a message to my colaborators
Maybe this is not totally necessary but I want to explain my situation to my associates and customers, because not explaining it is one of the reasons things got where they are, and I want to untangle the mess I made.
As we all know, we’re in a global pandemic. When the whole thing started, I had a few projects going on. The biggest of them was porting Slipstream from its current Java codebase to C#. It’s not only a port, but a whole new version, with many new features and gameplay changes. I was also working on a few smaller side projects, including new games.
At first, the quarantine didn’t affect me much. I work from home, I don’t need to go out much, I kept working steadily for a couple of months, but then the problems started. I have always been kind of a hypochondriac, and I live with an elderly person (my mother, who is 72). At some point in may or june, when the coronavirus started to hit Brazil very hard, my stress level got too high, and it all went downhill from there.
I stopped being able to concentrate enough to do work, got easily distracted, even though I was following very strict quarantine since march, every time I coughed a little because my throat was dry or anything equally banal, my first thought was “oh no, I got the rona, my mother is gonna die”. I started drinking too much alcohol, messed up my sleep schedule, I even suspect I developed blood pressure problems because of all that and the lack of exercise (or maybe it’s just my hypochondria again). In short, I completely lost control of my professional life. For those who followed the Slipstream development saga, this isn’t news, something similar happened in 2016.
When you stop being productive, it becomes a feedback loop. “I needed to deliver thing X two weeks ago, two weeks! it’s too late now, it’s over, you can’t fix this anymore”, and then another two months go by, and the guilt gets worse and worse, and the feeling that everything’s lost and you should just give up gets stronger and stronger. Meanwhile the disease is still out there, all the worries that led you to this situation are still very much alive.
So... this message is an attempt to start cleaning the house. The coronavirus situation now seems to be getting under control, I’ve been less stressed about it lately, I greatly reduced my alcohol consumption, fixed my sleep schedule with medication, started exercising and will seriously try to organize myself and deliver all the work I promised still in 2020. If you are a business associate or a Slipstream player waiting for the update, I’m asking for a little more time, but I will deliver what was promised.
The Slipstream port is at 50% completion I’d say, I think it’s possible to finish it in a couple more months if my plan succeeds. The core gameplay is working, and the most critical part, the track renderer, is 99% finished, as the video shows. Most of the remaining work is just straight up translating the Java code to C#, which is a very “linear” task, takes a bit of time but doesn’t have many surprises. The new version will add camera tilt, modding support, some graphical updates, fix many bugs and improve performance and compatibility across all platforms.
TL; DR I messed up again, fell into the abyss of poor mental health again, spent months unable to do anything productive in my life, but now I’m trying to get my shit together. I ask for a little comprehension and patience for the time that already passed, I won’t fail to deliver what I promised. “Now” is the sooner I can start, so I will start now. Thanks for understanding and sorry for letting things get to this point.Â
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2087
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