Situation report

Hello everybody,

As some of you may or may not know, I am now back in college. It is going to take up most of the free time that I used to have during the past months. As such, development of new features has now ceased until further notice. I will try to continue providing fixes for critical issues, especially concerning persistence and the antihack, but don't expect my involvement in anything beyond that for the moment being.

Concerning the bounty system and R3F v3.1, they are also affected, and as such will either not be implemented in A3W vanilla, or maybe only late next summer if lucky. I did have plenty of time to implement them during the holidays, but the problem is that I simply couldn't find the motivation needed to work on them. Maybe it's related to the fact that I barely want to play A3W myself anymore, or maybe because I have worked too much on the mission to the point where it bores me, but I'm unable to pinpoint a specific reason.

About Make Arma Not War, the finalists have been announced today, and A3W didn't make the cut. I didn't expect it to, but anyway it isn't the reason why I work on A3W, so it ain't that big of deal. I do definitely want to thank everyone who supported us, everyone who has played, everyone who has complimented, everyone who has contributed, everyone who has donated, and of course everyone who has hosted or is hosting the mission. A3W wouldn't have made it that far without all of you. So, a big thank you.

Now, I just want to say that this isn't the end. I am in college, but I do plan on doing additional work on the mission during break weeks (if I don't have exams after), summer, and most likely holidays. I did say to a few of you that I was planning on full retirement from A3W next August, but that plan is shelved for now, at least if A3W remains the dominant open-source Wasteland mode in Arma 3. I will stay onboard in the long term, but people will have to rely less on me for new features.

The only person who has proved capable of and is willing to make new features so far is micovery, so if you are a server owner, I certainly do encourage you to implement his custom features if you're interested in them. Those which are saving-related don't work with extDB or iniDB, and require running his Node.js fork, but if you're a new server owner and they're something you want to have, then you can definitely run his fork instead of the vanilla mission, he updates it pretty regularly, unlike me with vanilla.

Alright, I think that's all I have to say for now. Take care.

- Agent

Thank you AgentRev!

It's been a great experience with playing A3Wasteland. I have always appreciated your direct response and hope you the best in the future with studies.

If there is ever anything you need and I might be able to help out, please reach out.

Without your time, I would not have found such a great enjoyment in providing fun for others. Thanks again!

Thank you AgentRev!

Your effort is much appreciated. The mission is imo very good as it is right now, it has many great features and they work very well. For the features you mention i they would be very nice addition and they will probably be implemented in some fashion. You provided a great community here (Joshaap and the others aren't forgotten), and i had a great time with all your support, answering all my stupid questions and giving great advice. I learned so very much from you and others here (so many great ppl here).

Thanks and i wish all the best and hope that you succeed with your study's and with everything else in life.

/Micael 

As a really quiet member here, I almost didn't say anything.  Then I thought about how much you folks have given to make my friends happy...

You gave us an incredible gift.  Your time, effort, probably some blood, sweat, and tears.  In the beginning it was probably interesting and neat, tons of fun.  You started with a goal in mind and you chased it hard.  I have to imagine that this is cooler than you first thought it was (if not, WOW, I want to get you a budget).
Then came the bug reports, the questions (mine, being some of them), and the bug stomping.  Oh yeah, the feature requests.  What started out as a fun project became a job.

These things are massive undertakings (I'm perusing your code right now...), and when the public gets involved it can get a lot tougher.  Couple it with that "job" like atmosphere and it's natural for it to lose some of it's fun.

Stop.  Take a break. Bare minimum, step back.  It may call you back.  You'll tinker and poke and prod.  Implement some new stuff quietly, or just jump in and play again, the way you wanted to when you started on this course.
But don't keep pushing at it just to push at it.
Please don't ever think your efforts aren't appreciated.  There aren't enough words to convey my appreciation for what you've done here.

Kick college's ass, and enjoy yourself.  Hell, take a class that can showcase this and get credit for your work.

Huge thanks.  Continue to do great things!

Cheers Rev for everything.

You put in alot of effort to help everyone here and myself and others appreciate all the effort you put into this great mod.

Arma 3 would be dead for me if it wasnt for your hard work in making wasteland so enjoyable.You look at the server list right now and any other days,wasteland always dominates arma 3 - Thats because of all your hard efforts and others have put into this making it the most popular mod ever.

Payday for me is donation day for wasteland here.

Gonna smoke some weed.

Thank you Rev, for eveything. For the mission you make, for all the help you give here and for all the help you gave me on steam. I'm glad we the community can help each other aswell.
Take a break, focus on your study and it will eventually, and hopefully will come back to you.

-edit-
For anyone interested, I have a working version of r3f 3.1 on my server. Still have to work out a couple of bugs, but am working on it.