So, what's going on?

[Veneteaou]

Some people aren't here very often. Robin Patterson manages the Imperialism Wiki, and IIRC never intended to get too involved in the project itself. Three of the members have never posted, so I assume they are either following our progress or gone. Only five members have joined so far this year, and you are one of them. Trilarion was on vacation, but he's dedicated so I don't worry about him. Creator has been working on this game in one way or another since 2009 or so. I've been busy doing real world stuff, and I need to get my new workstation setup for composing before I can work on music again (and that's a couple weeks worth of work). I still work on Imp stuff from time to time, and I'm sure once Tril implements continuous terrain support I will get all giddy and draw way too far into the night.

We aren't a big team though, maybe 6 or so people. And a couple of people perhaps who follow the project but aren't going to have time to contribute a sizable chunk of work to it. When the Index page says 11 users were here on March 7th, it includes guests (which are usually web-crawling bots). We haven't had more than 5 here at once in the whole time I've been here, largely because we are spread in different timezones.

[Trilarion]

I always hope for more contribution because that will make our game better. Everything is welcome, even one line comments. And currently the game rules discussion is really hot because it determines a lot of what would come later. We can also change things later, but not everything and not without doing extrawork.

I guess that it's a mix of not being so active, not being so interested in difficult mechanics discussions, not wanting to read large posts (wall of text). However I immensely enjoy the collaboration with all of you, because I think we all act reasonably and goal-oriented and civilized.

In the long term hopefully we will attract many more fans/contributors. The problem is that we'll probably first get them when all the game mechanics discussion is over because nothing gives you more publicity than some success. I haven't yet figured out a solution out of this trap of insignificance but I spent always at least some part of my time on promotion. Recruitment seems to be the most difficult part of it.

[Veneteaou]

As soon as you implement a continuous tile system, I will be able recruit pretty well. People love to join projects they are impressed with, and our tile system is going to be pretty impressive. The more time I've spent working on it, the more I realize that our system (I call it staggered orthogonal, which technically doesn't make sense) is a brilliant combination of the other tile layouts.

[Veneteaou]

So I'm currently a couple of DVD installations away from having my new music machine up and running. Windows 8 has been an absolute nightmare to work with, but I guess that's part of the learning experience. I have some paid work lined up right off the bat, but hopefully I will have that squared away in time for our tile overlay system.

That said, we do need to find a more skilled artist. My stuff works for the small tiles of the terrain and goods and such but battle backgrounds, the industry screen, and military/naval units especially are beyond my skill to pull off. I should be able to spend some of summer working with an artist I'm related to, which might be enough for the backgrounds and industry screen stuff. Still, combat units are a stretch for my art skills in the realistic future, and a different artist's style will help the units stand out against my backgrounds.

I will start actively recruiting once we get closer to a playable alpha, and can lure talent in with the promise of a decent game being released.

[Trilarion]

Just re-emerging from a nasty illness that had me staying in bed for some days, still a bit weak and not very hungry at all. I agree that the best way to lure in talent is to advance on all other fronts and to show steady progress and committment. I hope it will result in an ever growing team.

[Veneteaou]

I hope your feeling better. I myself am also trying to kick a massive sore throat (which was probably strep throat).

If we can get the main screen together, we should be in pretty good shape in terms of recruiting.

[Trilarion]

Today should be another version coming out according to the two months traditional schedule I set myself. Well, lately I was on holiday, a bit less active (this is only temporary) and more involved in content discussions. So there is not much that changed. But I can include the map buttons of Creator for the main menu. However they aren't finished either. So, in order to keep the release flow going, I will finish this one task and make a release during the next days. It's incredible how fast time flies by, if you have many occupations.

[Creator]

been on holiday as well. cant wait for the update

[Trilarion]

And there it is. Version 0.1.3 however with the shortest changes list so far. You'll see the main changes on the start screen and even there I didn't really make everything perfect. The reason is twofold. First there is the discussion about the game mechanics which is very important and I need to push this and finish this in the next time. Second in the last month I relaxed a bit more and did other things. Now that 0.1.3 is out I feel motivated again and fresh of energy to strive forward again.

[Veneteaou]

Well days have been better. I'm currently on my dying gaming rig (and I mean dying, I have to spend about 10 minutes working with the BIOS and Windows just to get the thing to start up every day) because my laptop (that I use for general purpose computer stuff, old games, the internet, and most importantly drawing) doesn't want to recognize the one partition on the drive. Most of my artwork is backed up here and on the Dropbox, but I don't even want to think about how much important writing, pictures, and other stuff is on that drive. I'm working my magic to try and fix it or at least pull files, so hopefully one of those will pan out. Assuming laptop death, I'm going to spend the next couple of days trying to sort through the parts downstairs and build myself a replacement. Won't see any new artwork for the next few days.

I also wasn't paying attention, and managed to miss an important sale on an important piece of software (Artrage 4) by about $3. I've been planning to migrate all of my artwork over to Artrage as soon as I was able to pick it up, as it's far superior to Mypaint and quite close to matching the quality of Corel painter.

Long week. I think I'm gonna go play guitar.