kmitchell.12catblackstudios (9/23/2018)
robbey10 (9/23/2018)
I must say that I always feel a little bit gypped when you announce a September release and we get a few days before October. I should have known because this is not the first time that this has happened,Software development is not a thing that can be exactly judged. If you want a really buggy release then yes it can drop on time. But if you want something that has been ironed out then yes that might extend the estimated time. Never rush software releases. That ends bad. They should take their time and release it when they know its stable. Mind you theres no such thing as a perfect release for anything but they can make it better than a rushed release.
Software development can be "judged". It very often is. Only with very fresh/junior teams do you experience issues tracking/managing deadlines. As a veteran to the industry, and the owner of a software company, I can assure you that software engineering efficiency and velocity has been recorded/properly planned for a very long time now.
I find it interesting that as soon as a person brings up release dates, people incorrectly assume that others want something rushed. Who here has said "Rush this product! Release it now with all its present bugs and lack of functionality!"? The discussion at hand is a matter of an advertised release date (and thus, people making purchasing decisions based on that) versus the real release date. As with most businesses, it boils down to customer perception vs reality.
In this case, the release was slated for September. The discussion at hand is essentially "will it release in September". Derailing that by claiming that someone who expects it in September is an idiot who expects a rushed/buggy/sub-par product is not conducive to the topic at hand, and is highly reductive. By that logic, you are indirectly claiming that anyone who believes the word of Reallusion is a buffoon, and thus calling them liars. A massive blow to both Reallusion and those who support them.
What I personally find unnerving is the total silence on the matter. I haven't planned teams' schedules around the release of this software as that'd be foolish. However, as someone who purchased based on the marketing around this product (which centered around a September release and pushed very hard for pre-orders on that premise) I'd love to know what exactly I should be planning on. I have two smaller projects that are awaiting assets, which I would love to test CC3 with (that's why they're awaiting assets). For me, this boils down to whether it will slow the projects down by a large amount or not -- presently the artists are busy with other things, but that can't hold up forever. I really don't want anyone sitting on their hands waiting for CC3 just so we can conduct a test run.
As it stands, that means the decision to either use this or not will be made when we finish up with other tasks, on the fly. Sometimes you have to do that, and that is one of the reasons we are an agile studio. However, planning is certainly nice, and I'd love to mitigate as many spur-of-the-moment decisions as I possibly can. I don't want to continue down our normal routine, only to have CC3 release a week after we make that decision. If we could be informed beforehand, we can make an informed decision without any surprises. Even if the only information we receive is, "Sorry, we will likely be pushing it back to mid-October", we can at least know that the wise decision is to not wait for CC3 on these projects. If we get a surprise and it releases September 28th or October 1st, so be it, we still made a more informed decision based on the communication we were given.
I don't want anything rushed. I don't want a product that is going to crash and cause grief for artists. I'm not here to ask for that. I'm here to ask for communication, which does not seem like a tall order. I have to communicate with investors on the regular, and when it comes to deadlines it's not all rainbows and unicorns. However, the communication is still there. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask to be treated like an adult that can handle the pushing of a deadline. I'm not asking for a guaranteed release date, either.
I'm simply asking if it presently looks like it will actually be released in September. If so, great, I'll make tentative plans around that. If not, great, I'll make tentative plans around that instead. I'm not going to complain if it won't make it to a September release. On the contrary, I will be relieved that the information was actually communicated, rather than simply waiting around to find out.
This post is made with respect to Reallusion and the entire team. I'm here because I'm excited to test the product, and I really like what I've seen of CC3 so far. Sometimes it's difficult to convey things over text, and my approach is often very direct anyway. In person it's a lot easier to judge that a direct question or statement is not said with malice. All things considered, if I've said something that seems like a jab, that was not my intention. I'm just crossing my fingers for an update of any kind, not to rush/judge/criticize/complain.