Good news everyone!Today’s Dev Diary will be about whatever I want it to be about! When I thought about what I would write in this dev diary I had a really hard time deciding what I should write. Most people told me that I should write about who I am and what I do, but I thought that felt a little self-absorbed. But anyway, let’s begin with being self-absorbed...My name is Rikard Åslund and I have worked at PDS since 2011. Initially I worked as a programmer and then senior programmer, but these days my main focus is being the project lead for Stellaris. I have worked on a bunch of different projects during my years here but I spent most of them working on EU4. After EU4 I moved to Stellaris to work as a senior programmer, but I took over as project lead after some time.As a project lead my main responsibility is to handle the execution of the project and making sure that we do that within set budget and time frames. Since I’m also the most senior programmer on the team I have also worked as a programmer lead (tech lead). These days I’m trying to step back from programming because I simply don’t have the time. This is something I feel confident doing since my team is so highly skilled, but it’s also hurtful since I love programming so much. Because of that I still try to write a couple of lines of code everyday, to keep my mind sane between all the different budget and time follow-up meetings.When I think about Stellaris I feel three different strong loves; the team, the game and the players. I have the privilege to spend each day surrounded by highly skilled and passionate people, they are the makers of the game and the ones that should receive all credit. I feel so extremely proud of what the team has achieved, we have managed to create a such a good game in a setting we have never worked in before.This game is in my personal opinion the best game PDS has ever created. First of all let me say that I love our other historical grand strategy games, no other games let you relive and feel history at such a grand scale. With that said I however have to say that sci-fi games have always had a certain attraction to me that few other games ever had. I love the feeling of dreaming myself away to an alien world and the feeling of exploring something new. Stellaris gives me exactly that possibility, I get to dream myself away.Now when the release is incoming you always feel as a developer that you would like to have some more time. This feeling is completely normal and if someone ever tells you that they are completely done and have nothing more to add, you should probably not buy that game because it will suck. With Stellaris I know in my heart that we have a really good product in our hands, I think the game would be really well received even if we released it tomorrow (no we won’t), but we are in no way done with this game. We have plans for working with this game for a really long time and I’m really looking forward to see how this game gets shaped by our players. I usually say that we probably don’t know exactly what Stellaris is until a year after release, I’m really looking forward to be along for that ride with you guys.Next week we will talk about Pop Factions and Elections , don't miss it!Fun fact: Stellaris was originally planned to have a locked camera like our other games, so that it felt more like a 2D map. The rotatable camera was implemented as a test because we had a hunch it might work better and it turned out so good that we kept it. Meaning that in Stellaris, in comparison to our other games, you can always rotate the camera by holding the right mouse button.