Had another off day, but I'm feelin' it and I think i'll be back to work come tomorrow. I shaved my beard of shame, I was growing it out till the game was kinda done, but I got tired of looking like a hobo, so hey I LOST WEIGHT! I played the game a touch just now, I think it's important for us designers to sometimes just play our game for a few minutes after a break without feeling as though we're going to dive in and change things around. It's not terrible, but needs work.

Everything needs tuning, and that's fine, that's just gamedev. But it is frustrating, seeing that everything needs to be pushed a bit further. The damage, the timings, the new things, things need to be taken out of here to simplify stuff, and they need to be put over there to add progression. Animations need adjusting, formulas need adjusting, timings will ALWAYS need slight adjustments. Combat feels "floaty", I need to normalize fish sizes a bit, I need to dial down shark attacks, just feels too easy to dart around all the damned time. Too easy to get into trouble moving about too much, I need to tone things down across the board. The item drops feel unpolished, the UI feels unpolished, LOTS of things feel unpolished, when you're a one man band. What to work on? EVERYTHING! ALL THE TIME! On the bright side, ranged fish feels pretty good, a lot of charged attacks take to long to break out of so you can start firing and lock your heading in, and I think turning takes a bit too long so I may up the agility of hte ranged fish so they're super sporty and twitch. I don't want the player feeling as though they barely missed their timing to fire in the direction of something and style their way through the game. I need to dial up the craziness of ranged, and tone down the ranged just a touch.

Whew...

So tomorrow! Add caves, revamp damage formula to allow for environmental damage, add spikes, add underwater caverns with open air pools and jump dangers. Add underwater out of water volumes. Revamp level layouts to allow for rapid prototyping and kitbashing of level setups. Add new layer of geo specifically for large level block in flow. Completely deconstruct and remanage the flow of progression, add actionable paths to specific item types and upgrades, break up the level flow and add branching paths and purpose to building up upgrades, items and progression. Everything needs to be repackaged in a more fun, adventurous experience with interesting paths, not just in the physical world, but the branching goodies the find in that world that unlock new weapons and upgrades and shops and treasures.

TIME TO METROIDVANIA THIS BISH! I'm actually excited for this. Until very recently, I've thought of SeaCrit as this purely combat game, NOTHING has distracted me from developing the core combat and systems that will create enough depth for a rich progression and item system. In this moment, though it needs lots of tuning and polish, I'm quite happy with the core game. And now I'm kinda excited by the idea of creating this big world of SeaCrit and adventure. I'm imagining branching paths... Do i swim over to the right or do I explore the depths of this cave over here? What sort of treasures and dangers exist deep inside?! I have not allowed myself to indulge this low hanging design content fruit, because as I've posted before "Content is a prison" and it can poison your project if you indulge it too early. I have adhered to this for a long time, but it is time to feel out a world, to develop pipelines and prefabs to allow for rapid world generation, to create multiple scenarios and interesting areas. I'm going to be creating world hazards with spikes, and I think with underwater caves where the player will have to jump over hazards by dashing in and out of areas it's going to be pretty neat! I'm sure i'll break shit along the way, that's half the fun of gamedev.

No bigs! EASY CRAP, THIS GAME DEV STUFF IS SO EASY IT'LL BE OVER IN NO TIME. THIS NEVERENDING LIST OF THINGS TO DO WON'T GO ONE FOREVER. I CAN HANDLE THIS AS A ONE MAN TEAM. People are surely going to find this game and enjoy it and share it and this uncertainly will finally end. AHAhahahahahahahaha.

ha.

It's a bit of a dilemma. On one hand I'm proud that I'm able to stick with this, that I'm able to keep pushing forward regardless of the odds, to keep chipping away at making this not dog shit. Can I make it better? Then I can't give up yet. On the other hand, this never ending decline is so frustrating. What i'd give for just a bit of help along the way... among other things I won't harp on here...

I generally try to think thoughts like, "just need to make the game better, just need to push things a bit further, the balls in my court, just kick some ass!" I try to trick my mind into taking all the doubt and all the shortcomings I'm facing with this project and use those disadvantages as a strength, "no help! Well if you want something right do it yourself!", not think about how fuckign impossible this mountain is to climb a solo outsider trying to put out a game against teams of well paid individuals living fulfilling lives. Just taking a stab in the dark in this damned cave. It is what it is, no point griping, just gotta hold on... to what we've got... it doesn't even matter if we make it or no- GOD DAMN IT ILL TEMPERED TUNA, YOU'VE LINKED BON JOVI ONE TOO MANY DAMNED TIMES CALM THE F-CK DOWN.

I just gotta concentrate, can't get distracted...