An Open Letter

Good morning (Or whatever pleasantry is appropriate for whatever the time is where you are),

I've been reading about Phantasy Calradia 2018 like I'm cramming for an exam for the last couple of days and thought I would share my impression. As a developer myself, I want to express how impressive it is to look at the changelog for this mod and realize the amount of work that is being put into it. This is clearly a labor of love and one that is being graciously provided through blood, sweat, and tears. I want to say thank you both as a fantasy gaming enthusiast and as someone who recognizes the deep, difficult work that it takes to make a project like this successful.

I want to share a quick story about an old mod for the original mount & blade called the Hordelands. Some may remember it, it was an excellent fantasy mod that was spearheaded by an equally dedicated developer. It had orcs, elves, undead, necromancy... sound familiar? It went through rapid development cycles, buoyed by the developers imagination and the passion of the playerbase. For many months, it was in a nearly perfect state, 100% playable with many new and exciting features never implemented in the base game. But then two things happened: 1. The developer began to burn out and started reaching for new and exciting features to hold his interest in the project, causing him to increase the scope of the project far beyond his willingness to troubleshoot and address the bugs that inevitably crop up from large changes and 2. The community became more and more vocal and demanding, less complimentary, further sapping the devs enthusiasm.

This tale sadly ends in a minor tragedy, as a work of art that was previously playable devolved into a buggy mess that was impossible to play for any length of time. I have missed Hordelands over the years, and I see the potential here in this mod to be it's spiritual successor (I believe, in fact, that this has already been accomplished.) I think this is a cautionary tale both for the developer gsanders and for this playerbase. Gsanders please take care of yourself and especially your health first. The project won't matter if the person behind it is incapacitated or emotionally exhausted. Please take time for yourself first and foremost. I hope you know that many people appreciate and value the work that you are doing. This brings me to the community. We have a responsibility to be polite, sensitive, and cordial to developers who give freely of their time and energy to share with us something that they could easily keep for themselves or even more easily play golf or do anything else instead. Frankly, you should shove off if you can't be compassionate about providing feedback and suggestions (which in this case you have been specifically asked not to provide) and asking for help. In this instance, the developer is already pushing themselves to the max and you will very well kill the project if you push harder than had already been done.

That does it for my public letter. Below I have some selfish requests which can safely be ignored if you have read this far and don't have the energy to process more.

Selfish requests:
1. Please don't remove Necromancy from the game. It is disgusting and vile and all of this, but it's also one of the most deep and interesting parts of this mod and it would be sorely missed I think by this player community. On behalf of the concept of being a PC necromancer, let me just say that there is nothing so empowering and diabolically pleasing as destroying your foes and turning them into a vast force of destruction bound to your will. It's just... like the coolest thing ever for some people.

2. Please release your game to the public again. Or at least to me... (I said these were selfish  ) I missed the boat on this thing and would really like to play it. I promise not to ask for features or report bugs. If everyone else on this board can commit to something similar, maybe it could be a public release. I can even build a web app that only allows the game to be downloaded if people read through and agree to rules that they are not to make any suggestions or complaints. I'll send you a PM, in case you would be interested.

Sanctus57 said:

...
1. Please don't remove Necromancy from the game. It is disgusting and vile and all of this, but it's also one of the most deep and interesting parts of this mod and it would be sorely missed I think by this player community. On behalf of the concept of being a PC necromancer, let me just say that there is nothing so empowering and diabolically pleasing as destroying your foes and turning them into a vast force of destruction bound to your will. It's just... like the coolest thing ever for some people.

2. Please release your game to the public again. Or at least to me... (I said these were selfish  ) I missed the boat on this thing and would really like to play it. I promise not to ask for features or report bugs. If everyone else on this board can commit to something similar, maybe it could be a public release.

Click to expand...

  Well, here's the thing:

  Let's address number 2 first.
    Right now, the mod is transitioning from v150, which I felt was an early prototype with a purpose in my eyes to just wring out some of the layers without necessarily feeling balanced, finished, or even close to what I wanted.  It turned out that #1, Necromancers, got more of my time put in than ALL the other classes combined.  But Necromancers also became game destabilizing, game disrupting, and carried with them much but not all that was seriously buggy about the game.  Also, getting back to number 2, players stopped taking the mod as a serious tool for development packed with a HUGE number of tester oriented features, and just thought it was a party to exploit, mess with, and go back and forth with me on.

    So let's actually go back first to December 2017.  I've had the mod at that point since August 2nd 2017 and it was starting to finally seem stable "enough" to let other people see SOME of the changes Guspav put in and some more changes I was working on, AS I WAS WORKING ON THEM, sort of a "hey, I compiled this 5 minutes ago, wanna take it for a spin?"  If I offered that to ME, I'd be flattered and if it worked, fine, if not, I'd mention that I was stuck but no biggee, maybe next week it would be unstuck.  MANY users were that chill.  A few weren't.  Worse, I push myself when everyone else is still at the waiting calmly stage.  Why?  _I_ don't want 20 people having to wait a week on me to untangle something.  And what if it was 20-hundreds (2000?)  Or 20,000?  Now even Reformist said "it was an open ALPHA", which it was.  Much of the time, the mod stayed within a window of 2-3 days old, at most, and there were over 60 patches issued in rapid order.  In fact the whole "v150" name was a bow to the fact that as of mid December it had 144 internal releases, each being 1-2 days work then put on cloud so that if EVER Guspav wanted to compile "today's code" it was there, with a name and number showing up front in big red letters which version that was since he might get lost sometime.  Thus v150 started ABOUT 150 patches since he handed me the code, at roughly 15-20 man hours per "patch" number.
Instead of numbers once it got to 150 it was letters followed by numbers, just so that "v150" referred to the savegame format, and a v150A game was meant to be roughly good even with a v150P patch.  With 1 exception only, that was in fact how it worked.

  For v156 and v155 I wanted to explore adding TPE (Tournament Play Enhancements) and custom troop trees, both of which broke save game for v150, and took that opportunity to add to troops files some extra placeholder "troops" used for different utilities in game.  I added some items that Whydott re-colorized for us, since he had trouble colorizing them in place, but could make new items.  They're pretty cool; if a few of them don't show its because I did something wrong.  In my opinion, I'll need to merge v155 with v156  someday and break savegame, but only with some serious overhaul of the v155 custom troop trees.
We'll get to that later.

  TPE also added some problems.  I'm told tournaments at night are too dark to see; although I tweaked  Guspav's buggy tournaments to always take place as if the sun had either just risen or still has not finished going below horizon, TPE tournaments managed to miss that.  I can quickly tweak that, but then the NEXT issue pops up:

    Of the 10.000 or so downloads the mod has, around 70 actually update EVERY patch.  Major patches had a follow up rate of 200-300.  Otherwise, whatever was bundled in the base file is all anyone ever took the time to see.  If there was a follow up fix 2 days later, only 70-200 of those users ever saw it.  Now I'll accept I am the raspiest host ever made.  And I'll accept that an ideal mod should not NEED 60- 150 patches.  If anyone else can accept that the whole idea was you the audience were 1-3 days away from whatever build _I_ run, and if you did patch you'd be right at the edge - good bad and ugly as it was.

  OK, so here we are with me claiming I'm pushed by bug reports and backed up by change suggestions.  Umm, the thing is... I'm like 1-4 MONTHS behind on fixes.  I keep focusing on one thing that is bleeding like an artery and putting a band aid on it, then I get damage reports from 2 other places.  I never catch up.  I also can't make changes that blow away save games, well, at least not if only 1-3 % of the audience can or will patch.  Maybe they figure "that jerk, he keeps closing exploits that I happen to love.  Why shouldn't I have a 2000 skeleton army?  But its BROKEN, darn it -- my morale isn't keeping current for 20000 skellies.  Waaah. "    OK, so I fix something.  Then there is another complaint.  And another.  So I say, hmm, there's like 10 neglected classes and one super phat class that I never ASKED to be a slave to.  Unfair to me.  If I'm unpaid and doing not my work but someone else's, is that slavery?  Am I whose slave?  Do I have any rights?  So instead of a non-toxic, nice honeymoon, the public at large, many of whom are perfectly nice guys so long as Hilary wins, have dumped their hostility about necromancers on me, and I have dumped my anger at being a slave on them.

  Necromancers are not the only thing the mod has.  I've been willing to keep them, with something like balance, for v156.  But I also don't have the energy to struggle with people.  If they can respect me, I may well respect them.  If they feel this is the "necromancy mod", go play 2014.  If they feel "you allow necromancers, and I can dig that, and I'll just do my thing so quiet you never knew I was here", I can respect that.  Everybody wins.  Its the in-between that gets tedious.  Mine.  Yours.  Theirs.  "They" can social justice warrior style "act up".  Play "antifa" to that doubtless red person  (nevermind I sat the election out).  I'm supposedly too Christian.  Except an overtly Satanic mod would be an offense to Islam, be unkind to Buddhists, and be more than just inquisition-bait.  I refuse to have a "witch hunt" here.  SO I have no obligation or rationale to drape the mod with unnecessary red flags.  Make your skeletons, QUIETLY, and stop asking to summon more demons, have more demons in your party, role play as a Satanist, etc.  If you ask me, Satan is a supercomputer server farm running software remarkably like his opposite, and the distinction is motivation.  But you didn't ask so I won't tell.  My beliefs have nothing to do with accepting or rejecting Necromancers.  I both made Necromancy GREAT and put chains around it, at the same time.  See for yourself if you don't believe me.

  Now as for letting you see the mod, I'm for it.  Except in 1-3 days it gets a patch.  In 1-3 weeks the entire v155 will go away.  Probably within a month v156 will go away.  I'm all for putting new things in. 

  Now here's what DID get excessive.  People mentioned a fresh bug report 6 times for "character creation is broken.  Its black.  Yeah I managed to make a character, but its broken I tell you".  "I can't pick a race.  Race is gone."  Now this despite that I put some 1 page picture "manuals" as  a walk through in this forum.  Never read.  Never planned to.  Notta.  Four letter word, "work".  Or "Read".  OK my eyes are so bad now I prefer audio books, I can understand.  But most users here have no discernable handicap.  They're just too VIP to read.  I felt I should be the only prima donna. At least I put in 50 hours a week every week for the last 9 months, so I have a right to be ... something.  Maybe not like I am.  But something.

  There are 80- 200 users of this mod.  Maybe right now theyre playing a different flavor of the month, but they're updating.  The other 10,000 left long ago.
Maybe good riddance, maybe they never stuck around for the best part of the mod.  Maybe only a real loser like me could take a 34,000 player base like Guspav had for 2014 and turn it into 200 and less real players in just 9 months.

    I'm trying to get Vyrn up and running.  I think I'll have success tomorrow.  If so, I'd like to see what it takes to put the fancy footwork into tournaments and if any of it could help monk or rogue class.  The dragon model would be useful too.  I flew 2 1/2 years ago after I think the same person shared Evlat with Perisno team in 2015.  I ported that here but it collided with PBOD so I just turned it off.  It was like a 4 hour port.  Never did put more hours into it.  I'd reckon Necromancers have taken at least 400 of the last 1000 hours I personally invested in THIS mod.  Maybe I've put in 1300-1500 hours total.  You'd think users would treat me better, but I suppose it will always be at best I'm just keeping the roost warm and if the mod was anyone's its Guspav's to decide what features stay and go.  He's welcome to make a necromancer specific submod.  Or welcome to let me write my version, and I call it whatever he wants, so long as noone thinks its Phantasy Calradia.  I called it "2018" to keep it straight; I can say without his code base it never would have gotten this far.  I kind of hoped I at least gave him something that worked, at least a little.  I'm aware he also put in 1500+ hours.  Its not like all those lines came from nothing.  The mod has 250K lines, about half of those native and maybe a third of those add-in OSPs.  The rest either he made or I made.  Sometimes he made them and I remade them, a little different, for some reason or another.

  Well, you started with an open letter.  I wanted to explain what happened to the 34,000 user lead Guspav gave me.  I managed to not mention my illnesses, real or imagined, or the episodes of peeing blood or unable to swallow or breathe.  Or the actuarial age of certain professions.  None of that was important.
Just keeping it real.

  - GS

so, now to Necromancers and their role here:

  I mentioned I don't like witch hunts.  I don't like persecution for the sake of some meme, some popular dogma, or some unconscious movement to express a meme.  If the real reason for a bunch of controversy is "religious persecution" and "I play necromancer to protest organized religion", then both are bull sherman answers.  God, the server farm, the internet expanded AI, certainly created this virtual world you live in.  Now whether your last life or next is spent as a butterfly or not, is dogma.  We don't know and frankly I don't care.  I DO object to people using my work as a launchpad for their religious axes to grind.  Even if their religion is anti-religion, or religion to the zeroeth power (atheism).  Its still THEIR religion inflicted on me.  I hate that.  More, I shouldn't have to write for it like that.  At least give me the courtesy of accepting I deliver necromancers exactly as I see them.  You're free to roll something else if its unacceptable to you.
I'm not interested in how Guspav presented them.  I'm not interested in how YOU present them.  Take them as I give them or roll something else.  I dont care which.  I also don't like people prodding to do "more" for them.  By Gods! What do these people want?  Ask me instead to do something for rogues.  Just once.
 
  Oh.  That's right.  Rogues arent part of your "religious tolerance".  Thats so BS.  Your tolerance is intolerance.  Show me the evidence of your tolerance for other religions, oh false ones!  I accept 9 of them.  You accept none.  Who then shows tolerance?  I asked simply to not burn the house down, which is a crime in some places.  I HAVE been persecuted for religion's sake, when I had a BBS 25 years ago.  The rumor had it I was hosting witches, real witches.  And the name "Phosphor" was construed as evidence of Satan.  I felt Phosphor was the essence of television and then computer monitors -- light (knowlege) from electricity.  The modern age.  The right metaphor for a pre-internet era.  We had 15 concurrent sessions across 1200 baud modems in 1992.  I had 5 CPUs performing pipelined execution, with mirrors across the city and remote updates nightly.  One live, one for dev running identical hardware.  A church made it their mission to shut me down.  They prayed for bad things to happen to my family.  People came over to attack my parents.  Situation normal.  So talk to me about what a cruel censor I am.  Taleworlds is hosted in a country that routinely imprisons journalists for even suggesting their new Sultan is dictator.  The reforms of Attaturk are one by one replaced by a new Islamic leaning state.  Maybe that is the will of the people, and they certainly have a right to their own will.  But I have no right to inflame them with a mod that has anti-Muslim themes.  Neither am I at war with Christians, Jews, Hindis, Buddhists, nor a half dozen other beliefs.  So stop militantly demanding stuff that could have my head cut off if I travelled to Saudi Arabia, or Burundi, or Ethiopia.  I mean, how about letting me make the mod without external interference? 

    I'd RATHER use the skin now used for demons to have some other race, like Dragons.  Or even Vampires.  Or cherubin.  Or water borne lizards.  Anything less controversial.  How about letting me do as I'm called and either play quietly or go find a more "friendly" mod?  I think I did more than enough.  So don't ask more, it distracts me from my calling.  Which was not to squander 35 years of my life getting to this point to just write a bunch of childish demon worship BS.  How about something that really matters?  I can think of far better focal points for a game than misusing the dead and expanding the damned.  In various senses.  Even if damnation is just getting a really bad mod that you're forced to play the next 1000 years while everyone else has the good mod with weekly updates to block all the trojans the other inmates tack on.  But that's back to dogma, isn't it?

You will never please all of the people. All that matters is your mod, not their opinions, wants or needs.

adrakken said:

You will never please all of the people. All that matters is your mod, not their opinions, wants or needs.

Click to expand...

  I want to make Monks great again... but that sounds suspiciously like another Aspie president and BSer. 
The un-civility of the Red vs Blue civil war happening overseas makes me wonder if angels in heaven fight by internet and proxies;
Blues and Reds seem like nice people when in their comfort zone and yet manage to be most uncivilized on the internet.  I find games players tend to reflect that also -- one on one they're ok, but when in a mob something changes.

  It's my hope sometime we manage to go beyond one class and embrace a half dozen classes, some of which manage to do something unexpected. 
That can't happen if we just chase our tail and finally walk away from the ashes of the mod.  Better to let it cool down a bit and fix what's REALLY broken.

I didn't realize necromancy had religious connotations. I certainly didn't have anything remotely close to that in mind when I made above post.

I was fortunate enough to get to play this mod today thanks to gsanders and it is absolutely amazing. It's too bad a few bad actors are spoiling the party. Seriously, this mod - wow.

gsanders said:

The un-civility of the Red vs Blue civil war happening overseas makes me wonder if angels in heaven fight by internet and proxies;Blues and Reds seem like nice people when in their comfort zone and yet manage to be most uncivilized on the internet.  I find games players tend to reflect that also -- one on one they're ok, but when in a mob something changes.

Click to expand...

The internet conflates everything since everyone now has a voice coupled with the fact that few people can put it into its proper perspective since it is something unprecedented in history.

There never was a single thing in history, great or small, that everyone liked/agreed with and now, we can actually see it because all voices are seen as they are now more like printed words in a book...for all to see, whenever they discovered. Our words are no longer spoken and thus disappearing with the sound on the air...they are forever.

So now we get the pleasure of seeing the simplest things create outrage, hate, anger and even short 3 second fart videos get liked and shared by millions...and why should we allow such things to effect our lives?

Example: Say...10 years ago, you were walking through the mall and some person you have never seen before, nor likely to ever see again made a negative comment on your life choices...what would you do? Would you allow it to effect your life? There in is the perspective. A strangers words are only as impactful if you allow to be so and it shouldnt be, they do not even know you and you have no actual emotional connection to them and words on the internet should mean even less since there isnt even a FACE to connect the words to!

Dont sweat the internet. Make your mod and allow nothing with no connection to you effect YOUR LABOR OF LOVE!

It's been nice.

  I'll find a forum that lets me filter participants so I can code and alpha testers can well, "Alpha Test".  This ain't it.
The real problem is 2014 is released and in good shape and 2018 was prematurely shared as an alpha but not respected as one.  It should have been on a different forum, to not pollute Guspav's legacy.  I'll fix that now.  I DID give Guspav a head start on fixing his own mod, and if I approve of his replacement I may yet give them my source instead of as well as his.  Although once more, HE has to give the source.  I can merely add or keep it private; I can't forward it otherwise.  But right now its obviously something I cannot promise without seeing how it plays out.  A lot of people promise the sky but can't deliver.  I promised very little and I think over-delivered.

  Lets not tangle this up any more than it already is.  I notice the people complaining suddenly show up after months of absence, and they never really played the game.  But surface layer looks matter.  In any case, I don't feel welcome.  If you don't either, then we both lose a mod.  I'll give you Guspav's mod back and you stop camping mine.  Fair trade?

  This to haters.
  For anyone else, give me time to untangle anything that isnt mine to use.
  I admire Guspav, but I won't be held hostage over one class.  Thats so BS it reeks.

---
  And by the way, when I said "you are intolerant of religion, mine, yours, and Taleworld's", it wasn't to the OP of THIS thread, but to everyone that had an axe to grind claiming I somehow forced them into Sunday school and wouldn't let them play without a Bible, even if I do feel the old testament was written by the Shadow and not who it says, based solely on deeds.  I've put Taleworlds in the dubious position of taking a religious stance when I personally didnt ask for it -- atheism, especially militant atheism, is just another religious persecution.  Its just a very popular form these days.  But making me have to support a class -- first of all I made it WAY stronger than Guspav did.  But I need to show you what Guspav intended, so we can even stop BSing and deal only with FACTS.
The FACT:  I made the class many times more powerful than he EVER had it.  And I'm the bad guy.  Give it a rest.  I just asked people to try any other class.
Once.  Even Rogues, which was Guspav's last effort.  It was Guspav's clerics.  His Magic.  Kind of BS to claim I flooded the forum with religion.  I just said the way it was presented was bait to inquisitors.  If you're not honest enough to see that it is true, then who is lying?  I also complained that not updating made no sense, except that the early necromancers werent locked down much, so it seemed to favor one class only.  Every other class would have updated.  EVERY. Other.


  Its probably best to take it to gmail.  I think my time here is limited.  Pity that, because all I ever asked from this forum was you leave alone to write my way, not yours.  Apparently it is inflammatory.  Just uninstall.  You were supposed to be in an OPEN ALPHA, never anything else.  Or running 2014, which is a regular release.  Please keep the mindset separate.  Pulling it is a kindness.

That is such a shame. gsanders I hope you do start a new forum and nexus site for the mod you are making. It is truly excellent and I find it to be a great improvement over the original already. If you never touch the necromancer again, I would still think it is in wonderful working shape, and you could proceed to put your efforts into all other classes/feature backlog without feeling anything was unfinished(not that you likely care at this point about the class). Thank you for all you have done up to this point.

P.S. For anyone else who doesn't have the Phantasy 2018 current build and would like to see what they are missing, politely message gsanders and explain you will update regularly and not make feature requests of him as he is already overloaded. I hope I am not being too presumptuous when I say I believe it is very likely he will fulfill your request.

This is ridiculous.  There are a couple of assholes here, who are so desperate for attention that they are attracting disproportionate notice.

No sane person thinks about religion, persecution, damning one's soul, etc. and immediately links that to the necromancer class.  Some of my Warband characters have 50,000 personal kills.  They are mass murderers as the real world has never seen.  Whether you raise the bodies afterwards matters little.  It's a game.

GSanders has done a good job at improving the mod, and in my book, it has been playable for months.  He has improved necromancers as well, from what I hear. To drive him away from the mod and the forum is absolutely ungrateful. 

And GSanders, you should ignore those morons.  "The curs bark, the caravan travels on."  Whether, and wherever you continue working on the mod, there will be assholes.  They are not worth noticing, let alone getting upset over.

I cannot even believe people would actually get their jimmies rustled by a fantasy element such as necromancy in a fantasy mod. Seriously, what are they thinking? I mean, I've cleared bandit infestations in a village just to sack them IMMEDIATELY after. It's a game and moreover, we're playing a fantasy mod.

I started playing Phantasy 2018 patched to v156 yesterday and I fell in love with it--It feels pretty polished for me, and while there's a lot going on all the time, you can figure out how things work by yourself.

I'm totally behind GSanders on this, his work has been nothing but impressive.

No one is getting jimmies rustled, it's all in his head because he can't handle the fraction of criticism bound to happen to literally any creator in this world. Gsanders, your posts seem to indicate you are a grown up family man and yet you display this limitless immaturity and thin skin? Keep deleting posts and throwing tantrums online, the situation ought to get better that way.

coo_snake said:

No one is getting jimmies rustled, it's all in his head because he can't handle the fraction of criticism bound to happen to literally any creator in this world. your posts seem to indicate you are a grown up family man and yet you display this limitless immaturity and thin skin? Keep deleting posts and throwing tantrums online, the situation ought to get better that way.

Click to expand...

I agree with your statement: That kind of attitude won't make anything better; if anything, it makes things worse. But I can't say I don't understand him. This community has proven multiple times that it can draw the worse out of someone.

I presume the second part is not towards me because I've hardly posted, let alone deleted posts haha.

I'm sorry this forum has been so upsetting for him, but gsanders made something really great. I'm playing the hell out of it right now and having a total blast.

It's actually been really helpful to me because I'm in kind of a down time in my life and this mod is lifting my spirits. Very thankful

Sanctus57 said:

I'm sorry this forum has been so upsetting for him, but gsanders made something really great. I'm playing the hell out of it right now and having a total blast.

It's actually been really helpful to me because I'm in kind of a down time in my life and this mod is lifting my spirits. Very thankful

Click to expand...

Hmmm.  I felt down and played this: (turn on English subtitles).  Its so childish on the face of it, but actually the Soviet Jewry that wrote this embedded considerable insight into what seems like a complete children's story.  It is - and it isn't.  Like the mod, there is a little happening under the hood that I don't think all appreciate.  I'm glad you do.  What's that line in Native - "You sound like someone worth talking to.  It would be good to talk again."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_uviMr9kl8
  I like the line "maybe you mistakenly angered someone else, but time will cover the mistakes"

  As you can see at least your class is still in the current release.
  And you are not only welcomed but begged to compare carefully the differences between the August 1st version, as I feel a vibe that i am not really a developer but more of a third class citizen, a "maintainer and pretender/usurper".  I do more than minor code maintenance.  But at some site I never uploaded to, I'm not listed and the patches and this forum were stripped.  Some bot harvested from Moddb and put it elsewhere linking Guspav but stripping everything else.  Which is fine, but it stripped this forum which has instructions and help from other users, such as yourself.  As for my name, maybe that's a kiss of death, but at least when you beat a dog don't ask it to also make your world.  Its fair to have nostalgia; but it should be in fairness a comparison with Guspavs last lines of code and my last lines.

  I will certainly make a mod, minus a community that dislikes me, and minus any IP from Guspav -- not because it wasn't good enough, but only so I get equal respect from the users.  I know I know, ... when the users feel respected.  Except 4% only patched.  And many problems resulted.  And few came here to read the forums.  I feel I only ever had a core of 30-70 users.  Its possible some more lurked.  I'm happy you liked it.  It was 1400 of my man hours, a fact that seems overlooked by someone with oh 20 hours of game time coming to kick sand in someones face - and that's not you.  At least you found something else to do.  Now it looks like there are no emergencies so I'll leave this forum to the users; hopefully they'll eventually tire of taking their frustrations out on me and go play the game.  I in turn will only come here for true emergencies -- such as dangerous links.  The rest can sit a year and noone will care.  Thats how Warsword Conquest is, and not one person ever complained.  I come here and everyone complains.  Ergo, ignoring the forum would make everyone happy.  And it would be good for me.  As for respect -- the users will feel more respected.  And they still will think Guspav wrote everything after August 1st 2017, but I don't care if the fairy godmother wrote it.  I just want quiet right now.  Its the one thing some people refuse to give.  Go to bed, oh users of someone else's mod.  I can probably find quiet at Rigale instead.  I wish they'd get a life instead of reading mine.  And I'll stop blogging here.  But leave the personal attacks somewhere else.  And dont ask me for favors.  Not if you wont respect me.  This to the haters, and they'll know who they are.  Locked before they reply.  Go make a different thread, the OP likes the game.  Let one person be happy for once.