An explanation (Patreon)
Content
Greetings Conquerors!
I want to sincerely apologize for the prolonged silence and the delay in updates. I understand this might have been frustrating for you and I appreciate your patience and support during this time.
The Explanation
I feel you all deserve an explanation for the now months of radio silence coming from me regarding the process of this mod. While I wish I could shift the blame to the fact that my IRL work and responsibilities escalated these past few months, at the end of the day it was still my fault with the methods I used to develop the mod as I did so in a way that made it extremely hard to make any quick progress on it when life's responsibilities started piling up.
For context, I have a bad habit of working on a lot of things at once instead of prioritizing and finishing one thing at a time. This mindset seeped into this update for the mod.
Instead of focusing on creating/optimizing one whole feature at a time, I did a little bit of one feature, moved onto another, and kept doing that based on what I felt like working on that day. Doing it this way would have been fine had I consistently had the same amount of time to work on it.
However, when life started picking up I found I didn't have as much time to work on the mod, and with most of the features being incomplete, there wasn't really anything I can showcase. Additionally, a lot of limited time I had these past months were spent optimizing existing scripts, as my priority for the mod has shifted a bit to focus on making it as stable as possible first.
Either way, what ultimately was the root cause of the delays for the next update was how my inefficient decision on how to work on the mod, resulting from poor contingency planning in how I would be able to work on it when IRL responsibilities came up. Additionally, I am not the most socially-skilled person and I should have informed you all of this sooner rather than waiting until now to tell you.
Moving Forward
Now you all are probably still wondering when the update will actually come out. Because of the above issues, I have made the decision to scale back update 0.4 in terms of features since it has already been way too long since the last update. I am planning for it to be a re-optimized version of the mod that runs a million times better than the current version. (A lot of the improvements so far are refreshing including the economy updating and faction military movements only taking a few seconds at 30 fps, meaning if your Skyrim runs faster than 30 fps then the scripts will run even faster) Additionally, Settlement Building is close enough to completion that I can add that into the update as well. Due to these cutbacks I estimate getting the update out at some point within the next couple of months.
I also want to make a few changes to how updates will be released on here moving forward. You all have stuck through with this mod despite the radio silence and I want to make sure I am providing for you. A lot of you have expressed interest in beta testing updates for the mod. In order to do this, as well as address the root cause for the delays in this update, once 0.4 is released I am planning on releasing 0.5 and subsequent updates incrementally here instead of in one big update.
What this means is that while I am developing 0.5, I will focus on one feature at a time. Once I finish working on each feature, I will describe the feature to you in detail and release a new update to the mod with the new feature on Patreon as soon as it is completed. You can all try out or test each new feature as soon as I upload them and give me your thoughts. This will allow the mod to continuously improve and get me out of the habit that put us here in the first place. When I finish all the new features for that particular version, I will wait a week and then release it to the general public on the Nexus.
Please let me know what you think of this new method of keeping the mod and this page alive! You all are truly amazing for the interest and dedication you've shown for its continued development and I want you to know that I have never stopped working on it will continue to do so until it is complete.