Welcome back part 1: Website

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Hello, and welcome back to all my Kickstarter backers. Welcome to any newcomers too, obviously, but these first few posts are aimed primarily at people who have been involved with this project for years and just need to be brought up to date.

Some of us have been discussing the changeover to this new website for a while, now, over on the old site, but that was by no means all of us. Now that I’ve mapped this new site onto the grandroids.com domain, you won’t be able to read that discussion any more. So if this leaves you confused about what’s going on, believe me, you’re not the only one! I can easily lose track of who knows what, as I try to shift gears and introduce new people to my work. But you’re here now, and that’s the main thing!

You missed some nice dinosaur footprints, too, but I may post them again one day, when I have a suitable excuse. Meanwhile, I’ll try to bring everybody up to speed in this first few posts. I’m hoping to keep this down to three posts, each covering a different aspect of the project, but they’ll be long ones, so you might want to make some coffee!

So, we have a new website! Or at least, the beginnings of one.

It’s actually accessible through two domains: https://grandroids.com, as before, and https://phantasia.life, to match the new name of the game. I may drop the Grandroids name eventually, so feel free to update your browser bookmarks to point at phantasia.life instead, but there’s no rush.

The new site runs on WordPress, which I’m much more comfortable with than Drupal. The old site ran on Drupal 7, which is close to obsolete now, and that only supported an old version of PHP, so I either had to update the site to a new major version of Drupal to keep it secure, or else delete the whole thing entirely. I’ve chosen to do the latter. Not only is keeping Drupal updated a pain at the best of times, and upgrading through several major versions spanning a decade might be the last straw for my sanity, but also I think we need a fresh start.

Why? Because the project is now entering a new phase. It has a new name (Phantasia, if you hadn’t already guessed), a new backstory (you may have seen hints of this on the home page), and I’ve done a huge amount of work on the code over the past few years, which I haven’t told anybody about yet. Also, I feel like I’ve finally reached the point where I can start introducing the project to new people, including people who wanted to take part some time ago, but I asked to wait. Eventually I hope to earn an actual living from this outreach. Fingers crossed, anyway! I think I’m doing something quite significant; maybe even marginally historic, but it’s been a really long time since Kickstarter, and ‘man cannot live on code alone’.

I’m really sorry I went so quiet for so long – this is a real killer of a project to work on, both emotionally and physically, and I got to the point where I just couldn’t deal with making all these major and frequently reconsidered changes, while the Unity ecosystem was shifting rapidly beneath my feet, and discuss each step of my thinking with you guys as I went. So, I decided I needed to put my head down, block my ears, and just get on with it. I’m back now.

Anyway, yes, the game is now called Phantasia, and I’ve re-imagined the web site and community as a membership site. In other words, from now on, I’ll be charging people a small amount per month in membership fees, in return for access to the software and the creatures themselves (among other benefits).

Those of you who backed my Kickstarter have already donated to the project, so although that was a long time ago, it wouldn’t be fair to start demanding more money from you now. As an original backer, you’ll continue to get access to everything, just like before. Simply sign up for the free ‘Visitor’ tier and, if your email matches my records, I’ll move you to an equally free tier that is functionally equivalent to a full paid membership, yet only available to Kickstarter backers.

Nonetheless, if you’re willing to sign up instead for a paid tier and support my work on a regular basis from now on, I would be tremendously grateful (you can ‘downgrade’ again at any time). I honestly won’t be offended if you don’t want to or can’t, but if you do, then thank you!

Why is this new membership site called the Frampton Gurney Phantasmagorical Society? Well, basically, why not? Frampton Gurney was the name I put on the station platform signs in the last few versions of the virtual world, so it’s a place I’ve developed a soft spot for in my imagination. It also fits with the general look and feel I’m after, although more on this in a separate post.

We have to have some kind of identity, and membership sites are often used for clubs and societies, so charging ‘membership dues’ seemed like an appropriate and even rather fun way to fund my life’s work. It’s similar to how Patreon is designed to support artists and bloggers, except it’s not so predicated on producing regular media output. I can certainly produce regular blog posts now, but they’re not my core ‘content’, which is measured instead in genes, 3D objects, lines of code, and theoretical developments to the game itself. Membership of a club seemed less ‘transactional’ and more community-focused, somehow.

Anyway, the Frampton Gurney Phantasmagorical Society it is, and I’m doing it independently of Patreon and suchlike, because of the different focus. Patreon might have brought in more people, since it’s such a huge site, but I think word of mouth is much better anyway. So if you’d like to spread the word, I already trust that you’ll know the right kinds of people to spread it to. And, as of today, you can!

So, this first post was mostly to update you on the new website. Obviously it has a very long way to go yet, as far as adding content is concerned. But that’s okay. Everything I do is ‘evolutionary’, so hopefully we can just let it evolve.

Right now, we have this blog (which is where we’ve traditionally held most conversations anyway), plus a few static pages that all sites need these days (privacy policy, About pages, etc.) The other main part of the site is the Encyclopedia Phantasia, a wiki-like system where I plan to document the HUGE amount of information on the creatures’ genes, biochemistry, brains, etc. This has all been missing up to now, because it was constantly in flux, but things are far more settled at last, and I can finally begin documenting it. I think it will be a very important part of the whole project.

For now, I’m the only one who can edit the Encyclopedia, but I’ve built it so that all full members will be able to add and edit pages eventually. Things they’ve learned about how the creatures behave, what they eat, how to cross-breed mushrooms… I think it will turn into a useful resource.

We need other ways to communicate and document things as well, so I plan to start a Discord server soon. Perhaps we also need a forum, but maybe blog comments and Discord will be enough. I’d like to invite you all to make videos and write stories and suchlike, eventually (at least one person is already primed to do that), so we’ll need a community-driven way for that to happen as well. And we’ll probably need volunteer moderators on Discord, because I’m now officially an old man and don’t understand the social nuances of all that stuff. But, one step at a time!

In my next post, I’ll talk about what has happened to the software since I went quiet. There’s quite a lot to talk about…


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Mabus
Mabus
1 month ago

Where can we sign up to be next in line for being primed up for story’s, videos, 3d models of whatever?

BoB3K
BoB3K
1 month ago

To add my 2 cents — I’ve never used discord, don’t like ‘chats’. I have always been and still am a forum type person– more thought out and permanent posts. Anything worth saying is saved in the archived conversations.

Stephen
Stephen
5 days ago

Hi Steve,

How are you?

I’ve tried a few times to message you on Contact but keep getting a ‘there was an error sending your message’ alert after clicking send?

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