A Blog Resurection

It’s been a long while since I wrote anything on this blog. In fact, more than four years! There’s been two complete major WM releases since then – Artist Point and Hurricane Ridge. New features. Significant changes to how WM works. 15 public builds between dev and maintenance releases…. and no posts. What gives?

There are a few reasons for that. The biggest reason: Towards the end, this blog had become mostly a way to share release notes and show off the new features in each release. With the launch of the Help Center, all of that content rightfully found a home there. I was essentially copy-pasting content from one place to another, which didn’t feel valuable.

But it also made it confusing to figure out the purpose of the Dev blog.

…is it:

• “Official” communication from World Machine Software?
• Release notes and changelogs?
• A casual, behind the scenes look at what I’m working on?
• A way to debate or discuss new features?
• A personal blog?

I was increasingly using the blog as an “official” channel, and the communication style, topics covered, and effort required to post all morphed under that influence negatively. It was unclear what topics I should write about or what I was trying to accomplish. And so… I stopped writing here.

Fast forward to present day. The next release named ‘Dragontail Peak‘ includes some of the largest changes that have ever been made to World Machine, and I’m really excited about it.

But to share again, here, I need to make sure there is clarity. Both for others but especially for myself, about what I’m sharing and why.

And so, a mission statement of sorts:

Goals for the Dev Blog

• Speak in my own voice. This is my blog, not World Machine’s.
• The audience is World Machine enthusiasts.
• Provide a casual behind-the-scenes peek at what I’m creating.
• Also talk about the why and how.
• By sharing, provide an opportunity for folks to be engaged with planned new stuff early.
• … and just generally to geek out about terrain together.
• Share from my lived experience around making WM as a solo creator.

Non-Goals

• No version release notes, changelogs, or in depth documentation. That’s official content for the Help Center.
• The blog is Unofficial. It is not a marketing or support channel.
• I want the blog to be like a friendly chat with folks who are passionate about graphics at a pub. But it should be my Dev blog, not my personal blog.
• Likewise, the target audience is not the the general public, or even other devs. I can assume you know a fair bit about WM and enjoy it! I can also assume you don’t really care about arcana like solving differential equations or optimizing for modern SIMD behavior… things that I enjoy talking about but very few people enjoy listening to 😉

Those are my thoughts for now. The next posts here will start rolling in pulling back the curtains and sharing bits of some of the big changes coming down the pipeline.Looking forward to it!

Stephen