Contributing and keeping up to date

[misterpotts]

Welcome

Hi Everyone! My name is Matt, the Author of Fabricate and the person to whom all frustrations, woes, hopes and dreams for the module should be directed. I hope to be able to do a lot more with Fabricate over the coming weeks and months, leading up to a launch for the module of Foundry VTT sooner, rather than later.

If you're here, you're probably interested in contributing code or ideas, finding out more about what is coming up and what I've been working on recently.

Contributing

I'll be writing a comprehensive contributing guide to smooth out this process for everyone involved, but in essence I'll be asking for a few things from now on:

1. All contributions must be made by raising a PR to this repository from a fork
2. A PR must aim to do one thing only, e.g. add a template for submitting defects, add a guide on how to install Fabricate from Github or introduce one new feature.
   3A PR must have a clear goal which states what it hopes to achieve and why that's a good thing, written either a) in a linked issue or b) in a comment on the PR
3. A PR must not mix functional and structural changes, e.g. adding the ability to break down a component (salvage) while also refactoring the structure of Combinations. Instead, it should either add a new feature using existing structures, or change existing structures without adding new features

And that's it!

Keeping up to date

I've decided that I'll be posting updates on my new Patreon. For now I'll be keeping all progress reports there free and public, because I have no supporters! 😢 However, that might change in the future. You can read my first ever progress update here.

Patreon

Yeah, that's right; I set one up. I've been asked before by people if I have one and how else they can support me and Fabricate, so I thought I'd give it a go. The Code Goblin tier (which is only £2.50 p/m plus UK VAT) is there if you just want to help out a little and let me know that I should really be pushing Fabricate harder because someone actually cares enough to throw me some coins.

I have tried to find a way to offer more value to people who want to give more with higher tiers. Right now I'm thinking of sharing my homebrew, and a little down the line (after Fabricate releases) other benefits like early access. I'll admit that Patreon is all new to me and I don't know what I'm doing or if people want the extras that I can offer. I hope it goes well, but it might not 🤷🏻 I'll cross my fingers 🤞🏻

What's next?

I still have work to do to nail down my in-progress changes (which were massive, I now realise) before I can think about foundry V9 or V10, new crafting systems (like KibblesTasty's) and new game systems (like PF2E maybe), compendium import in the UI etc. However, I'm feeling pretty good about it. The only question is when will I do that.

You should know that this is a hobby for me. I'm a Software Engineer in the (pretty full-on) day job and earn my money building someone else's stuff - not building Foundry modules. If I'd taken Elf at character creation I'd have three or four extra hours in the day, but sadly I went with Variant Human with the Caffeine Resistance feat. I really enjoy working on Fabricate, but family will always come first, but maybe next week I'll get project time in the evenings, and I hope to get more the weekend after that. My wife and I are spending this weekend with my mother (who is a tiny, adorable woman that I love very much). We're also having our kitchen redone starting in a couple of weeks, are painting garden fences before that (6 panels down,14 to go) and are also just trying to hang out with each other, you know?

I suppose all that I'm saying is please be patient with me! I'll be trying to post more on Patreon as I contribute to Fabricate, with bigger changes or releases being announced on the League Discord server.