Weekly update #45 - Sprint retrospective, planning next

Hey all,

For this weekly, I figured I'd fit the retrospective for the 0.18 cycle.

We're still doing the classic format since I did not really come up with something more fancy, though it's still the backlogs of DevOps stuff to improve.

As usual, the classic scrum talking points then I'll talk about the scope of next release, and what's next for the story.

What went wrong:

• Format, early access and public releases: on this big cycle since the last public release, I experimented with a new format, intending to ship some early access builds on the way to the public update. I don't think it's a bad idea per se but I don't think I implemented that very well. The way things went, I think it burdened me more than anything with a whole additional week of release and DevOps tasks, so I need to streamline the release process if I want to do more frequent releases.

• Delays: this cycle was way longer than intended, but mostly for IRL, private reasons rather than project-related blockers (though those IRL issues do impact my creativity and involvement in the development). The good news is, things are looking up, I'm taking care of myself and I've started to change my daily organization (more on that later on)

• One of the things I realized when going through the whole release process is that I had been kind of steering off track these past few months. Between the technical challenges (learning animation was a big one) and being too focused on day-to-day tasks, I forgot to focus on the important things : where is the game going, what story do I want to tell. In doing so, I faced creativity issues that undermined everything else I was doing. Before starting production for the next update, I've already started doing some major pre-writing trying to set in advance the next few days in the story.

What went right:

• I like how the artwork is evolving: with the coloring process being streamlined and the new backgrounds, I'm starting to like the way the artwork is shaping up. I'm striving to have every day 2 illustration remastered with colors and backgrounds by the next couple of updates.

• The animations look pretty good: it's a promising start, even though there are still a handful of technical challenges to address (asset compression and format mostly), I think it's a good way to diversify the artwork and liven up the characters.

• As I mentioned earlier, I had my load of personal issues that affected my creativity and motivation; things are improving however, and I believe I've started making some good changes in my organization. I'm actually feeling a newfound motivation and inspiration as I've had a bunch of ideas for the story and the evolution of characters and their relationships with the MC. I'm trying to improve my processes, the way I approach project management and most importantly the way I take care of myself and I think it can only improve the quality of my work.

What to improve:

• As I mentioned, I want to finish remastering all the black & white artwork in the game, and I also wanted to improve some of the early dialogue to accommodate some stuff that will come next in the story. Dialogue is an important part of my storytelling process and I really want to have high quality standards in that regard.

• Communication, as always. I'm intending to do some major changes in that domain, mostly by being present in more socials but also by improving my branding and overall communication strategy.

What's next?

I will most likely do a separate post for next update's planning. As I mentioned, I have a bunch of ideas for what's coming next in the story so I have a rough idea of the scope for next update, but I'll probably still do some content polls to orient my choices gauging what you guys like best.

Thank you as always for the support, feel free to give feedback about anything you like and stay tuned for more posts & polls!