Here we go!

So... here we are. I'm not 100% sure what to post just yet, but I do want to provide some kind of update at the very least. I'm going to continue working on this site and I'm sure so many of you (at least those willing to read this) are tired of how often I start over with the UoA.

Luckily, this time I can be confident in saying that this is a step forward as we're really just moving content from other sites into this one.

Why Docusaurus, though?

Great question! I did a lot of research into different tools out there that would help me deliver two things:

1. A wiki/documentation system.
2. A blog/article system.

Many of you know that I tried building this myself, kind of, with the previous version of this website... but honestly, keeping up with learning React and custom coding to that extent became a bit annoying.

After messing around with the Nextra templates on the UoA Wiki, I realized that MD/X was absolutely the way I wanted to go with this website, as it allows me to focus on content creation without distracting me with code too often. This honestly might not be much of a problem for most people, but for me this became an issue because of my background with coding and development... while I may sometimes come to the site files to add content, I end up getting totally distracted by seeing code and end up getting nothing done because I go off down a rabbit hole that gets me nowhere. So, when these files are much more simple to keep up with and maintain without having to look at code all the time, I'm hoping my focus can be better retained.

The other reason I'm doing things this way is that I need to stop worrying about making the information 'pretty' and just focus on getting the information delivered for now. If we need to make it prettier, easier to read, or simply just more structured, we can worry about that later... for now, it's a content-dump.

You'll likely notice other things are still... unfinished. That's all because I have no idea what to do with it yet or I'm trying to focus on more important things before making it there, but a good example is the home page of this site. I honestly don't know what I want to do with it and I wonder if maybe I just won't until I actually get the content I want up and posted. You'll also find a To-Do page in the navigation. For now, since I'm the only person working on this site, I'm using that as my own, but if we get other contributors working with me, maybe they'll use that, too... or maybe we'll just use GitHub to help us track our work, which is probably a better idea to be honest.

Anyway, one thing I need to do is decide what my writing workflow is going to be for this site. Right now, I'm just writing all of this directly into VS Code, so typos and grammar issues are quite likely to be spotted in this post, as I'm too lazy to review it before posting. In the future, though, we may have a Grammarly-centric content workflow for posting blog articles like these. Another thing I want to do eventually is actually modify Ulmina (or as many of you know her currently, AURA) to be able to read through this website and answer questions based on information here. That, however, much like my distraction with code, is a technology goal that I think needs to be put aside until we have a website actually worth crawling.

As a side note, we're also going to be using Github Pages for now. At the moment, it serves our purpose (even if I did almost tear my hair out getting it to work) but if we need something more robust or complicated in the future, we may look at options like Netlify or even AWS in the future. We'll see. For the record, the old UoA site was using Vercel and I don't have any problems with Vercel, tbh, but it did seem like overkill for the moment.

What should I be expecting from here on out?

Well... that's hard to say, but I think a lot of it revolves around making sure I get my own story stapled down more firmly. Using myself as a type of framework or baseline, we'll begin building out the rest of the universe and hopefully that will be fairly soon. I also don't think I'll be posting personal blog posts here too often, as things here should revolve around Avilium, though I may look for a more blog-centric technology (or just use Docusaurus) for my own site so I can get back to my old blogging habits. I kinda miss doing that. For now, though, here's what's on my mind for Avilium:

1. Ferihons were originally created to group all "human animal people" into a single race, but as I continue writing, I feel like that's going to be shifting. I'm thinking about turning Ferihons into being creatures that are more like a vague animal reference rather than actual specific animals. For example, maybe changing their design so that they look more like humans who happen to have fur on their shoulders, backs, and hips, give them long animalistic ears that could pass as either rabbit or even bat ears, giving them prehensile tails much like that of chimps, and possibly even some kind of upperlip/nose fusion to give them more animalistic faces. None of this is set in stone, but it is something I'm toying around with so if you have any thoughts, feel free to share.
2. My story will be posted on the site soon. It won't be completed and if anything will look more like a rough bullet list of scenarios and events, but as mentioned above, it will be the foundation for us moving forward to build even further.
3. The new language system is something we're going to be prioritizing as well. We originally wanted to develop our own language from the ground up, but the more I looked at other media with their own languages, the more I began really appreciating that thing that some companies do where they kind of just warp English letters instead of making their own language entirely. I think I'd like to be somewhere in the middle, using recognizable-ish characters to spell out familiar words, but implementing our own rules... like taking that stupid L out of Salmon. Because fuck that L. Why is it there? Who invited it? Anyway...
4. I'd also like to see if maybe our "Getting Started" system could become more TTRPG-oriented so our magic page and bestiary might include stat blocks and more detailed breakdowns on things later on... but that's a ways out and not really set in stone, either. As much as I want to do this, the truth is I've never been huge on TTRPGs and I think that if I take that project on, on my own, it's basically like a bunch of CEO's who never play video games trying to dictate the design of a new video game... and we all know that rarely works out.

Anyway, that's all I've got for you for now. For the time being, please enjoy what we do have posted and please feel free to ping me on Discord if you have questions, comments, or concerns. Thank you!