Wow.. the recent work you guys have done with animating oceans and clouds
sounds so cool. Just my luck that after a 3 year delay I finally release and go
public with my big FreeCol tour video right before you guys make such a cool
and massive change to the game's appearance haha *facepalm*, I guess I'll just
have to do a bonus episode video at some point lol! This is super cool and it's
already getting peoples attention so I've gotta ask again if there be a nightly
release soon so 'regular Jos' like me can see it without all the compiling
business? Sorry to pester you guys about that but because I'm the go between
contact between you guys here and the fans in the Col groups people are
pestering me about it haha! And of course I'm also copping the usual negative
"there hasn't been a nightly release in nearly a year so freecol must be dead"
garbage lately from people so it would be good to stop all that with a new
pre-release build even if its a one off for another 6-12mths while you guys
work on the next big stable release.
Also this reminds me.. Stian, I'm not sure if you were reading all the dev
messages over the last year or 2 but if not then I should let you know about
some of the stuff I setup. As well as creating the welcome & information thread
and updating the sourceforge front page pictures and info areas with Mike (by
working with I mean I continuously pestered the poor guy for months about that
haha) as well as helping Winter update the website front page and downloads
area to ensure the project looked alive and well again (as nearly all the stuff
in those areas was 10 years old giving fans the wrong impression), I also set
about fixing a fan community issue in that Colonization had no social media
presence and no forums were left either. So I created the Colonization Fans
facebook, Discord and Reddit groups for fans to get together and talk about the
classic game while I also created these groups to not so secretly promote
FreeCol content bringing more fans and programmer talent here to support the
project. The videos I've been releasing recently are the final stage in
promoting FreeCol and these ColFan communities to build them up and ensure that
we can have direct access to the fans for years to come whenever something
important happens with FreeCol. I still haven't fully promoted these videos
across all the retro gaming communities yet so there's still plenty of growth
in the months to come. So if you or any other members reading this would like
to join these groups you are more than welcome to as having one of FreeCol's
original creators visit would be a huge honour! However it's perfectly fine if
you don't as I remember Mike and Winter saying they're not big social media
people and you may be the same. I'm happy to still be 'the face' of FreeCol in
the groups to stop disinformation and share important news etc. :)
At this stage the Col FB group is up to 197 members so is just about to hit a
milestone!https://www.facebook.com/groups/ColonizationGame
Despite being much newer the Col Reddit group as really taken off and is about
to overtake the FB group as its at 193 members
now!https://www.reddit.com/r/ColonizationGame/
And lastly the Col Discord group is newer than the others and has also been
pretty slow in its growth so is only up to 53 member now, it would have been 56
but I had to boot 3 morons for spamming haha. I should also mention that this
discord has a dedicated FreeCol subchat area. Obviously many fan projects use
Discord for chatting so keep it in mind should anyone wish to switch to it in
the future if sourceforge suddenly closes or something
lol.https://discord.gg/CHcH75s
And lastly a year or so ago I was able to gain control of the old abandoned
FreeCol IndieDB page. We don't know who originally set it up many years ago, it
may have been you Stian? However for whatever reason it became abandoned for 10
or so years and was under no users control anymore. So I contacted the site
admins, discussed the situation and was able to get them to give me full
control of the page. This then allowed me to update its pictures, information
and downloads to get it all on par with the modern up to date information on
the FreeCol sourceforge and website. To ensure it never becomes abandoned again
if something happens to me I switched control of the game page from my account
to a IndieDB FreeCol dev team group and brought in Mike and Winter into the
team and gave them full control over the group and game page too. I've just
sent you a invite to the group too so there should be an email in your inbox
just before this one. If you would prefer the invite sent to a different email
of yours let me know. If you're not interested in joining that's fine too. With
Mike, Winter & myself there it should ensure the page stays under the dev teams
control now and doesn't get lost again or claimed by an impostor. IndieDB is a
great site for promoting fan projects as it has a huge fan/visitor base so it's
important for FreeCol to keep a presence
there.https://www.indiedb.com/games/freecol
I think that's everything from me. Happy new year guys!
Blake
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