Sounds about par for software development.

Yeah, maybe in a few years. I've still got a lot to learn and a lot of networking (the meeting people kind) to do, then perhaps I will. But I am indeed convinced of the fact that I had more fun (at least in many ways) as a hobbyist. But being indie is hard hard hard, as you can no doubt attest to.

Hee, I went through both those steps trying to get this working. I ended up basically sorting things by like groups and Y position both, so pretty much there are 5 different groups or so and everything within those groups is sorted by Y. Typically, each group only uses one sprite atlas, maybe two, so the occasional visual height problems usually look decent enough (given that the things are different types of units) that it's typically acceptable.