[Mobius]

I'll copy and paste the comment I just made on the Discord channel, just to make my take on it clear:

I occasionally find comments on Italian media about FSO players who write comments on several well known mods. Do you see any of these people lurking around on HLP or Discord? Nope - they probably don't even have accounts. Yet still, they play the game and monitor all updates on both the engine and mods.

There's a "behind the scenes" FreeSpace fanbase we don't know that much about. It's just that it's no longer about forum posts.

The point is, people not posting on forum boards are definitely not a good indicator of the overall activity of the FreeSpace fanbase. We've released the first Series Resurrecta colleciton about ten days ago, and Discord comments on the mod far exceed forum posts on the dedicated board.

[0rph3u5]

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
- John Masefield, Sea Fever

Sad that the day had to come.

Spoon: I send you a PM

[Nightmare]

I'm sorry to hear that. Ironically, I was getting the impression that HLP finally took a turn upwards this year (unlike many other things), just that most stuff was being discussed on Discord or project boards. Are you atleast planning to promote your game over here when it's done?

[Droid803]

F

[EatThePath]

A few months back ngld talked some on discord about the amount of traffic Knossos was getting, and going from that info I'd wager the number of people who have downloaded and played any given mod is much, much higher than activity on the forums would suggest.

But that aside, moving on eventually is natural enough. Good luck with your game, and thank you for all you've brought to Freespace over the years.

[qazwsx]

Should be able to look at knossos usage in detail on the cloudflare dashboard

[starlord]

Such a pity. One of the most promising mods here.

This is no doubt fool’s hope speaking spoon but wouldn’t a prolonged hiatus do the trick while possibly returning to it later? Seems really a shame to see it die given the momentous work involved in there.

[Nightmare]

As much as I'd hope for that, that is 99%+ chance that it doesn't happen. Ofc you can say "nobody knows how long HLP will exist" but keep in mind that Spoon was already on an almost 2-year long hiatus before posting this, and it does not look like he'd ever feel like "damn, I need to finish this".

I was afraid this would happen at one point, but still heartbroken I am. I had wished that Spoon would've stayed around here from time to time too.

[starlord]

I understand that hlp has seen better days, although things like discord tend to mitigate that arguably. Many people have taken extended leaves from the forum. I just hope spoon will still pop in occasionally.

[Lorric]

I had wondered. Unfortunately my decision after I played Episode 1 to wait until all episodes were completed before playing seems to have been correct, though not in the way I would have expected.

Thank you for the closure, and I'm genuinely sad to see you and your project go. It was the reason I joined the forum, and has always remained my favourite project. Good luck for the future, and thank you for everything, including the things you've done for me over the years.

I wish we could see any stuff you might have made before stopping, art, ships, writing scripts, etc.

[Commander Zane]

What a terrible day for rain.

Thanks for everything you've done to this point. WoD is an absolute treat.

[starlord]

At least come back occasionally to say hi, or even check on releases.

[0rph3u5]

Should be able to look at knossos usage in detail on the cloudflare dashboard

I can only infer from the post above, but a quantity metric might not be the problem. - One thing that contribute to stagnation and exhaustion on a creative side is when feedback fails to materialize in the fields you want it to, sometimes you just don't hear from the people you want to hear from, and even then what you would like to have the most feedback on is just never talked about. Some of that is just problems with communication ... and even if you know this it can sometimes be harder than it looks, because one of the big advantages of blind feedback is that you get someone to talk about points you never considered.

Now, maybe none of this applies here, I am after all writing/FREDing for an audience of one and take the appraisal of my work by other as a bonus.

[manwiththemachinegun]

You did great work man. Here's hoping your next project is just as good.

[TechnoD11]

Little late to the party here but wanted to also chime in - WoD was always one of my favorites, especially with the release of act 2.

As for this:

I'm sorry to hear that. Ironically, I was getting the impression that HLP finally took a turn upwards this year (unlike many other things), just that most stuff was being discussed on Discord or project boards. Are you atleast planning to promote your game over here when it's done?

I'm pretty active on the HLP discord and would agree with this statement - we've had some pretty great stuff get released this year, def more than the last couple of years.

[guitarfan01]

Well, darn.

Not surprising, but sad. Not like I've been active on here for years anyway, but I literally just installed Knossos...

RIP WoD and so many different ambitious projects.

[Bloodwolf]

Thanks for these great campaigns. I am one of the lurkers who just visits here for 20 years but never got an account. (I feel a bit guilty so I made an account.)
I think it is safe to assume that all the releases are played a lot more than people would think.

For me WoD is already a classic and I will replay it just as some Marios for the decades to come.
When you first released and I played the first minute or so I expected something like a cringy fanfic with copy paste content from animes.

But you really made it work. Please make sure to share some info here when your game is released, old dudes like me have disposable income and when its from you there is no need to worry about quality.

[GamerMan27]

I only recently learned about this standalone title. I had played Freespace and Freespace 2 really late (2022) and I loved the campaigns. Fishing around for some mods for a game I loved, I eventually found your standalone mod. After a bit of hassle trying to get the mod to install, I finally got the mod and started playing. I don't think I stopped playing for 5 hours, the first day I played. As I write this reply, I just finished Wings of Dawn ep 1&2. And I am blown away. I absolutely love this game, and I can't thank you enough for making it Spoon. While I wish you were still working on it, I hope that your future endeavors are just as good as this was.