When d'you accept something's 'finished'

(Or put another way, how'd you carry on when your running out of steam......)

Well,

You finish something. It works, it has an installer, other people have beta tested - but deep down you're thinking 'but I could just do x, y and z and then it'll be even better.'

How'd you stop from doing x,y and z - start another project ? Start trying to implement x,y and z & make it release 2 ?

Or get a new hobby/addiction ?

Hello.

That's called planning for the sequel. Release and prepare to earn money, improve the something, realease that and earn more.

Don't, don't, don't let feature creep hold you up.

It might sound like rubbish but look at, oooh, EA Games....hmmm, maybe not such a good example ;o)

Goodbye.

Well basically, is it a viable option to sell it now or are x,y,z required to make it sell or to make it sell MUCH more? Your testers should have indicated whether the features were "must haves" or "maybes but not really bothered". If it's ready to sell, then sell it and put your time into a new project with all you've learned (or a sequal/re-skin if applicable).

If it's not a retail product (i.e. it's free) the same logic applies in terms of asking your testers is it good enough for release. Also your reputation may be affect positively or negatively by the release so anything you can do to make it more positive in order to secure future deals is good. Mind you having ANYTHING finished is really positive (well done), it's just that the quality affects the order of magnitude :-)

Thanks Soggy, good luck with your results, mine are due and day now.

What makes matters worse is that I'd seriously considered employing a very accomplished graphical artist but am going through a bit of a funds shortage / lack of confidence in my product . C'est La Vie.

If I find the wherewithall to carry on development of my product then I may consider more development.

@Grey... the MUCH more bit is bothering me I must confess.

To misappropriate and paraphrase an old writing saying: software is never finished, it's simply abandoned. This is true.

Justluke: hehe good one. I made some business management software in Delphi/SQL for a firm over 9 years and it was never finished. I no longer work from them, I've "abandoned" it but they are in charge of improving it now if they want :-)

Blitzplotter: Dare you post it in the showcase? If it's good enough you may be able to assess whether it's worth hiring an artist or you maybe be able to get one on board for royalties. Royalties are only viable with a finished product/track record, it's very hard to get anyone to agree at the start of development of course.

Years ago I worked as a game tester in one of Infogrames' QA departments. I worked on a ton of games in my time, and they were all released while there was still a long list of bugs remaining to be fixed. And, in every case, the company was clearly aware of the problems and made a conscious decision to ignore them. I don't know about other types of software, but commercial games absolutely are abandoned rather than finished.

On a side note: it always makes me smile when a publisher releases a statement saying something like "we are working hard on a patch to fix the serious issues that have been discovered since the release of our game". Discovered since the game was released? Ha. Yeah right.

@Just Luke "Yeah right" ... LOL (;-)

@ Grey: composing something for you.....

That's interesting to hear, JustLuke.

It's impossible to finish anything ever, because everything keeps on going. There is always something more you can add, change, or tweak. Look at how much time gets wasted writing forum posts or customizing your desktop or playing with your app rather than developing it more.

If you're going to draw a line let's just hope you draw it in a sensible place and that if you do add some new feature at the last minute it's done properly and not just some strapped-on afterthought better left for a full rethink in the next product.

Never. Developing software is an evolutionary process.

Oh Christ.... remember the Portuguese version of Fatal Racing?!

None of the testers even spoke Portuguese and even WE could tell half of the text was missing. They went ahead and released it anyway because another released game would look good for their investors.

Didn't seem to matter that said game was complete dog filth.

I have only ever finished one major project, but I decided it was finished when I could think of nothing really great I could add to it without a major rewrite of perfectly good existing code.

I think games only need to have a certain amount of depth to them and it's fairly easy to know when you're going too far when you find yourself nit picking over small things that nobody is ever going to notice the difference with anyway.

This is a good reason to setup a list of features before starting. A good solid list of features. Then slot each feature into the release. Without that I would personally never get anything done (which is partly why I never get anything done outside of work)

Agreed ... without it ... nothing ever gets finished!

I have a habbit of 'feature creeping' myself so it's best to always keep an open mind in terms of what I might like to add at the design stage - saves a world of pain trying to shoehorn stuff in after the fact

Stevie