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General / Future developement of sumwars
« on: July 02, 2012, 10:24:44 PM »
Hello to all,
I am sure that you have noted, that I was more or less completely absent and inactive during the last weeks or months. I am annoyed of myself a lot in this regard, because just disappearing is not my usual style. Recall, that I always complained about those who are just gone without a word.
However, harsh truth is, that I wont return to active contribution soon. In fact, my current state could be described as severe lack of mental energy. Many people would just call it unmotivated. I myself would not say it this way, because I have still a strong interest in further developement of this game. At the end its still me who invested by far the most time into this project. Nevertheless, I have no ressources to contribute at this time.
As for the reasons: I have to speculate myself here. For a long time, I did not know where I got the power from, I threw into several projects, now I have no idea where I lost it. One point might be, that I have already invested tons of time and energy during the last 4 years. So at a certain point, a project looses its *thrill*. However, I doubt that this is the real problem. In fact I have noticed that the quality of my work diminished in other voluntary jobs I do as well. Moreover, I face the same issues at my job - I am researcher, which means that quick perception and professional level creativity are my daily bread and butter. Lately, I have caught myself reading the same article several time without getting the core idea or staring at some problems which arise without any *motivation* to tackle them instead of the *yeah some challenge* attitude I used to have. Some personal issues (which will not be discussed in detail) definitely contributed to this state, but in my believe they stand next to other unidentified reasons.
Whatever, my consequences are clear: If the overall pool of ressources shrinks, you have to set priorities and cut expenses. In my case, the priority is my job. I have a lot of other hobbies, including sports, a lot of music and just meeting friends. No idea how I would weight Sumwars against these ones - this is the sort of decision nobody wants to make. At the end, Sumwars looses first, because its the most direct rival of my professional work.
I can immediately understand, if someone is upset about this sort of decision and yells at me *but you have a responsibility here!*. Yeah, I know I have. In fact, this burden of responsibility might be a central reason why the developement lead grew more and more expensive for me. Be assured, that nobody would hate it more, if this project died here. And yes, I am aware, that I am most probably the person that must never leave here. Nevertheless, you can not invest something you do not have. I can understand if someone is severely disappointed or annoyed. I can only say sorry. Unfortunately, programmers are not just devices converting coffee to code, as a really old and lame joke claims, at the end.
So in one short sentence: Summoning Wars needs a new lead developer. I can't do it anymore.
What I can do is to offer any help I am capable of providing. Concerning legal issues, I can give any rights or whatever required (you know, I never really valued this licensing stuff
), as long as my name stays somewhere in the credits. I can continue to pay for the webspace.
This is becoming a quite long and quite personal post. I hope you excuse the first and value the second. In my opinion you deserved this sort of rather elaborate explanation. Even though the majority of us never met in person - we share a common hobby and we invested a lot of time and I would also claim we had a lot of fun. So as a final remark I want to thank you, thanks to everyone who contributed something and thanks for everything we accomplished. Whatever happens next and however the future of Summoning Wars looks like - we can be proud. We did an awesome job.
Best regards,
Hans aka Lastmerlin
I am sure that you have noted, that I was more or less completely absent and inactive during the last weeks or months. I am annoyed of myself a lot in this regard, because just disappearing is not my usual style. Recall, that I always complained about those who are just gone without a word.
However, harsh truth is, that I wont return to active contribution soon. In fact, my current state could be described as severe lack of mental energy. Many people would just call it unmotivated. I myself would not say it this way, because I have still a strong interest in further developement of this game. At the end its still me who invested by far the most time into this project. Nevertheless, I have no ressources to contribute at this time.
As for the reasons: I have to speculate myself here. For a long time, I did not know where I got the power from, I threw into several projects, now I have no idea where I lost it. One point might be, that I have already invested tons of time and energy during the last 4 years. So at a certain point, a project looses its *thrill*. However, I doubt that this is the real problem. In fact I have noticed that the quality of my work diminished in other voluntary jobs I do as well. Moreover, I face the same issues at my job - I am researcher, which means that quick perception and professional level creativity are my daily bread and butter. Lately, I have caught myself reading the same article several time without getting the core idea or staring at some problems which arise without any *motivation* to tackle them instead of the *yeah some challenge* attitude I used to have. Some personal issues (which will not be discussed in detail) definitely contributed to this state, but in my believe they stand next to other unidentified reasons.
Whatever, my consequences are clear: If the overall pool of ressources shrinks, you have to set priorities and cut expenses. In my case, the priority is my job. I have a lot of other hobbies, including sports, a lot of music and just meeting friends. No idea how I would weight Sumwars against these ones - this is the sort of decision nobody wants to make. At the end, Sumwars looses first, because its the most direct rival of my professional work.
I can immediately understand, if someone is upset about this sort of decision and yells at me *but you have a responsibility here!*. Yeah, I know I have. In fact, this burden of responsibility might be a central reason why the developement lead grew more and more expensive for me. Be assured, that nobody would hate it more, if this project died here. And yes, I am aware, that I am most probably the person that must never leave here. Nevertheless, you can not invest something you do not have. I can understand if someone is severely disappointed or annoyed. I can only say sorry. Unfortunately, programmers are not just devices converting coffee to code, as a really old and lame joke claims, at the end.
So in one short sentence: Summoning Wars needs a new lead developer. I can't do it anymore.
What I can do is to offer any help I am capable of providing. Concerning legal issues, I can give any rights or whatever required (you know, I never really valued this licensing stuff
), as long as my name stays somewhere in the credits. I can continue to pay for the webspace.This is becoming a quite long and quite personal post. I hope you excuse the first and value the second. In my opinion you deserved this sort of rather elaborate explanation. Even though the majority of us never met in person - we share a common hobby and we invested a lot of time and I would also claim we had a lot of fun. So as a final remark I want to thank you, thanks to everyone who contributed something and thanks for everything we accomplished. Whatever happens next and however the future of Summoning Wars looks like - we can be proud. We did an awesome job.
Best regards,
Hans aka Lastmerlin
. A big thanks to all those who contributed to it. Moreover, we had significant changes in the internal structure and developement toolbox. Even though (or rather, especially because) these changes are not directly reflected in the list below, I want to thanks for all the work done there.