I THINK yesterday went really well. 

I was not looking forward to putting together new zones. I very much get this sense of deja vu. I put together some geometry, I put fish in the spawn lists,  I start tweaking attack values and attack ranges, and I wonder to myself, "Why am i doing this again?". It's one thing to be working on a game and adjusting core systems so they will be better in the future, but so many times I've been working on things and I feel like i'm making the same mistakes. "this isn't going to be good enough" when I add the fish they're not going to be fun to fight against, the zone is going to feel empty and the gameplay will feel super repetitive and boring. They'll just dash in and attack the player. But Things went a bit better than that after I put my head down and just started making this crap. At first it wasn't encouraging, i added some sharks and filled in an area and it was so lifeless and boring, and I tried making this new type of level with a winding cave that the AI didn't like to be in and everything just felt bad. But for the first time I thought, "why am i forcing my game to be something it isn't?" I know what works.... i'll just keep doing that. So i simplified the level design, still made it a kinda new winding cave, I pulled the camera back a bit to make it more epic and I threw in some cave backgrounds and it really started coming together (I think). For all i know i'll play it later and think it's crap, it's a fast implementation, but I think it has promise.

I'm going to have to figure out what works in higher tier play. I still have no idea what the moment to moment gameplay is going to be like. Will it feel like a side scroller in hard areas where a single hit kills you? Or will it be more like diablo where 99% of the time you just farm where it's safe and then when you're powerful enough you engage with bosses for big rewards and that fight will have high stakes. I simply don't know. I'm just building things out and adjusting things as I feel is necessary. The game is absolutely 100% showing me what it is rather than me forcing in what I think it should be.

SeaCrit is in a weird spot between a classic platformer like Mario, where the level is the true enemy and the enemies within the level are very simple and add a small component to the challenge of navigating a complex setting. It's not like street fighter where all the combat is super deep and there are tons of combos, but there is no level. Is it like diablo? Kinda? I don't even know what I'm getting at any more, I just know I'm trying to feel out what this game is, and I'm trying to build up new zones and harder enemies and know I need to figure out progression loops. How will I make replaying the game fun? How will I create this exciting experience with pull that people want to play and then want to play again and again?

It all seemed so much clearer to me before, before I started piecing everything together. But this isn't what I plan on working on today. There is so much to do. Today I want to focus on making items and building up a few well balanced upgrades to make these items interesting.

Head is kinda swimming with absolutely core issues I need to figure out so that this game can be fun, the overarching combat, the AI, the items, the world, the progressoins, the item modifiers, the level up system, and on and on.

But today I wanted to blather about the nature of progression, about ugprades, about how powerful items can be, how fast should they scale? How much should a build be based on specific upgrades that bolster one another? Should there be many viable builds? A few? How many junk items should there be?

I was planning on being very long winded and blathering about all the systems and noise of junk items, and the nature of progression, but i'm just not feelin' it, maybe another time. I've got a lot of work to do, and sometimes it's hard to conceptualize these broad systems if you're not of the mind to devote yourself to that one thing in that day. I guess  i'll just try to talk about itemization as I see it working for SeaCrit.

I know view items for seacrit more like a powerup gun item you'd see in a side scrolling shooter. Oh that's shiney, what does that do? OH WOW MY ATTACKS LOOK COOL NOW! I want the early items you pick up to have a very obvious "OH COOL!" factor to them. Armor that reflects attacks, a very visible helmet, rings that do very powerful things like greatly enhancing wounds damage, or giving potent regen. I want things to jump up into actoin right out of the gate.

I'm rethinking how I see progression in this game. I once thought later zones were going to have entirely new types of fish, entiretly now environment hazards, huge bosses, massive loads of new AI patterns and upgrades and feel to them. That's stupid. I'm one person, i need to make iterative content that builds on a core I am ably to build up in my lonesome. If things go well, maybe I can chase that dragon in the future. So the plan as I see it is to build up my "goombas" a few simple enemies that are fun to smack around and I will use them all over. In harder areas i'll slap a new material on them, make them move faster and hit harder, that kinda jazz. WORK SMARTER NOT HARDER!

Ok, this was a shit blog entry, not insightful on gamedev or full of edge lord spectacle. Whatever. 

TIME TO GET TO WORK!

Post Work Blather: I really feel like work is going well, which makes this all the more frustrating. Working hard, making good progress, still stuck in this cave.

Final Edit: I was just reminiscing how fortunate I am to be working alone, I got to make the game my way and never had anyone breathing down my neck that things weren't working or that we needed to go anothe direction. The freedom to make mistakes, the freedom to walk the razors edge of failure all this time... but what I like the best about working alone... no finger pointing, no neckbeards demanding everyone do things their way, no one fighting over the toys. Just making the game, no drama, no politics, no bullshit, no madness. Well, there's a lot of madness, that's what makes all of this interesting.