In this video we reveal Titan as imagined by the Aether. This will be a area available to explore in CommunityUs.

Titan is a moon around Saturn. It is one of the few places in our solar system that has an atmosphere. Futurist often discuss Titan's virtues. Colonizing Titan would look very different from say colonizing Mars or the Moon. The extreme cold and low gravity are assets. Titan is filled with methane and would be a good place for Helium-3 (He3) mining.

Experience Titan represents our second attempt to use machine learning to "predict" (with low probability) the future. We are only half joking. All story, art and voices are generated via machine learning dubbed "#AetherUs" and released as Creative Commons.

This is part of a larger work which we'll be revealing over the course of the following year. The idea is to make entertaining educated guesses about the future with low probability. The goal isn't for the guess to be right but rather invite discussion over the hypotheticals and have fun learning about our universe in the process.

Images:
Author: CompVis
Year: 2022
Title: Stable Diffusion
For more information, see the paper "High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models(A.K.A. LDM & Stable Diffusion)", Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann, Dominik Lorenz, Patrick Esser, Björn Ommer, CVPR 2022 (ORAL)

Script:
Author: henk717
Year: 2022
Title: KoboldAI
URL: github.com/KoboldAI/KoboldAI-Client

Voice:
Author: CorentinJ
Year: 2015-2022
Title: Real Time Voice Cloning
URL: github.com/CorentinJ/Real-Time-Voice-Cloning
For more information, see the paper "LibriSpeech: an ASR corpus based on public domain audio books", Vassil Panayotov, Guoguo Chen, Daniel Povey and Sanjeev Khudanpur, ICASSP 2015

Music and Sound FX from:
https://artlislt.io/

Visual FX: (lasers/smoke)

RELEASE ETA: A playable release is getting closer! Until then some pictures.

Sharing some information about the first plants found in the Aether of the TRAPPIST-1 star system. (More on what the Aether is later.) On this first data dump it appears that at least one of the planets features breathable atmosphere! Unless the Aether math just assumes humans have undergone some sort of gene therapy. We will keep sharing things as they come in. Let us know how you perceive the data.

Here are some pics. (Playable soonish.)

Human found in one still image. No mask!


NOTE: Behind the tree the human is looking towards we can see a sort of classification of a creature of some kind. Any guesses what it is? Also note the man doesn't seem too put off by it.

Special thanks to publisher Brian Blinks for the below renders and suggested names. The one above is dubbed the Caper Berry Tree.

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Wiki credit: https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1 used in the Cover Image.

Last year we promised you content updates. That begins today.

Yellowdale is a lively town near the Angshire cultural center with a mixed population. Surrounding areas are; Blademer, Kambert, Fennac & Lansman. (To name a few...)

The story begins with a likeable hero who somehow ended up in Yellowdale and is now trapped for one reason or another. In the past the town was very progressive - even boasting metaverse status but, for some reason their federated identity was rejected recently and much of the town has reverted to doing things the old way. (Polygonal)

[Dev Note] CommunityUs is a space opera-fantasy with epic elements on the timescale. The introductory story is meant to be widely appealing and comical. Paying homage to many cultures and genres in a lighthearted way. As the game progresses, the story will become more important and you will have to pay attention to progress. The in game characters and environments also improve along the way.

How does the game begin:



The game begins in polygon style. It is part of the story. On one of the screens you can save your characters look. Since the game is epic fantasy you will have many classes to pick from. After you finish your character will wake up in the world and you will be treated to some nice opening dialogue and background.

After you have wandered around the map you will eventual find someone who wants to spar with you.



Battle mode is a key game mechanic. It ties in the magical force called the Aether that will eventually allow you to do very powerful things in spacetime. However for now you are just learning.

The map is still heavily under development. We do know we want Yellowdale in there in some form. (More on that backstory later.) So that is why its canon safe to begin discussing this unchanging location with you. This is the size we are looking at making available for exploration..



Click to zoom:


(The space map will be shown later and is part of the more advanced game play)

There is a working GPS system. Yellowdale will be somewhere near the Prime Meridian.

We are still playing with the idea of lightly using some of H.P. Lovecraft's work. So that is what Bosterton is for. Maybe a chilling tail of a spirited graveyard by next halloween?



As you accomplish goals in the story Yellowdale will come alive and the gameplay graphics will progress right along with you.



(Notice the billboard upgrade from low poly style to a textured style.)

As the game world comes alive. We hope you get more and more immersed in the story.

Thank you for checking out this Part One of the new Make One series. There isn't a new game build yet. It is inching its way closer and closer everyday. Think of it this way. It's close enough to preview we now feel comfortable talking about the content.

Look for more news and updates soon.

Up until now there have been a lot of posts about features. We want to move away from doing those as updates and instead talk about the story.

The updates may not be great...i.e.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1994573731

But we want to get ideas down, encourage others who have shown interest they too can put their ideas down no matter the quality and move the bar forward.

What?

Yup, I just get tired of putting a date out there, spending time trying to hit said date so yeah lets just do something crazy far out that we can come in early on.


We want to dazzle anyone following along with ideas.


We will remain Linux first. This is a strategic choice - we do test on all platforms.

Okay, can I stop reading now?

Sure...the best is yet to come.

This January we take advantage of the winter months to do some inward growth. This includes unplugging for a bit - a electronic detox inspired by the Amazon Prime show The Feed and a tiny bit of soul searching for the game.

This is not to say we haven't done above many - many - many times before. Each time it gets better though. In the past we realize a few things:

A FEW THINGS:

CommunityUs is about - well people of course. So it starts with the individuals journey.
Second it is about family. This can be close friends too. To start a sort of game revolution, we need to think first about family and people of course.
Then third is kinda a toss up between; adventure and story - leading to form content, that then forms the community. We think of this as the narrative, the convo both inside the game and out.

It is mostly this third part we are working on and perhaps the truth is we can't know until we have the family and close friend part working first.

So this Christmas season I worked on that. I simplified all the art, so that a child could contribute to the community if they wanted. Then I asked some children / students ranging from 3-12 years to take an hour and test out what a mod might look like.

Here are some screenshots.

STEP I:

First I showed them some pictures of the game with low end graphics. (Rest assured there will be high end still and it will be glorious - it is just too big to make copies of all the time when I make a change, plus anyone can play with low end art.)



Yup - a little late now that Christmas had passed but at least with family and friends we had some laughs. I wore suspenders this Christmas because I have no hips and I finally just got tired enough of pulling up my pants I wanted to be done with that. So yes suspenders.

STEP II:
So picking this farmer gal for testing was perfect. Now whenever I were the suspenders, I'm in farmer mode.



STEP III:
Have family and friends create their own farmer skin.

People, Family, Friends - CommunityUs...see how it works. The real experience I am after is the time in between. The real memories you can treasure.

So to continue to try to paint this vision.

The vision simply stated.

VISION:
CommunityUs - it is a framework for life.

That phrase can be torn apart and should be torn apart as we mean every interpretation. Lets see how it played a role this Christmas/Holiday Season.

1.) People - I find people to bring ideas to life with.
2.) Family and Friends - help with game art - we don't care about quality - it is about doing fun and creative things with family and friends.
3.) We do this enough times, talk about it, have laughs and share ideas and stories - it starts to catch on and new content of all different shapes and sizes are brought to life and communities pop up all around the solar system. (gotta plan for next 20 years - so solar system)



PRACTICE:
As the point of CommunityUs became clear. It didn't matter anymore how we launched, just that we launched. This was further confirmed at a Christmas service we went to - simply stated Christ didn't arrive in a Kingly palace or even at the inn - no that Present showed up in a filthy, unpolished manager (likely a feeding trough.) That was the only thing I got from the service, but it ran deep. It was time to stop trying to make this release super grand, and just release the feeding trough version. Then watch it grow with family and friends.

So you begin to see how I play the game. The vision is to have a game that enhances life, brings people together and becomes a modern platform for sharing stories with others. I also want it to edify - to provide facts and history that can be taken in optionally. There will also be a companion app that does this better.

In practice this changed my direction for the first release a great deal. We have a lot of old phones laying around. So I dropped the graphics to a very low bar, so old phones can play along. This would allow families to play together. Though we have good graphics and all that - it was a sacrifice I had to make to start with, to drop the graphics quality so we can begin pushing stuff out the door content and product wise.

Our music person also caught the vision and has begun writing lesser quality songs - again aimed at allowing anyone to pickup the music in a workshop template and try their hand at making a cue or two.

Once I get the new music in, some basic dialogue and quests as a example. I will unlock the lowly manger - feed trough version. The goal will be to play with family and friends. Begin to explore, begin to think of what might come. Begin to dream with us.

What I can tell you. The Lacuna Expanse is coming. You will begin to see the name show up in the cities. This will be a key plot point, so watch it closely.



Some pictures of the hand drawn "skins" the friends and family made.

In Oct. we talked a lot about The Lacuna Expanse (TLE) addition. We are waiting on some feedback from JT before we say more so stay tuned.

November and even Dec. forecast is... snow!

In house we are working on a mac build so our audio master can see his work in game. This is just an in house build, but we may make it available on share storage if a mac user wants. Windows users also might expect something like this - a side download for testing someday 2020.

For Linux:
The plan is to do a mini Christmas story, likely featuring a hymn and begin character development and story telling with the community platform. I feel a sense we need to plainly show what we are as a game soon. This is a pressing feeling so expect it to be done with high focus and prioriety.

For this Christmas demo we want to feature a best of playable mini game that gives a taste of where we are going and what to expect going forward quality level on Linux. To be honest the hardest thing for small studios is figuring out where to focus and to make sure that focus is based on a business plan. Even harder if said studio (us) wants to also have the main core gameplay free (and not some pay to win scheme - true free) and support something abitous worthy of building a community or soon you will find communities around. Please know once we feel we have something that demonstrates this feel - that is when we will unlock the linux build and not require keys.

Things to expect in the Christmas build:
Good character movement
One or several character controller samples
A beginning of a standard format to convey user interface and information/data
Audio as a focus
Graphics as a focus
Some tease of a low poly spec that could play on a Raspberry Pi

The writer of this post is feeling a tad under the weather, so I will end it there. I realized this morning I hadn't even thought to send the Nov. 1st update. So I wanted to get something out. I will upate the content later with spell check and any more info. I can sort out.

Quick catch up from Sep.

We did get workshops working well. It loads fast, and we are able to offer content encryption for artists that require their work to be protected that way.

Example:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1759257087

Note the tree trunks are not visible this was left on purpose - the thought was to add a particle fx to the trunk to begin forming some treatment / look feel of the world. At present this work is not on the table. Not because we didn't like it, but because it wasn't getting us to playable build worth downloading.

Oct. part update.

Regarding playable build we began working with a great server framework with GPL license. We have reached out to the original creators of the Perl based implementation and were able to get permission to plow ahead with some of their IP (intellectual property.)

More info on The Lacuna Expanse available next month or early 2020. (Above mentioned IP collab.)

This in particular was a big leap forward for us, as integrating other open source works into CommunityUs is one of our goals. It is our belief these are valuable resources where game mechanics have been tested and tweaked "just so" to strike that balance difficult to find the dial on. So we thank JT and PlainBlack team for their support.

Here is our in house branch: (rough commits)
https://github.com/communityus-private/Lacuna-Server-Open/network

It really needs to be cleaned up, we basically took 20 days and just did a deep dive to try to learn the project history and get all the features working again.

The client is a web client, and you can see some of the contributers to that here:
https://github.com/communityus?tab=followers

Generally the web client is MIT licensed with content and IP rights to JT Smith and The Lacuna Expanse community - which CommunityUs is now part of. (This is not legal advise - contact the correct parties for clarity on use.)

The Lacuna Expanse Web Client - has two branches a NodeJS/React branch and a YUI branch. We want to remove the NodeJS and become React + C# / Unity. This takes time, so we are playing with the YUI in house.

more on that...
We were able to get a Unity WebGL 2.0 (better shaders/graphics) build with NodeJS + React (js) front end for UI working with mini browser / WebGL-player (QT based) delivered to you as the client (the react talks to the WebGL dom I think is the right way to describe it [still new to this approach]), but the most functional code for the client is the old YUI2 (Yahoo UI) which we are now security testing and updating to YUI-latest. Once that is done, it will start to surface in game and between now and then you may see elements of The Lacuna Expanse (TLE) teased maybe on in game posters in the Aether areas (or other worldly trees [yes this is a tease - about trees]) sections of the CommunityUs Universe - which *clears throat* (because of a cold I cleared my throat, not because we admit we stink and need to get better or anything) we know few have been able to play with or even see this "in game" (now double quoting myself in a jest) because we haven't unlocked the game yet. *Sigh

To be honest it is very tempting to try to deliver WebGL on all platforms (including a mobile companion [oversee and mini games] app.) There are cons to doing this but it opens up a lot of options - freeing us from code bases that don't play well with others, we can just seperate the data from the client (which we are doing anyways) and use code based on the story we want to tell. *This is the power of TLE btw - great backend for game data. We are still looking at this, but at present we press on in native client land for now.

One dev log key note is if we release a mono QT WebGL solution there could be options to controlling the WebGL 2.0 player from C# at runtime, or with JS / any other runtime lang. like Perl.


Christmas in the desert repurposed screen shots.


NOTE: Ignore the low poly garden scene in the middle - that was another idea that got scratched back in idk 2014 or something.

We are pushing for maybe something Dec. at present (playable unlocked on steam store - meaning no key.) Trying for a mini Christmas story experience to give a taste of actual gameplay. Alas - this won't likely fit TLE gameplay - unless we tweak the server code during alpha to host towns (or the like) instead of stars and planets. This has its own pros/cons...feel free to comment.



Last thing to mention. I think I have figured out how TLE will hook in to the CommunityUs story.

Bit of how:
FTL + Cyro sleep at the speed of light = ?

More on the 1st.

I thought that 12:00 am on the nose timing was rather fun to share for when the build that is now live was uploaded.

What to expect between now and Oct. 31. (my next two part announcement)

- Some holiday theme workshop stuff.

- Release a mix of best playable gameplay even if whole story isn't there yet.

- Release time game play, so those that like to follow a game from the beginning can start gaining rewards even if the whole game isn't there yet. (nor will be for some time)

- Open source code even if only Unity Companion License code based play.

- Workshop tools.

- VR play.

Lastly, create the start of the "central gameplay" that begins to lay the concept of what CommunityUs is. Simply a bunch of us being able to do stuff in an open world - where adventure, treasure and sincere stories find you - grab hold and inspire. Something like that.

Central to this is building your toon. (Avatar, Character...played around with the idea of calling it a Dou or in game Clone.) So could spend 2 months just doing that. Maybe we will.

Anyways more stuff coming. We are a slow burn.

Every few months, the dev team can be seen stretching their backs on a grassy enclave that flows like a outstretched tongue intersecting the old bear cave where this team seems to dwell. During this rare time, the devs are more human than bear and it is safe to talk to them.

Lets lean in and see what they are saying...

"Updates? Did you say an update is coming?"

Updates below, coming soon mentioned here. (alpha state subject to change)
- Universe (think IPFS) player data with P2P (peer to peer - not pay to play - *yuk) using Steam networking. So the global player base can interact with mini worlds...

...hosted by you some persistent some not doesn't matter because all the while you global data is progressing - so no matter what you do, your playing and gaining points that can be spent or traded whatever they are your points who are we to tell you what to do! Freeeeeedoooom! ;-)
- Tons of content uploading soon to Workshop in form of walk around levels with open (free as in MIT [where can]) source runtime scripts you can play with. (aimed at devs, diy types, builders and those that like to have fun in non traditional ways like running bots for game advancement rather than grinding.)

- Local server you can host on your Linux box, with persistent military grade sql lite for data share.
- WebGL support in game - works on windows, some issues with Linux port. Low priority right now. But will be fun long term for VR browser stuff and the 3D web of things.
- React UI working with WebGL. So we can use open source React libraries that everyone can use for other stuff too! Why not learn while you play and build?
- K4 content coming Sep.

workshop
- Unity companion license content too!
- Clearly labeled folder structure for Workshop. Engine and Editor dates, workshop tags and notes and readmes everywhere they should be.
- Single code base game mechanics private repo started, finally get our code base under control (there was huge tech debt to be paid since May 1st we been paying it, now have some spending money so to speak so more good updates [and more good English too])
- Single code base API/SDK for workshop, so you can do what we do. readme will have what assets were used, you can license non free code and do what we do. We share what we can.

/* Random Mumble */
// From the tongue of the cave
On the surface all we have at this point is a functional workshop on linux, tested on SteamOS.
-> We are still uploading and playing with best approach to deepots now that we know more what we are trying to do. Things may not work or launch until Sep. 2nd. But feel free to play and chat about anything as we upload. Most of the action will be in Workshops. We have a Cube test working at 4pm Aug. 31st (to have the proof of concept done by when we said) actualy good content with bells whistles and pretty good art is inbound.

(We will be taking full advantage of Steam api and tools to speed along our dev process. Most everything will have a tiny readme file if you poke around in the folders. I will also try my best to clearly state where all the license info is. The plan is to use workshop collections, and open source licensed stuff where we can to let people use the Steam workshop like they would use a workshop in their RL [real life] garage/shed - we want it to be that handy and fun [like part of gameplay is workshop built in concept wise/design wise and as a game mechanic but in a way that is fun and intuitive and freeing and not in a annoying way though day one , two and three it may be annoying till we get feedback.)


Windows on Steam has a lot more built in to the app delivery process - like common redistributables, a server tools for depots etc. We are playing around with a few undocumented features, while also taking advantage of standard bash and open source to see how crazy cool we can get in our offerings of game and app playable services and features. (Think everything is less than 3 clicks away) Again not much to see or do yet, but the pipeline and workflow is almost semi-polished and we will be rolling this out sometime over next several months.



Placeholders. Yup, right now the editor tool is just the same app build as the game. The though here is - we spotted a FlatPak library in steam runtime for linux maybe we can leverage that to auto install say.. the... Unity Editor or MonoDevelop or (MIT License) Torque editor or Godot, Unreal, aws Lumberyard, Moby etc. If so talk about a hidden feature!

(more edits and updates to happen up until 11:59pm then we will shift to what to expect in the Sep. update between Sep. 1st and end of the year.)
[pic?]



MUST HAVE:
Steam Controller Support
Lots of Workshop Items
...add more next month

GOODIES:
Steam Leaderboards
Steam Trading Cards
Workshop Collections
...add more next month

WANT:
all Steam Features.
standardized workshop tags.
...add more next month

8/15/19 mid month update (not a regular thing)
@all Brief update. The uploading of builds was getting too tedious and error prone so we have opted to use a launcher/patcher like other AAA games. We have a good enough test on windows done - the issue has been porting to GNU/Linux and FreeBSD. After exploring a lot of options we really felt it best to stick with mono/c# and winforms if we could. Then to solve launching (the launcher - saying here because it is funny to say laucher 2x and I am tired :-)) as a self contained app on steam we just solved tonight with winforms simple test also working. I thought about sharing a screen shot but its really just a blank Linux window. So it would be worthless to the eyes. But it is created by true System.Windows.Forms lib from mono and no wine nonsense, true ./App Linux. So anyways, now that this mystery is solved it is just the matter or porting the code from .NET to mono - and maybe some file system calls differences. But anyways, having a real launcher that you have control over will be great and can be expanded etc. It will also allow us to no have to worry about uploading everything into our main depot. and we have more options now for content delivery, and modular control on both ends. Anyways that is the update of what we need to finish up this month before we unlock the repo. Thanks for sticking around :-)

"
[UPDATE 8/13/19] Let's say end of Aug. for the update, unless the public demands sooner. Might as well take our time if no one cares really. :-)

[UPDATE] Those following along closely, FYI...the end of july update for Linux is almost here. Now in early Aug. like week 1. If this blasted computer would just work by itself, the update would be all shiny and ready by now. Alas, we have to do everything the hard way. *whine. thanks for your patience. if we run behind by a bit, we just let you know sea. easy. oops, was that a typo or a hint of what is coming?"

Our next official update will be end of Aug. July is all about strategy.

I will follow the leap frog pattern of update then the next day (1st of the month) followed by what to expect for next ~ 60 days. This provides a monthly update, but still gives the team ~ 60 days in between to deal with all the issues that creep up meeting the goals laid out.

So July... we will be pursuing the straightest path to content, play and world background / vision casting.

The best visuals would of come from using the Unity Asset Bundle tech to deliver art via workshop a la carte. This is a stretch goal for next 60 days. To get something in your hands now , with least amount of steps and start getting feedback, I think offering a graphical MUX/MUSH Client (Multi User Experience/Shared Habitat) is the way to go. I may just mock one up in Unity downstream before commiting to an open source upstream (again problem here is tracking down a non gpl codebase [see June update for more info as to why.])

The strategy:
Gabe 20 years ago quit his day job with the belief that gaming would become the new form of entertainment. Today we have Steam and we can see that happening in a big way. Even TV, comic books, big studios are crossing into gaming tech (not the other way around) to solve industry problems. We see this time we are in as important as the digital camera innovation and non linear editing was to TV/Film back then. It may take 20 years to get there too. But someday a game will be such a broad thing that will mean next gen TV show, next gen realtime book, next gen way to work, next gen way to learn, next gen way to be social. All of this for better or worse is coming.

Together we have a chance to define it for the better. I would go so far as to say all hardcore gamers I know aside from just a good FPS, are tired of watered down games. So our plan is to go 10x in the other direction. Go insanely deep.

The strategic target then becomes everything mentioned in the above paragraph. If we focus on content, reading required, deep background and also background that is easy to justify your time on because it enriches life through edification and growing knowledge and understanding. This seems a worthy goal, and a lasting goal.

So we ask ourselves, how do we get you a great game that meets our goals and values. Well we need a big team, and then we need a biz plan to pay said team, but to avoid dollars ruining gameplay we want our biz plan to live as a side project. This was hard to flush out how to even do this but the key is to not focus on the two goals only. But instead focus on the bigger picture and where we are going.

We want to be one place of many that started a deep game background long before anyone else saw it coming. All of our content is free to grab and do what you want with. We are simply the place to find it. Once you have this, finding a palatable way to fund the project is easy.

So expect to see a simple game interface you can interact with and begin exploring ideas. Expect these ideas to be forward reaching and some even biz facing. Assume we dislike many of the things you dislike here. Assume we also know the player understands at base level at some point there has to be a biz plan and we will find that together.

Happy Independence Day, said here on July 1st not only to U.S. but to the broader world, let us declare independence from spoon fed content. Let us make something that is both fun and makes your life a little bit better one day at a time.

See you again here in announcements at end of Aug.