Looks like Maksw is taking a break from his development, which is understandable since he has been working on the game for quiet a while now and it takes some definite determination to keep plugging away at something your not getting paid for 🙂 so tip of the hat to you Maksw for the endurance. But it looks like Maksw is going to slow down his development a bit to just recharge and rethink, development is not stopping just slowing... read below:

The time has come to take a hard, but ultimately realistic decision on Dominium Development.

You may have noticed the gap since the last blog post, as I’ve been away on hols, and also ‘taking stock’ of all my efforts to date and where it’s got me. Yep, you can tell where this is going…

This site went up back in December 2012, and the original Kickstarter was just before that in November 2012. Nearly five years of (fairly) dedicated spare-time, ad-hoc, one man development, and (if I do say so myself) some fairly nifty work being done toward the great vision. However, I’m no idiot – in fact being a very experienced game developer and software engineer (be it ever so humble ???? ), and I knew that what I wanted to achieve with Dom stood absolutely no chance without some form of funding, and being able to hire other people and bring them on board for code, design and content.

To be frank, my decision to go ahead anyway was sheer bloody-mindedness ???? Plus it was a great way to ‘keep my arm in’ with game dev, while my professional life left that industry far behind.

Secretly (the little voice which surfaces from the subconscious every now and then) I was hoping that the ‘keep on trucking’ doggedness, and constant blog updates (and the book(s)) might spin up some form of interest which would gather momentum over time, and allow me to seek other funding avenues after being able to demonstrate some level of interest to potential backers.

Sadly, despite my best efforts and others plugging this on my behalf (I thank you profoundly, you know who you are!) this has not been the case, and I’ve had to take a long hard look at that lack of momentum/interest, versus the effort still needed to even bring a modicum of demonstrable gameplay to anyone for feedback.

While I never expected a flood of followers and/or clamouring hordes – they sure would have been nice ???? – unfortunately I simply don’t have the spare time available to generate interest outside of the confines of this blog, so I can’t help my own cause much. Also, the pace of development I can dedicate myself to just isn’t enough to keep generating the flood of ‘interesting posts’ needed to maintain any large scale community interest, even if I had had it. There’s no bitterness here, just a sad sense of resignation.

I wanted to achieve my vision of what I think a free-form space faring game could be, and should be, and I may yet still do that ???? I’m certainly not closing the door. But I’m going to take my part-time foot off the part-time pedal and chill out, for some considerable time. It’s been ‘full on’ for me for five years, and I need to step away from the vessel for a time. I will certainly tinker with Dom Dev, probably return to Maggy (who was named after the Magratheans btw) but the ‘pace’ of development will basically stutter to a halt, as will the blog updates. I’ll also be stopping the Newsletter, for obvious reason.

So, I felt it only fair to those few who have been following faithfully (Cornflakes, SolCommand, SpaceSimCentral, Troy et al), to step up and state my intention instead of just going into a Communication Blackout or Radio Silence.

I’m not killing off Dom, far from it. I’ll be doing stuff as and when, I may even post here and there. I’ll also be certainly wrapping up Book 2 of When Stars Fall soonish. But, as far as ‘Dominium’ the game is concerned, it’s all definitely being put firmly on hold for the foreseeable future. If some peculiar turn of events leads me to thinking ‘there’s something in this after all’ then I’ll be back on the case like a shot, trust me!

So for now, I bid you farewell and leave you with the wise words of a great bard…

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying Goodbye so hard.

Winnie the Pooh