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by norseboar 347 days ago
I second this. I've done lots of game jams and I think the "messy code" threshold for me is like, 1-2 hours away from the deadline at most, on files nobody else will touch. It depends on the type of cleanup, but factoring out common logic really doesn't take that long.

As the above comment says, in my experience bugs introduced from messy code are way more likely than the time savings of not cleaning up code.

The usual exception I'd make are things that like, mostly the same but not quite (e.g. a function to fade out a light over time vs a function to fade out a color over time). Often I find requirements for those diverge over time, so I'll just leave some repeated patterns across both.