July 2021 Sitrep

What’s happened so far

July has been a substantially more productive month compared to May and June. With less work pressure I’ve been able to get things back on track and start knocking down some of the lower hanging fruit.

I haven’t put as much effort into more story writing in July. The final part of 3rd Elysium has been completed and gotten one edit pass, but I want to give it one more before it gets finally put out. I’ve also been hoovering up more story snippets and ideas, so I have some ideas about where things will be going. Part of August is going to be looking through this and starting to write up at least a rough skeleton of events for things going forward. That also means actually getting back into the pipe and processing new turns. One thing at a time, though.

What’s happening next?

I need to do a final pass on the last part of 3rd Elysium, and then start crunching on some new turns to get the universe moving forward yet again. That will then help drive new events and stories, as well as start letting me see what longer plot lines should get some attention. I’ve got ideas, with both a substantial peace dividend as well as ongoing fallout thanks to how parts of the navy performed in the war, but those things can and may change as a result of what events happen as the turns are run.

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.

1) Finish 3rd Elysium

Tactical battles are complete, story writing almost done (doing polish on the final bit after the gunboat strike). This month (August), honest!

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

No progress as yet (due to 3rd Elysium still not finished).

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

Done! See it’s own post for more details.

4) Write up a new Mk2 commissioning contract

No further progress on this one yet.

5) Update my internal deWulf Story Document

No new progress here.

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

No progress here.

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

No progress here.

8) Introduce and post completed artwork

This is actually more or less done! I’ll do another pass through my art archive to verify that I haven’t missed anything, but I’m pretty sure everything that has been done is done.

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

Nothing new here, but that’s to be expected as there’s artwork and other things still outstanding.

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.