You don't think of game development as a sport. I sure didn't. But tonight I feel like I was totally on fire. Like I got a hat trick or knocked out a few home runs. There's so much to do that I feel as though I've barely put a dent in things, but damn in the moment I really felt alive tonight just slamming out work.

Gamedev usually goes like this: Attempt to add or change some major thing, brace for bugs, hunt down their cause, fix the issue, create a bug fixing the issue, repeat. But time and time again tonight I was sticking the landing. Really solid day.

I think the first few hours of dev I did today may have been the best I've ever had doing this crap for about a decade now. Started with some quick Ad Hoc play, set up a quick todo list, slammed out some code, design, material fiddling, fixed some bugs, added some new stuffs, tweaked some combat, did some scene upkeep. An all around solid day.

Going to keep it short and sweet tonight (no fucking way) I'm really just satisfied for a solid day of work, nothing too fancy, just reliable progress and for that I'm totally stoked. There's still much to do but I think I'm going to be ready to slam out some more manana.

Edit: Whew this always happens, play the game briefly to see if it's coming together and seeing lots of core issues. Everything is too fast. The enemies the player, the dashes, everything feels off. Like the game is just a chaotic mish mash of random elements dashing at each other. I always try to fix them but it's the same issue every single time it's deja vu all over again. There's also the deloading system that's a total pain in the ass that i've decided to revamp tomorrow.

Every day feels like everything is on the line, that there's some terrible fault I need to fix by forcing myself through burnout to resolve some inherent issue like looking for a needle in a haystack for years on end. If I can bring myself to work on the project i'm sure i'll put on some upbeat music and it'll feel like i'm making big progress again, but who knows.

There are some big key attack mechanics I want to try and maybe i'll spend a bit of time actually thinking about the current state of combat and sorting it out. Maybe it's time I stop trying to polish the current setups by adjusting dials for weeks on end and actually revist the foundations and see if I can sort things out.

I'm torn, should I keep it simple and try to get a few setups that are fun with the current elements, or do I go in and try to fix and improve the foundations this late into the project?

Honestly I should probably put out the game, watch people play it, and get feedback then move on from there. I'm becoming far too much a perfectionist these days.