Progress update- Animation and rendering (Patreon)

Been working on the animation code updates I mentioned last time. The biggest update (better frame-by-frame animation) requires changes to the core rendering code for the animations. That means I've been delving into some kinda hardcore 2d transformation math.  This has resulted in a Project Management Decision (tm). 

Problem: I can tell this subject matter is at the edges of my current capabilities, which means it could be a massive rabbit hole that takes much longer than expected. It's an unknown -- I think it's fine, I think I only need a couple more days to get the primary features working, but a single error could end up needing two weeks of learning and testing to fix.

I could end up needing to pick up a course on 2d transformation matrix math if things go really wrong.

Solution: I'm giving myself two more days to make the needed progress to get this update working. If we hit an unsolvable error, I'm giving one extra day for research and testing. If I don't know how to fix it, or I do know but it'll take a long time, then this animation update gets put on pause for now.

Luckily, since I use git, I can just save the current progress, revert the code back to before I started the animation code update, and move on. If that happens, I'll revisit this when I have more free time, and people aren't waiting on the game to just be playable.

We'll see by next week which way this ends up going!

Thoughts

Decisions like this are logically easy to make, but deceptively hard to commit to as a solo dev. I think in the past I would've grinded my way through this no matter the difficulty and no matter the consequences to the project. I like being able to solve hard things. I hate feeling inadequate or like I've wasted peoples' time. But it's more responsible to save difficult tasks like this for the right time.

I really hope I can get this piece done though! Frame-by-frame animation is a nasty beast in my current workflow, but it's also visually the best solution to a lot of little animation problems. Being able to quickly swap between/intertwine frame animation and skeletal animation would unlock some really really nice things, especially around orifices getting stretched, fluids bursting out, etc.

Feeeeelings

I like to keep things very open in these posts, and share how I feel about development. It's almost funny how much something as abstract and technical as programming animation code can be tied to something as deep and emotional as feelings of self-worth. If I listen to my gut, it's telling me to barrel forward on this task without assessing the costs/benefits. Because pausing, or giving up, feels like a personal failure. Even though logically, it would be a much bigger success for the project, for the players, and for myself, to prevent a big development delay.

I think bad project management decisions are usually emotional in nature like this. There's this delusional black-and-white feeling that comes up, like delaying a feature will literally kill you, so there's no point in even considering that option. So the only remaining path is to barrel forward. No reason to stop and think if you had no choice in the first place.

I wish I'd been better educated about how personal feelings and fears affect project management decisions, and how the brain is really really good at convincing you that you don't have a choice when you actually do. I hope that anyone working on their own projects can glean something useful from my experiences ^^

... and that's all for now!

Thank you all soooo friggin much. While support on this project dwindled very slightly at the start of this massive update, between Substar and Patreon, it's remained startlingly steady ever since. That stability is what gives me the space to think critically about the best development decisions for the game, and ultimately find the best path to release. Y'all literally make this possible <3