I find this very interesting, because I feel like it's one of those 'outcome' driven projects, where no real consideration is given to any kind of maintainability, and you quickly throw together a buggy prototype in a few months.
...and no one ever touches it again [1].
That was never the goal though, and as they point out in the retrospective [2]:
> We were asked whether the project would have benefit from a stricter testing phase to developing, with each code iteration requiring some testing, and we believe the answer is still no. While our engine could have used more testing, the project's mission was to learn, and we wouldn't have been able to learn as much by being more methodical.
> What the Isetta Engine allowed us to do was see the whole picture of a game engine, what it takes to build one, and how the engine development process works.
To be fair, it did that... but it's a pity they had to learn the hard way, by making something they poured their hearts and souls into and then... just, never touch again.
> We weren't being given explicit feedback about the engine we were developing from our faculty or others, and we were no longer spending even the majority of our time learning game engine development. At some point near the end, the project pivoted from its original goal, and we had to do something that was no longer learning. And it just became a slog.
...and no one ever touches it again [1].
That was never the goal though, and as they point out in the retrospective [2]:
> We were asked whether the project would have benefit from a stricter testing phase to developing, with each code iteration requiring some testing, and we believe the answer is still no. While our engine could have used more testing, the project's mission was to learn, and we wouldn't have been able to learn as much by being more methodical.
> What the Isetta Engine allowed us to do was see the whole picture of a game engine, what it takes to build one, and how the engine development process works.
To be fair, it did that... but it's a pity they had to learn the hard way, by making something they poured their hearts and souls into and then... just, never touch again.
> We weren't being given explicit feedback about the engine we were developing from our faculty or others, and we were no longer spending even the majority of our time learning game engine development. At some point near the end, the project pivoted from its original goal, and we had to do something that was no longer learning. And it just became a slog.
[1] - https://github.com/Isetta-Team/Isetta-Engine/commits/master
[2] - https://isetta.io/engine_postmortem/SoftwareDevelopment