The future & Coronavirus

Hello everyone!

Firstly, let’s talk about the good news. Mirage is bringing in just enough money to cover my bills, so, although it is still early days and I’ll be living paycheck to paycheck I figured it is time to put my money where my mouth is and I have quit my full time job, making this my full time job instead. I have 3 months of notice to work, so things will be relatively quiet during this time as I am working full hours until my last day to try and get every penny in the bank I can before I have no fixed income anymore. Once these 3 months are up however, I am throwing everything I have at this – hopefully the number of recent updates when I was working part-time have shown how things can move fast when I have the time to code.

Having time to code is great, but if you don’t know what you are coding that is a problem. Me and Mombi have each made a list of the top 10 things we think need to be added to the game before it can be declared “version 1”. Our lists turned out quite similar which is great, and it is from these lists I will be creating a plan for the first 3 months of me being full time working on Mirage. When I have this plan in place I will post it on the website so you guys can track what is happening next and what to expect.

So that’s all great exciting fun news, now for some bad news – the coronavirus. I haven’t caught it yet, however there is a bunch of stuff happening that is going to impact Mirage until this all blows over.

  • Google has a big warning in the developer console saying that app updates are delayed, and we should expect their review process to take over 7 days at the moment. This means I can’t push any updates to Mirage out, as if I break something client side the game will be unplayable for over a week while the fix rolls out.
  • Lots and lots of places have closed, this means lots and lots of people are not going to work, which means many people are financially insecure right now, which means people aren’t spending money in-game on scrolls. I was really hoping to build up a litle bit of money in the company before I went full time but… as luck would have it, I have picked the worst possible time to quit my job! This doesn’t change my decision, it just adds a bit more risk and in the interest of full disclosure I felt I should share it.
  • All of the climbing centres in the UK have closed, this doesn’t affect Mirage directly but it makes me a sad panda :<

I have unfortunately not had time to check the support email for like 10 days, I will be going through this tomorrow night so sincere apologies if you are awaiting a response from me there.

I have been absent from the game for the last few weeks but I have not been absent from the project so to speak. I have been busy getting things square with my accountant, sorting out the business account, and migrating the game stuff that currently costs me money from my personal account over to the business account (which for some reason is actually a mission when it comes to the server hosting, I have had to print forms and write letters and allsorts… what a faff).

As I am going to be using my house as an office for the forseeable future I have been spending evenings and weekends doing all the real-life boring stuff that I’ve been putting off for ages – insulating the loft and putting raised boards down so I don’t melt in the summer and freeze in the winter when I’m sat in the upstairs study for 15 hours a day. A job that takes absolutely ages and is horrible to do, but someone’s gotta do it.

What else has happened in my life… oh yes, we were going to get a new kitchen because ours looks like it was built in 1950 but then the exhaust from my car was stolen while I was at work and the cost to fix it is more than the car so I no longer have a car, and I quit my job so there’s that whole financial side of things… which is, y’know, life, but we knocked an interior wall down in preparation and now that room is a building site forever so that’s fun.

Also, we knocked the wall down and threw all the rubble onto our driveway thinking we’d use my car to take it to the tip but then the theft happened so my car is dead and we just sort of ended up with a big pile of soggy rubble on the driveway for a few weeks that blew all over the street and made us look like the trampy neighbours nobody wants… after much effort we managed to shift the rubble in Char’s much smaller car and that was pretty much a weekend’s worth of effort, but way more stress than it should have been.

You know, someone stealing that exhaust has probably taken years off of my life with the stress it’s caused. Those bastards.

Anyway, I think I’m over sharing now, but I wanted to update you lot on what’s going on in life and well, this is the stuff that’s been going on in my life! Exciting news for the games future, we’ll get to version 1 if it kills you guys let alone me! Let’s hope the world doesn’t fall to pieces before I get the chance to live the dream.

See you in game soon,
Foxish

The future & Coronavirus
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