trying to get the demo done ontime, it's looking like we won't be able to make our Christmas deadline by a day or two. It really sucks, but we'd rather be a few days late than rush out something that isn't as polished as the standards we've set for ourselves.

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  7. Christmas came and passed, where's the update?
    You oughta fire one more of your staff for insuficient productivity. How much you got left?

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    1. We're working our asses off, check back tomorrow!

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