I get the strangest emails sometimes. A gentleman by the name of Anthony sent me the following via the contact form while I was away in England.

Thank You!!! Thank You !!! Thank you!!!
Please kind sir continue your awesome work. Please let me know when it will be complete I will pay 60$ u.s.a to play it. Please kind sir I hope you will not quit this project I love Ultima Games to the MAX. Please finish soon I’m dieing to play it.

First off, Anthony, you’re welcome.

And if Anthony will forgive me, I would like to make use of his note to highlight a couple of important realities that are at work in this project.

Important Reality #1: Time

This project is currently being worked on by one guy (that’d be me). In and of itself, that’s not a bad thing — I find it quite relaxing to build another couple of map areas in an evening, and to think about how I want to shape the story.

But what that means is that the project will take a while to finish unless more people are willing to help out. I wouldn’t expect to see this project approaching release status for at least another three years, in all honesty.

Mapping takes time. Scripting events takes time. Writing and implementing dialogue takes time. Tying it all together into one cohesive, playable entity takes time. And I’m just one guy.

So if anyone out there wants to see this project come along a little bit sooner, or wants to see it hurry on up, and if anyone out there also happens to have some passing familiarity with Neverwinter Nights’ development tools…I encourage you to volunteer at Lost Sosaria!

Important Reality #2: Money

I cannot legally, do not intend to, and will not accept money for this project (although I do appreciate the offer).

Important Reality #3: Information

Anthony asked to be informed when the project was nearing completion. I’ll go one further and give advance notice of each milestone release to him and anyone else who asks.

Tags: Ultima

And what an experience it was!

By some miracle, I managed to keep meticulous notes about each and every day of the experience, and so in the coming few days I’ll be converting my scribbled notes into full articles and posting them at Ubi, and at the wedding website. For the moment, it will have to suffice when I say that on the whole, this was one of the most amazing experiences, and one of the most incredible journeys, I have ever had or undertaken.

And I’ve got 1726 photos to show for it. Now, admittedly, I won’t be keeping all of those…but still, that number ought to give the reader a decent idea as to the magnitude of the Jamboree. Failing that, there are a few statistics attached to the Jamboree’s Wikipedia entry that may prove enlightening.

I also made many good friends, and I would even venture to say that in working with the people of ICCS — the International Catholic Conference of Scouting — defined for me at long last just what my Scouting career means to me, and demonstrated just how I want to conduct myself as a Scout, and what I want to work toward as a member of that world-wide organization.

I made a number of new friends, met some incredible people, tasted great English bitters and IPAs, attended Mass and Taize prayer with what was, for me, a heightened frequency, and worked with between 50 and 100 kids a day doing little things to help them learn (or learn more) about the Catholic faith. And in the off hours, I had some memorable times with some or all of the members of the 59th Rover Crew that were in attendance at the Jamboree.

I have to say, though, that the best part of the Jamboree was coming through the doors out of the customs area at the Edmonton International Airport and seeing Grace there. I had missed her so much during the trip, and seeing her smiling face across the arrivals area was the first breath of fresh air for this man when he finally made it home again.

Home. It’s strange, but over the course of the last three weeks, the very meaning of that word seems to have changed so much for me. Home is not, for me, the place where I’m currently living, the place I rest my head at the end of the day, or the place where my family is. Seeing Grace again, I knew at once that the sneaking suspicion of a feeling I’d been having all Jamboree was true: home is where she is. Home is with her.

And so, O Reader, on that note I will leave, and will tell you only that you ought to keep checking back — development has resumed.

Tags: 21st World Scouts Jamboree, Canada, Catholicism, Edmonton, England, ICCS, International Catholic Conference of Scouting, Scouting