Mythruna

In general, I try not to share too much personal information... mostly because I don't want to over-share.  Mostly because it never comes up or isn't relevant.

These days that's a little different.  It may affect how responsive I am on the forums, chats, etc. for the next week or more and so I thought it important to fill people in on what's been happening.  Feel free to skip if your "too much information" alarms are now going off.


For most of my wife's life, she has had epilepsy caused by a slow-growing tumor in her brain.  We had this tumor surgically removed 7 years ago and since then her epilepsy has been controlled with medication.  A couple months ago she began to have seizures again and partially lose movement in her right side.  An MRI revealed that the tumor has grown back and is much more aggressive.

On Sunday March 11th, we are packing up the family and heading down to North Carolina where one of the top brain centers is located.  The surgery is scheduled for Thursday but we don't yet know how much of the tumor they will get to remove.  Everything is sort of all up in the air at this point.  After that, she will start radiation and chemo-therapy, the degree of which will be based on exactly what kind of tumor they find.

So, obviously, this is where most of my focus has been lately.

How this affects Mythruna:

-I will be away from the "nerve center" starting Sunday for at least a week.. probably closer to 10 days.  I will have remote access into my network but I won't be sitting right next to the public server like I usually am.  Mythruna.com will continue to function normally as that is hosted elsewhere... donations will still be accepted and so on.  But regarding the public game server, if my internet connection goes south for some reason, I will not be here to trouble-shoot it.  If the power goes down at my house for longer than 30 minutes, I will not be here to bring the systems back up.  This sort of thing rarely happens but I thought I'd point it out anyway.  Fate has a way of making these things break when I'm not here to fix them.

-Development may slow down for a while and will certainly be on hold next week.  My family and I 100% believe in the development of Mythruna and barring the various worst-case scenarios, development will continue.  It just may be hobbled for a while.  This may end up being directly related to how much additional income I can derive from Mythruna.

-For some period of time, I might not be as "available" as I usually am.  Normally, I'm sitting at my computer an average of 16 hours a day... this makes me pretty responsive to questions, issues, etc..  One of the consequences of what is going is that my wife can no longer drive... and even in the best case scenario this will be true for at least six months.  As such, I will have to venture out into the "big blue room" more often to shuttle the kids around to various activities, take my wife where she needs to go, etc..  This means I'm not sitting at a keyboard.

-Hopefully, we see more concept art.  One of the side-effects of taking my kids to various activities is that I'm left computerless for long spans of time where it is also very convenient to bring my sketch book to keep occupied.

-A slight shift in focus that started a month ago already.  This is one of the reasons I've been focusing so hard on the modding support lately.  And that will continue.  It was always the plan to support modding right from the beginning and give the community useful APIs and hooks as early as possible.  By focusing on it sooner, my hope is that the game might keep some momentum even if I have to slow development down for periods of time. 


Thanks for reading this far.  These issues have been affecting my focus enough that I felt the need to let everyone know why I might not be my normal bouncy-cheery-helpful self.  Also, you will now know why I'm away more next week.

And a big thank you to all that make this such a fun community to be a part of.  It is comforting to think of all of the people that get enjoyment from the game.

-Paul

good luck for the surgery hope everything goes ok :]

My thoughts and prayers are with you guys Paul, I hope she gets better soon.

Hi Paul,

your family is THE priority. We all know that you're doing your best for Mythruna, and even if the development take more time to finish, we'll wait this awesome project as long as necessary.
I send to your wife all my best wishes for recovery, and never forget Paul, the whole community of Mythruna supports you.
       

Best wishes to your wife. Keep positive.

Best of wishes to your wife and you... I hope everything turns out great :)

I have already said few weeks ago. Take your time.. And good luck in this hard period.

I'll be praying for you. Don't let Mythruna keep you from your family. :)

... horrible news, best wishes for your family, especially to have the strength to get through that hard time.
The recovery of your wife is the 1st priority! We will hold the line here!

Good-luck, best of luck from me. But one thing, radiation therapy reduces your life-span, it's best to do something different than that.

Good luck pal, we're all here for ya;)

Thanks for all of the kind words and support, everyone.

Latest update: due to a scheduling mistake, we are basically here the wrong week.  So tomorrow we will be packing the family up and heading back to the homestead to repeat this all again next week. :-/

Good luck paul!

So, as of last night, I'm temporarily back in the sanctity of Mythruna-central, warm computers humming serenely all around me.  (Yes, I have a lot of PCs. :))

We drive back down on Sunday and then I will be remote again.  In the mean time, I'm back to my usual responsive self for the next three days or so.

On the down side, the massive disruption in my day-job plans means that I'm up to my eyeballs in "OMG WE'RE LATE" style coding.  On the up side, by the time I hit North Carolina again next week I will have no hard-core work responsibilities and will use whatever computer time I get to work on Mythruna.  This week is a total bust, though.

Going to be AFK for about 6 hours while I travel south.

See you guys later.

Take your time with the coding, We, the community, can wait a few months or weeks (whenever you get to the point of a release) for you to release an update. Just take it easy and you can code when things are flowing easily again. WE CAN WAIT ;D .

Take all the time you need and know we all luv and support u in this hardship.

-best of wishs zac
:)

Here is the latest update.

It's been kind of a rough week of hospital and doctor visits leading up to pre-op and admission yesterday.  This morning at 6 AM they wheeled my wife down for her surgery.  She was out and in ICU again by 10:45 or so and I was able to see her shortly after.

It looks like the surgery went well and they were able to remove most of the tumor.  We still wait on the final pathology tests to find out if she needs radiation and chemotherapy to nuke the rest of it.  We are hopeful that it can be avoided... but at least the surgery is behind us now.

Most of my time over the next week will be divided between watching my kids and visiting my wife in the hospital.

Thank you all for your kind thoughts, prayers... and patience. :)

You're welcome. Thank you for making a great game and caring about the community.

yay everythings okish :]

It seems that way :D. Paul can handle himself well I hope :)

very VERY glad to hear that everything went that good!
Someone in my family recenty had to get a tumor removed, and everything is ok, the cancer is gone. Your wife will be ok, too!

Again, I wish you the best!

Kind regards

I am very glad to hear the surgery went well. Best wishes and love to you and your family <3

Thanks, everyone.

Latest status is that my wife is now back at the hotel with us and is doing well so far.  They say the tumor was benign but we will have to keep checking to see if it grows back.

I'm still in the hotel so my development time is limited... especially since my wife needs lots of sleep and we still have our two kids running around being kids. :)

We are scheduled to head back home on Wednesday and then I will probably sleep for several solid days. :) :) :)

yay im glad everything is ok hope the cancer goes away forever ;]

:D Really? Wednesday? I thought it would be like 2 - 3 weeks or so. Good to know.  :) . If something bad would've happen... Seeing text wouldn't be the best way to feel bad about it (or atleast in my perspective).

She'll still have some frankenstein looking stitches for the next couple weeks.  But things went really well.

Hi Paul!

I've been wondering why there've been less information according to the game during the the last time. I could only follow the development on facebook and I was shocked reading these news today in the forum. I hope it's your wife continues to improve and she quickly recoveres from the intervention.

I wish you all the best for the future!

DocWoric