Welcome New Subscribers + Tutorials Discussion
Hey gang! Happy Thorium Thursday!
Before you read any further, check your calendar on March 20th at 7:00pm ET. I want to give an updated demo for anyone who wants to see Thorium Nova in action, and give a tour of the codebase. This will happen in the Thorium Nova Discord server, so it will be interactive and won't be recorded.
Anyway, a huge welcome to our new subscribers, who easily outnumber the subscribers from before March 1st! A fan posted the Thorium Nova website on a popular news website, and it managed to get some traction. I even had coworkers, old classmates, and other friends reaching out saying "I saw that post and thought 'Hey, I know that guy!'"
In any case, the response was very gratifying. Thanks for supporting this project just by being here. Like "plethora", it means a lot.
And if you're interested in contributing, I've got a handy guide for that right here: https://thoriumsim.com/blog/contributing-to-thorium-nova
This project is really ambitious, probably more than I was expecting. But there are also lots of interesting problems to solve in terms of UI design, project management, conceptual design, building physics simulations, building AI behavior, developing the narrative universe - all kinds of stuff. There's a lot of need for programmers, but plenty of things non-programmers can do.
Since I'm doing all this in my spare time, I can't afford to spend lots of attention handholding new contributors. That means you'll have to be proactive about asking what needs to be done and diving into it. On the flip side, since you're basically starting at the ground floor, you've got the opportunity to help influence and direct the future of this project.
One easy way to help is by weighing in on discussions in Discord and Github. I know that collaborating and combining perspectives is the best way to build anything.
Tutorials
Recently I've written some thoughts on Tutorials in Thorium Nova here: https://github.com/Thorium-Sim/thorium-nova/discussions/579
I'd love to you to give it a read and comment. Let me know what you think is a good idea, and what should be reconsidered. If you had an idea or question about the project, you could even write up your own discussion and get the community's take on it. It's an open forum for anyone!
And if you don't want to sign up for Github, you can still read it and respond to this email with your comments. As always, I'll try to respond to every email and incorporate your thoughts into the proposal.
That's all for this week. I'm chipping away at the power grid controls and should have something to show for that in a week or two. Until then, take care of yourselves!
Alex