All right, so aside from delivering some papers next week, I'm all done. I've moved out of the office and turned in my keys. You've been very generous over the past few days, and I'm still slowly working through the confirmation emails and ASCII Art Rewards. Thanks! That was really cool. I was really groggy today after my final grading marathon, but I should be back to coding tomorrow.
As for leaving my job, I'd like to clear up a misunderstanding I've noticed. I wasn't a "part time lecturer", leaving a permanent job at this university to go write games. I was a visiting assistant professor, which is a long name for a postdoc. These are generally postdoctoral research positions that have a limited term, and the position I held had a three year term. The main focus of my job was math research, but I got permission last July to trade in my research responsibilities for an extra class and the third year of my position. I didn't really throw away a long term job here so much as throw away my career as a math researcher along with any potential to land a tenure-track job (if I had focused more on research instead of making games). You really have to give math research your all to be successful, unless you're a super genius, and I wasn't prepared to do that. If it appeared like I had a lot of free time to work on games at my job, it was only because of this temporary setup. It was very awesome of the chair of the Texas A&M math department to allow me this arrangement, but it wasn't something that could last forever.
So what's my situation? I've saved a bit of money from work (I've basically been living like a grad student). I can keep programming for a year or so with no worries, even if contributions dry up today. If my savings drop below a certain amount, I'm going to seek another job. If I have to get another job, development will slow, but I'll keep the project up to date as I can. I'm not going to whine if contributions decrease or make gloomy predictions about the impending death of Bay 12 (despite the apocalyptic yellow Cautionsaurus on the DF main page). I'll continue asking for your support, though, and the money really does help. Anyway, I'm not heading into this blindly. It's difficult to raise a consistent amount of money by contributions alone, and I very well might have to seek additional employment at a later time, but it would be great if it does work out, so I'm going to try it now. I am missing out on some job perks like retirement and health insurance, but I'm willing to risk that for the time being.
The current plan is to work on Dwarf Fortress, and then move at the end of June, and then work on Dwarf Fortress some more. Depending on how things go, I might sprinkle this with some work on other projects on and off, since there are lots of other ideas floating around. Dwarf Fortress will still be the main focus. I really don't have the slightest idea when the next DF version will be released, but within a week or so I should be fully immersed in my new schedule, and it might be easier to tell at that time.
