A Surfeit of Spaces
Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2023 8:46 pm
So. Given my very limited finances and very limited time, my ambitions for the hard launch have been further diminishing. The latest casualty is the free D&D 5e adventure I'd hoped to have done by the hard launch; it's not going to get done by then, or at least while maybe I could get it done by then if I really focused on it, it would take time better spent on higher priority work like getting the MediaWiki customizations done or, you know, actually posting some new articles. I still do want to make some free adventures available eventually, for 5e and for other systems, but... it's not going to be part of the hard launch. I wish it were, but it's not.
(That being said, I'm not sure how much this really would have helped bring attention to the Wongery anyway. There's a lot of 5e material on DriveThruRPG, and a free adventure may not get much notice without promotion—and if I had any ideas for how to promote the adventure or the means to do so, it would make more sense to skip the middleman and use those ideas and means to promote the Wongery directly.)
But there are a few things I definitely do still want to get done before the hard launch. I want to put into practice what I learned in the CSS class on Udemy to give the non-wiki part of the site an improved look and layout. I want to add a Metawongery wiki for articles related to the Wongery as a whole—the entire site and project, not specifically the Central Wongery or the Public Wongery—this is something I first had the idea for while I was writing a blog post back in August, but the more I thought about it the more sense I made; there are several projectspace articles that I wasn't quite sure whether to put in the Central Wongery or the Public Wongery—the Wongery Manual of Style; an article about Wongery Conventions, etc.—that I think it would make a lot of sense to put in a Metawongery wiki instead. Speaking of which, there are a lot more projectspace "meta" articles I'd really like to have up before the hard launch.
And I still hope to get the custom namespaces implemented. Admittedly, that's looking dicey right now. ("Dicey" is another word I don't think I've ever used before. Huh. Or maybe I have, but it's certainly not a word I've used much.) I have less than three weeks left, and I haven't even started the PHP course on Udemy that I want to get through before I try making MediaWiki customizations. (This isn't just out of sheer laziness (though that may be a part of it); I plan to start the PHP course as soon as I've finished the JavaScript course I'm currently taking, and I'm not quite done with that yet. (Almost, though. I'm on the penultimate unit (out of twenty-two), so... soon.) But I still plan to make a serious effort to get this done before the hard launch, even if it means devoting all my time to it over the holidays.
That being said, I'm not going to implement all the namespaces I've mentioned right away. Like I said in the previous post, I'm definitely not going to have the Atlasspace finished, a namespace for interactive maps. And there may not be much point in implementing the Worksspace before there are any works to put there. But the Gamespace, the Buildspace, the Assetspace, and the Sourcespace should all be present, even if there's not much there yet. At the hard launch, the Gamespace is likely to have only a few RPGs (probably D&D 5e, EABA, Basic Role-playing, GURPS, and maybe * Dominion Rules, Savage Worlds, and/or the Year Zero Engine), and only a handful of things statted for each system; only one CCG (the Strike Engine), and probably no wargames yet, or maybe one or two with just a few units statted. The Buildspace will have a few LEGO models, maybe an origami model or two; the Assetspace may not have anything at all yet, but it will at least exist and be there ready to have assets uploaded to it when I have them.
But there are other namespaces I've been thinking of that, like the Atlasspace, definitely won't be implemented at launch, but may be implemented later. Possibly much later, but... these are things I'd like the Wongery to have eventually. Note that the names are very tentative, and likely to change when and if the namespaces are actually implemented.
Oh... and one other thing that I've been thinking it might be nice for the Wongery to eventually have that, if it ever does happen (which it probably won't), won't be in a subspace and won't in fact be part of the wiki at all, is a Wongery store. This might at first (if it ever exists, which it probably won't) just sell products made internally, but would branch out to sell works made by others based on Wongery worlds, or just based on imaginary worlds in general. Not only would this give us a convenient means of distribution of our own merchandise (whatever hypothetical merchandise that may be; I don't know), but it may also help bring attention to interesting products by others, and, not incidentally, could be a source of income for the Wongery. As a parallel I'm thinking of the Paizo store. Paizo, of course, is the RPG company best known—in fact, currently pretty much only known—for the Pathfinder and Starfinder role-playing games. (Well, and a few Pathfinder- and Starfinder-branded products like the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. But the Paizo site includes a store that sells not only their own products but games by other publishers as well. So I figure that if Paizo can do this, the Wongery can (eventually) do this as well. In principle. Except that Paizo has people working for it who know a lot about business. I am not a businessman; I don't know any businessmen; and I don't have money to pay businessmen. Which is why this almost certainly will never happen.
So, anyway, these are some additional long-term plans for the Wongery. Which I really shouldn't be dwelling on right now, because I have a lot of short-term plans that still need to be implemented, and not much time to do it. Ecch. The next few weeks I'm going to be busy. Well, I'm pretty much always busy, which is part of the problem. But anyway, I've got to focus.
(That being said, I'm not sure how much this really would have helped bring attention to the Wongery anyway. There's a lot of 5e material on DriveThruRPG, and a free adventure may not get much notice without promotion—and if I had any ideas for how to promote the adventure or the means to do so, it would make more sense to skip the middleman and use those ideas and means to promote the Wongery directly.)
But there are a few things I definitely do still want to get done before the hard launch. I want to put into practice what I learned in the CSS class on Udemy to give the non-wiki part of the site an improved look and layout. I want to add a Metawongery wiki for articles related to the Wongery as a whole—the entire site and project, not specifically the Central Wongery or the Public Wongery—this is something I first had the idea for while I was writing a blog post back in August, but the more I thought about it the more sense I made; there are several projectspace articles that I wasn't quite sure whether to put in the Central Wongery or the Public Wongery—the Wongery Manual of Style; an article about Wongery Conventions, etc.—that I think it would make a lot of sense to put in a Metawongery wiki instead. Speaking of which, there are a lot more projectspace "meta" articles I'd really like to have up before the hard launch.
And I still hope to get the custom namespaces implemented. Admittedly, that's looking dicey right now. ("Dicey" is another word I don't think I've ever used before. Huh. Or maybe I have, but it's certainly not a word I've used much.) I have less than three weeks left, and I haven't even started the PHP course on Udemy that I want to get through before I try making MediaWiki customizations. (This isn't just out of sheer laziness (though that may be a part of it); I plan to start the PHP course as soon as I've finished the JavaScript course I'm currently taking, and I'm not quite done with that yet. (Almost, though. I'm on the penultimate unit (out of twenty-two), so... soon.) But I still plan to make a serious effort to get this done before the hard launch, even if it means devoting all my time to it over the holidays.
That being said, I'm not going to implement all the namespaces I've mentioned right away. Like I said in the previous post, I'm definitely not going to have the Atlasspace finished, a namespace for interactive maps. And there may not be much point in implementing the Worksspace before there are any works to put there. But the Gamespace, the Buildspace, the Assetspace, and the Sourcespace should all be present, even if there's not much there yet. At the hard launch, the Gamespace is likely to have only a few RPGs (probably D&D 5e, EABA, Basic Role-playing, GURPS, and maybe * Dominion Rules, Savage Worlds, and/or the Year Zero Engine), and only a handful of things statted for each system; only one CCG (the Strike Engine), and probably no wargames yet, or maybe one or two with just a few units statted. The Buildspace will have a few LEGO models, maybe an origami model or two; the Assetspace may not have anything at all yet, but it will at least exist and be there ready to have assets uploaded to it when I have them.
But there are other namespaces I've been thinking of that, like the Atlasspace, definitely won't be implemented at launch, but may be implemented later. Possibly much later, but... these are things I'd like the Wongery to have eventually. Note that the names are very tentative, and likely to change when and if the namespaces are actually implemented.
- Foodspace: A space for recipes for dishes eaten on Wongery worlds, or somewhat reasonable facsimiles thereof. I am not a chef, and cannot come up with good recipes myself, but maybe eventually I'll be in a position to pay someone to do so. (I would not necessarily be averse to learning enough about cooking to come up with recipes myself, except that there is already a huge list of other things I would like to learn to do, and as much as I might like to, I can't learn to do everything, among other reasons because of course I don't have unlimited time.)
- Tonguespace. Okay, that's a really bad name. I thought "Languagespace" was too long, and "tongue" is a synonym of "language", so that was the first name that occurred to me (well, maybe the second name after the unwieldy "languagespace", but... yeah, it sounds weird. Wordspace? I don't know. Anyway, this would be a namespace devoted to original languages spoken on Wongery worlds. The Wongery does make use of some invented languages , although perhaps fewer than you might assume, since we do also draw upon some not necessarily well known real-world languages, and I think it would be nice to have a place where there's more information available about them. I'm not entirely sure what would go here. A dictionary? A grammar guide? Language lessons? All three? Well, definitely at least the first two, I guess, but as separate namespaces or in the same? For that matter, how should it be organized? You can't exactly put an entire grammar guide to a language on a single page—or at least you shouldn't. Maybe subsubspaces. Maybe I should stop worrying about this for now, since it's definitely not going to happen anytime soon.
- Virtualspace: Okay, I admit, I'm kind of fond of virtual reality. Not most current implementations of virtual reality, like the insipid wasteland that is Meta's "Horizon Worlds". But I think there's a lot of interesting potential in virtual reality, even if little of it has yet been realized. Anyway, I think it could be fun to have virtual environments representing parts of Wongery worlds that users can explore and interact with. Again, though, this won't be happening anytime soon.
- Soundspace. I think it would also be fun to have, well, sounds from the various worlds. The noises made by various creatures. The unique dins of particular cities. Samples of people speaking the Wongery's original languages—or maybe that would be confined to the Tonguespace. Maybe including music, or maybe that should be in a separate space. No, probably a subspace. Maybe the Soundspace should have subspaces for music, sound effects, and ambient sounds. I don't know.
- Propspace. In this namespace would be paper props corresponding to various worlds and their contents. Faux newspapers, playbills, pamhplets, circulars, and assorted documents. Maybe also including 3D-printable files for non-paper props, although that might overlap with the Buildspace. Maybe "life-sized" models could go in the Propspace and others in the Buildspace? Or maybe not; I don't know.
Oh... and one other thing that I've been thinking it might be nice for the Wongery to eventually have that, if it ever does happen (which it probably won't), won't be in a subspace and won't in fact be part of the wiki at all, is a Wongery store. This might at first (if it ever exists, which it probably won't) just sell products made internally, but would branch out to sell works made by others based on Wongery worlds, or just based on imaginary worlds in general. Not only would this give us a convenient means of distribution of our own merchandise (whatever hypothetical merchandise that may be; I don't know), but it may also help bring attention to interesting products by others, and, not incidentally, could be a source of income for the Wongery. As a parallel I'm thinking of the Paizo store. Paizo, of course, is the RPG company best known—in fact, currently pretty much only known—for the Pathfinder and Starfinder role-playing games. (Well, and a few Pathfinder- and Starfinder-branded products like the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. But the Paizo site includes a store that sells not only their own products but games by other publishers as well. So I figure that if Paizo can do this, the Wongery can (eventually) do this as well. In principle. Except that Paizo has people working for it who know a lot about business. I am not a businessman; I don't know any businessmen; and I don't have money to pay businessmen. Which is why this almost certainly will never happen.
So, anyway, these are some additional long-term plans for the Wongery. Which I really shouldn't be dwelling on right now, because I have a lot of short-term plans that still need to be implemented, and not much time to do it. Ecch. The next few weeks I'm going to be busy. Well, I'm pretty much always busy, which is part of the problem. But anyway, I've got to focus.