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Thinking about it like tech debt - there is a middle ground, to gradually improve his "tilekit" over time. He's willing to take the extra 6-8 months (which is roughly a $60-80k cash investment based on his $200k/20 months budget) to rewrite the engine, but not willing to spend one month per game to tidy up some of his worst art offenders.

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He mentions this in the earlier post. He tried that once before with a game, where he put quite a bit of effort into making the graphics better, but people didn't really notice the improvement, they still complained about the graphics. From this, he concludes that what people want isn't just a short upgrade, it's a vast improvement in quality, and he cannot afford to spend time on that at the moment. I think that's a fair tradeoff that he can make from the numbers, and his experience in the industry gives his decision a lot of weight.

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