I spent most of the last six weeks sharing my free time between two projects: the upcoming 1.1 release of WebIssues and the final chapters of the second part of my book. So the next logical step is... to start a new, third project. It's been a long time since I last started a completely new project and at some point I even though it's not going to happen anymore... But, as usual, in the least expected moment, an idea came to my mind and formed quite a clear shape. Within a few days I hacked together a proof of concept of what's supposed to be a combination of classic logic and arcade games.
The idea of the game is that there is a simple labyrinth which you can see from above, but it's three-dimensional, with multiple levels, so you can jump and fall, go up and down stairs, etc. So far the player consists of just a helmet which I modeled using Descend and some crazy math. Within an hour I added an export function to Descend which saves the model into a very simple file format which can be then imported by the game engine. So far it looks very cool :).
I know that a lot of people are waiting for WebIssues 1.1. I promised that it will be released by the end of this year and I'm going to try hard to keep that promise. I'm really very close, especially that I've already cut off a lot of unnecessary things and I'm only focusing on the most useful features. After it's done I'm going to take a longer break from it, especially that now I understand that I was fooling myself thinking that as it becomes more and more popular, someday I will be able to make some profit from it.
The book is unfortunately going to have to wait for now, even though it's probably about 75% done and there are a few people waiting for me to finish it as well. But the question whether I can expect anyone to ever publish it remains open; not because it's not good enough, but because publishers don't invest money in a book written by completely unknown authors, and it's quite understandable. But next year I'm definitely going to finish it, even if it's going to end up as a few xeroxed volumes for friends and family.
The game, if I'm really ever going to create it, most likely won't be open source like my other projects. Not that I expect to make any real money on it. I'm aware of the fact that there is a lot of competition in indie games industry and it takes a lot of PR and marketing effort to achieve even a moderate commercial success. I'm only going to do it as long as I feel it's fun. After all, I've been into making computer game since I was a child. Perhaps I'm feeling a bit nostalgic lately and somehow I feel that this is the last chance to revive those old inclinations.
All projects I've done so far I did entirely for my own satisfaction. The process of creation is in most part a great experience by itself, kind of like exploring new unknown lands. And the biggest satisfaction comes from the realization that someone is actually going to use my program, read my book or play my game, and experience the same thing from a completely different perspective. We're more like artists than businessmen; it's the individual opinions that matter, not the numbers. That's why I can make decisions regarding my personal projects which not always seem rational, but often end up with something really interesting.