End of week report

Hey guys!  This is the end of week 2 of the MFAGA plan.

Week 2 progress
This week we made progress on all four MFAGA objectives:

• Simplifying the avatar: illustrator Victoria has been working incredibly hard on this, and I can't wait to share her work with you.
  
  We also progressed some supporting tasks in this area: her new avatar is structured differently, so the old character creation UI needed to be updated so you will be able to interact with the new artwork.  Lara, Hyneman and I worked on the design of that this week, and Hyneman is currently testing the layer architecture code that we designed last week.
  
  This MFAGA objective is nearly complete!  The benefit will be much faster production of avatar clothes and other customisation options in future.
   
• Removing barriers to contribution: Yesterday I posted the Final Ultimate Master Skills List v2, an important step towards making the game systems complete enough for other writers to use.  
  
  This was a good example of the benefits of working as a team: I'm pleased with the new solution (and community feedback so far has been good), but I would never have figured it out on my own.
   
• Improving admin: doing my best.  I've been consciously trying not to get too engrossed in my own taskings, and to take a little time out every day just to think about where the project is going, reaching out to team members when they or I need support.  I'm also gradually getting the length of my work days back under control (although this is still WIP), and I'm starting to feel the benefits of resting the last two weekends: I'm more energetic during the week.
  
  I've got a long way to go before I can claim to be doïng well in this area but I'm definitely doïng better.
  
  In news that will please all the grandmas I never knew I had, 'til I mentioned the trucker pills:* I cut back from 50mg/day to 25mg/day this week.  The only effect I've noticed is that I'm sleeping better; I haven't felt a performance decrease, so I'll continue to dial this down.
  
• Streamlining the writing: I got to work on this today!  I worked on the MFAGA tasks "Streamline the backstory" and "Create plot outlines" today – working on the structural stuff that will make the whole game easier and faster to write in the future.  Because I only started today it's not finished, but I'm thrilled with the work in progress.  More info soon.

Random thoughts:

• Still behind on my replies, including to some incredibly helpful messages that I read and absorbed but didn't reply to yet because they were so useful and well thought out that saying "thanks" didn't feel like it cut it, so I didn't even do that yet  :-(
• Some community members have asked about the dangers of feature creep and for some clearer timings on Bangkok.  These are good questions that you deserve a straight answer to and I'll address it in a dev post over the next few days (the delay is just that it's a complex issue and I haven't made time yet to write the progress report – I'll prioritise it, though, because I don't want any Patrons to feel misled about where we are and what's next).

Okay, so that was week 2!  Personally I'm really excited about the last fortnight – it feels to me like the project is getting firmly back on track.  But I know that we need to share content with you ASAP – this is our priority, and I'll include some detail on this in the aforementioned progress report.

My fucking eyelids have been flickering since yesterday – I guess I'm logging more screen time than these ridiculous gelatinous orbs can handle, so I'll sign off for now.  Have a great weekend, guys and dolls!  Next progress report will be Monday.

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* Seriously, I appreciate the concerned messages I got about the trucker pills.  Rest assured they're a very mild, non-addictive stimulant I got from a friendly pharmacist, it's not like I'm hooked on amphetamines or anything