Starting over....again.

Since the development of Forgotten Ones began over 6 months ago we have hit numerous snags and hold backs. The most aggravating of all though is the “resets”. This month we began the 4^th reset since the beginning of production. Every time we perform a reset we scrap all of the code and begin again (still keeping the models, textures, and concepts).

This has to be the most annoying part of development, but...maybe it's not such a bad thing. When we started back in June we started out coding some very ugly looking game-play mechanics before scrapping that and going with a package from the Unity Asset Store. After about a month we got rid of that due to it's sever limitations and moved on to a framework for an RPG game (UniRPG) through extensive modifications of the frameworks we got it to suit our purpose. Then, just last month, UniRPG's developer stated that he was making major changes to the framework and when the update released it would break older games made with it.

We sat for 3 weeks waiting, but decided to give it a go without UniRPG, so we scrapped all of our old code and started over, yet again. Now, 2 weeks into this cycle, we are much farther ahead then we have ever been. Most of the mechanics are done, as well as some of the in-game physics, we dropped the legacy animation in favor of mecanim, programmed our own load/save system, as well as input controller and movement controller. Maybe “resetting” isn't such a bad idea? Every time we do it, it winds up giving us a chance to look at things and think “How could this be done better?” and effectively speeds up development.

I know many other developers have probably had to undergo similar situations, if so what were your experiences with it? Did it help you? Or hurt you?