=CORE= is how I denote a lot of the parent prefabs in Unity which are objects that work in a Child/Parent relationship, in that the child prefabs inherit the qualities of their parents, but can have unique attributes. And the reason I'm blathering about this gamedev jargon is that it's CORE to our game being well balanced and tuned and fun that all the things at the center of our world be well made, everything builds off them, the upgrades, the powerups, the enemies, the player fish, the items, the gameplay, they all build off each other and expand on one another in so many countless ways.

I'm going to try to be extra blathery today as a precursor to getting to work so that I can really get into the right headspace and know what i'm going to be doing today and why.

This is the core design philosophy of designing SeaCrit: POLISH THE CORE. You wouldn't build up all of super mario world prior to polishing the absolute best control and powerup system you can, otherwise you would be constantly revamping levels time and again as systems were changed and polished. To this point, I will not be building up tons of items and powerups without locking in the core play of the player fishes.

It dawned on me yesterday after firing up the game for a quick minute that the core shark moveset just don't feel just right, there is something "off". The ranged fish feels great, i'm happy with it, it's damage oriented, and the movesets click in your head, both the combos and the ranged charged attacks. It's great. The shark on the other hand... the shark needs work. Just as I type this I had a thought. And i think this could be big. I had the notion that i would shrink the shark as you get low on life, (this is an ancient mechanic i scrapped long ago) the smaller you get, the faster you could bite, adding a new mechanic of risky play. But this all seems very complicated. Anyway, let me get back to the core issues with the shark...

The most satisfying attack for the shark is the alternate charge attack, it does big damage, and feels fun to use, it's also the least easy to access. Currently the bite attack for the shark applies wounds, and i've kinda gimped it for this reason, I don't want a single button attack that you just spam and invalidates other attacks, so the current play is you use your alt bite to mow through lots of enemies at once, and you bite the big ones to apply wounds to take them down faster, and you lifetap as necessary. It's a TAD repetitive, and it doesn't have that nice "meat and potatoes, deal reliable damage all the time feeling that the pointer fish has.

I'd much rather just have the shark be fun and easy to pick up, and add the nuance with more interesting play styles by adding in new weapons, specifically higher end bite attacks that have more interesting setups that invite deeper play after you have already jumped in and enjoyed the simple meat and potatoes gameplay of early play, so I think what i'll do is make the current attack setup a more advanced bite item setup, and create a more generic "every attack is fun and satisfying" version of the early abilities. Though this could end up being confusing.

Maybe I should just focus on making the core attacks simply more fun to use. As it stands the right click combo bite is pretty lackluster, and it grows in power as you grow in size, which means I have to really nerf it in its default state, I think it's time I revitalize it, and really tone down the scaling power of the bite and just make it satisfying to use, I've also been meaning to add a forward lunge speed mechanic to it. For so long I've been intentionally not adding enhanced speed on attacks because I don't want the player just spamming buttons to move fast, but I think that's a stupid reason to not make the game more fun. I'm not even sure what that's an issue. I can add some cheap upgrade somewhere to allow the player to move really fast when default swimming, and make the speed up time really slow so it's not exploitable in combat scenarios.

When you think of classics like street fighter or double dragon, there isn't a lot of fuss to delivering a punch. You spam the button, you do cool crap.

I've also decided i'm going to remove the "pass through" mechanic on the secondary dash, it invalidates ranged combat too much, instead I think i'll put an animation on it where the player becomes very small when dashing, greatly enhancing the chance that they can dash through projectile waves. Will this invalidate the ability to hit enemies and deal damage? Yes, but this ability always felt like a second rate damage delivery system anyhow, which is good, it means the core charged attacks of melee and ranged are doing their job, so I'll make this dash more of a utility, need to enhance its dash range a bit too.

Too often I've always felt games don't take the time to really build up their core systems, create move sets, create enemies and really tweak and tune things back and forth between these core entities. Everything builds off these core systems, if you start throwing level designers and spawn systems and start making items and upgrades for things that aren't finished, you're really setting yourself to spin wheels in mud over and over, or even worse, lock yourself into content (it's a prison) and your game becomes hamstrung because you were to impatient to do things right. In this sense I'm glad I haven't had a publisher or people pushing the game forward too fast before it finds it bearings, working alone can sometimes be a blessing in disguise.

I dunno, for all I know I'm crazy and the game is just dog sh*t (my testers would say dog water)

Ok, so TODO:

1. Make the combo bite not scale so much, and fun to use with solid damage, attack speed, and a nice forward movement right out of the gate.

2. Enhance the secondary bite with a new life cost penalty while upping it's damage a bit, make the attacks of lifetap and charge bite a yin/yang situation where if you bite tap too much, YOU DIE! (need to make it so this damage is non lethal, players should only die if hit by enemies, I also need to revamp the health cost system to be frontloaded on ability use and not on hitting the enemy so that hitting tons of fish at once doesn't immediately decimate the player, needs to be a one time cost of health.)

3. Make using the dash attack shrink the player, I may find that this makes the ability feel crappy and weak, or just bizzare as various particle systems shrink, F*ck it, i'm just going to have this ability cause you to dash a bit more and not do the shrink thing. KEEP IT SiMplE STUPID!

Plenty of other things to do, but I have taken pride in putting gameplay first ALWAYS and rushed things, maybe that's why this game remains in development hell. Gameplay makes every moment in every area of the game better, it is a multiplier on every other single peace of content. If I can make swimming around and biting fish fun, this game has a snowballs chance in hell. It's the one thing I have a slight advantage with as a solo developer. If at some point I am lucky enough to have some kind of backing in the future, level designers, artists, animators, etc. all can be dumped on the solid foundations of gameplay that I have slowly built up over all these years, I'm making the most out of not having too many cooks in the kitchen presently.

(I tried to find a music video with "guile music goes with everything" and fish in it, but the only one I found also had H*tler, so enjoy the cats!)

Edit: While making coffee I remembered an admission i've been meaning to make. I have no idea what makes a good fighting game. I've played a round or two of street fighter, I've had fun memorizing how to do the hadooken, dragon kicks, and sherrrrrrrrrrrroyookens, but I am by no means a fighting game aficionado. I don't know what combo breakers are, I don't know the strategies of these games, why some combo strings are 50 hits and others are 8 long. So i'm not sure this is a fighting game, it's more a beat 'em up with some side scrolling shooter mixed in.

OH! And one more thing, I've decided to totally revamp the dash attack, to now be the multi hit passthrough stun attack.

It had been very important in my mind that the left chargeup be an escape ability, whether you use the alt attack or core attack, but I think i'm going to try switching it up a little bit.

I also think i'm going to remove the basic spin attack on the left attack, it's just sorta "there" it muddies the input. I think i'm going to replace it with a lowest level alt dash, or maybe spin stun attack. I'll tool around with it and see what's best.