1000 Patrons celebrations! (Patreon)

F*ck.

I never expected to be here. Not going to lie, I never expected to reach 50 patrons. When I set this place up I expected it to be something I'd just set up and leave, like Ko-fi that I had but no longer use.

I remember very well how we got to 100 patrons. The frienship made along the way. The force driving me forward to make development blog and give people a peek behind the curtain. I remember how having 100 patrons allowed me to finally give back to the community - but also treat myself to nice things that kept me motivated. A coffee here, a cheeky chinese takeaway there.

I remember 300 patrons. Took a year to get there. It was a huge milestone. Finally Patreon stopped being about 'tips' and started being about 'wage'. It allowed me to pay some of the bills, which meant I wasn't that stressed when wrapping sandwiches all day in Subway, dreaming about all the cool mods I'm going to do when I get home.

I remember 700 patrons. Such support really took all my worries away. I didn't work in Subway anymore. I left my other job as a Vape shop manager too. I only worked on mods, and for Tynan Sylvester on making RimWorld art. I was able to give money to people around me that helped me: and to all of them sweet sexy programmers and artists: Thank you for sticking with me when I was little and noone liked our mods.

I remember 800 patrons milestone. Hard not to remember: It was 2 weeks ago. What the f*ck guys. 300 new patrons in 2 weeks? Are you all insane? 

From the bottom of my heart, a tremendous Vanilla Thank You Expanded. 

You probably all expect me to stop my Full Time Job now, as that's what it says on the Patreon milestone. What if I told you that modding is my full time job now, and has been for a few months now? Can't really stop it, can I? :P Well, I'm certainly not planning to.

Vanilla Expanded is not just me, and it's very important to know. Let me take this moment to say a few words about everyone of us.

In no particular order:

Cassie (The Oracle), a great person who might not have been working on Vanilla Expanded mods, but drove me to make my favourite mod series, Rim-Effect, and has been the biggest inspiration to add everything Mass Effect related to RimWorld. She also made these dope Oskarmojis.

Chowder, my second favourite American, a gentle soul with a knack for Creative Writing. Great guy to do any descriptions for items and things, and never said 'no' to me.

erdelf, a scrub who recently joined our team. He's like a bag of roses, pretty, but if you put your hand in it, you will get hurt. I don't know where I'm going with it. He's alright.

Luis, a little young spaniard who was the first person I ever spoke to in regards to modding. He shown me the ropes of RimWorld art, pointed me in the right direction and said: GO.

Sarg Bjornson, my main inspiration. I played Alpha Animals and Genetic Rim long before I even started modding. I approached him one day about retexturing his Genetic Rim, I mentioned he's my great inspiration, he said I'm his, and now we have a bromance.

xrushha, my favourite russian. This guy singlehandedly enhanced our mod development speed by a hundred times. He does all of our xml, which previously I dreaded as it took me days to do simple items code. He knocks it out the park in an hour.

Erin, the best brit. She's awesome, makes excellent art, is stubborn but honest and modest. You couldn't ask for a better person to do Animal art. Well, maybe except me. You know what I mean ;) I can't openly admit someone's better than me, that's not in my nature.

ISOREX, an incredibly humble dutchman who makes excellent art. He helped us tremendously with numerous mods and will always have a place at Vanilla Expanded team.

Kikohi, I was first introduced to him by Trunken ages ago. Kikohi is an incredibly talented Frenchie who creates amazing code in no time. We've known each other for years now, and he improved more than I can ever dream to improve.

legodude17, a great guy from US of A, who joined us recently when integrating MVCF to our Framework. I was skeptical at first, but now I know he's not only a coding god, but also a cool lad to hang out with and play shitty games like Rocket League.

Andross, a scrub who loves CE, I think he works with CE too, I don't know. He's a wild card, a weird dude, but he has never refused to write a patch for us, hence he has the Master Patcher role. Truth be told his patches rarely work first time, but he tries his best.

Smash Phil, my close friend and colleague from Cursed Crew game we are developing together with Roolo. Great guy, great sass, very sensitive. He left me bagholding some kind of stock which he sold and never told me to sell too. Typical.

Taranchuk, if Ukraine had a Lead coding position in the government, he would probably have it. Great guy, fastest code in the west, it takes him 30 seconds to make mods.

Trunken and XeoNovaDan, both retired now, worked with me closely when I first began. They don't to mods anymore and moved on with their lives. At least Trunken has. XND is a scrub ha!

Damn, I hope I didn't miss anyone. That would be so unprofessional.

Ow snap, yeah.

Helixien, an Austrian, or a German, I don't remember. Great guy, we have lots of banter. He tries hard to make cooler mods than me, but I will let you guys be the judge of this competition.

Well, I'm going to Sainsbury in a moment to pick up stuff for lunch and dinner, and to pick up a good bottle of Gin and some tonic water. I will be playing GTA 5 tonight with some of the patrons over at our Vanilla Expanded discord to try to blow off some steam. Tomorrow, I'm back to modding.

If you're on the discord, you can tune in as I will be doing a small local stream. No camera or anything, just streaming GTA and drinking booze.

I will make a little Ask me Anything video on youtube where I will answer some of your questions. Ask them here, in the comments of this post. It can be anything, literally. Of course I won't be able to answer all questions, but I will try to answer as many of them as possible.

Thank you guys. You all are legends, you all are insane, and you drive me forward every day, and I couldn't ask for a better community to have. I hope I can keep bringing joy to you with all the new mods, because I'm certainly not planning to stop anytime soon!