The Ebonheim Chronicle

Yesterday was the 4th anniversary of the 1st commit of the 4th codebase trying to create Chronicles IV. As is tradition, here's a blog post!

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Couple of Updates

Warp Point

This blog is now a part of Warp Point!

Wes Fenlon & Matt Sayer have developed a new blog directory collecting gaming-related RSS feeds from around the internet in a really slick user interface calling back to the old days of webrings. You can absolutely lose some hours surfing these feeds!

There's a widget that will randomly show other warp point blogs but I can't get it to work because I think writefreely disables script calls, so until I sit down to hack the guts, you'll have to settle for a button in the post signatures here. Widget works now, scroll down!

Playtesters Welcome

As stated in a few social media posts, I'm still welcoming all offers to playtest the upcoming Dungeon Milestone. Those interested can contact me in any of various ways including email! After some testing from people I've talked to directly, there will be a wave of testing that goes to the Discord server. Discord is totally optional, I'm not requiring any testers to use it, but there will probably be playtest discussions there from at least a few people!

The Dungeon Milestone

I had delusions of having this ready to ship yesterday but it needs to cook a little longer. I have a little running gag going for myself where I keep telling people it'll be done soon or this year or what have you. Anyway, it'll be done soon, or at least this year!

The milestone is a huge leap forward from Oct 2023's Combat Milestone, with a focus on dungeon crawling and the main core game loop! It's a vertical slice of a lot of different features that is meant to feel like a standalone game but it is very much not the opening hours of the final product by any means.

I wrote about the rough plan for this milestone after the previous playtest ended. I'm happy to say that I stand by everything I said then, except for maybe the “this one will come together rather quickly!” part.

Four Years is a Long Time

I definitely remember thinking after the first year that I had probably 2 years of development left. I also remember being pretty sure at the second year that I had about another 2 years left. Four years was, for whatever reason, a marker of a reasonable amount of spare time to spend on a hobby video game.

Sometime before the 3rd birthday I really began to be honest with myself about the scope and time and unreliability of progress. Parts of the game I hand-waved away as “and then I'll just add this” had more understandable costs attached to them, measured in months, and the possible completion dates blurred.

I had to really grapple with this because I always told myself that I didn't want a forever project. I used to look at all the decade+ long hobby games in development and think “at least that's not me!” but here we are staring down the barrel of half a decade and I honestly can't say when it will be done!

All Things in Perspective

The advantage of a solo hobby project is there's no financial risk for anybody for it to take as long as it needs. I don't employ anybody who needs to be paid, I have separate income already and so the timing or success of the end-product doesn't factor much into the work. This is a luxury a whole lot of people working in games simply do not have!

I don't bring this up to gloat or talk down or dismiss by any means, I say this to remind myself that the stakes for my fun hobby are so desperately and incredibly low. In the end, nobody is going to end up homeless because of my slow and wholly unreliable pace.

Just about every year of this project has had full months, sometimes multiple, with zero progress. It happens, and it's somehow something that I've broken my brain into not being bothered about anymore. Sure I'd love to be further along, love to be able to tell people it's out soon, love to be able to write more blogs about more features and show off more gifs and all the rest. But if I get upset about that, or depressed, or anxious, well, I'm throwing away the advantages of being in this position in the first place.

My happy place is making progress on my game and occasionally writing about it, it's something I legitimately enjoy. Even when it's super hard technical problems or refactors, all of it is still something I look forward to! I own all my own tools, all my own code, all my asset creation. I think that really personally helps keep the frustration levels down. It's just so fun to be able to be creating something.

I feel a little like a broken record but for my own sake I often need to say out loud “Be proud of what you've done, look forward to getting to do more, and it'll be done when it's done!”

I would, for the record, rather not be working on this game forever, and my focus is always revolving around a desire to eventually finish something but when will that be?

Well, probably another two years and I'll have it licked.

Thank You

As always, a huge thank you to everyone who has shared in this space for the last four years. I feel very grateful to have gotten to meet and interact with so many kind and talented people!

Wishlist Chronicles IV: Ebonheim! 🌐   🙋‍