Hi folks. Those of you that have been active on the forums in the past couple of weeks, will have seen some some posts from me about giving up on my long ongoing Blackhawk project, and then leaving the forums.

Banita pushed me over the edge with his comments and criticisms at a point where my mental health was low. Lockdown for the last year has taken its toll on me. I've barely left home in over a year, and only for essential shopping.

I was trying to finish my Blackhawk project so I could release it and walk away. I've spent soo many full days at my pc this year working on it, and it's an unhealthy obsession. I did fully delete my files for it, and the code branch. Maybe it was a bit too reactive in hindsight, but I wasn't really thinking straight. It's possible it could be recovered now I look into it, but I'm not sure if I will.

I've been a contributor to this community for over 10 years. I think I'm the only modder left, or at least one of very few, and I'm the only one with full access to the source code repo. As such, I felt pressure from members of the forum to fix things, and deal with bugs being posted. So it all became a bit too much, resulting in the posts and actions I took.

But I wanted to still help the community without getting too involved, and do it on my terms without expectation, so created the simulacrum user account to have a fresh start. I hadn't played the sim in a long, long time, and so when I stopped working on my project, I just played the game as a player for the first time in years, without thinking about modding it. It was nice to enjoy the sim as it is now. Over the past year, with being home more than normal, I have gotten into sims a lot more. I've got MSFS, IL-2 Sturmovik, and Falcon BMS. I've enjoyed playing those and learning them, but EECH always felt like a burden due to the unfinished tasks I felt I had.

So I'm sorry for the dishonesty, and for reacting the way that I did. Reading the posts after I left, I see others were waiting on me finishing my project, and counting on other things being fixed or improved. So I'm sorry if I've let anyone down, or messed up plans they had for the game.

I've been messaging the forums admins in the last few days about all of this, and they have kindly agreed to re-enable this account and let me remain on the forums. The other accounts I created will be disabled.

I'm not going to make any promises or guarantees about working on fixing things in the game, or making mods. If I feel like it, and have the time, then I might. Others are more than welcome to get the source code, and have a go - after all that's how I learnt many years ago. I'll be happy to answer questions, and help if I can.

Great 2 see u back

Covid = cranky humans but we will give this disease a kick in the ass.

Stuck in on own as well for the last year.

Nice to see the admins of SimHQ can show some understanding...

Its a great site and one the few really good places left to have some funz.

Welcome back fella.

Welcome back messyhead

Everything you've said is highly relatable and I've been in a very similar position with the isolation of lockdowns and deteriorating mental health over the past year. I also understand the immense pressure that you can feel when you're solely responsible for a much coveted contribution to a game or community. I think I found myself in a similar situation with my Longbow 2 fix package and website. People wanted more and more from the fix, although it did work for the majority of people. And the website became a bit of an obsession to say the least. I've pretty much always suffered from mental health issues which accounts for my obsessive projects in the past, and my impatience and irritability at times. Don't beat yourself up over it, it's just a game. I know you've worked hard at your Black Hawk cockpit and although I don't play or contribute to EECH, I appreciate your efforts. Sometimes the break we need is killing what we create, so I understand you deleting all the project files. If that's what you needed to do in order to find some sort of peace then so be it. People will get over it, and if they don't, then maybe they need to re-evaluate their own lives...

Welcome back messyhead. Take care of yourself, first and foremost. Thanks for all the work you've put into this game over many years and enjoy your sim time!

Hi Messyhead! Taking a break is a good idea. I've been off playing with music synthesizers instead of coding anything myself. I might do some more with EECH, I might not. We all have lives outside of this. I have an old medieval styled chair I'm fixing right now, the leather seat tore in half and it needs a new seat. And by all means, play the sim for fun! That's what it's for!

Hello everyone, it is difficult to have life in order and even more difficult to find time to dedicate to this non-profit project so from my humble opinion I can only thank you and all those who have contributed to the improvements. I have great memories of when all this was booming and it is sad now for me to see what we have come to. From here I encourage everyone to the tolerance and respect that we all deserve. Building is laborious and difficult to achieve good results, instead destroying is easy and instantaneous and I encouraged construction, participation, development, exchange because this is where I have seen all that. Long live this community !!

I want to thank you for coming back,

You were like one of the only hopes here of progress before you left. I was really bummed out when you gave up but I understand the reasons why. I hope you find motivation again but understand if you don't. I work with 3d modeling and it can be very tedious and stressful when your doing work for others.

Hi folks. That's for the nice comments.

I've not been on this forum for quite a while, and haven't played or done any work on EECH for months. I've got a new distraction now that doesn't involve sitting at my PC for hours, so that's been taking up my time instead.

I hope you're all well, stay safe, look after each other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MICPyrnGYwg

U rock and i only hope that u will see the work u guys put in to this sim is really appreciated...

you guys are the doc holidays of chopper combat...

be well and never forget that you guys kept the sim alive...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfgQWvhu8s4