Hey.
I'm not dead. Amostubal has written me a message, one among several that I've got about this... disaster. I've often tried writing this post but every time I deleted what I wrote and said to myself that I might do this later, at a better time. Obviously that worked well.
This post will probably be stupendously long, since I have to go through an entire year worth of time and explain what happened and why. For those that are not that interested in what will mostly by my private life, I'll add a TL;DR up here once I'm done.
TL;DR:
- A mix up bad luck, too much work and RL stress led to the first time I missed an update.
- I then spend time camping in the African bush, unable to do updates, too much a chicken shit to come clean about it.
- I developed a depression over the last 1.5-2 years which brought me to wonderful new lows. (A lot better now)
- Money donated on Patreon is all still there. Didn't touch it. You want yours back, simply write me a PM.
- I'm sorry for being an idiot.
For those that want to know more, here we go. Strap on your best adamantine socks, grab your torches and pitchforks, and strap in.
I've always travelled. When I was 19 I started with it, and spend a year going round the world on a minimal budget. I added cycling to it after that, it's both cheaper and made me more independent of public transport. I cycled literally everywhere. Europe to South Africa? No problem. Southern Argentina to Canada? Yep. To China? Sure.
I've always been on the move, challenging myself. 50° c in Central Asia in the desert? Cycling across the Sahara? At -45° c across Siberia? All of that and more, I loved it. Appart from the physical challenges I also took up chess, lots and lots of reading and... Dwarf Fortress modding. Training my mind and creativity. For 5 years I've done mods and created Masterwork DF. It was destroyed several times by large DF updates, but hey, I loved it too. Not only the coding, but the ideas come to life and the community. Aka you.
I started DF in Buenos Aires, released Accelerated DF from Cartagena, the first Kobold Mode in Mexico... Combining programming with travelling was never a problem.
Then I turned 30 and decided that change my life. After all, 10 YEARS! had passed and maybe it was time to settle down. Build up a social circle, add some routine, live a life of comfort and luxury in the western world, without tropical diseases, wild animals and armed robbers.
Turns out, I'm shit at that. Huh. Who would have guessed?
I got a flat, a new girlfriend, weekly meetups for cinema and gaming nights, set apart Fridays for DF modding on a schedule and set up the Patreon since I now need to pay rent, planned a few smaller tours that I might or might not do, and tried to be normal.
The result: I got a depression. For over a year now, about one and a half. No idea when exactly it started, but looking back it's quite clear how and why. Despite that, I was still slogging along, doing reduced versions of what I loved. Instead of sitting down 10h a day till it's done, I programmed only 8h max on Fridays. Instead of an open-ended tour, I planned short trips.
I lost the parts of my life that brought my satisfaction and positive input from others. The rather unique skills I build up over my adult life where suddenly useless. Instead of the great adventurer braving the desert or mountains alone, I was just a jobless bloke at the local gaming night. My greatest achievements now where bringing out the trash or taking a shower on time. Yeah me. I thought about writing books, thought about more blogging, interviews, public talks... but I was slowly being dragged down by the milieu I surrounded myself with, people that hated their jobs, worked 9/5 and watched Netflix after that, I ended up way too long in front of my laptop, doing nothing useful at all.
The release schedule for Masterwork DF was actually fine for the first half year, when I ported from the old version to the new DF version, adding small parts here and there. But it got harder once I made larger updates. I ended up obsessing about that 64x tileset I made, which I hope is still used in some way, conflicting with the release on Fridays. THEN I made the mistake of adding unfinished parts of it (because stress!, I have to do a release on time!), which essentially broke the game when you used it. That was around Christmas last year. I simply couldn't get it done in time, but I thought it would be ok if I take 1 week off, due to the holidays and all.
Then I had a stroke of horrendously bad luck.
For half a year I had planned an expedition around West Africa. Mali, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Niger and Burkina Faso. Just before my flight to Ghana, the German post lost my passport. Now usually I have a second passport (legal in Germany), so that's not a big deal, but my backup passport just happened to run out 4 months from then, and they have to be valid for another 6 months if you want to travel. Much more importantly, the original passport had 5 visas in them. Let me tell you, visas for remote African states are sometimes a bit tricky to get and take forever. The one for Ghana cost me 200$, I had to go to Berlin (700km), and took 3 weeks to make. That was the Express(!) version. Should take 2-3 days, but they fucked up.
What happened in the end was this: Burkina Faso embassy sends me the passport, the postman arrived when I wasn't there, but didn't leave a note. It ended up 7 days at the local post office, then was send back to the Embassy. Never arrived at the embassy, instead went to a letter collection center. It's there, but it takes 2-6 weeks to get it back. It also took 3 weeks till it anyone was able to tell me that it was in said center.
All in all I had to get 2 new passports, do 1 trip to Munich, 3 trips to Berlin, I straight up lost one flight (didn't get my money back), had to book a new flight, change the flight date of my return flight, and cut off 5 weeks from the trip. I ended up spending over 1000€ because the postman couldn't be bother to hand in a slip of paper.
Since the tour was in limbo, and I didn't knew at the time when or if the passport would show up, and when I'll leave, I did not write here on Bay12. What I planned to do was to suspend the Patreon as soon as I knew when I'll leave, let you guys know that I'll be in Africa for 3 months, and continue afterwards.
What actually happened is that I got the passport back by complete surprise and sat in an airplane to Africa 2 days later. In those 48h I had so much to do, I simply forgot. At some point on tour I remembered, checked online, no torches and pitchforks were raised, so I hurried back into the African bush and told myself that it will be fine, I'll explain it after the tour. When I finally came back, I was so ashamed that I didn't dare look.
So, that's how that whole "I didn't update for a week, it will be fine" started.
Combined with a depression that took more and more over and sucked the joy out of so many things, that somehow turned into an entire year.
So back to my year in Germany and my great idea of routine and stability.
The past year I've done pretty much nothing. I've not just ignored you, Bay12 and MasterworkDF, but also my friends and family. I've disappeared from my social media (career suicide, if there is such a thing in my circles, since I get my equipment sponsored from outdoor brands in exchange for publicity), there are good friends that I haven't talked to for many months, and my mother got so worried she ended up writing emails and letters to all kinds of people, trying to figure out my where-abouts and if I'm dead or not. Several people assumed I was in prison in some third-world country.
Mh. Sounds rather bad now that I write it out like this.
I haven't trained in a year, I've barely done anything useful, been an asshole by ignoring everyone and everything online, hiding away spending my days wasting time on the first online multiplayer game I ever touched (Gwent), and pressing F5 a lot on Reddit and Imgur. It got quite bad. Sometimes I made an effort, felt super energetic and took up 10 projects at once and surely I'll get a grip now, but those soon collapsed on themselves.
Worry not, I'm better now. Steady progress over the past few months. What I was missing was goals. Comfort and complacency do not suit me. I'm right now in the process of learning a new skill and preparing a big tour for next year. I get up on time, I eat better, and among other things, I'm writing you this.
I wish I could have just been as straight forward as Phoebus, when he said that he stops his tileset for personal and mental health reasons, but at the time I did not know how bad it was and how bad it would get. A simple message at the start would have prevented this disappearing act, telling you guys that I'll take a break and pausing or re-writing the Patreon to fit this.
Which brings me to the topic of the Patreon and money. I did many things wrong, but I did not touch that money at all. Just to be abundently clear: All the money that has been donated for the Patreon in my off-time is still on Patreon. (For those that don't know how the website works: You pay money to Patreon, the company. The content creators can get a monthly payout or manual payout. I opted for manual.) Just like Bay12, I stayed away from their site and all your money is still there. Anyone who wants to be paid back the money he donated for a product that wasn't been created, please write me a PM and I'll send it back.
I logged in just now. I have 2 messages, 18 notifications and 29 patrons/83$ per month. Which are way less messages and a lot more people that forgot to cancel their pledges than I thought.
All in all I've gotten far fewer messages than I expected. No emails, maybe 1-2 PMs a month on Reddit, and a grand total of 12 messages here on Bay12. None from Patreon themselves about me not doing anything for a year.
Now, to the future: Will I continue modding DF, will there be a Patreon, etc? I have no idea. I'd love to, in some form. I've always been a very active and respected member of this community, but that is something that I probably can't ever get back. I let you down so bad.
I'm truly sorry. I know that everyone in the text above is not an excuse, but maybe you can accept it as an explanation.
PS: I haven't read anything on bay12 yet, so I'll start reading now.
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Topic: A long, regretful year has passed. (Read 23118 times)