Spritescape Fantasy

Wow, has it been a year already?

Hey there. If you’re reading this, you may be wondering why this site and its associated comic has been dead for the better part of the past year. Chances are, you assumed it had finally joined the ranks of the ever growing landfill of dead sprite comics, and decided to divert your attention to bigger and better things. Of course, a cursory glance at the archive page will show that activity had been on a rapid decline for quite a while; to say that Spritescape in its current state is dead is entirely redundant, since that which is already dead (and has been for years) cannot, for all intents and purposes, die again. (sans zombies)

So let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way first. Is Spritescape dead for good? Probably not.

This may have been the longest hiatus this webcomic has gone on yet, but a big part of me still wants to see this project through. It kills me when webcomics I greatly enjoy disappear off the face of the interwebs suddenly and unexpectedly, and while Spritescape has always been a bit of an amateur piece of work compared to a lot of the awesome webcomics floating around the net, I’ve always had a soft spot for its style and characters, and would like to give the comic proper closure both for my own benefit and whoever also happens to get a kick out of reading it.

And, well… if you’re reading all this, you probably have at least a passing interest in this webcomic, and for that, you have my thanks. I appreciate you taking the time to visit. It’s been a wild and bumpy ride (understatement!), but I’m sure we can both expect better things for Spritescape in 2011. I highly recommend subscribing to the RSS feed.

PS.
I suffered a hard drive failure around the point I ceased all activity early last year. I keep a folder full of scripts, custom sprites, backgrounds, and a host of other bits of junk for use in the comic, most of which I hadn’t gotten a chance to use yet. I lost all of that, and while I did have a severely outdated backup, I didn’t have the willpower to replace all the lost content. I put Spritescape in the back burner to focus on real life priorities, and things quickly snowballed into a one year hiatus. And here we are.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, the website has undergone a complete overhaul. Spritescape is now powered by Comicpress along with all the cool bells and whistles that come with it… like an RSS feed! Finally! Not sure how many people actually utilize the thing (I consider myself a fairly tech-savvy person, but I still prefer to do the whole “go through bookmarks to see if my favorite websites have updated” routine), but I know at least one person has requested it with passionate fervor in the past. In all likelihood, said person has long since stopped visiting here, but it’s nice to know it’s there anyway.

There’s still quite a number of things I need to add, but for the most part, what you see is the core of the new Spritescape website. Few things I want to note; the news and comics are integrated directly into the site, so it should be easier for you to navigate the comics and comment on them. It also saves me a lot of headache not having to muck around with php files and manually edit the code, so this should hopefully benefit everyone. Plus, it’s got a sleek new look.

I stated in a previous newspost that I was taking an extended hiatus to build up a reliable buffer of comics. You’ll be happy to know that I’ve been making good progress and that you won’t have to wait much longer. I want to be absolutely certain this time that I’ll be able to update in a consistent fashion. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.

As always, thanks for your patience and for taking the time to visit.