Maintaining Shared Projects

Maintenence is time-consuming! At some point I have to decide to stop looking after older projects because otherwise that's all I would be doing with my time. Many of my older projects are in states I consider unfinished. Many were intended to get occasional updates and while I did do this in the past, I've made firmer decisions now to stop completely. This should not be interpreted as a bad thing. Instead, consider the time now free to make better projects... new ones!

It's probably a bit subtle but there has been a shift in my more recent projects (as of 2023) to be shared as full releases only. I do not want to release unfinished projects so I can fix them later. So unless otherwise specified, the projects you see are pretty much final. This also goes along with my sharing of "abandoned projects" on my test account. They're unfinished so I won't share them on my main account. Nevertheless, I think they have content some might find interesting, so to the test account they go.

What has also happened is the removal of many cloud variables because they are high-maintenence. They are at risk of being abused by users to store incorrect or even inappropriate data. They also are at risk of breaking through no fault of my own (this one is frequently being asked about on the forums and while it has an easy fix to just rename them, I have a lot of projects to edit and it's never clear when they break).

The only exceptions for project changes I now make are for issues that affect the users negatively that are also reasonably fixable, basically bugs and unintended behaviour that do not require changing significant amounts of the project.
One example is Truck Driving Challenge. To enable touchscreen mode, you are supposed to press a button in the menu. Too many users complained that there was no touchscreen mode (probably not seeing the button or reading the instuctions). I couldn't change the way the inputs were handled due to how integral they are to the driving code. Instead, there was an easy alternative - detect if the user tries to drive using touchscreen and enable it automatically.
As for Flight Simulator 737, let me address something: No I will not fix altitude hold, add approach mode, or add autopilot. They are complicated things and require too much time. Plus, the core simulation has flaws I realise now that make this a bit more difficult. Again, I'd rather create a new project rather than fix an old one.