2021 Goals

So earlier this month I took a look at what I have and have not accomplished in 2020, and made some oblique hints at both what remained and what new tasks needed to be done. All things considered in 2020 I made a lot of concrete progress. Having these defined goals AND checking up on them month by month was a big part in getting them done. And since the idea works, I’m going to continue with it. One change I will be making with the monthly reviews is outright dropping completed entries. For example, if I complete #3 in June, it won’t show up from July’s reviews onward (the list instead going 1, 2, 4, and so on).

2021 Goals

These goals are approximately in order of priority and in order of precedence (IE have to do #1 before you can do #2). There’s some goals from 2020 that are coming back, but a lot of them are going to be brand new ones as well. It’s also a longer list as well, but some of those entries are one-and-done tasks that shouldn’t be as hard as others to complete.

So enough banter. On to the list!

1) Finish 3rd Elysium

The battle is done, but the final aftermath of the last Elysian units still is to be played out. This requires doing some more system-level maneuvering, then detection and combat to follow. There will probably be more battles, but smaller ones comprised mainly of gunboat actions, so it should be easier to do than the main battle.

2) Complete turn processing for all empires up to turn 160

It’s important to keep moving forward, and ideally I want to move forward more than just at a one game month to one real month pace.

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

A carryover from 2020. The mapping software is installed, and thanks to some wonderful people on the Starfire discord they pointed me to some software that will be quite useful at maintaining a sane map with a minimum of overlap. This is a two-part task; part one is building out the web-map so that I know what goes where, and then redoing it in a more graphically pleasing format.

4) Write up a new Mk2 commissioning contract

Last year at virtual Gencon I got a lot of good information and feedback from people more involved in the industry when it came to contract work. Part of that included a bunch of discussion about work for hire contracts, as well as several samples. The plan is to go through those, pull what is useful and needed and update my current standard contract.

5) Update my internal deWulf Story Document

One of the things on my end that I let slide was updating my own internal story copy. Over the past year and change I’ve posted a LOT of stuff to the forums and my own website, but didn’t keep any of it logged safely for long-term retention. One of 2021’s tasks is to go pull all of this down, put it in as part of my main story file, and do a light spelling/edit pass in the process. This includes both story posts and any worldbuilding from the Sunday Sketch series.

6) Finish playtesting and balancing for Scenario Book 1 – The First Contact War

This was something that was happening in parallel to the writing work. While some playtesting has been done, a few more passes for the later scenarios need to be completed before the job can be said and done.

7) Finish the writing work for Scenario Book 1 – The First Contact War

While most of the writing is more or less done, there’s a few spots that need to be completed and tidied up in order for things to be ready for an editing pass.

8) Introduce and post completed artwork

Another thing that happened in 2020 was that I got several bits of artwork done. Some of it was done by D1D2M3, others done by Blu3Dawn14. But I was at best haphazard in posting them, both here and on DeviantArt. This goal is to make sure that completed art is getting posted in both places (when appropriate) and being credited to the right people. The artists did good work, and the fruits of their labor deserves to be seen.

9) Go do a second pass on the artwork for Scenario Book 1, incorporating new details and design concepts over the past year

Originally this was just based around the concept of taking all my sketches, notes and the like, and then incorporating them into the 3d models. In the fall however, with the commissions that D1D2M3 has so elegantly done, this is expanding to a more in-depth rebuild of the models to match his own artwork of various deWulf and Sintillan ships. As a result, this task has dropped down the to-do list, as it requires the completion of various commissioned work before actual 3d model work can get done.

10) Start fishing in my contacts to find someone who can do proofreading for Scenario Book

This task is sitting low on the to-do list for fairly obvious reasons. Need to be done writing and my own edit pass before the work can get handed off to an editor.