Update on TMU

Alright, I'm posting an update on TMU.

As always, it's never dead, just a little slow sometimes.  I don't feel good that you've all been waiting for such a long time for another update.

My dad meant a hell of a lot to me.  I was born on September 28th, 1983.  I started farming with my dad when I was fourteen years old.  Back then, my grandfather was still alive.

It's normal on farms for the oldest member of the family to drive the combine.  It's the largest and most complex machine we run.  My grandfather taught me how to drive it when I was very young and I took over full time shortly after that.  My dad said I was a natural with heavy machinery.  I was.

The only way to own a farm yourself these days is to be lucky enough to be born a farmer.  I am that lucky and for that reason, I won't squander it.  I'm going to farm and I'm going to continue where my dad and grandpa left off.  It's going to be hard and scary as hell, but I'm going to do it, no matter what.  I'm ready to run a farm, I just wasn't ready to do it without my dad.

I want to tell you something else about me, something I wasn't comfortable sharing, but I think you've been waiting so long for an update to TMU that you deserve it.  I'm so thankful to have such a wonderful community behind the project.  What I reveal is by far not the only reason I work on TMU, but it is important to me.

I'm well educated.  I have a certificate in New Media Communications, Microelectronics and Ag Sciences.  I have a degree in Computer Science.  Despite that, I admit that I was a poor student in university.  I barely graduated.

I started work on my first game when I was 12.  It was called Dementia and it was a screen-based side-scroller written in Basic.  I had no internet connection, just a copy of Microsoft QBasic and a manual for GWBasic.

To me, computers were magical devices that could build anything you could imagine.

I have worked on over a dozen projects since then, mostly modding projects.  But here's the thing: I never finished any of them.  Not one.

I'm not happy with a project unless it's ambitious.  If it's not awesome, then I don't want to work on it.

I usually quit a project after about three months.  I look at the progress I've made after that time and what's left to be done and I feel discouraged.

When I was a kid, I really wanted to be a games developer.  Like, real bad.  I loved the idea of building anything you wanted, to bring to life anything you can imagine.

I have never finished a project.  I am now 39 years old.  I feel bad about that.  I want to make something that means something to everyone here.  How can I call myself a developer if I've never actually built anything?

TMU means a lot of things to me, beyond being a project I work on.  TMU means a lot to all of you.  Even if another developer makes something similar, I'm still building this and I will always be thankful for having you guys (and gals~!!).

My dad died of a massive heart attack in his late sixties.  We honestly thought he'd live to his late eighties.  It was so sudden that it scares me.  He went upstairs one night.  He was in perfect health.  Hell, farming wore me down more than him this year.  My mom heard him hit the floor.  She called an ambulance and did chest compressions, but he was dead instantly.  We never got to say goodbye.

It's made me more determined to build TMU.  To that end, I've enrolled in Unity's Professional Programmer certificate course.  My skills are badly out of date (I learned to write code for old Pentium 4's back in the day).  I'm going to upgrade my skills so I'm better equipped to build this.  After that, I'm going for my associate certificate as a Unity artist.  This will slow things down a bit, but it will not stop development.  I'm going to upgrade my skills so I'm better at what I do on this project in the long run.

The next update will include not only better versions of the current gags and blindfolds, but new ones too.  I'm going to work on the 3D models in between sessions spent in the programming course.  It will take time, but I'll do my best to make it worth your while.

Thank you so much for you continued support.  I'm so glad I have you as a community.  Hell, most of what I eventually finish is your ideas.   >: D