What’s happened so far
August’s been quite productive, all things considered. Got two of the things on the big to-do list done, and made a little progress on two or three others. As well, been building a better habit of getting stuff done more regularly, and the results have been showing nicely. Even got some turn processing done. Which is important, as I don’t have things done much past 151, and it’s a little hard to write about stuff that’s not happened at all!
This update is a little belated, but I’ll try not to add too much of October’s news into it either. But it’s got some good news in there. You’ll see…
What’s happening next?
I’ve tendered my art out to a new artist, one who’s done a bit of work in this universe already. It’s been both good and bad. Good because I know they’re capable of doing VERY good work, but a little bad because gods, they’re trying to improve the various designs. They go “but they suck!” and I’m go “yes, you’re right! But they’re already worked out that way!” So it’s a little hard to go back in time and have him redo ALL the artwork to match what is, potentially, a better design. Which sucks. But the rough concepts he smashed about aren’t forgotten either, and if and when the time comes along I will be happy to accept them.
Still, things are continuing to move forward. And I remain confident that things will continue to do so.
2023 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 2022 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
No turn processing has gotten done, BUT writing is now at 150 and moving steadily, so that means September’s going to finally see some turn processing. At least to 155, might push it up to 160.
2) Update/Archive all the Sketch Sunday Worldbuilding
Well, I decided better is the enemy of good enough, and I built a rough but ready sortation system. I then spent about two days copy-pasting everything over into a OneNote. But now it’s all backed up and archived. The organizing needs another pass or two, but it’s all copied and accessible via search. Which is several steps in the right direction.
3) Finish playtesting and balancing for Scenario Book 1 – The First Contact War
The playtest reports I have gotten have come and gone. I’m hoping maybe to get a few more this fall when some of the Starfire beta testers end up moving near one another and are able to start up some semi-regular games (I’m tentatively pegging this for October-ish). But failing that, I think I’m just going to have to accept that nothing’s gonna be happening on this end. That’s not a bad thing per se, since these are meant to be “historical” scenarios as opposed to balanced stuff. But it’s kind of a melancholy sort of thing.
4) Finish the writing work for Scenario Book 1 – The First Contact War
This year. This year. That’s the plan and the pressure. I’ve dusted off my task sheet and it’s been printed and put up next to my monitor as a visual tracking reminder. I’ve got most of it done, but it could stand for another edit pass before handing it off to someone for final edit.
5) Go do a second pass on the artwork for Scenario Book 1, incorporating new details and design concepts over the past year
This task is admittedly higher than it ought to be, as it’s more looking at the commissioned art and then pulling the drawing from it back into the universe’s design documentation and identification.
The flip side of this is that I’m starting to just farm my art ideas out to actual artists to do the work. It’s costing money, but it’s also resulting in things getting done. I imagine there’ll be a few more design concept passes as projects come and go (especially if any ship-focused materials get done), but this I think is going to become more of a long-term “as needed” task.
6) 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. The source that my family hooked me up with was, well… not familiar with the industry or the product work. At least, I couldn’t tell if they were. Their website was filled with a lot of generic vanity self-published work that was VERY hard to source or confirm, and all my communication with them basically boiled down to “Trust us! We have plenty of experience!”, which in my line of work is more red flags than a May Day parade in Tiananmen Square. I’ve got a few business cards from when I was last at GenCon, so I’ve got some alternates that are more promising.
7) Rename systems/planets that do not fit the universe setting
I’ve done a pass through the whole space database checking planet and location names and gotten most of them cleaned up. I’ve gotten the most obvious and blatant ones at least. I’ve also gone through my stellar mapping/fleet board and updated that as well. The individual empire sheets have not been updated, but that represents more of a bureaucratic task that can be done as turns are processed. I’m going to keep this on here, mostly as a task reminder to go through the remainder of the outstanding work and make sure that nothing else has leaked through.
8) Look at the Solar Starfire Freight Handling Rules
Not started yet.
9) Set up a redundant deWulf data backup
So I got FBackup all set up. My friend was right insofar as it has its own way of being configured, but it wasn’t difficult. Just felt a bit… odd, I guess? But on the flip side it works. I’ve got a good half dozen different backup processes running, and I’ve verified that it is backing up readable data (as opposed to useless hash.) This is an important part of backups after all. If you can’t read the backup, it’s not a backup!
10) 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 synopses 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.
11) Come up with a replacement for Sketch Sunday
The only thing better than coming up with an idea yourself is using someone elses. Especially when they’ve already done and tested it, so you know it works! Following in the footsteps of many other blogs, why not go pull on some tropes from TVtropes and then go with em. Even better, to make it a little more interesting (instead of just grinding down a list of tropes from A to Z) I can throw a little randomization in, like some kind of spinning wheel…
This probably isn’t going to cook off this year. I’m gonna want to get some work set up to have a bit of buffer already in place. But! This works.
Dollarton Proxima Shipyards 