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Okay so the last "Change of plans" was posted late at night and I was very tired but wanted to get my thoughts out, so I wrote it out as quickly as I could and I didn't go into much detail so that's the goal of this post. This is hopefully my last brain vomit post for a while.
Before I start with that I do want to mention that I proposed to my girlfriend last night and she said yes. I didn't plan to propose (Had another plan for it in mind) but I brought the ring just incase the perfect moment happened... and it did. So I'm now engaged and that's pretty fucking cool.
Okay, now the post starts for real.
After my hiatus I made a few changes that I thought would be enough to guarantee consistency. Those included getting rid of making a set of weekly renders, changing to a bi-weekly schedule, and changing from a hard deadline date of Thursday to Thurs-Sat.
While those changes do help it also kind of showed me what the real issue was... and I already knew it was an issue but I thought those changes would make it way easier to manage.
The issue is how I approach the work and how I deliver it.
The issue:
I'm not a robot. I'm a human that makes mistakes.
So with my current schedule and how I release things I have little room for fuck ups or basically anything other than the initial plan. It's super structured and if one thing falls out of place then everything falls with it.
Why is that?
When I release an update I release 100% of everything I have. Meaning the day after the update I'm back to square one.
Why is that a problem?
It leads to volatility. If I have a bad week then it basically always leads to a delay.
Another reason and it's a self imposed problem is that I always try to one up myself. "I did 180 renders last week, I can do better this week!" and that just keeps happening and the number keeps growing. When I first set out to work on WVM I had said I'd do 80-100 renders a week. Then the goal was 120, then 140, then 150...
I always want to do more and more... and that leads to delays because it only takes one fuck up to cause one... and the delay leads me to want to do better the next time and deliver even more. That cycle just repeats and repeats.
How do you fix it?
There's a few approaches. I could switch to a "it's out when it's out" schedule but I think I'd still have the same issue of trying to over deliver (see day 7 final).
I could stop giving hard deadlines but still have two releases a month. (This may be a thing, but not sure how to implement it)
I could build a buffer of renders so it isn't a mad dash for content after every single update and I can pull from it whenever I have fuck ups or need some time off for real life stuff. (This is 100% happening. After this update I'll be spending some time building up a stash of renders)
Set a soft cap of renders per update. (This is also happening. The number in my mind right now is 240 because I think that's a number I can reliably hit and overshoot a little to help build up the buffer. And when the buffer is large enough I'll have slightly larger updates.)
Conclusion:
A soft cap and a buffer of renders is the only path I see to me being 100% consistent barring any major tragedies. I maintain all the good about the work and updates while getting rid of almost all of the bad.
It takes some time to build but it's the perfect time as pledges are paused. It's kind of too obvious a solution to not take advantage of.
Other benefits of the buffer include giving me the time needed to work on some of the things that benefit WVM that can be a pain to work on mid update like building scenes, working on characters or custom textures, and things like the character sheet.
And finally news about the update:
I'm just gonna give it to you straight. The update ends in a mini cliffhanger currently. (The kind of playful ones I do on occasion which would be fine with the normal schedule) but I think I should see that scene through as there won't be any update past this for around a month. So trading a few days for a hot scene that wouldn't be seen for a month otherwise. I know my last few posts have been titled "I'm an asshole" but I guess it turns out I'm not big enough of one to hit you guys with a cliffhanger before going on with this plan.
The scene will take a few days, so the update will be out this weekend. Likely Sunday as I'm going to be celebrating with the fiancée for a bit today. I'm quite excited about things.
That's all I had planned to touch on. If you guys have any questions or advice feel free to leave a comment and I'll get to it when I can.
Love you guys <3
