Dear players,
I would like to inform all of you that my time with Arma modding has come to an end. I feel that it is just fair to make a public statement to counter all the false rumors and urban myths that are around these days. You simply deserve that. However, I cannot speak for my friends Grim and Vishpala here, but I think they feel the same.
There are many reasons why I am stepping back now. Where do I begin?
Exile has been my first game modification ever and I have spent all my love into it for more than one and a half year exclusively. I simply need something else now. This is like eating pasta for more than a year. Pasta sure is great, but I think we all agree that after that long time, you will want to eat something else.
I also just became a father this year and this little gnome needs my love more than everything else now. I have spent weeks of my private vacation time before his birth to finish version 1.0.0 and I simply do not have the time for that anymore. This truly is a life changer, but unfortunately, that is not it: Just hours after releasing the 1.0.2 update, I have suffered a stroke and ended up in the hospital. And the first message I have received in hospital: "Hey, your website was hacked and now shows swastikas!". Great. Thank you, I guess. Doctors say I might work and sit too much. I think I do. I work in another country and travel quite a lot. And sitting for about ten hours a day is definitely too much. I have also been working on Exile while sitting at the airports waiting for planes. To quote one of my favorite movies here: "I am too old for this shit!" (For you wondering, it is Lethal Weapon). I will now invest time in what really matters: Eichi Level 1.
I am a developer by heart and it will always be my hobby. I will continue developing games in the little free time that I have left after my job and family, but it will not be related to Arma modding. I am simply too tired of restarting Arma over and over again just to tune a value in a config. I also cannot look at questionable error messages like "Error Type Number, Not a Number, Expected Number, Number" anymore. And as stated above, I simply do not have the time anymore to mess with things. I also remember that I once had a problem where infantry could walk through opened gates, but vehicles could not drive through. It took me three (god-damn) days to figure out something that was not documented to solve it. It just feels too unprofessional.
On top of that, these days it is less frustrating (and sometimes easier) to create a new game from scratch than to modify an existing platform. Many mods are moving away from Arma as they have grown up, leaving little behind. Battle Royale turns into Battlegrounds, Altis Life turns into Identity, Breaking Point into a stand-alone and the talented 2017 guys have announced to do something with the Unreal Engine, too. The list continues. Modding is just too limited and failing to make your dreams come true is just frustrating in the long run. I am not teasing you (am I?), but the Unreal Engine is teasing me. But no, I am not planning to do an Exile stand-alone in case you ask. There is something else in my mind.
We also never know what the next Arma update includes. The long awaited 2017 Mod , my favorite map called Taunus and even Namalsk were screwed by Arma updates and ended up in the trash bin. So it can turn out that months or even years of work turn into a big waste of time by the decisions of a third party you cannot influence. Some of you might remember my t-shirt saying "And then Arma updated". I have it for a reason. Bohemia Interactive seems to consider Arma 3 "done" and will deploy stabilization updates only. Let us hope the best for that. Maybe the shrubberies will be less lethal and walls might stop you from walking through them.
In case an update goes wild and breaks things again, I am willing to invest time to solve arising issues, but I will surely need help here. I have experienced update problems that took weeks to solve. Some updates went without problems, but we never know. If you would like to help out on making Exile compatible with upcoming Arma versions or maybe even continue developing it, feel free to get in touch with us. I suggest that we arrange a meeting in Teamspeak (ts.exile.majormittens.co.uk) and discuss the details. Maybe already this weekend? It would be great to talk to everybody again!
I will keep this forum, the XM8 app and all backend servers alive, so in the end, nothing will really change. It will just stay in the current state. Everyone who needs my support with developing a Community is King project will get my support. I will be there if you need me.
Overall, I believe that Exile is a great project. I have met amazing people and it was much more successful than I ever would have expected. Some of you may remember the first Wordpress website we have had. Yepp, see how bad we were prepared for the storm. You completely rekt our servers
From the bottom of my heart; Thank you! You rock!
/Eichi
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