How Coffee and Can Openers Helped Restart Thanksgiving

For a long time people celebrated Thanksgiving every year because they didn’t have to worry about having enough food. The first Thanksgiving happened a long, long time ago before people knew about vending machines or how to put food in cans. A group of people called the Pilgrims had a feast with people called the Indians in order to thank them for teaching them how to grow food. Over the years, other people heard about the Pilgrims, moved to where they lived and killed almost all the Indians. After that, Thanksgiving was mostly about eating with relatives and trying to be nice to them. Everyone’s family would travel from far and wide to eat together, catch up on each other’s lives, and talk about what things used to be better. The kids would sit at a different table than the adults so they could be loud and everyone ate a type of bird called a turkey. A turkey was like a giant chicken but it was almost always dry when you cooked it and nobody ate the eggs.

After things stopped working, people had to worry about getting enough food to eat everyday so they stopped having Thanksgiving. There weren’t any turkeys on the island anyway. Nobody seemed to care because they were busy trying to live. For lots of years people like my Grandpa Pa’ani worked hard up on the hill to make sure everyone there had enough to eat, and that the ugly people down below didn’t steal anything. Even though the people on the hill were smart and they worked hard some of their plants started to get sick. The macadamia trees stopped making nuts and the taro plants started turning brown and dying. Everyone was really scared because they didn’t know where they were going to get food.

They were so worried that a bunch of them went out the gate and down below to try and trade for some food. After looking around for awhile they found a hunting party. The ugly hunters saw that one of the traders was drinking coffee and asked if they could taste some. They hadn’t had good coffee in a really long time because their roasters were broken and they’re not very good at fixing things. They really liked the coffee so they invited them back to their village.The people on the hill noticed there was a lot of broken stuff in the village. Almost all of their machines didn’t work and their plates and glasses were chipped and dirty. Most of their stuff was rusty and all of them had to share a can opener. They noticed something else too, lots of healthy plants.

The people from the hill told them about how their plants were dying and the Kanaka knew what to do. They gave them a different kind of taro plant that was stronger than the old kind but tasted just the same. They showed the hill people how to bury the purple fish next to the macadamia trees so they would get better and make nuts again. The people on the hill were happy that they didn’t have to worry about starving anymore. They decided to have Thanksgiving again and invite the Kanaka.

Even though the people down below don’t smell very good and are messy when they eat, the hill people opened the gates to share a feast . They laid out blankets and brought out tables so that their houses wouldn’t get messy. The Kanaka brought lots of fish, meat, and vegetables. The hardworking people made lots of coffee and brought out clean plates and glasses for them to use. Everyone was really happy and best of all nobody tried to steal anything. To show their appreciation for the good manners and the healthy plants, the people on the hill gave them bags of roasted coffee, new glasses and plates, and some new can openers. The people down below loved the gifts, especially the can openers. After that the Kanaka and the people like my grandpa started trading things more often. They still do today.

The people up here had such a good time that they decided to start having Thanksgiving every year again. We don’t eat with the people down below anymore because we have enough food for our families now. Grandfathers can talk about how lazy everyone is compared to them, aunts can ask your older sister why they aren’t married, and your cousin can talk about how important Kanaka integration is to a vibrant culture again, all thanks to coffee and can openers. I’m glad that the Kanaka helped us but I’m more glad that I don’t have to eat with them. My weird cousin is bad enough!

Akamai Mahelona
4th Grade
Pu`u School Lahaina

Don’t Give Up On Aloha Shores

Frank and I would like to thank you all for hanging in there. We understand that this is a time of fear and confusion for many of you. Heck, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous too. As I’ve said before if we hear anything about what’s going on you’ll be the first to know. I also apologize that this presentation has lasted a bit longer than many of you anticipated. To be honest, I was only expecting to be in your ear for a few hours myself, and now we find ourselves 43 days in. Still, I think we’ve all done a good job sticking together so far and I’m sure the authorities will have this all straightened out in no time.

While we wait, my brother and I would like to once again urge you to sign your paperwork. Aloha Shores has been the hottest timeshare on the beach for years now and we’re confident that won’t change. I think demand might even go up once the turmoil ends. Look, we understand why you might have questions right now. You’d be crazy not to. We just want you to be able to make an informed choice. It’s in that spirit of openness and transparency that we feel we need to address some issues and give you a heads-up about a few things. I’d like to take a little of your time separating fact from fiction.

Fact: The Wifi is going to remain down for the foreseeable future. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause but we’re going to have to keep it off for a while. We’ve tried restarting the router a number of times to no avail. Sorry folks we’d like to check our email too but we’re all going to have to make do.

Fiction: Frank and I have a working satellite phone. The phone didn’t work at all for the first week and now only makes a strange pulsing noise. As many of you know, the noise, whatever it was, caused some health issues with Frank. He is doing better now and I thank you all for your kind words. The nosebleeds have stopped and he is alert and oriented. We feel turning the phone back on is too high a risk for now.

Fact: We’re holding on to the Dolphin Experience tickets that were promised to all of you for now. You may have heard that the sea was boiling again yesterday and we feel it’s just too dangerous until we figure out what’s causing the turbulence. We’ll be more than happy to hand out the tickets when we get a better handle on the events outside and when the dolphins are feeling up for a little tail-walking.

Fact: All driving services appear to be down, even Hailoha. We were all encouraged when a car arrived the day after the Veilcorp accident. Frank and I assumed that at least the local transportation service was still running but it appears that isn’t the case. The driver who showed up that day appears to be a lone wolf so-to-speak. He was last seen heading down Front street with his passengers.

Fiction: It is safe to go outside. We may not know the extent of the trouble out there but we do have a couple of immediate concerns that we need to share. First, the sidewalk around the building was severely damaged in one of the quakes. There are a number of large cracks visible from the lobby window. The accessibility ramp also appears to be at an unsafe angle so please use caution. In addition, a group snuck out last night to go to the bar down the road and only one returned. Frank and I have long discouraged visitors from venturing down to the Little Grass Shack, but it appears now to be dangerous and not merely distasteful. We will give you more specifics once the survivor is able to talk again.

Fact: We have less than a dozen chicken wraps left. We all knew that supplies were going to become an issue at some point and it looks like the wraps are going to be the first to go.

Fiction: We are going to starve. This fear is completely unfounded. We have a number of delicious options available yet including: pita’s, pinwheel sandwiches, quesadillas, cold crepes, flatbread pizzas, buckets of instant soup, and a wide variety of canned goods. Did I mention that we have enough coffee and Manimal to keep us awake and hydrated for years? No friends, having an empty belly is not a concern.

I hope that clears some things up for you all. Frank and I really appreciate your time and continued confidence. We’ve done amazing things together so far and I hope that you decide to make it official by signing your agreements. We’d love to be able to call you members of the Aloha Shores family. Remember, paradise is just a signature away!

Steve and Frank Lacey
Lacey Property Management

Lost Tourists Found Thanks To “Trail of Drink Pouches”

A family who went missing on the Pali Trail in Lahaina last week were found safe and sound this morning thanks to the hard work of rescuers and a number of Manimal drink pouches.

Max and Brenda Hower along with their 8-year-old son, Grit, set off last Tuesday for a day hike on the Pali Trail, a popular destination for many tourists. The family declined maps of the area when offered by park authorities saying that they didn’t want to “overplan” their day. When the family didn’t return by dinner that evening, others in their tour group notified officials.

More than 100 people were involved in the ensuing search, with the lost family gaining worldwide attention. The search continued for days amid claims of extreme recklessness, and rumors that the family were missing on purpose in order to land a reality show. The hunt came to an end today after officials followed a trail of empty Manimal drink pouches and found the missing family.

One of the rescuers told reporters, “We turned a corner on the trail and there was garbage everywhere, mostly these empty drink pouches. I thought we found illegal campers at first because of the sheer volume of trash, but it just kept going on into the foliage. After following it for a few hours we heard voices and called out to the family. I don’t know how two adults and a child carried so many drink pouches.”

The family was taken to a local hospital with officials saying they appeared to be well hydrated and in good condition.

“In the beginning I was concerned we wouldn’t make it.” Brenda said in a statement. “It seemed like we walked forever and we were all exhausted that first night… My pack got a little lighter and my confidence grew with every pouch I threw into the bushes. Manimal fought off the doubt that we had made a big mistake and saved my family.”

“Luckily we’re pouch people. following the path and drinking out of a bottle like everyone else is not what the Howers are about. When we find two roads in a wood we make our own road, and sometimes that comes at a cost. Thankfully, we had Manimal pouches. We feel very fortunate that they could follow our trash like a treasure map. There were times that we were scared, but we were never thirsty,” added Max.

Officials say they are looking into the Hower’s story but have no plans to file charges at this time. “The Pali Trail is one of the most pristine places in the world and we ask for the public’s help in keeping it that way. The paths are clearly marked and we encourage the public to use them no matter what their family philosophy may be,” said a park spokesperson.

DEV

Crafting Improvements, Bug Fixes, and Persistence Updates

From the very beginning, we’ve tried to add little touches to the world that remind players of the thriving Lahaina that existed before the Fracture. There’s no doubt that the forests and beaches frame the setting in the game, but the buildings and dilapidated neighborhoods help tell the story of the people who didn’t make it through the apocalypse. 

Followers of our discord will know that one of the projects we’ve been working on is adding pictures and posters to the ruins and abandoned homes around the map. Community members have submitted photos of their fur babies and we’ve set out to make them Lahaina famous. 

We’re happy to share that we’ve finally fixed a few bugs that saw posters stacked on top of each other and rooms having too few or too many pictures to reach just the right amount of wall hangings. 

Right now it’s mostly pictures of the team and some friends but if you head over to the #pets channel on our discord and submit a photo, you might just see their picture hanging in a house in the future.

We continued making persistence and inventory improvements this week and squashed a long list of bugs with the help of our testers. That includes some updates to the research bench and fixes an issue with boot and hat recipes not producing boots or hats. 

We made it impossible to place sleeping bags under benches and we fixed an interesting bug where players could steal items from other players’ inventories. There are plenty of reasons for you to kill other players but stolen arrows won’t be one of them anymore.

One of our testers discovered that the meat spoilage timer was being applied to other crafted items like iron and charcoal. Nothing smells worse than putrid ingots so we fixed the problem. We also fixed an issue where dragging a stack from a player-built smelter into a stack in a player inventory wasn’t working correctly.

AI should be lootable again so players can feel free to go through the mutant’s disgusting pockets after they’ve been put down, and we fixed a bug with weapon reloading animations. As you can see loading your rifle after shooting one of the neighbors looks as good as it feels.

You can learn more about the game and get all the latest updates by going to our Discord server or checking out our Steam page.

DEV

Bug Fixes and Persistence Updates

With almost as many ways to pick up, interact with, and store items as there are mutants on the island, nailing down inventory and item persistence has been one of our biggest tasks and our main focus. We know how important it is to be able to return to your bases and access inventory so we’ve been devoting all our attention to ensuring everything is where you left it. 

This week, with the help of our testers, we hopefully nabbed the last of the bugs and worked out the final edge cases making sure that your stuff stays where you put it after you log out. 

We also fixed a crash that would occur when moving attachments around in your inventory.  While we were at it, we fixed double clicking on equippable items in a bank, worked out issues with items that were put into containers from the ground, and a whole host of inventory storage bugs. 

Gathering loot isn’t much fun if some of it disappears when you log out. You can now stroll down the beach, finding loot along the way and then cramming your base full of goodies. It will (at least it should) still be there waiting for you whenever you travel to Lahaina.

With container and inventory persistence worked out there’s never been a better time to stuff your warchests with building materials. Unfortunately, our testers ran into some trouble harvesting wood using certain tools. We fixed those bugs and players should find the sawtoothed axe and shark-toothed pan to be good options for chopping down trees and gathering wood again.

Some of you have reported problems with totems and we fixed many of those bugs. We adjusted the energy requirements for totems, fixed a bug where they would disappear after a server restart and made it impossible to build a totem underwater. 

Lastly this week we fixed a bug with rotting head throwing Trophy Collectors. Avoiding the clouds of poison gas the putrid heads make when they land is already hard enough. 

With some help from the community, we learned that a few overzealous Collectors were tossing them two at a time. We fixed the problem so our missile throwing mutants are playing by their disgusting rules once again.

You can learn more about the game and get all the latest updates by going to our Discord server or checking out our Steam page.

DEV

Persistence and Spawning Improvements

We know there are a lot of new people who are excited to jump in the game, but before we welcome you to Lahaina for the first time with a beta key, we want to fix some things first. We are going to take a few weeks to focus on refactoring, persistence, and stability in order to provide the best experience possible for all of our new players before we start handing out keys again. Mahalo to our great testers for not only finding things that need to be fixed but pointing out where our systems needed some upgrading. Here’s a list of the bugs you found that we addressed this week.

  • Maikowl – UI Text Spelled wrong
  • Be able to select multiple screenshots to submit to bug reporter
  • Compass impacting performance
  • Eldisty – Can’t Loot Mutant

If you want to learn more about Fractured Veil head over to our Discord server or check out our Steam page.

Most of our time this week was spent on refactoring and improving stability but we did find time to squash several bugs. The team fixed an issue with the new compass affecting performance negatively and worked out an issue where pressing Y to respawn no longer worked properly. We found and fixed many player death related bugs including: a bug where player corpses could fall through the world, a problem where a little floating character would be left behind if the player died while switching between perspectives, and a handful or UI related problems.

Even though we are focusing on refactoring for the rest of the sprint, our play sessions are still very important, helping us decide what aspects of the game to work on next and what needs to be fixed. Below you can see a few shots from a recent session.
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