What’s happened so far
November was both very productive and not productive. My week off was actually quite productive, but not too much of that productivity really went to Starfire. I got a few turns done, and some writing snippets put together for later use, but not quite as much concrete work got done as I had aimed for.
What’s happening next?
It’s a press to get back onto the usual Sunday schedule. Given that the holidays are fast approaching, that shouldn’t be as much a surprise as you’d think. But here we are. Still, I’m hoping to get some more work done and written. I’ve been building up some good idea threads; just a matter of sitting down and actually weaving them into something.
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
With less than a month to go, 160 is honestly not that realistic unless I get a really good burst of time sometime around the holidays themselves. Which is unlikely, but one can hope!
2) Update/Archive all the Sketch Sunday Worldbuilding
No progress on this one yet either; this is going to become a 2023 goal I’m afraid.
3) Finish playtesting and balancing for Scenario Book 1 – The First Contact War
After sending out more messages to my “playtesters”, nothing. Gone off into a black hole, sadly. So 2023 is going to be doing two things: The first is running some local playtesting games, and the second is to do a second request over on the discord server. We’ve had a lot more people sign up over the past few months, so maybe I’ll get lucky and there’ll be a few people willing to blow up ships?
4) Finish the writing work for Scenario Book 1 – The First Contact War
Not started yet.
5) Introduce and post completed artwork
Those two Sintillan pictures (three actually!) have been finally written up and posted.
6) Go do a second pass on the artwork for Scenario Book 1, incorporating new details and design concepts over the past year
My current artist has completed all of their exams and work, and after a little bit of very well earned relaxation, they’ll be going back to the artwork that I’ve commissioned. So hopefully in time for Christmas. Maybe. 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 scored a pretty nice NAS unit for Black Friday, though it was a little more pricy than I had been intending to, but it’s also a MUCH beefier model than I had initially been planning on getting. So it balances out I guess. Next thing here is to get it all set up and operating over December. I have to spend some time reading the manuals and figuring out how to get it to do regular versioned backups. Good news at least is that it’s running RAID 1, so it’s proof against some drive failures.
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
Well, I’ve run out of sketches. I’m still going to keep sketching, but Sketch Sunday as an ongoing thing is probably going to be dropping by the wayside. I’ve got an updated post scheduled for later this month that talks a little bit more in depth about this.
13) Designing a Space Navy series
Article 6 has been written and posted, bringing this to an end!
Dollarton Proxima Shipyards 