Status update - 2019-05-06

What I recently did:

Reworking my work process

I've been very busy with "putting out fires", things that (seemingly) needed attention right now, having to stop whatever I was working on and take care of the fire. But many things aren't always really fires. Of course, I will always prioritize serious bugs, crashes and when people need support with their copy of MMM. But others are just normal tasks that came to mind, and instead if noting down a few thoughts on it and putting it in my backlog I try to do them at once. If a fire delays work on other things or scrambles my plans, that is fine, because some things can't wait. But normal tasks should not. And recently it feels like I am getting more and more delayed and just put out (fake) fires.

So, I sat down and thought hard about my development processes, not only for MMM but also other projects, I do or would like to do if I had the time and money for it (like more gamedev). The result of it is a 3 phase process: Design, Development, Polishing. I still work it in a agile manner, so everyone thinking that this sounds like a waterfall-model, it's not.

In short, the three phases explained (for MMM):

Design Phase: I plan the features for the next version, invest more time into research upfront, maybe prototype a feature, and write down a lot of _how_ I want to tackle the upcoming changes and features.

Development Phase: I focus on the work, able to mostly follow the plans I did in the Design Phase. For me, trying to think about look and feel of things _while_ working on a feature usually slows me down immensely. In worst cases I get paralyzed by the possible options, which I usually only able to break when I just decide for the most simple solution to implement. One example of that happening is the included file browser. Such choices could and should have been made earlier on, allowing me to follow a plan, making the implementation smoother.

Polishing Phase: All things for the next versions are implemented now. I will give the version to Alpha testers and beta testers. I will do bugfixing and also see if I can do general polishing, improving things, making the version better in overall quality. At the end of the phase I'll release the polished and bugfixed version to the stores.

This process allows me to better dedicate time to things, improving my focus while working. Of course, I will also keep improving the process, using "Kaizen. But in any case, I am already feeling a lot better about how things progress now.

Concluding v1.2 "Design Phase"

I went through every planned feature for v1.2 and wrote down a brief plan on how I will make it a reality. I dedicated time to think about all screens involved in the session importing process, defined where I want the standard importing folder to be, how the user can import multiple sessions in less time without making it complicated, etc. I feel like many took care of a lot of lingering questions that cluttered up my brain. Now that I have a plan for each new or changed thing for 1.2, I'm feeling a lot more confident in implementing them in a timely manner.

Session for March released

I released the march session ("Drone Mode") on April 30th to Alpha supporters. That means that Beta supporters will get access on May 14th and the file will become public to the rest of the world on May 28th. I marked those dates in my calendar to not forget.

February Session public

I was (very) late, but the February session ("8 hours of arousal") is now available on the wordpress site and I also uploaded it to WarpMyMind. Can you think of more places where I should upload it?

What I hope to accomplish next (this week):

Sessions for April

I am not finished with this. The idea is that this file make it so that you will derive pleasure from giving pleasure and satisfying someone else. I hope you like that idea. It's somewhat more tame than "Drone Mode". What do you think?

SessionMaker 1.1: MP3 to OGG conversion

I focused my time on the design phase, so this one isn't done yet. But I made a plan for this one as well, so I hope it will go smoothly.

Wrapping up SessionMaker 1.1

I will do some more testing of the version. If everything is running smoothly I'll release it to Alpha supportes soon.

Adding links to creators on the wordpress site

You might know that there are already several well-known people in the community that created one or more sessions for MMM. I will try to find them and put links to them under the "Sessions" seciot on the wordpress homepage so that visitors have an easier time finding more sessions as well as creators.

Soon-ish: Variants of February session

It seems not many users listened to the file, since 8 hours seems quite intimidating. I'm sorry that I was too stupid to realize that earlier. Anyways, I will do variants of this file so that the effect will last for a shorter amount of time. The variants will be for 4 hours, 2 hours and 1 hour. 

And that's it for today. As always, I'm looking forward to your comments. So, if you have thoughts / answers / questions, please let me know!