So I'm in the throws of being in my head before working on this new boss spawn system. So instead of getting the damned system done, I just keep going over every little detail in my head, over and over again for no good reason and I get burned out before I even do anything.

I don't want the boss to just "pop" in. Even though it would be perfectly fine if they did, I want there to be a "puff" before they spawn. But in order for this puff to properly cover the fish as it enters the world, it has to be generated about half a second before the fish spawns, this means I can't simply just add this particle spawn event to the "OnEnable" event of the fish spawning into the world.

So I had this idea that I'll add an event on the fish spawner, as it reaches the 0 seconds where it spawns the boss fish, i'll have it generate the puff particle at the one second mark, and JUST as the fish is about to spawn, the fish spawner will generate this puff just as the fish is spawning.

But then I started thinking about the secondary mechanic whereby the player is able to kill fish to reduce the spawn timer of the boss, if the fish kills a fish at the 1 second mark just as the puff particle is being generated, then the puff and the fish will spawn at the exact same time, and the puff will not properly cover the fish. So the solution to this would be to add the logic, "if(spawntime > 2f) then spawntimer - 1f" or whatever, meaning that the player can only reduce the timer above the 2 second mark so as to not disrupt the particle properly hiding the pop in of the spawn. 

Beyond this I'm thinking back on each system, like the AI and wondering where did i tuck away the "this is where I need to swim to when i'm idle" position, and how best to set that for bosses so that they will retreat back to where they spawn, and how i'll need to adjust the despawn range so they don't despawn and if that will become a performance issue with lots of boss fish sitting in the game not despawning, I suppose I could disable them with the same system I use for environment assets that are far away.

The point is, you think you have this very basic system in your head, to just spawn a basic boss enemy with a timer, and when you're making a fully featured, polished game, every little feature baloons and baloons and before you know it there are a MESS of little polish elements that make building up the game a huge endeavor, which is why being smart about how you structure things, and make things that "just work" is so important at every stage of development. Like if I had designed fish to have a poof particle on spawn no matte what early one, this owuld be a non issue and I could also consider adding new fish spawns of all types nearby the player... AND NOW MY MIND IS GOING DOWN THAT RABBIT HOLE RIGHT NOW! Feature creep is a hell of a thing...

So I finally open the game to get some work done and so many tiny things hit me in the face right out of the gate. This weapon is too powerful, these enemies are too easy to kill, the beginner area is too small to fit a boss in, poison damage isn't displaying damage to the player, and on and on and on. BUT ON THE BRIGHT SIDE... The game feels fun. And that's what keeps me going. It's always crazy to me the revolving door of thigns that kinda break over and over again and you feel you're never making any progress as you fix the same things over and over again in the persuit of a game loop that is reliable, balanced, and fun. I'm making progress, but periods of burnout like this are so frustrating. 

I am learning the hard way that indulging in going over the motions of how you're going to do things in your head before you actually do them is fuckin' stupid. Stop planning shit, open the damned engine, open Visual Studio and do some friggin' code you lazy bum. If I'd just done a little feature here and there every day for the last month this would all be done by now. Bleh. But I know how much I can get done on a good day so i try not to harp on that shit too much.

SO NEW PLAN! Bite sized chunks, screw building myself up in the head to pound out a 12 hour straight work video where i make the game finally fun in a single day, that has prevented me from getting solid work done for way too long, this is a compromise, day 1 i'll get the spawn system in and working, day 2 I get a couple bosses in with their unique weapon spawn, and migrate armor spawns to neutral enemies exclusively and migrate all weapon drops to bosses. Day 3 I fix up the levels to give a visual indicator in the level of what item the boss drops and maybe give that weapon to the boss with a custom attack that fits that weapon (they already exist for the player, so easy to slap it on them).

I need to remind myself that no game is perfect, there's still time in the future to tune things up and the game doesn't have to be perfect and fully featured a week from now. Though it is irritating to be this far along, thinking the game is pretty good AS IS and have absolutely no backing and still be developing in a cave...

But hey, got some work done today! Baby steps towards ramping this SOB back up. It's weird how different your days change based on how your work ethic is. Som days I wake up and i'm just totally worthless for weeks on end, other times I feel like some kind of unstoppable dev with unlimited energy. I Did a little tuning to a few weapons and attacks, and i ran into a bug involving projectiles and realized that my last update revamping projectile movement mechanics, I had them updating in an update loop and not fixed update, which made their movement really erratic based on framerate, so that's random crap fixed that I didn't know was broken. One step back, one step forward.

On one hand it's so frustrating to know how much needs to be done and the mountain to climb and the always nagging decline, on the other hand, I can feel i'm just about ready to handle this shit. 

I HAVE HAD IT WITH DILLY DALLYING TO GET THESE MOTHER FUCKIN' FISH IN THIS MOTHER FUCKIN' GAME