I took a break after getting some pretty solid work done the past several months, not sure I needed this long a break but it is what it is and i'm gearing up to jump back in hard.

It's after a solid break that I often have the biggest epiphanies. We'd like to think our great epiphanies will be something along the liens of "EURIKA!" I've thought of the greatest new crazy idea ever that will be better than other games! But actually it's more along the lines of, "Oh damn, if I take this crap out I think the game will be much better, that was a terrible idea."

So from the very inception of SeaCrit, my vision for the game was you could turn into other types of fish, and gather "fish parts" akin to E.V.O. which was an evolution game for the SNES back in the day. Well the years have flown by and that system sorta turned into the swap system I have today. Just a few day ago  I had this revelation, "I need to ditch all the weapon swapping in my game, this will simplify the swap button to one simple purpose: changing class". That was HUGE, it kinda revamped things and made the 3rd button manageable, no more clunky "hold the buttons to change weapons", just tape it to swap. Now i'm sitting here wondering, how did I even end up here with different fish classes? What even is this game? I've deconstructed and reconstructed everything so many times that SeaCrit feels like every type of game all at once, I can finagle the code and systems in so many ways that it can be anything. 

(/Mini rant) This is really where I hope I'm starting to understand gamedev. Sucking it up, and executing towards what your game actually is, and letting go of the foolish notions of what you hoped it would be. Certain things just work with other things, all those action games you wish had deep RPG mechanics, all those rpg's you wished had better action mechanics... There are fundamental flaws with the pairings of these things you cannot fathom in your brain until you attempt to piece them together. Perhaps with greater resources I could have fenagled more things, who knows, maybe it would have been a greater disaster, I simply don't know the pros and cons of that potential scenario. I'm in my head too much right now, the game is going well, I just need to tie up some loose ends and find its final form. My brain is dreading redoing things for the 500th time too much, and not thinking of the positives which greatly outweigh some short sighted revamping.

Generally speaking when I take a break, just before getting back to work, that's the moment my mind is detached from all the systems I've been working into the project, and I'm best able to think of the nagging design and user experience issues without attachment to them, I can properly put things on the chopping block, so before just jumping into work, I try to have a moment of clarity and think deeply about the trajectory of the project, ensure I'm not spinning wheels in mud, and think if there is any cool big thing I want to add or take out. 

One thing that I realized bugs me is how the player at any time can magically in an instance just turn into a shark and tap back all their health like it's not even a big deal, this means that only the absolute most dire situations are life threatening to the player unless they get really sloppy with their play. Another thing that annoyed me was the itemizing for 2 sets of items in a game that is more arcadey and twitch than diablo, expecting the player to have 2 build goals in mind and 2 on the fly knowledge of loadouts for 2 fish is totally discombobulated. It was also weird to find so many item types, some were for your secondary class, weapons for one fish that didn't bolster your current one, armor for another. All this excess complexity for the clunky system of swapping classes. Thus far everyone who has played the game has ha

Not to mention, each class feels self sufficient and unique in their own way. Allowing swapping just creates this homogenized playstyle where you deal damaged as ranged, and heal and tank as melee. There was no variety, every game felt kinda the sameish.

It's so weird to me now that I plan to have a class system as they exist in other games, and somehow this is a revolutionary thing for SeaCrit, it's so weird to end up at the classic version of classes in a roundabout way after trying several failed systems only to arrive at what other games have done forever, and it never once crossed my mind to do them this way. Gamedev really messes with your head, and time and again I am amazed at how developing in a cave and digging yourself a hole with complex and hard to create systems poisons your mind from the potential of trying new thigns, because your brain is tired of being tormented with unending work or the notion that you have to do things "the same way other games do things".

For every 1 kinda ok fun thing you want to add to your game, you have to try like 5 things that don't work, and it's enough to drive you crazy.

That said I have mixed feelings, on one hand I am SO FUCKING TIRED OF THESE MOTHER FUCKIN' SYSTEMS IN MY MOTHER FUCKIN' GAME. On the other hand i'm very excited to be removing entirely Button #3. The game will have a clean 2 button input system and I will begin focusing on seperate classes.

So half the tutorial stuff will be irrelevant and need rewriting now. I told myself I wouldn't work on it, but I did it anyway thinking "there's no way these systems are giong to change, things are finally falling into place." THINGS CAN ALWAYS CHANGE!. Oh well, so i need to totally revamp how items are given to the player, I need to think of how the player will choose between ranged and melee, should they be able to grab a ranged weapon mid game and swap in the middle of battle? I feel like that's too abrupt, I feel as thought choosing a class should be a decision the player makes at the start of the game, and I think they should be unlocks to give the player a sort of long term goal.  My brain hates the idea of starting to add long term progression because I have so much sort term stuff to do right now, and this hellride never ends, but who knows.

Part of my brain is like, but what if players never get the chance to try the ranged fish! But then I think, this will be a much more cohesive and better experience if I tune the fish to be the sole class accessible in a run, the player will enjoy the strengths and weaknesses of their given class and the game will have a unique feel based on the type of play you enjoy most. Hell, maybe i'll keep the swap mechanic and just make it an unlock you need to purchase. I LIKE THAT IDEA! I don't have to take anything out of the game, and I can start building around the notion that first the player unlocks the ranged fish, and over time unlocks the ability to swap between the two. I'll see what other people think as well.

LOTS TO THINK ABOUT! Not sure if i'm going to greatly remove the ability to change fish tomorrow or what, the game is very broad and has more and more content, and these sorts of changes take so much time and mental energy that comes and goes.

Random edit thrown in randomly because I don't want to disrupt the ending of this blog post: I can look back now at many times I have provided what I felt as very valid feedback to other teams creating games and better understand their insanity now that I have been insane in my own project. Holding on to systems that aren't working, seeing that vision that will never materialize of the perfect game, a very simplistic version works in my imperfect brain, if i just push hard enough eventually these ideas will be fun. After going through the motions so many times, I finally get the insanity of gamedev, why most projects fail, why most games seeek to just improve slightly upon others. Because at the core of gamedev is madness, and the crazy notion that our incorpororal visions will be fun, our stupid, untested, self absorbed visions. I've really kinda fallen out of love with this whole thing lately, with all the craziness that happens on all levels. But I still hold on because I do think there are a few innovative and neat things swimming around in this project and I still dream of unleashing these terrifying murderfish on the masses some far off day....

I'm in a really weird state of mind lately, on one hand I think "I think maybe the game is good enough for success" but I often also think "this game will never be success, it will be an endless arduous journey and I'm batshit crazy for putting myself through this".

You know what's frustrating? Adding the ability to buy an item that lets you change class to the game, when you removed that damned thing months ago thinking you'd never need it, and knowing the codebase is crappy and it's going to be a headache and gamedev is nothing but regret, spinning wheels in mud, and suffering making stupid digital fish that murder everything for a user base that doesn't exist. Life is strange.

I don't even know WTF I'm doing any more. I just know that through all the pain in the ass work, the game slowly, SLOWLY becomes not total dog shit.