Exceptional Times, also for the YARPS Team
Dear backers, friends, and followers of YARPS,
The coronavirus has a tight grip on Europe, as most of you are probably aware from the news over the last few days and weeks. The impact on our daily lives is already remarkable and the situation is unlikely to change very soon. This also affects our work on YARPS. Luckily, nobody in our team has fallen seriously ill, yet. Under these circumstances, however, it’s difficult for us to keep up our usual workflow. We’re expecting a delay to our Feature Alpha Phase, as well as delayed response times in our support, the Community Hub and the Idea Hub. But there’s still more to tell you.
After thorough evaluation over the last couple of days we have decided to pause the development of YARPS for some time. Our team has decided that we want to join other developers and research partners in contributing to overcome the corona situation. We believe that this exceptional situation requires readjusting our priorities so that everyone of us can contribute to crisis management according to their respective means. Soon we can let you know what this means specifically, but we want to do this in another, separate announcement. (If you already want to have a look, you can learn more here.)
We understand that you’re eagerly waiting for the next steps for YARPS. However, many of you will probably also share our perspective and concerns. And those who are already directly affected by the coronavirus might have other things on their minds, anyway. We hope you can understand our decision.
As soon as our capacities and general circumstances allow we will continue the development of YARPS for you. In this regard there are still more exciting news!
We are aiming to implement offline usability for YARPS already before the final release, a feature that was requested often. As you know, this was not part of the prototype’s original concept and was only considered as a potential next step after the release. After comprehensive analysis we have now decided to redesign the foundations of YARPS already before the release. This will enable offline usability and many other things and make YARPS even better right from the start.
To develop YARPS using this optimized technical design provides many advantages upon release of the full version:
The New YARPS
We’re looking forward to continuing our work on YARPS for you in this incredible new design! Of course, YARPS will not lose any of the features that it already has or that we’ve promised before! The new YARPS will simply provide even more features and be even better than what you could already look forward to, but it will take a little longer than expected.
What does that mean for our new schedule? In the light of the current corona crisis we can’t make a reliable statement on our schedule in the long term. However, as of today, we expect that the Feature Alpha Phase that was originally planned for May 2020 will have to be delayed by about nine months. This already accounts for our involvement in the corona situation as well as the comprehensive redesign of YARPS’s foundations for offline usability. It does sound like a long time but it is impossible for us to ignore the global economic and political situation. We’ll have to prepare for difficult times.
We’re hoping for your understanding and sympathy, but we also know very well that some of you might be disappointed. However, we’re certain that the wait will be worth it. Until then, the YARPS Prototype will remain available for free and we will keep updating it with small improvements and fixes. In addition to that, we have decided to provide a little extra for our backers on Kickstarter as a reward for your understanding and patience.
Thank You for Your Patience!
The decisions we’re announcing today weren’t easy ones. But we believe they are necessary and reasonable, and we hope you stand with us in this. Please be assured: We will continue to dedicate our full efforts to the development of YARPS to shape it into the perfect application for your roleplaying needs as soon as possible.
Stay with us, stay home, and stay healthy. Hopefully, we’ll all meet again soon on Kickstarter, in the YARPS Community Hub, support center, or on Facebook.
Best regards
The YARPS Team