Several months ago I wrote a post explaining my decision to focus on Hard Science, largely giving up work on my other mods.
I tell the people I work with that sometimes the best way to show someone they don’t want what they are asking for is to give it to them. It seems that also works when that someone is you.
Well, I’ve been thinking and writing and pondering the implications for art and code and… while there are some things I love, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. The game I had in mind would require so many changes to Minecraft, so many difficult problems to be solved, that I get tired just thinking about the effort. This is a hobby project - it should be fun and interesting and gratifying, not exhausting.
I’m also finding it difficult to sustain motivation without coding. I want a cohesive design, but I need the frequent satisfaction of working code. I need a healthier balance of long-term planning with feature development.
Well, I still want to do something with the interesting but practical bits I’ve collected, but the world building and story and mechanics will have to be far less ambitious.
The new concept is still strategy-oriented, with goals and hazards to create meaningful challenge and progression - I want an actual end game. But it will discard much of the scientific realism I was aiming for in favor of logical consistency.
In short, what if magic is real and so are the laws of thermodynamics? Also, what if it is very silly?
Development will be incremental, so you can expect to start seeing commits and builds soonish.
Yes! With this change I’m more comfortable maintaining some of my existing mods, including FREX and Canvas, albeit at a more sedate pace than before. I will continue to appreciate any help I can get.
It remains true that I will be focusing on features I need for my mods, but this new concept is more inclusive than before and so it seems like less of a burden to put some effort into compatibility, including Forge.
That said, two of my mods, Exotic Blocks and Facility, will be discontinued because all of their functionality will exist in the new mod. I considered keeping them as separate modules but a single distribution greatly simplifies dependency management, both for code and for game mechanics like recipes.
While I’ve not been active in the community recently, the community has carried on. I am especially grateful to spiralhalo, who has done so much to continue progress on FREX and Canvas.
For what it’s worth, I’ve missed you all, and I am looking forward to interacting with you more often.
Until next time,
Grondag
June 26, 2022