Let's blather a bit while I wait for this coffee to enter my blood.

I've touched on it before, but I used to do QA for games. We used to poke fun at how crap the games we were testing were, I remember one of my colleagues coming up to me and he was like "dude, these devs think this game is the cat's meow." We were in a constant sate of shock at how bad the game we were testing was, yet the developers all seemed to think it was great.

I am now at a new stage of development, where the rose colored glasses have faded, the game isn't as good as I thought it was years back, I believe I can objectively see it for what it is far better, and it's a lot harder in this state to push forward, to hold on to those dreams of making the game fun, and to have the wherewithal to push forward not with unbridled passion, but with burnout and realistic expectations. 

I no longer see the game as the cat's meow.

Shit's fucked up. Well, perhaps unrealized is a better phrasing. 

I have an item system that needs to come online, I need enemies and progression to come online. I’ve been kind of happy to tune out items and and progression from my mind, but i’ve put so much damned time into them. To be frank, that was the fucking game I wanted to make, and for too long i’ve been knee deep in todo lists removing things to make the game better to worry about what it was I still want this game to be. It's one thing to invest years into something, it's an entirely different beast to just light those years on fire while you try to retain the optimism to afford energy to move forward and still have a shot at all of this.

Good news. I have been building for this moment. I have been making environments and locking in systems entirely for this point of development rather than wasting spinning wheels in mud over and over again. Current setups are not meant to be “done”, they are meant to be iterative, to fit future changes.

It's a constant head trip. I’m happy how far I’ve come, I’m embarrassed how little i’ve made. I’m happy with how AI is working, I shake my head at how damned stupid they are. I’m excited at the unique control systems, I’m frustrated at how hard it is to remember what the buttons do. Some moments I think I’m working on a project and the hard work is going to pay off. Sometimes I think I’m a worthless eccentric busying myself as life passes by. Aren't we all. Just wish this toil afforded me a bit more along the way.

Who knows how things will go, if the world will return to sanity or if we'll all burn. I know only what I can affect in this world, and embarrassingly little. But I still believe I can make the game better, so i’m going to fucking do that.

The past several months i’ve more or less been playing the game and thinking, “how can I alter this to be better. It’s been a very long time since I thought about what this game could be, about the fun itemization systems, about how the progression was supposed to work. We spend so much time worrying about feature creep, by the time we reach burnout and we're cutting everything from the game, there are little words of wisdom when it comes to holding on to that spark of inspiration that set you on the journey to begin with.

I’m torn, part of me is of the mindset “I need to let this game show me what it is.” and part of me is like, “I really want to implement a fun itemization system damn it, that's what I think i’d be good at as a designer”.

So i’m going to try to find a middle of the road. Maybe I wont have crazy deep itemization with tons of mods and min/maxing. But maybe I can shine with a scaled down system, find a handful of very fun types of items and figure out the progression as I go.

Mixed emotions. still excited by the possibility of this coming together, but time and again I am finding that my ideas for fun aren’t as 100% as I had hoped they would be.

Still spread thin, still climbing a mountain that gets taller and taller every day, but still wanting to put out a damned game that isn’t total dog shit. Fuck it, I’ll spin these wheels in the mud till something gives.

Did I write this entire blog entry to fit around the song I felt like linking today? Maybe, who cares anyhow.

Little bleh today, we'll see how far this coffee gets me. No idea what's on the todo list, better to just open the project and not harp on this shit. You're not the only one, with mixed emoooootionssssssss. YOU'RE NOT THE ONLY SHIP, ADRIFT ON THIS OCEeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaan. Just when I think I can't find any more songs about the ocean they drift up on the shore.