Full Steam Ahead · 1:27am Nov 7th, 2019
I've been sick for two weeks, but I'm doing better now. And I have some big news.
But first, smaller news.
I'm working on several stories. The two most likely to appear next are both from a recent competition. One was my entry, and the other is "from" the competition in another manner of speaking. The latter is currently the hottest iron in the fire, and also the most painful.
I get off the last week in November, and the first week of December is the last week I work in the semester. I have a goal to have TSJ complete(!) by the end of 2019, maybe with some fixing of errors because the thing is too freaking huge.
Okay, now the big news.
I'm going all-in on a MLP:FiM interactive fiction project tentatively titled Spellbound. It will be a text adventure game (maybe with added graphics and/or sound, dunno yet) featuring an incredibly detailed system for casting spells and performing alchemy. Much of the game will require developing your own spells and alchemy by modifying the techniques you learn in clever ways. You'll be playing as Luster Dawn initially, but your perspective may change over the course of the adventure...
This is a big, big, big project, and it will take a lot of time and effort, but the fire is within me and I am fully capable of pulling this off.
I'll be retooling my Patreon to focus on interactive fiction, and there will be rewards for patrons for early access, playtesting, and possibly squeezing ideas into the game if they're a good fit. 
Spellbound sounds awesome. Best of luck with it.
Good luck! :D
And glad you're feeling better. :)
That sounds pretty cool!
Glad to hear you're feeling better
Spellbound sounds awesome! Good luck with it!
Glad to hear you're feeling better, Trixie! Good luck with Spellbound. It sounds exciting and interesting!
whoa :O this I gotta see
How do you think Spellbound will be released? Where, price and so on?
5151655
It's fanfiction, so I can't Steam it. It'll be free.
It will probably be all over the pony media if pony media is still a thing. I'll definitely mention it here and on my Patreon. Frequently.
Some practical advice: even if you can do it alone, try to get others to contribute, and spend a lot of time trying to make them productive. The biggest bottleneck is probably not going to be your ability. The biggest bottleneck will probably be a lack of sustained motivation. Seeing other people build on your work, being able to "take a break" by working on other people's problems, and seeing other people make progress even on your off days... that helps a LOT.
5152797
I'm trying to get my husband Jewel (whitekitten/Tala Tearjerker) involved in it, but it's tricky. I don't think I can easily subversion this sort of thing so it's difficult to coordinate work. My intent is to give him "produce this effect" requests so he can do the research on expression fixes.
5152811
The actual coordination could be really haphazard, as long as people can find the things that interest them and the things might want to contribute to. Here's an example that's really minimal but seems to work really well: [/ded] (link will die in a few days).
It has (1) a single thread so people can post their thoughts or progress, (2) a tidy summary so people can get a sense for what's done and what needs doing, and (3) a bunch of links to results and more detailed descriptions. People post code on github / pastebin / colab, they upload things to mega.nz / clyp.it / Google Drive, they describe things in posts / pastebin / Google Docs. If you dive down into anything in particular, it's really messily organized, but it's good enough that people can wander in and contribute to something.
If there are any parts of SpellBound that can be very modular and very open-ended, I suspect it's a good candidate for similar loose coordination. Examples:
If you got to see any of the collaboration panels at BronyCon, those were also very insightful. Those were more top-down where a single person creates a Google Doc with the outline/script, clearly labels what needs doing, tracks their status, and pings a bunch of content creators for help. For "product this effect" style requests, this model might work better.
5152811
That can speed things up considerably, but I think you'll miss out on a lot of the motivational benefits by doing this. This is anecdotal, but for me, I don't get any kick from seeing people do work that I asked them to do, and it can feel really bad to ask them to do work on my off/unproductive days. Sometimes that kind of coordination consumes a lot more energy than it gives.
What interactive fiction engine do you think you'll use?
5155822
I started with ADRIFT but have already moved on to the one the real authors use: Inform 7.
It's incredible. The programming language reads like you're writing a novel.
5155966
There used to also be TADS and a couple of others, but I haven't looked into them in, like, 20 years.
I want to get back to IF, tho. Amazing that Inform is up to version 7.