I mentioned some of this already in a few comments, but I owe it to everyone to make an official detailed posting. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing the speed-of-progress I would like from my mod, so rather than leave everyone in suspense and do a disservice, I'm temporarily suspending the mod's development until I have something substantial. I'm not cancelling it, I'm just suspending it. As I look at the months flying by based on my prior post dates, I'm realizing my development is not proceeding as quickly as I'd like, and I'm feeling embarrassed by the downtime.
This would be the part where an author makes excuses, such as they have a wife (I don't), kids to take care of (nope), or a dying relative (nah, I've been pretty lucky). I've been healthy, enjoying life, and my boy Trump even won the election. By all accounts, life is good. The blame is mostly because I didn't anticipate how difficult juggling multiple mod development can be, namely for Crusader Kings II. It's like writing multiple novels at once, only each novel requires a different tool to publish it (Clausewitz for CKII, Aurora for NWN). What's worse, I've built up a following for both titles, and people on both aisles asking for updates, lol. One distinction I can't ignore is the number of potential users -- I could mod for a currently active game with a vibrant growing community and have my mod enjoyed by up to thousands, or I can mod for a game with a small community and possibly have it enjoyed by a few hundred.
When I first started this mod, NWN Vault was still online and Lamb's Demonheart mod was still in development, so the game looked very attractive to me. Now, not so much, but considering how much work I've put into the story and what I've done in-game so far, it feels like a tremendous waste of time to quit on it all now. To put what I've done in perspective, the average Goosebumps novel is 22,000 words, and I've currently typed over 3x that much, yet I still have a long way to go. Oh, and I'm writing for free, and unlike a book author, writing is only half of my struggle -- the hard part is making it all work in Aurora. I've realized now why most mods exclusively focus on hack-and-slash, lol.
I'll offer an update when I have something concrete. Just to reiterate, I'm not cancelling the mod; I'm suspending it. I promise the next update I make on this blog will be a substantial one, because I'm exhausted throwing out minor posts just for the sake of reminding everyone I'm alive. Hell, maybe I'll just wait until the entirety of chapter one is complete, so I can redeem myself. Once I do that, I can finally start promoting the mod.
