I feel compelled to write a little something about the last release and what will follow it. I had great fun writing and designing the Warlocks. I even started a week early and made entity and items and graphics, before I even started the dev log. The people who have talked with me about suggestions here or on reddit know this. I wont lie, the last days were a bit odd and I didnt do all that much, because it started to feel like something I have to do, not something I am doing because I want it. I have never written an update as big as this, and I have never actually accepted money for something like this... my brain was all like: Omg, I have to release it in 3 days. Omg, 2 days. What if people dont like it? Could I have done it better? (Of course, you can always do it better), Omg, I havent done the devlog yesterday...
That being said, I dont regret the decision for this little experiment, and I might even like to do another, at some point in the future. It was just odd doing
only DF, nothing else, for such a long time. I felt like I was neglecting other parts of my life, like physical training and travel preparations. I actually have quite a hard time with the bureaucracy behind Westafrica countries. They are not accommodating indiviual travellers at all.
Now that the Warlocks have been released, the question arises: What will I do next?
There are several projects for DF. I can do the raw-cleaning that would help Teellox and the merry crew of co-authors. It would add a naming scheme to the raws, sort them, delete old, unused things... This would have no affect on the players, and would only be dev-stuff. In the long run it probably helps with more authors writing races and prevention of bugs.
Then there is the all-in-one-tileset-raws. Its possible to write the raws to include all tilenumbers for all tilesets. This would allow me to combine all sets into one. Currently there are ~250 files, with 28 unique ones for each of the 15 tilesets. I can shave off these 15*28 files, and it would make the GUI faster, the filesize smaller and prevent any bugs that happen across different tilesets. Forever.
Finally there is the balancing and bugfixing that always exists. A lot of reported dwarf-bugs have shown up, BillyJack wanted to fix some stockpiles, there could be more GUI options added, Kobolds havent seen any love for a long time, and the Warlock race is so huge that I am sure that quite a few bugs did find a hiding spot somewhere in there.
But non-DF wise I have this on my plate:
I have to plan, finance and equip a min. 100 day tour through one of the most hostile area in the world. I will go by bicycle from Gambia through Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, IvoryCoast, maybe Burkina Faso and Mali, before I go to Dakar and do a Sahara-Crossing on a bicycle. After that is all easy, Marocco, Spain, Portugal, France... still, its a min. 12,000km tour. And I have done next to nothing on it so far. This must take priority, especially since I still have to combat silly embassy rules like the need for hotel reservations, invitations from travel agencies or a return-flight ticket (obviously I cycle back, but they need to see one. -.-)
And I dont speak french, so I have to cram as much beginner french learning into February as well.
On the other hand, DF has taken up quite a big niche of my life. Due to travelling so much I often meet people making their means with some form of online business, artists, maybe webcomics, and so forth. They always say that the hardest part is the start, finding visitors until you have a basis, 1000 people is more then enough, bla bla bla. One send me this article:
1000 true fans, and at some point I just thought to myself: Wait a second. I already have that. The last version of the mod, which was online for exactly one month (see what I did there?
) had 12000+ downloads, not counting the SWP release. Why not make my own DF, with blackjack and hookers? (aka kickstarter, opening a business, hiring people that can actually code, and suddenly there is a free-to-play open source DF-thing.) Obviously that would interfere with my current idea of building up
this website a lot more and concentrating more on the expedition side of my life, which honestly is a lot of work and doesnt bring me any income whatsoever.
(btw, the income from MDF is currently around 1200 Dollars total, for 150,000+ downloads, 2,5 years of on/off work and the 1 year that I do accept donations. I guess its somewhere around 50 Cents to 1 Dollar that I got per hour, or 0.8 Cents per download. But then again, I never would have guessed that there would be any income at all. I wasnt the first to add a donation link (Dwarf Therapist gave me the idea), but I was quite suprised that the community took it so well, considering that it might interfere with Toady Ones donations.)
What I know for sure is that the next month will be spend with forum support for DF (I will stick around here, no worries) and preparation and training for the Sahara Cross. Then, 03. March I will start with that, planning on ~100 days for the trip. I cant say anything yet about modding on tour, because I dont even know if I take my netbook with me or not. After that I probably do 2-3 weeks nothing, so its safe to assume that my next 5 months are planned out.
Other possible ideas for after this are opening a company, writing a book, going to Nepal for a professional mountain-guide training, becoming a professional Starcraft II player (I just watch too much Husky replays), or bumming around the world for another year on a shoestring budget. (Centralasia/China/Korea/Japan)
I just leave this here, make of it as you will. I have always gotten good feedback from the DF community, but I cant continue like I did the last year, because I feel I dont evolve enough. Aka not learning enough new skills or getting new experiences.
Hope its not all too personal, but then again I even know some of you guys personally. And wouldnt mind to meet more. Say, anyone here live in Gambia?
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Topic: Whats next? - general df and real life rambling. (Read 1292 times)