T w e n t y S i d e d
The site has a new category called “Epilogue”. If you look up in the menu (under the 3 bars if on mobile) it’s to the right of “Top Content” (or below on mobile). This category will be where we upload the content Shamus created but never posted. This way that content is kept separate from that which he carefully edited and curated. The category should show up in the normal RSS feed but the content will only show under the Epilogue tab, not on the front page.
This content will be added gradually as we get to it but will include most of the extra content he never posted. The kids (all adults, old habit) plan to start a podcast and blog that will also be linked as a subdomain of the site rather than on the primary.
The Epilogue tab will also contain updates of what is happening with the site as well as family updates that seem pertinent to readers.
Please Help I Can’t Stop Playing Cities: Skylines
What makes this borderline indie title so much better than the AAA juggernauts that came before?
Chainmail Bikini
A horrible, railroading, stupid, contrived, and painfully ill-conceived roleplaying campaign. All in good fun.
The Opportunity Crunch
No, brutal, soul-sucking, marriage-destroying crunch mode in game development isn't a privilege or an opportunity. It's idiocy.
The Middle Ages
Would you have survived in the middle ages?
Quakecon 2011 Keynote Annotated
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
Confirming that I did receive this update via RSS, and it’s not on the main page, so that does seem to be working as expected.
I did as well
Rando rss reader here as well. Glad to hear the work continues. Best wishes, guys.
It’s going to be weird to read those posts.
Hope you guys are doing okay.
Thanks Heather. A million best wishes to you guys.
This is a very elegant way of doing it! However, may I suggest putting this topic at the top of the blog? Or at least below “The Late Shamus Young” blog post. Because unless you have an RSS reader, you might not have noticed that this post has gone up.
In any case, I’m really happy we’ll get to see what Shamus had been working on, as well as to read future content from the “kids” :)
I’ve been running some experiments, and no post in the new Epilogue category shows up on the blogroll, so that all seems to be working as intended. I’ve added this post to the Personal category, so it will at least appear on the “next” button on the sticky memorial post.
That’s how I realized it was there (I went to the main page after re-reading the “Retrospectives” to look for the “Mass Effect” category and noticed that there was a new post).
We’re still working out the kinks.
Shamus had everything on the WordPress install set up to his liking, which means my knowledge of WordPress (I’ve been hosting and designing WordPress sites for almost as long as he had the site) is almost useless. Basically everything is custom designed, hard coded, and not compatible with built-in updates. For every change, I have to track down where and how he made the original work, then make the change within the code. It’s not a huge deal but takes time and a lot of sleuthing. I work full time and have been helping the kids get moved into their apartment so it’s slow going.
Currently the page is set to normal categories layout, which I have to change so it uses the blog layout. I also plan to post an actual update and a thank you but wanted to make sure the first part is working (which it is). After I get things more set up I will make a post to point people in the right direction. I may also add a front page link to the latest content aside from the tab but will have to see how hard it is to add given his proprietary theme design.
I can just imagine how hard it must be (in both senses of the word)! I just wanted to be sure it wasn’t a silly oversight, and you hadn’t realised the post wasn’t on the front page. Given that it wasn’t, just ignore my comment.
Anyways, good luck, and I wish you and the family all the best :)
Hello Heather,
Thank you for making the decision to do this work. I hope it helps you and it isn’t too difficult.
Looking forward to seeing where this goes! Thanks for undertaking this ongoing work in Shamus’ memory.
I saw this on the RSS feed as well. It will be interesting to read more of Shamus’s thoughts, even in a rough/incomplete form. I am also curious about the podcast, and what form it will take. It’s going to be a bit melancholic, but I am looking forward to it.
Thank you for keeping Shamus’ legacy.
Thank-you Heather. Sending all the good wishes to you all.
Spam – delete, please.
Would it be possible to get guest writers who Shamus used to be in more contact with and/or who contributed to the blog in the past. I used to listen to the podcast Shamus did with Paul Spooner and he’s one of the people I haven’t really heard about since.
The Spoiler Warning crew is another that’s had me wondering. On the other hand it’s not really anyone’s business but theirs, but I think many people would have appreciated at least a short address if nothing else when Shamus passed away. I can live without knowing any better, but it’s just sad to think that the break-off had to be that final.
Hi, Disc. Thanks for commenting. This has actually all been addressed over the last few years. Some as answers to comments; some as posts. I won’t rehash everything that’s been said and I won’t speak for anyone. Twenty Sided is now operated by Shamus’ kids. New content going forward is planned by them with their own goals and intentions. Everything that Shamus ever did is being kept as-is.
I’m aware of the state of the blog and that’s fine. I was just asking if the idea represented is a possibility. Not trying to push for anything, just asking as someone who used to actively read the blog back in the day. If you get a lot similar questions and requests, it might be a good idea to make a Frequently Asked Questions section or something similar, so you can point people like me there.
In general it’d be appreciated to know where to go for some general info. Or just some pointers, because I wouldn’t know where to look really, if there’s actually answers to be had.
And for reason as to why I asked what I asked, it’s because of having being a small part of that somewhat eclectic community that used to read and comment on the posts and even organize stuff outside of it, when we still had the forum. It’s not that most of us ever knew Shamus personally, but he drew in a lot of people from all sorts of crowds. It was a community that changed a lot over time, people came and went, but it was something that gave life to a lot of interesting conversations over more topics than I care to even count. It wasn’t a perfect community by any means, but it was something fairly unique, and almost extraordinary in the way that it held on as long as it did, the internet being the crazy digital Wild West that it is. But I wouldn’t demand or expect his kids to try to keep that legacy up, especially with the way so much of it was built around the content Shamus either created, co-created or partnered with someone else to post on the site.
It’s well enough that the site is being preserved and I think most people coming back here appreciate it. But I still miss that community at times. The Spoiler Warning days was probably the most involved it ever got for me and it was sad to see the split happen, even when I respected the reasons for it.
But life goes on. The community as I used to know it is long gone and I don’t think there’s generally much to be done about it. If I knew a better place to ask, I’d be asking my questions there.
I think many readers have had a hard time accepting that Shamus was the thing that made that particular community possible. There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes information relevant to this idea, but it involves other people so I’ll leave that alone.
We do attempt to reach multiple demographics, but we all understand we can’t substitute for Shamus, and we’re not trying. And we don’t always engage in pre-Epilogue content. That’s left for people to talk about Shamus, although a few times a year someone posts in threads of a long-running series as if the conversation is still active.