Tag: independent

BRIEF UPDATE, JUNE 2021

I am working on a lot of different things, but the unavoidable result of that is that each individual effort progresses more slowly. That said, here’s a breakdown of where things stand:

  1. Microtasks. These have become higher-priority as I’ve found some work [off and on] that pays more, as in an average of $7.20/hour. And it’s work that’s available about half the time, each week so… I’ve made $400+ so far this year doing that, most of it since mid-May. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it earth-shattering, or life-changing, but rather pathetically this – minimum-wage part-time work – has a better pay rate than anything I’ve ever really landed in my life before.
  2. Miniature papercraft. I’m updating it a bit in the next couple days with a modest amount of new material tacked onto existing listings. You’ll see more soon. And best part is I do actually have a large-format printer with fantastic print quality, it can go up to 13″ by 19″ poster size. This means my papercraft will be available in TT and HO scales soon and not just the smaller scales (T, Z, N).
Nigel’s Pub, with an optional ‘outdoor seating’ addition. One of several new structures being tacked onto the British papercraft set in the next few days, across multiple scales of printable papercraft. Is there any name more stereotypically British than Nigel? Certainly not a name that is at all common in the USA!

3. Blood… the blood particle effects I have for free on Itch.IO just got an update. And it’s one of a number of updates showing up over the next week there. Watch for about 30-40 more assets to be added across some of my texture and 3d asset packs before the July 4th sale. WHICH IS ONLY ACTIVE FOR ONE DAY – JULY 4, 2021! DON’T FORGET IT!

Blood. For all the horror fans on Itch.IO.

Speaking of July 4 – I absolutely am working towards a gigantic sale on Etsy that will coincide with the Itch one and it’ll be good too. And though promotional efforts have been sort of modest this past month, they’re likely to be substantial starting a couple of days from now.

As in, I’ll be spending approx. $55 on ad campaigns, just between now and the end of the July 4 sale. That is, $35 over the two weeks leading up to that date and $20 on the day itself. It’s extremely likely to produce massive results based on past test runs.

Recall that in the past three years, between Etsy and Itch.IO, I’ve made over 60 individual sales worth over $500 total… almost all of them the direct result of active ad campaigns that were about $150 in all. So given that track record, I figure making over a dozen sales across these two venues in one day… July 4th… is fairly likely. This also means that some of the popular oft-viewed, oft-favorited listings on Etsy should finally sell by the end of that day. If you want them, but have been holding off… seriously, grab them now before someone else does! (Or take a chance on that, and wait until the morning of July 4th, and get the item you want then at 20% off if it happens to still be there.).

In preparation for the new sale I’ll be increasing the total listing count on Etsy to over 20 total listings, 20 different listed items. Granted, some of the new listings will be print stuff – the model railroading stuff appearing in a couple of larger scales they have not yet appeared in. But there will also be some new paintings showing up by the start of the sale.

Final notes: I am still working on both “Miniature Multiverse” and “Panoramic Worlds HD”. As for the latter – in the past month I’ve scrapped the old scene load/unload system and set up a new one with nicer loading screens, I implemented ad and ad-free versions of that loading-screen transition, did some playtesting, identified some situational bugs and fixed most of them, did a bit more graphics polishing in various spots, and in another few days will be doing further playtesting with a handful of other people (mostly close family) and will note any glitches/bugs they find, or any places that are confusing or that get them stuck. I’ll try to fix whatever issues they find, and also will post some trailer and video material on the web (Youtube, Vimeo, the PWHD website, the Itch.IO page, etc.)

Despite numerous failed deadlines, many delays and numerous bugs found and quashed, now I am still very optimistic that it’ll be out there by the time the sale hits. As in, during the week leading into the sale. Keep an eye out for that! It shouldn’t be more than 12 days off now!

Also, I’m working on a MAJOR update for HornbostelVideos.com to go live after that sale, some time in early July. Just know that that is still in the works. I want a lot more of my archived video content accessible but… still, not everything. There are basically going to be several tiers/categories of stuff for legal and other reasons.

Reevaluation of priorities

Status update – I’ve been in Pittsburgh for a while, I’ve gotten past the ‘trial by fire’ of childcare and have a few days off right now to sort through things. I’m now sending out a bunch of long-delayed eBay orders as well as 100% refunds of the purchase prices of those orders as an apology for the delays in shipping. Also, as you might have noticed, my websites were down for weeks, due to a weird glitch in my billing setup at A2 Hosting. I’ve now sorted that out and all my domains are back online and should hopefully remain online from here on out.

The bad news is, I’m having real difficulty getting many of my external hard drives to work. That includes drives with critical content on them relating to many of my projects, some of that content is essential and irreplaceable.

I did back everything up locally in a massive reorganization effort; each drive had a mirror drive which was filled with identical content. Unfortunately, only 3 out of my 10 drives are functional post-move which means in a couple of cases both the original drive and its duplicate are both unusable. With data recovery costs at around $400+ per drive, I figure I’ll need $800 minimum to get everything back on track production-wise.

I have noticed that certain projects are almost entirely intact. One of the few of my projects that still seems mostly in place is my game ‘Miniature Multiverse‘. I need close to a thousand dollars in position in order to recover all the inaccessible data. That includes a ton of video projects that were nearing completion, as well as game productions, and scattered side projects including a batch of fan content I was close to done with and now cannot access.

So here’s the deal I’m making with all of you. I will work as hard as possible to wrap up ‘Miniature Multiverse’ and do it justice, with the goal of launching the project by end of 2018, several months early. I am desperately hoping it will then sell well enough to jumpstart the data recovery effort, which in turn would allow me to complete other projects, their existence contingent on ‘Miniature Multiverse’ succeeding. I won’t have a big ad budget for the launch, every last penny and every available waking hour goes into getting the game finished, so I’m counting on all of you to PLEASE buy this thing when it’s done because the future of nearly everything else of mine pretty much is hanging in the balance. If the game does well, I can accelerate my productions, and if it fails, then you’ll see a bitter wait of 2+ years possibly before anything around here makes much progress again.

I’d be grateful if you’d spread the word about the project – and share this Itch.IO page and the official website of Miniature Multiverse.