The Steam Summer Sales event is up. As mentioned previously, I plan to go through my bucket list and make some recommendations. This list below represents the top games in my list and my thoughts on purchasing them. As with any sale, I will be focusing on the value of the game at the price they are listed and not simply the merits of the game or the discount prices alone.
Category: General Updates
Site Maintenance Pending
Over the course of this week, and possibly into next week, I will be performing a series of site changes that are likely to bring Worlds of Nations offline for extended periods of time. If you need access to any of the files or scripts during the outage, place a comment on this post or contact me directly and I will give you alternate methods of access it while the upgrades are taking place.
The Pandemic Work-Life Balance
I would be remis if I didn’t take some time to actually talk about the ongoing pandemic. For today’s update, I want to take a moment and let you all know why my updates have been spotty for the past three months and how much longer I expect this to continue.
I had a suspicion back in April that my productivity had dropped and my stress levels had skyrocketed following the statewide closure in March. It felt like I was doing a lot more work with less actual output, and at the same time my personal life was struggling. By May it felt the opposite, with better productivity and improved work-life balance. However, I had no data or proof this was the case. Thankfully, I was tracking some timecard data during this time. Here is what I found.
May Update – A Return to Normalcy
May sees a return to normalcy but a significant increase in my real-life workload. The focus of this late May update will be on the impact the pandemic has on things for the past few months. I will specifically be focusing on the state of the website, the status of the EDCE tournament, and some personal impacts the situation has had on me and my plans going forward.
Stepping Back Into the Light
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve connected to the outside world. The initial panic and urgency as the world shut down has subsided. In its place is an acceptance of what a steady state looks like for the foreseeable future. With it will return a resemblance of normalcy to my own life as it becomes clear what the next few months will looks like for me.
March Update
Not 20 days ago I had a completely different update in mind for March. I was going to post on Friday the 13th, the first back to back updates on unique days in one year. I had plans to do some new modding while also exploring some creative ideas I had. This week, the world seems to have been turned upside down. The WHO pandemic announcement followed by the CDC acknowledgment were the first pieces to a domino effect that seems unstoppable.
Unfortunately, I don’t know where this leaves me other than I have been recalled into lock down. This is the first time in recent memory where this hasn’t been voluntary. It also means the updates going forward will be uncertain.
Performing a Quick Website Update
I made a quick website update today due to some expiring domains and certifications. I took the time to perform some cleanup on old domains I no longer use, including the old NOE domain. I have been monitoring traffic and it was not used in over 9 months so I assume at this point everyone has migrated to this site. I’ll be monitoring the traffic for the next few weeks to make sure the active domains are still working. If I notice any issues I will make some additional changes.
October 2019 Update
I don’t want to go an entire month without making a single post so here is a quick update. Due to some renovations and an uptick in recent business travel, free time has been limited. This week marks the end of the renovations which have prevented me from accessing my main work station. With the holidays approaching soon, the work travel is expected to lessen within the next two weeks as well.
I have made some progress on the new UDB but it is not ready yet for a release. One key addition is that I will be basing the portage costs on average weight of vehicles and weapons. This is turning out to be difficult since there is no way to limit the number of unit types. In other words, right now a cargo ship can carry more helicopters than a fleet carrier.
Lastly, I took a look at the old WoN campaigns and noticed some recent browser updates have been kind. There are some noticeable performance improvements. I will be applying some new upgrades to the website in the next few weeks, so lets see if I can also find some time to update the game as well.
I have Returned
My two week hiatus is over and I will be returning to some of the work I was doing before my brief introduction. However, after reviewing the amount of work required for my next planned updates, I came to realize that there is little hope in my completing the graphic set in July. More likely it will be August before the set is complete. The main delay is due to my decision to try and keep the number of ships even across all categories, which will slightly increase the number I planned originally.
Updates Are Slowing
I expect updates to this site to slow for a bit. I’ve decided to take on a somewhat large undertaking for my next project which I will start posting about shortly. This is likely to take me some time to complete so don’t expect anything soon.
Also, sometime early summer I will be making some technical changes to the website as well. This will require me to dedicate some downtime to resolve. This is something I will probably tackle in June.