So woke up this morning buzzing to ship the Lovely Day update. Got myself coffee, cracked open the laptop feeling all ready. Opened the bug tracker first thing, like always. And there it was. A bunch of new tickets tagged CRITICAL. Like, okay, what now?
Facing the Music
Clicked into the first one. Crash reports exploding. Something in the new animation module. Fine, I think, probably just a loose end. Jumped into the code, traced it back. Spent like two hours messing with timings, thinking it was just a glitchy loop. Nope. Whole thing’s unstable. Feels like walking on a pile of junk.
Next ticket: Save data corruption. Awesome. User saves getting nuked because of how the new event system handles overwrites. My stomach kinda dropped. Tested it myself. Yep, saved my game, played the new event, exited… and bam. Progress gone. Poof. That’s a deal-breaker right there.
The Triage Chaos
Called the team together – my two artists and the junior coder. Screen-shared the mess. Everyone staring at the crash logs like it’s hieroglyphics. Our faces? Probably looked like someone ran over our lunchboxes.
- Crash Monster: Needed a full rewrite of that animation handler. Tried patching; fell apart.
- Save Slayer: Entire event sequencing logic was broken. Band-aid fixes just made more holes.
- Minor Stuff Pileup: Text overlapping, a weird sound glitch… felt like death by a thousand cuts while the big stuff bled out.
Knew right then – no way this ships this week. Told the team. Silence. Heavy sighing. Junior coder looked like he wanted to hide under the desk. Felt like crap.
Making The Call (And The Plan)
Stomped off to make another coffee. Just pacing. Knew players would be pissed. Hated the thought. But shipping broken junk? Worse. Chugged the coffee, bitter taste kinda matched the mood. Went back to the team.
- Delay Announcement: Drafted that mess first. Wrote it straight from the gut – honest about the crashes and save issues. Posted it everywhere.
- New Target: Gave ourselves three solid weeks. No heroics, just realistic.
- Scrap & Rebuild: Tore out the rotten animation code. Started fresh, super basic. Junior coder tackled the save logic under my eye – step by step, testing after EVERY change.
Silver Linings (Sorta)
While we were neck-deep in fixing the fires, artists got extra time. Came up with this super cute hidden park scene. Wouldn’t have happened without the delay. Also tightened up some UI stuff that always bugged me. Small wins, I guess.
So yeah. Lovely Day is late. Sucked saying it. But honestly? Found more critical junk before it reached you guys. Learned the hard way: rushing near the finish line is how you faceplant. Fixing it proper now. New date’s solid. Promise.
Still feel like I swallowed a rock telling you all this delay stuff, though. Management? They just sent an email saying “Thoroughness is a virtue!”. Whatever. We keep coding.
