As anyone who has visited this site recently can guess, there isn’t really any work being done.

I could keep putting together artwork or try to get a programmer on board but there would still be the same difficulties I faced before. I think that in order for me to move forward with what i want to accomplish, both with this game and outside of it, there are certain hurdles that i need to get over.

I work a full time job with an hour commute both ways. Free time is a scarce commodity. I’m not in the position to not have a job- I’m married, have expensive rent, I just turned 30 blah blah its just not an option. My job has nothing to do with game design. I’m a carpenter. But the main problem isn’t my job, its my lack of involvement in anything related to game design. None of my friends have any interest in game development of any kind, no family members are interested in what I want to do – I have literally no contact on a daily basis with anyone that does anything even remotely close to the sorts of things I would like to accomplish long term. There is no support group, no structured learning, no contacts, no events. Spending an hour before dinner trying accomplish some super small thing for a game this complicated several times a week just wont cut it.

Back to the whole programming thing: I don’t expect one person to program a game like Optera. Its just way to complicated. It involves networking, server and client type stuff, game play programming, and lots of complicated UI stuff. However, with my current inability to program even basic game play its difficult to get this out there and generate interest. I need to learn programming for two reasons: I need to be able to prototype stuff. Just designing and doing art for big ideas will only get me so far as we have seen. The second reason I need to learn programming is that I need to be able to work with programmers! How can one collaborate with someone if they know absolutely nothing about what they do?

I have been messing around with c# the past few months and watching a bunch of videos and playing around trying to write basic stuff, but it isn’t easy. Its not easy to find time to keep pushing forward when your daily life pushes you in every direction except the one you want to go in. I’m considering going back to school or at the very least taking classes to keep moving forward. Being in that environment around people who share the same passion would have to be beneficial. I need to be challenged by people who are better than me and are accomplishing great things. I need some sort of structure and direction. A path to go on. Without it it just feels like being lost in space.

I need to throw something visual up here to counter all this text:

This is the first image I ever created that looked like what I envisioned for Optera. This was probably about three years ago. After I finished it I couldn’t stop looking at it.

If you are unfamiliar with Morrowind and the Tamriel Rebuilt community then take a look at it: http://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/?q=content/about

The content is created entirely by excited volunteers and its free to download. I don’t think Optera has enough interested people to function like that but I always thought that would be the best scenario for it. I added a new poll to the site. Please check it out.