Dear SpiritWars family,
I have some bad--and embarrassing--news. We have run into a major, perhaps insurmountable, problem with the SpiritWars code. I truly believed that we were going to be able to bring back the game. I never meant to mislead you and I hope you'll forgive me.
SpiritWars was written in a programming language called Visual Basic 6. This language was old even when Randy was working on it. Randy was a self-taught programmer and did his best but didn't live long enough to learn a newer language. He spoke of wanting to rewrite the game in .NET, the newer version of Visual Basic, but it didn't happen. A little lesson in programming that I just learned today: Programmers don't write all the code themselves. They often purchase "things" that they embed or somehow utilize in their own code. In the case of SpiritWars, there were things called "controls" that Randy apparently purchased from a "controls" company. Those controls are ancient and will no longer work in today's technological environment. It will be necessary to completely rewrite SpiritWars.
Eric and I need your help. Please tell us what you would like us to do, keeping in mind that we don't have the money to hire a team of programmers to do the rewrite. Should we try a kickstarter campaign? I'm afraid that we can't do it by ourselves. Do any of you know how to approach investors? Are any of you programmers who would want to work as a team to bring it back? I can't tell you why, but I don't feel ready to just give up. I apparently still have some fight left in me to keep trying. We NEED your input.
Eric attends community college and I work at my small (and not very successful) business teaching people to become nursing assistants. But even if we had no other comittments, we don't have the knowledge to move forward with SpiritWars by ourselves. I believe that you, dear SpiritWars family, are the best people to help us figure out a direction. I'll be looking for your comments.
Love, Lyn (aka Mom)