What’s happened so far
July was a fairly messy month, mostly because a lot of it was following along behind June with a mop cleaning everything up that had happened, and because it was also prepping up for my trip to Gencon. That meant cleaning up everything and getting as prepped as possible for the trip.
Which, as you can see, blew the usual update schedule apart. So rather than try to do a July update halfway through August, I’m instead rolling July in together with the August update. And that’s also going to include a little Gencon update as well.
So, non-Gencon update. Most of the updates will be down below in the various 2020 goals, but broadly speaking July had some working updates where turns were processed and some story updates were written and pushed out. Not very much project work got done, but a fair amount of that is out in 3rd party hands that is being followed up on. Another frustrating challenge has been that personal events and activities have been… unstable, forcibly rescheduling and pushing other activities around. That has, rather understandably, made Starfire work suffer.
And Gencon! It was a blast. It was great to be back after several years. It wasn’t quite right… it felt like everyone there was just taking a deep breath and getting back to normal. There weren’t any breakthrough “This. Is. Awesome!” products, no real hard crashes on entry either. Not all the usual vendors were there, though most of the big names had come out. There were some events that were missing from the normal schedule. But honestly, it was just good to be back.
What’s happening next?
With Gencon over, it’s back to the process of working on the “standard” Sunday process tasks of working through the below goals and trying to get things done. I’ve got some time set aside in the fall to devote to Starfire work. I’m hoping that time will work out better than it has so far!
2022 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 2021 that are coming back, but a some of them are going to be brand new ones as well. As before, some of them are one-and-done, while others are big projects. There’s a couple more tasks on it this year compared to last, but a bunch of them are more housekeeping tasks; easier one-and done things that can be pounded out sometime in the year.
So enough banter. On to the list!
1) Complete turn processing for all empires up to turn 175
I’ve only done a little turn processing, but the deWulf got their turn 146 done. Some more story writing has been done to help move this forward. I’ve got notes and framework for story snippets that give a pretty good framework up to 148 or even a bit farther.
2) Update/Archive all the Sketch Sunday Worldbuilding
No progress on this one yet either.
3) Finish playtesting and balancing for Scenario Book 1 – The First Contact War
I’ve reached out to the people who have volunteered to be playtesters, but I haven’t gotten any responses. There also haven’t been any playtesting reports, which is honestly a shame. I’m going to have to look at alternate options.
4) Finish the writing work for Scenario Book 1 – The First Contact War
Not started yet.
5) Introduce and post completed artwork
The two Sintillan pictures are pushed back to a August project.
6) Go do a second pass on the artwork for Scenario Book 1, incorporating new details and design concepts over the past year
I’ve followed up with the artist; they’re currently slogging through the tail end of their semester and have exams coming up, so updates are regretfully a bit delayed still. They do excellent work for a reasonable rate, so I can’t really complain about the speed after all 🙂 I don’t have a hard ETA yet, but I’m hoping to get some updated WiPs in the next month or two. We’ll see 🙂
7) 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. Need to reach out to some of my friends/contacts, see if they know anyone.
8) Rename systems/planets that do not fit the universe setting
Not started yet. A few of the systems/etc have been identified, and renames have been worked out for a few of them.
9) Look at the Solar Starfire Freight Handling Rules
Not started yet.
10) Set up a redundant deWulf data backup
I’ve reached out to a few colleagues for some useful information for a NAS, which was very enlightening. I’ve got a better idea as to both price point and potential equipment options. It might have to wait a little bit longer before I bite the bullet. Maybe Black Friday or Boxing Day. We’ll see…
11) Update the deWulf Story Document
The currently available deWulf story document on the website is, to be honest, really old. It was originally done as just a backup log, but with it out and on the website it does have some amount of actual attention. So the plan is to split it into three parts and then give it some short synopsizes on the website to explain (and more importantly warn) readers what’s going on in each of them. Mind you that’s not warn them of anything really questionable…. it’s more like my early writing is kinda… rough.
Which is another reason why this is so far down the to-do list.
12) Review Sketch Sunday
I’ve been doing some more thinking on this one, and I think at least for the immediate future I’ll be doing some sketches to tie them into sort of theme “arcs” where I look at a specific place or group of places. I’ve done this a few times where I grouped already done sketches together, but I’ll be trying to make some new sketches as a series. A new thing; we’ll see how it works.
13) Designing a Space Navy series
Third article is written, fourth is in planning. Ended up skipping a month due to Gencon. Back on track for September.
Dollarton Proxima Shipyards 