My point is, this game takes a long time to update, and the time it takes comes from Abelius being a lone programmer with insanely high standards. When you want to implement a feature, you start to see things that depend on that feature, and things that you had already made that need to be changed. Somewhere along the process you have to draw the line on how much you are willing to change, and how much time you are willing to spend changing every part of the process. This is also a problem with software engineering. If you have the whole thing planned out before you start, the process tends to go more smoothly, but even then, unexpected things just happen.
Abelius doesn't seem to have a trello set up anymore or some kind of software to keep track of what has to be done, even if in private. In my opinion, delivered from experience, thats is a big problem, not having all the steps planned out, not having a grasp on what every step of the process might be, or what these steps might require. He does seem to understand that this is important, and takes steps to program the game in a way that helps him account for future updates, yet he still finds himself having to fix and remake a lot, every update. That might be because he is the only one working in the code and cant really see things from another angle.
The game doesn't only seem to be a way for him to make a living, he also wants to keep the standards very high, maybe he lacks experience leading projects or organizing projects, which is very common even if you have worked in the industry before. But its undeniable that he has a vision for the project and is doing his best to accomplish it, while trying to make a living off of it in the process. However, the frequency in which even his best, not so well organized, process can generate new content and updates does not equal the promises he usually makes. On the start of the project, creating new content was easy, it could be done fast, he even made another game almost to prove this point to himself. But it didn't really work like that. And now, he can deliver 12 scenes in a 2 month long update.
There seems to be some problems with his own expectations and planning on what he is realistically able to do, and what is realistic for the project in general.
I completely agree on this take. Dev seems like a perfectionist, though I also think he prefers adding new technical content on his game, and appealing to the story progression later. I could feel it when he explained why 0.11 took so long, he took his time explaining the features he have added, but at the end of the day, it's only a framework that does not add any story to the game. It looked like he started on the idea, hits a roadblock, completely develops a new system for that roadblock, and what do you know, months have passed without him doing anything about the story.
From a programmer's perspective, what he did was awesome. He now has a framework that he can keep using on multiple scenes, on multiple areas, and it wouldn't take too long for him to create these scenes anymore, while keeping the animation quality high. But that's about it, on his perspective he poured a ton of work on his game, it was sadly a self service. From the outside perspective, he wasted several months and only provided a tiny amount of content for the game. And thus, a lot of negativity about the game had been thrown, I believe he deleted his F95 account after the release of 0.11 too, probably trying to escape the negativity.
And now, the dev's reputation is now of providing little content months at a time. It felt like he's not respecting everyone's time and money, and his community is now doing the same - by leaking the 0.12 beta version immediately. They no longer respect his time too, which obviously makes it really upsetting for the dev.
I believe the dev needs more accountability, and probably a project manager as well. Sometimes, adding new features to the unfinished game can be counter-productive. Case in point, dev wants height variety on all the characters in the game. Sounds awesome, but it adds an extra layer of complexity now that animations won't align. But the dev dived into it anyway. Would it look good? Definitely. Is it a ton of work? Yes, most likely. He needs to modify his animation framework to automatically adjust parameters when there are height differences. Is it worth it? Long run, yes. But now when people are expecting updates from you after you've been gone for months without? Probably not..
All in all, it's sad to hear the dev being frustrated by the leak. However, he needs to respect the time and money that people are pouring onto his project. I hope he understands that, and plan out his game more, perhaps restart communicating again here instead of just being in discord, explain his progress for the month, etc. I do think he is capable of making monthly releases once he has enough groundwork done, but for how long, now that's the question to ask.
