Time for me to weigh in, from a completely devil's advocate perspective.
Kornel the human needs to live. That means paying off bills and what-not. That also means transforming his current indie-for-fun credentials to indie-can-do-big-projects credentials. Because doing that pays the bills. He needs it given his current changing circumstance. We cannot reverse that.
Jupiter Hell is that project for him to convert from indie-for-fun to indie-can-do-big-projects. There are a couple of reasons why this ought to be done: the first, I have highlighted. The second can be inferred from various talk on the public sides of the forum, where there is always the cloud of litigation on DoomRL, AliensRL and DiabloRL should their holding companies come down on us if at any moment it can be argued that the big three rogue-likes we have are being used in a commercial manner, i.e. people pay money to play it. Our usual defense is that Carmack and Romero supports us, but you will realise quickly that though they created Doom, they don't own the Doom franchise, which means that the current owners can, if they so choose, come down on us really hard, and there's little we can do about it. The current donation model sidesteps that problem completely, but it is not sustainable for Kornel the person because a couple hundred of bucks of donations per month isn't going to pay the bills.
So given that Jupiter Hell is literally necessary for our resident God Hand, what does that mean for DoomRL et al? It means we do bug fixes. It means we implement small changes, release sneaky peeks at the current state of the trunk code without making it an official release. It means we bide time and try to incorporate the new things that have been suggested that doesn't need major architecture rescaffolding. Me and a few others have access to the DoomRL code base, and we are doing as what I have explained. DiabloRL is on SourceForge, of which only the "three prime evils" have commit privileges. You hasn't worked on the DiabloRL code recently because new things require some architectural changes on Valkyrie, which only Kornel has the mandate to modify, since it represents the core of the three rogue-likes. And AliensRL is still in the experimental stage despite all the work, and much of the newer ideas are being incorporated into Jupiter Hell.
What does this all mean? It means we are taking a big bet. We bet heavy that Kornel can make a living from doing what he loves, and to take that bet requires temporary sacrifice on the development of the current rogue-likes that we know and love so well. We bet that the success of Jupiter Hell will buy us the indie-for-fun time from Kornel to keep the rogue-likes we love running from now till the end of Chaosforge.
I do not say it lightly. The premise of Jupiter Hell doesn't completely resonate with me. But I see beyond a game. I see Kornel learning how to manage an actual dev team so as to take on larger projects that can contribute money to foot the bills, the unfortunate necessity of modern living. I see Kornel learning how to
delegate his development work so that he can focus on the big picture, and also to keep up with his unspoken promise of doing indie-for-fun. When I donate the thousands I do into Chaosforge, I do not do so for the game. I do so for the man behind the game. I do so with the understanding that Kornel will keep the faith of those who knew him from the indie-for-fun games, and to do so in a sustainable manner.
So have faith. Like all things, it will come to pass.
And now, before I bring out the banhammer, get back to discussing armour/weapon sets.
* thelaptop glares at both LuckyDee and MaiZure for the derailment