Made the time to get this written up while right at the start of the month. Getting better!
Unlike September, October was a month of Progress. And welcome progress as well. I finally had some vacation time set aside, and I’m very happy to say that not only was it some proper vacation time, but it also was productive time off as well. Work didn’t explode in my absence, and I was able to get no small amount of Starfire done in the process. And I’m looking forward to November as well for as much progress, and hopefully a bit more!
What’s happened so far
Carrying on the theme of last month with good and bad news is that I still haven’t posted that art that I mentioned at the beginning of last month. And worse I’ve actually gotten more that needs to be posted! I’ll get that done as soon as I can, but at the least I can mention who. I originally saw their work over on the Stellaris subreddit, and I thought I’d approach them about doing a bit of work, and I was very honored that they said yes! You can take a look at some of their work over at https://www.deviantart.com/d1d2m3. You can see they’ve got really nice, distinctive style with an eye for mechanical work. Quite a few artists are great at drawing animals or creatures or people, but drawing ships or weapons is often a challenge. Well, not for d1d2m3, clearly!
Anyhow. I’ve gotten one completed bit of art from them that needs to get posted up on my website in addition to what already needs to go up. I’m going to work on putting an hour or two aside this week to get all that stuff posted and set up, and then follow up with my other artists to see how they’re doing. After that, look at seeing to getting the last two bits of concept art done, and then I can start looking at next steps.
What’s happening next?
My time off was very productive, as I mentioned, and that’ll get covered in the entries below. I’m planning to get even more done later in November, but the plan is this week to get everything else lined up for the next sprint and hopefully get things completely done and finished. A lot of the prep work for October has gotten things lined up nicely for November, so it’s a matter of just battening down the hatches and plowing forward.
1) Push the turn processing up to get everyone lined up and done 140
All pushed up to 142! The only thing that remains to be done is 3rd Elysium.
2) Set up and run the 3rd Battle of Elysium to a conclusion
Tabletop Simulator use continues. I’ve made a few updates to the module that corrected an annoying problem where the game wouldn’t retain unique name/descriptions for the same kind of chit (IE stacking two BBs with different names would overwrite one name with the other). That took an evening of clicking and uploading, but it was a very useful fix.
The battle currently right at the start of the full battle; the drone bombardment has gone in, both sides have launched small craft, brought their battle lines out and gone to general quarters. The next step is to actually start maneuvering and shooting.
While it looks kind of one-sided, a lot of those chits are stand-ins for multiple squadrons. The Elysians have 23 gunboat squadrons over there! And a little stack of battlecruisers off to the side. First matters will the small craft waves impacting into each other, and then the battle line as it moves in to suppress the planetary defenses. I’ve got the next little bit already written up, and I’m planning to put that out by the weekend.
Exactly how well the Elysians manage to come out of this is a bit of an open question, but they still have one last ace up their sleeve. The question of course is how it gets played. But that card won’t help them in this battle, one way or another.
3) Do a full overhaul and update of my map (as seen on Fleet Management Mk2) so it’s all on one well-organized map WITH space to expand
Mapping software is still installed. Hoping to get this done this month.
4) Finish the writing work for Scenario Book 1 – The First Contact War
I did some work on this, taking a fresh pass on the scenario book to reacquaint myself with where this document is in the production cycle. I actually got a bit more work done on it than I thought that I did, this task has good odds of being completed soon.
5) Go do a second pass on the artwork for Scenario Book 1, incorporating new details and design concepts over the past year
Nothing here has been done yet, but this is looking more and more likely as I start to get more art done. It’s honestly quite amazing to see how things come together when new artists have their own take on things. Especially with more details on the basic hull forms. The work they do will definitely be flowing back into the 3d models, making them more detailed and more “real”. Based on the first bit of art I’ve gotten done for the Sintillan ships, this will be on hold until all the contracted space art is completed, so then all the details can be added in one pass.
6) Start fishing in my contacts to find someone who can do proofreading for Scenario Book
There’s a little progress on this one, mainly with a few light google searches to look for some potential people to do proofreading. Some likely candidates and places to do more searches came out of it, but #4 still needs to be done before anything substantial is done.
Dollarton Proxima Shipyards 