24.06.10 -- Too many projects and not enough progress

24.06.10 -- Too many projects and not enough progress

Postby Aloys » Thu Jun 24, 2010 4:51 pm

24.06.10 -- Too many projects and not enough progress.

I started my previous entry in this journal by: "my last entry in this journal was written over a year ago." Guess what, that entry was written over two years ago. What about that heh?..
Now I just need to make sure that the following entry gets written before the next millenium.

What has happenned in those last two years, and why am I posting today?
Well, in those last two years I have worked quite a bit (in RL), and despite my best efforts the company I worked for closed down. So I now find myself out of a job, with a lot of free time and I enjoy that a lot. (although I risk becoming a bit of a couch potato). That means I can finally try to complete some of the various Age projects I have lying around. The problem is I have too many of those Ages projects. 7 to be precise. That's way too much. And if you don't mind I'll use this journal entry to do a quick overview.. and try to sort out this mess.

- Ahra Pahts is obviously the biggest of these Ages, and one that should have been completed a long time ago.. I have decided for this Age to totally stop spending time exporting it and focus on the actual production of models and textures. That will help me quite a bit. PyPRP and Alcscript nightmares will come later.

- Islet is the Age I am currently working on, for the D'ni Location Contest. This one has to be completed by the end of August; no choice here. That's a good thing, that means I'll complete my first Age since Ahra Pahts version 0.8 over two years ago. :/ It's quite small and I should be able to do something nice with it.

- 'Hood' is my oldest project. Until recently I thought the layout was final and I was ready to move on to final modelling/texturing, but I realized the upper part was a complete mess; so I scrapped it and now I have no idea when I will complete it.. It's not like it is really important anyway.

- And the remaining 4 Ages are the perfect example of small projects that spinned out of control. They initially started out as separate small Ages, and somehow with time they ended up all being part of a single big story, with a large hub Age. This has all gotten way too big and complicated, and it looks more like a full new game than small separate Ages, and if I was a reasonnable person I'd scrap the whole thing (or at least parts of it). But I have two problems with that:
1) Two of those Ages have actually received quite a lot of work; and the journals for all these Ages are almost complete. All modesty aside, I am quite happy with what I have done so far, and it'd be a pity to see it go to waste.
2) I am not a reasonnable person.
I guess I could try to rework the story to release those Ages separately, or in some kind of episodic format, one Age at a time, but that would waste a perfectly fine story. And again, I am not reasonnable; so there.

So, what should I do of all this? I currently have some free time but that won't last forever, so I will have to get some progress done by the end of the summer. Islet and AP will get some work done in parallel, they are very different projects, and it'll be perfect to work on those alternatively. And those other Ages, they'll have to wait. I have worked on 'projects' for way to long, I need to get some stuff done.
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Re: 24.06.10 -- Too many projects and not enough progress

Postby Robert The Rebuilder » Thu Jun 24, 2010 7:17 pm

Wow, Aloys - these are tough decisions. Lots of interesting projects, but what to tackle now?

In general I've found that the projects that have a deadline are the ones that get the most attention (and are most likely to get finished). And specifically with ages, I learned to release them incrementally, just so that people can at least visit them; I feel like I had finished at least some stage of the overall project, even though I didn't complete the age. One last observation: with diminishing time and/or lack of progress, I tend to seek the path of 'least resistance', i.e. what is the bare minimum list of tasks I need to complete in order to consider the project finished.

...but these are just things that work for me. Your mileage will vary. [For you metric countries, do you say 'kilometerage' instead of 'mileage'? ;-)]
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Re: 24.06.10 -- Too many projects and not enough progress

Postby Aloys » Fri Jun 25, 2010 9:57 am

Robert The Rebuilder wrote:In general I've found that the projects that have a deadline are the ones that get the most attention (and are most likely to get finished).

I agree and I often try to impose myself deadlines, but the thing with those is that since they are self-imposed no-one forces me to respect them and they tend to slip a bit.. :) I have enough of those at work, so when I am busy with a personal project I often like to take my time...

One last observation: with diminishing time and/or lack of progress, I tend to seek the path of 'least resistance', i.e. what is the bare minimum list of tasks I need to complete in order to consider the project finished.

I'm a big fan of checklists (and maps), because they are made to be completed and when I see a checklist with lots of things unchecked I feel bad.. So when I know exactly what I have to do and it is plainly laid out in front of my eyes it is easier to complete things and cross them off my list, rather than endlessly mingling around on various parts of the Age and never actually complete anything.
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