Blog Launched and the Future of Mythic Apps

Welcome to the blog!

Hey everyone! I’m super excited to welcome you to my blog where I’ll be diving into the development of the Mythic apps, reflections on app development, and life updates. My goal is to publish once a month, with the possibility of twice a month for focused updates. Release notes will also be published here, but won’t count toward that cadence.

The blog will serve a few purposes, one of the most important being that I am building these apps with the core philosophy of build in public. You can read more about this idea here: The Linear Method - Build in Public. I was really inspired by the design methodology of the creators of Linear, a software development project management tool, when I first started working on the Mythic apps more than a year ago. As I was considering what it would take to create Mythic GME Mobile I realized right away that I needed the community in order to create something that would meet their needs, earn their trust, and get their buy in. I hope to dive more into the history of this process in the future but suffice to say, this blog also serves the purpose of helping the users, players, and game masters of my app understand what is going on in the development of the app and be able to directly influence the app’s direction.

Another purpose this blog will serve is to give me an outlet to think and reflect on history, state, and future of the app. With the onset of LLMs, thinking and the ability to reason are more important than ever. Writing helps me think through where I’ve been, what I’ve done, and how to move forward.

Lastly, I hope to include brief life updates to give some insight into what’s going on with me and help create some understanding of what it’s like to be a solo-developer in this day and age. As we are all trying to make our way in the world, many human things happen that influence the current development speed of the app. Thanks for reading this far and joining me on this adventure. I hope you find these updates valuable and fun!

Current state of the app

I released version 1.5 with custom tables and a number of point releases to address bugs since then. This was one of the most requested features and I was happy to finally be able to get it into your hands. One reason this took me a bit longer than I wanted was that I was dealing with technical debt from the original release. At the beginning of the project I made certain decisions about the architecture based on my at that time limited understanding of app architecture that made it difficult to add new features. Over the last year I’ve learned a lot about app development and app architecture and that has brought with it the realization that I need to begin migrating to a proper, modern app architecture in order to create the kind of experience that really meets your needs. There are some incredible features requested that I can’t wait to add but to support this, I am having to rewrite portions of the app.

The next planned update is version 1.6 and the plan is to include Thread Progress Tracks, Keyed Scenes, and potentially custom Lists. There will also be some quality of life improvements to lists (thanks again to a community member on Discord for sharing some feedback on the usability and pointing out a couple of mistakes.)

Stay tuned for more about this in the coming weeks and hop on the feature request board or head over to Discord to contribute more of your ideas: Feature Requests

A brief life update

To wrap things up I wanted to post a brief life update. Over the last year my spouse, who was working full-time, has been incredibly supportive in allowing me to work full-time on the Mythic apps. Recently we’ve been in a season where she had to look for a new job. Unfortunately in this market, even with certain sectors having an abundance of jobs, there are also a huge number of job seekers. The competition is fierce. While we are doing ok, she is still looking for a job. With this as the background it became clear to us that I also need to look for a way to help support us more than what the app is able to do at this stage.

I’ve enrolled in a master’s program here in Germany for computational linguistics (natural language processing, etc). There’s kind of a complicated history around why pursuing a master’s is the best move (I did search for and apply for numerous jobs in software development and teaching first) but the short version is it will be easier to get a job in the long run if I have this degree. I’m excited about diving into computational linguistics while continuing to work part-time on the Mythic apps. Who knows—maybe some of what I learn will find its way into future features!

Want to connect with me? Head over to the Mythic Discord and find me in the app channel: Mythic GME Discord