OK there is a lot I need to get done in October. I thought I might give you guys a running list and maybe let you see as I check things off. Will this be a monthly thing now? Probably not, but I expect most months to be easier than this one! Here's my TODO LIST for October (you know, besides the comic and stuff?) in order of importance:

Task By Priority	Status (10/11)	Notes (Last Checked 10/11)
Sluggy Freelance Book 17	Bonus Story 10% DONE!	Once the bonus story is done it's off to the printers. It's a 13 page "Aylee and Bun-bun" story!
20 Years of Sluggy Art	Not Started	These will go out by the end of October
Archives- First Pass	98% done	Years of Yarncraft (ch57) remains 'unpassed'.
Archives- Second Pass	5% done	only certain major stories 'Second Passed' so far
Printed Pawnz/Bookmark of the Month	Off to the printer on 10/16!	Dark Gwynn Printed Pawnz and Bookmark will be sent out to Defenders level 4 and higher! Psyk is this month's Pawn!

Here's the rundown:
SLUGGY FREELANCE BOOK 17:I've GOT to get this to the printer BEFORE the end of the month or I won't have it for holiday sales, and for the Defenders of the Nifty who pre-purchased signed editions back in June or July. This is top of the list and may be why there'll be fewer comics in the first half of October.

20 YEARS OF SLUGGY ART AUCTION WINNERS: I need a clear day or two to put together the packets for the auction winners. We said in the description that these packets would go out September or October. And they will go out before the end of October!

ARCHIVES- FIRST PASS: As I've established, there's a Super Sluggite Computer that alerts me when it thinks it's found a discrepancy between the old small archives and the new gloriously bug archives. I see the problem and fix it. Its a great intuitive system, I just had trouble finding time last month, surprisingly enough! I'm almost done!

ARCHIVES- SECOND PASS: I like to give the archives a slow pondering once-over to look for the comics that the Super Sluggite Computer missed. There's next-to-no problems except for a lot of slight panel bleed-over from the adjacent comics, and some layer effects being dropped. I haven't done this much yet except for particular stories looking for egregious errors like the rare 'dropping of a row'. Stories like bRoken and Mohkadun. thanks to 'bottomless' archive system it should be quick enough to do this with the other stories, one book at a time. Once I'm done with my second pass, I'll be calling on you guys to help me triple check the archives. I'll give you specific instructions and contact info at that time! I'd hate to see the Second Pass drift into November but it's less important than Book 17 getting to the printers or the 20 Years Auction Winners getting their goods!

PAWNZ AND BOOKMARK OF THE MONTH: All Defenders  who’s been a Defender 20+ at Level 2 or higher for at least half of September will get a digital version of the Dark Gwynn Pawnz and the Dark Gwynn bookmark. Level 3 or higher lands you a printed version sent to you. I had mentioned this before but misspoke, suggesting you had to be a member for the entire month. you only need half! The good news is you still have time to get this month's Psyk Pawnz that I haven't designed yet!

But lets talk about the Dark Gwynn Pawnz and Bookmark that I have to physically send to Level 3-and-higher Defenders. I need to wait for billing to be completes so I know who gets one. I need a report with the addresses of those eligables (Defenders Level 3+ make sure I have your accurate mailing address in your Defenders Subscription Profile)! Then I send the art off to the printers. Once they get the Pawnz and Bookmarks back to me, I send them out to the eligables (I'm digging the term 'eligibles'. Did I just make that up?). Now how long this takes I don't know, but I get the feeling the September stuff might ship Early November. This is my first time doing this so we'll see how it goes.

So That, plus the regular Sluggy Freelance comic, is October for me! The Book is the biggest of biggies! November will probably be about getting the store open, especially when we know when Book 17 is arriving! Thanks for your patience with everything! Big things await!

Lots of subjects! This is going to be a long one I think!


I’m Behind on Everything! But I’m catching up with a smile on my face!
There’s a lot missing from the site! Defenders content, contact info, Dialogue Search, etc. And things left to automate too! News Headlines, Forums, Comics Posting; all these things are not automated yet. But we’re making progress, a little bit every day.
On a personal note, I’m feeling my way through the way I want everything to happen in this new lifestyle of mine. There’ll be some growing pains as I flex my elbows and shape my schedule. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed right now with the new little details in my life, but every day gets a little more shiny! Give me a month or two and we should have our groove back!

On the Comic Itself: I know it’s been cliffhanger after cliffhanger in the strip. I really appreciate the elbow room to tell the story right instead of trying to crowbar it all in by the 25th of August.  I really was thinking about doing that. Also I was fearing having to just end things. But as all of this has unfolded I am thrilled to have this happy medium. “The Fall” will run as I always intended! That in and of itself is enough reason to sincerely thank each and every one of you Defenders of the Nifty and New Defenders 20+ for allowing this to happen!


The Store will stay closed for a bit! I’m thinking it won’t  open until October! Maybe later! I can’t even think of fulfilling orders until I get Book 17 locked down and figure out how to get all the bookmarks and pawnz out!


Speaking of The Defenders Exclusive Pawn and Bookmark of the Month: Everybody who’s been a Defender 20+ at Level 2 or higher for all of September will get a digital version of the Dark Gwynn Pawnz and the Dark Gwynn bookmark. Level 3 or higher lands you a printed version sent to you.

This monthly reward-printing is new to me, but I’m sure will go smoothly! I’ll keep y’all posted on that! If you want the yet-undesigned Demon-Spear Psyk Pawnz and Bookmark make sure you’re at level 2 or higher for all of October (level 3 or higher for a printed version)! This is a Public Service Announcement.

On to the biggest thing I need to get my tail in gear on:
The Archives- I need to finish my Archives Approving! This is my new top-of-the-list as of today!  We fixed a lot of the bouncing and bandwidth issues on the archives and got some calendar navigation in! And by “we” I meant ‘Team Not Including Me’. I said at site launch that “Chapters 48-64: Haven’t looked at yet! Uncharted Territory! New Readers AVOID these Chapters, rows of many strips may just be GONE! (It’ll take me maybe a week to clear these up!)” Well I haven’t had that time yet. Who knew lightened my workload was so much work? No more excuses, I’m doing it!!!


BONUS BEHIND THE SCENES: How We Remastered The Impossible Archives:  Here’s some insight on how the bigger archives were created. At one point I was doing one hi-res file per comic. (Back when comics were rarely more than 1 row). Theses would be dropped into books. Then, for the more epic stores I started doing larger comic files. These had to be broken down into multiple pages at book time. Then I was like ‘what a pain in the butt! I’ll just lay these out in book form directly and pluck from them the individual comic files. So some comics crossed pages. Some pages held multiple comics. And the patterns varied over the 20 years Sluggy’d been going on.

We have hi-res pdfs of the books, but sometimes books had different layout, comic order (sometimes holiday stories were moved to the back to the book for example), and the pdfs were sometimes missing filler art, guest artist weeks, and the random wacky things that have fallen into the archives into the years.

So with all that mess, how does one create a higher-res archive?

The team turned a computer into the Ultimate Sluggite! It read every comic, breaking it into slices, pouring over every detail, and matched the low res archives to my hi-res various files. For TWENTY YEARS OF almost DALY STRIPS! That’s 6,696 comics made of 8,445 low res files sliced into 12,215 rows matched against 5,511 high res pages to produce 10,050 matching high res files! THAT’S INSANE! And I dig that one of my biggest fans is a robot forced to be a fan against its will! OK I like to think that way at least!

In conclusion: We’ve done so much! So much left to do! Every day is getting better! THANK YOU DEFENDERS! And this was one long news story!


-Pete

Hey, there seems to have been some confusion with the plan for you
Defenders of the Nifty who still have time on their accounts. MOST
IMPORTANT THING:YOU ARE NOT LOSING ANYTHING WITH THE NEW DEFENDERS
20+ SYSTEM! You'll still have access to the compendium, the comic
boost,
my blog, new blog posts! Everything you had before, FOR THE DURATION
OF YOUR ACCOUNT! It might take us a bit to implement this stuff.
This is basically everything you get with a default Defenders 20+ Pledge
Level 1 Diligent Digbot. You lose nothing.

You're going to need a site-wide login account to access your
ongoing Defenders of the Nifty content. We converted
sluggy.net forums accounts into site-wide login accounts as part of
the new site launch.
If you had a sluggy.net forums account with the same username or
email address, we're already going to link you up automagically.
If you didn't have a sluggy.net forums account, please register a new
login account with the same email and we'll match them up as
soon as we can.
If you did have a sluggy.net forums account you want to keep using,
but it didn't match your Defenders of the Nifty account, please
stand by while we come up with a solution.

Any reason to pledge to the new system then?

A couple! One is that as a "Day 1" Defender 20+ you will get the
unlocks of
the new system like the Evil Clothes-Eating Moths Pawnz Set (with
'that's not a wookie costume' Bert), as well as the exclusive
Valerie pawn and bookmark.

As a thanks for being there for Sluggy in the past, all Defenders of
the Nifty, ever (like, if you subscribed in 2005 for a year and
never again) will get a virtual "inflatable coin":

If at any point you pledge while you still have time on your DotN
account, you'll get a different colored inflatable coin for each
month you had left on your annual subscription.

What do inflatable coins do?
Pretty much nothing right now, but they are kind of pretty. These
will go in a special section of the site collectibles that nobody
else has. We'll probably think of something nifty they can do in the
future, but for now, they're just bouncy shiny badges of honor
saying "I supported Sluggy 20-minus, too!"

Just know I will never stop being thankful for you Defenders of the
Nifty who have supported me for all these years, and I deeply
apologize for any confusion.

Extra note for Defenders who, whether currently active or not,
pre-ordered a doodled in Book 17: In case you were wondering,
because it's been a while, of course you'll get those as soon as
they're printed and doodled in! I'm back to work on Book 17 next
week! And I have elbow room to do it thanks to you guys! (YAY!)

-Pete

Hey everybody! IT’S THE BIG DAY! Sure, last Friday was the 20th anniversary of Sluggy Freelance but TODAY THE NEW SITE LAUNCHES! I’m very proud to show off the new Sluggy.com and I can’t wait for you to check it out. IT’S AMAZING!

Here’s all you need to know:

Features are still being added to the new site: It’s almost done; but we’re going to finish adding everything and polish it up the next couple of weeks! And there are additional features coming, so if something is missing from the site that the old site had, be patient! And feel free to poke around! And I can’t stress this enough: LOG IN! You must do this to get the full set of nine classic Pawnz. And other stuff like tracking your progress through the new (bigger) archives and placing bookmarks will only work if you’re logged in. The forums login will be your all-access pass to the forums, the store, and all the VERY nifty features of the new site! GO LOOK!

WARNING: The New Archives need some sweeping: Someday I am going to do a post on the magic that needed to happen to make the shiny new archives. And you WILL be amazed! Some serious time, effort, and programmer-magic went into it. But it requires me going in and verifying that the system didn’t drop rows, grab wrong graphics, etc. There can be some weird graphics out there in uncharted territory.

But I will need your help in the near future, you archive-divers out there, to make sure the chapter I have reviewed are good. There will be an easy way for you to flag questionable strips implemented in the next few days.

I’ve been sweeping from both ends, so here’s where I’m at:

Chapters 1-47 (thats books 1-14): Should be good!

Chapters 48-64: Haven’t looked at yet! Uncharted Territory! New Readers AVOID these Chapters, rows of many strips may just be GONE! (It’ll take me maybe a week to clear these up!)

Chapters 65-70 (Mohkadun through today): Should be good!

That’s all I need to tell you but you’re going to find plenty of things on your own! Go look! GO PLAY! But first, LOG IN!