Latest numbers: 18902342 bytes, 1628 text files. (Since last update: 845698 bytes, 1651 bytes/day.) About two weeks, I passed a milestone with 2 million words of description text. I think that the Wheel of Time has 4.4 million words, for comparison. (I surely won't reach that number, but it'll most likely be over halfway, and given that at one point in 2004 I estimated that the description text accounted for about 60% of the total byte count, the game is probably currently at a text-size-equivalent, when all code is included, of about 75% the size of WoT.)

I started tracking specifically what percentage of days I've actually worked on the game (with the starting reference point being 2005/01/01, since that's when I started a daily journal of things worked on). As of last update (2021/02/15) that was 29.41%. It went as low as 27.29% during one hiatus from the game between about last October and this March, but since then I've worked 99 of the last 107 days (at 6841 bytes/day), bringing that percentage back up to 28.38% (1817 working days out of 6402). It seems keeping track of this might keep me motivated enough to not have overly long absences.

Overall since last update, the major theme has been to go through the long list of "to-do" items and get them done. Currently the number of such items is still pretty high, at 1427, but it's at least 100 less than where it was 3 years ago. Despite covering a lot of them, I still find new things that need to be added, so it's probably more like "200 finished, but 100 new ones arose". These vary from reminders to "check some bit of text for consistency with another", to "fill in this sizable gap of content in the game", so it's hard to estimate how long it will take to do them all if no new ones were to be added.

The reason I've tried to do more of the above is that I'd like to get a third preview release out relatively soon, and the "to-do" list contain a lot of things that really need to be finalized before they're in even a preview release. (However, a lot are just enhancement ideas that don't need to go in at all, or could go in for the final release but not a preview, or are "must-do" items but wouldn't come up within the scope of the game the preview would cover.)

Other than that, these are some of the things done since last update:
(1) One more complicated fight sequence of the type discussed in the 2019/02/15 update. I also decided to simplify the design of the remaining fights of this type to save some effort.

(2) A lot of text polishing and filling in incomplete descriptions, especially with conditions that can vary over time, which had been skipped over for years.

(3) Designed and implemented the puzzle that I think will be the final one of the game (after all the dramatic events are over, not that those have even been written yet). Interestingly this has now become the first and only puzzle I've coded while on a flight.

(4) Made a "game development timeline" feature that you can access in the game and read a timeline of when various things in the game were implemented (game features, or specific areas of the world), just for those who are curious.

> 37 locations, 319150 bytes (8625 per location) [2001/03/25]
> 54 loc, 438797 bytes (8126 pl) [2001/04/08]
> 80 loc, 573649 bytes (7171 pl) [2001/04/30]
> 95 loc, 794677 bytes (8365 pl) [2001/05/21]
> 115 loc, 949191 bytes (8253 pl) [2001/06/06]
> 132 loc, 1105293 bytes (8373 pl) [2001/06/15] *
> 145 loc, 1259378 bytes (8685 pl) [2001/06/25]
> 152 loc, 1470894 bytes (9677 pl) [2001/07/08]
> 155 loc, 1598537 bytes (10313 pl) [2001/07/23]
> 158 loc, 1746880 bytes (11056 pl) [2001/08/14]
> 166 loc, 1809922 bytes (10903 pl) [2001/09/25]
> 179 loc, 2018080 bytes (11274 pl) [2001/10/18]
> 209 loc, 2188235 bytes (10470 pl) [2001/11/08]
> 220 loc, 2316166 bytes (10528 pl) [2001/11/30]
> 285 loc, 2605419 bytes (9141 pl) [2001/12/19]
> 296 loc, 2794886 bytes (9442 pl) [2002/01/27]
> 301 loc, 2891546 bytes (9606 pl) [2002/02/04]
> 304 loc, 3038874 bytes (9996 pl) [2002/02/15]
> 309 loc, 3146158 bytes (10181 pl) [2002/02/23]
> 311 loc, 3267399 bytes (10506 pl) [2002/03/09]
> 311 loc, 3449854 bytes (11092 pl) [2002/03/23]
> 318 loc, 3714958 bytes (11682 pl) [2002/04/06]
> 330 loc, 3987346 bytes (12082 pl) [2002/05/01]
> 412 loc, 5290126 bytes (12840 pl) [2002/06/25]
> 417 loc, 5534723 bytes (13272 pl) [2002/07/20]
> 445 loc, 5951946 bytes (13375 pl) [2002/09/04]
> 451 loc, 6181927 bytes (13707 pl) [2002/10/08]
> 451 loc, 6337773 bytes (14052 pl) [2002/11/04]
> 454 loc, 6602028 bytes (14541 pl) [2002/12/01]
> 456 loc, 6877294 bytes (15081 pl) [2003/02/15]
> 459 loc, 6953122 bytes (15148 pl) [2003/03/01]
> 460 loc, 7102484 bytes (15440 pl) [2003/04/01]
> 460 loc, 7217654 bytes (15690 pl) [2003/05/01]
> 463 loc, 7410958 bytes (16006 pl) [2003/06/01]
> 464 loc, 7655714 bytes (16499 pl) [2003/07/01]
> 464 loc, 8473865 bytes (18262 pl) [2003/08/01]
> 464 loc, 8101358 bytes (17459 pl) [2003/09/01]
> 464 loc, 8140964 bytes (17545 pl) [2003/10/01]
> 465 loc, 8181632 bytes (17594 pl) [2003/11/01]
> 486 loc, 8197166 bytes (16866 pl) [2003/12/01]
> 486 loc, 8197166 bytes (16866 pl) [2004/01/01]
> 485 loc, 8889647 bytes (18329 pl) [2004/02/01] **
> 490 loc, 9614464 bytes (19621 pl) [2004/04/21]
> 491 loc, 9854149 bytes (20069 pl) [2004/06/13]
> 10063192 bytes [2004/10/23] ***
> 10177700 bytes [2004/11/20]
> 10179362 bytes [2005/01/01]
> 10331884 bytes [2005/01/11]
> 10426354 bytes [2005/02/15]
> 10503046 bytes [2005/04/01]
> 10576958 bytes [2005/05/01]
> 10830199 bytes [2005/06/01]
> 11004821 bytes [2005/07/01]
> 11109205 bytes [2005/08/01]
> 11293249 bytes [2005/09/01]
> 11261072 bytes [2005/10/01]
> 11388432 bytes [2005/11/01]
> 11542625 bytes [2005/12/01]
> 11355007 bytes [2006/01/01]
> 11425523 bytes [2006/02/15]
> 11611039 bytes [2006/04/01]
> 11640914 bytes [2006/05/01]
> 11848769 bytes [2006/06/01]
> 11959800 bytes [2006/07/01]
> 12043809 bytes [2006/08/01]
> 12287368 bytes [2006/11/16]
> 12406753 bytes [2006/12/01]
> 12620681 bytes [2007/01/01]
> 12832810 bytes [2007/02/01]
> 12920349 bytes [2007/02/15]
> 13234479 bytes [2007/03/01]
> 13352602 bytes [2007/04/01]
> 13454855 bytes [2007/05/01]
> 13660068 bytes [2007/06/01]
> 13829000 bytes [2007/07/01]
> 14039480 bytes [2007/08/01]
> 14041915 bytes [2007/09/01]
> 14204068 bytes [2007/10/01]
> 14311033 bytes [2007/11/01]
> 14317981 bytes [2007/12/01]
> 14234894 bytes [2008/01/01]
> 14274387 bytes [2008/02/01]
> 14278691 bytes [2008/02/15]
> 14327569 bytes [2008/03/01]
> 14394075 bytes [2008/04/01]
> 14989987 bytes [2009/02/15]
> 15568134 bytes [2009/06/03]
> 16127147 bytes [2009/12/01]
> 16328078 bytes [2010/02/15]
> 16609169 bytes [2014/03/08]
> 16964407 bytes [2016/09/01]
> 17533277 bytes [2019/02/15]
> 17713834 bytes [2020/07/20]
> 18056644 bytes [2021/02/15]
>
> *, **, *** = change of metric for game size