Good news F*CKERS! An old friend reached out from my college days and we caught up a bit and found we're in a similar space. I've been working on this silly fish project and he's wanting to dive back into the game industry after doing businessy things. Why the f*ck not collaborate? 

I'm excited by the potential to bring this sucker out of this damned cave. For one, I'm excited to have more hands on deck, more people on a team means more progress, but more importantly I just f*cking miss having cool people to work with. Half the fun of gamedev is kicking ass together! Hell, a big part of life is getting out of your shell and sharing this journey with others. With a little luck, maybe this SeaCrit will be exposed and the betterments will accelerate!

He's more familiar with the business side of things and has some connections, whereas I'm more the crazed dev in the cave pounding out code and design. And he asked me, "Hey, Ill Tempered Tuna, YOU CRAZY SON OF A B*TCH, where is SeaCrit? Where is it going? Why would anyone want to play SeaCrit? Why would anyone want  to take a chance helping to develop it?

WELL PLAY THE DAMNED GAME! I'm proud as hell I've created a game that can run on darn near anything by damn near anyone. It's innovative, it's familiar, it's pretty, it's performant, it's fresh, it's cute, it's dangerous. It strikes a chord no other game has done before. 

The controls are very simple, intuitive on mouse, gamepad or touch screen. You can play it on a phone with one click of a website! You can share it with your friends with a simple text message! You can play it on a console, you can play it on a web browser while you're on your lunch break or chillin' in bed. It's fun, it's innovative. 

It adheres to the tried and true adage of "Easy to pick up, impossible to master". 

SeaCrit's gameplay is revolutionary, it has nuance and depth that you slowly pick up over time and get to remaster with crazy fun new weapons that pair in endless ways to other progression mechanics within the game. It has everything from revolutionary itemization elements to super performant visuals and effects that allow for stellar graphics even on low end machines. You can play the downloadable build on surprisingly low end machines (the web build is more taxing), it can run on a potato. 

I am the sole owner and creator of the SeaCrit, there is no throng of mouths to feed, no coder who left long ago who is the only person who knows how complex systems work and now everyone is walking on eggshells trying to sort out some technical monstrocity. SeaCrit is well organized, the code is easy to understand and tight, it shows promise NOW, it's core gameplay is revolutionary NOW. 

It's playable NOW.  You can see the promise NOW.

There is no overhead, the risk/ reward factor of SeaCrit is off the charts. No mouths to feed, no technical issues to sort, the game is on track to being incredible, I have been having massive gains in fun and playability update after update. The core play of SeaCrit is tried and true already, who knows how incredibly fun it will be to play 1 year from now and beyond. And it was all built it in a cave with a box of scraps, no backing, no funds, no paycheck. It has been created with every hardship and no advantage, which I think can be a great strength in the long term. You can't add hard earned lessons later on in a project, I have experienced them for years and the project is better for it, worthy of investment.

So why does the game feel so small and unfinished? Because it is. I have built up the core, and little else. And I take pride in this. I'm not going to build up massive ammounts of content that isn't up to quality. You must realize your core systems first, before you can build out your world. I very much enjoy the starting area of seacrit, I have a small sandbox that shows the level practices and potential for future areas. I have done extensive testing of various enemies and level layouts and there as great potential for exploration, puzzles and a grand world of adventure with a wide variety of bioms and settings, cavernous regions to sprawling expanses of open ocean. 

It takes quality artists and designers to start creating large levels, to start experimenting with larger sets of enemies and building up difficulty and polishing in the many dimensions of itemization, shops, enemies, bosses, and levels. When you're alone wearing this many hats you have to make a decision, either create procedural content like Minecraft and keep gameplay minimal, or focus on what you can and plan on having help later. I have built seacrit with the expectation of an amazing, expansive world with hand crafted adventure with massive vistas, deep ruined cities, and a seemingly endless world to explore with rewards in the form of rare items, enemies, and upgrades along the way.

I'm excited for where I have brought SeaCrit , now is the perfect time to start seeking outside help to grow SeaCrit now that it shows a glimmer of its potential. 

The CORE of this game is online, its fun. All the bells and whistles of a robust movement and attacks set exists for the player as well as challenges in the form of enemies and environmental exploration. But SeaCrit doesn't show just a fun core game that can be played a single time, I have scaling upgrades and items that allow for UNLIMITED replayability akin to Diablo or League of Legends. These are not an afterthought great time has been put into the game developing compelling avenues of power that allow for infinte replayability and fun. 

I'm not looking to make a game here that people play and throw away, SeaCrit will be a landmark title that remains on the sales charts INDEFFINITELY. A game that speaks to every market, every demographic with a revolutionary combination of goofy fun, with deep, complex progression married with top end twitch play never before seen. 

A Lofty goal? Perhaps, but play the game, try the different weapon sets, the unique combat nuances between ranged and melee combat, the unique combo attack sets, the upgrade options, the potential for a massive enthralling world and story. You will find more than a simple button masher in SeaCrit, MUCH more.

But I'm a one man team, and I've been pushing this project forward for far too long alone. I am finding that I have finally hit a wall where any progress I make solo, is only the illusion of progress. There comes a point where far reaching elements like story, level design, itemization, etc. all benefit greatly from more hands on deck to develop the proper pipelines not just within the game engine, but the interpersonal pipelines of communication of a team of professionals sharing the goal of producing a banger of a f*cking game. There is something profoundly motivating and empowering about being a small group of hard working, talented people driven to make something totally fucking bitchen. 

That's the plan, build a small, talented, team of badasses thirsty to make the next big thing. Not with lofty ambition, but a solid as f*ck core game that is ready to explode with potential.

I know every line of code, every animation, every UI panel and setup like the back of my hand. SeaCrit is a very polished and organized game that is easily expanded upon. Can some of its code use a little cleaning up? Sure, what project doesn't? But any developer familiar with Unity and C# will be able to open it up, poke around and see that the project is very well managed and organized, with very few bugs. I am VERY proud of the ship I have run here, and moving forward I am eager for the opportunities to maybe find outside investment and use that investment to very rapidly move SeaCrit forward. I have spun wheels in mud for years learning the hard way what AI sytems work for SeaCrit, what upgrades work, but sorts of level layouts work and when it comes to using the Unity Engine, setting up the project and getting everything working together smoothly, I handle shit. I am VERY eager to share this knowledge with future collaborators.

What's the dream team? 

Core Roles:

Business / Social Media Collaborator: First and foremost this project needs someone more savvy with the business side of things, someone who isn't shackled by development in a cave who can reach out, find funding, and eventually marketing and get the business side of things in order. Maybe start up a twitter account, brush elbows and get the SeaCrit name out there and start building up a fan base, start getting people excited about the game, about giving feedback, about being excited for future releases. Beyond this, internals need to be structured for the development side of things: code, design, world building, UI, etc. Dream scenario would be working with a small team that has released quality games in the past who has dealt with the full feature set of a game in the Unity engine who would want to jump on a project with huge potential and knock it out of the park.

Coder: High quality, nuanced combat that takes place in a 3d engine, with various progression mechanics, and AI systems all working in tandem to create a stellar real time combat experience can get complicated and hard to keep track of. A rock star coder to help at least for a few months to polish and clean up core combat, AI, and progression systems would be a real shot in the arm. 

Being able to bounce ideas off a talented team to create new AI routines for things like boss behavior loops (could be proliferated to existing enemies to make them more interesting), new enemy group AI systems for things like packs of enemies that spawn in patters (akin to Gradius) would be a huge piece to the development puzzle. 

This may sound obvious, but finding the right people who are tried and true paired with a solid game plan is the most important factor of projects succeeding, the more important the role, the more important it is to find the right person. A game with a couple mediocre level designers mixed in can still be great, but if any of the coders developing core gamplay systems don't properly create those systems, the project is doomed from the start, the game will be buggy, unfun, and doomed before it ever had a chance.

Clean, easy to read, compartmentalized code that makes as much sense as possible and plays as nice with other systems as possible is what we need.

Years back I worked with several coder to bring the AI, combat, and other systems online in SeaCrit. I have refactored these systems many times since in my lonesome, though I'm no stranger to managing a team through the good, bad, and ugly. Finding the right person to fulfill these duties is ABSOLUTELY the most important part of the puzzle. Find the right person who is competent and understands the work environment and has foresight for future problems and you won't run into the myriad of problems that appear when you work with the wrong people. As a contract developer myself, it was always my goal to be the person on the team who when I create something, it just works. The best people on your team, you don't even know they're there, because they implement their work in a way that it integrates perfectly the first time and they have encountered all the usual problems before and know how to avoid them. 

Develop proper procedures and code standards at the start, bring on the right people, share the thrill of success as things come together into an amazing game, and progress will be a dream. 

Proof is in the pudding! If I weren't any good at managing SeaCrit, you wouldn't be play the demo right now.

I am VERY happy with how the controls, AI, and gameplay have come together after years of arduous iteration. Through great pains I have found what works, and what doesn't. There isn't very much in terms of new mechanics to add going forward, the game is quite robust as is, but I am also excited to have more minds on the team, and voices with great ideas to make this fantastic game even better.

Secondary Roles:

I have commissioned several artists to do work from character artists, animators, to environment artists, as well as shouldered all shaderwork, effects and technical art implementing animations as such. I worked in art houses and I pride myself on being able to find fantastic talent, who deliver quick results at a fantastic price. I don't commission much art that gets thrown away later. In every aspect of assembling a team, to motivating them, to communicating with them so they don't waste their time, to having sound design plans, I handle shit very well, I worked for years on various art teams in various roles in high volume art house settings. Just look at the game running on a phone at a high framerate from a shoestring budget, it speaks for itself. The current art budget for seacrit was just a few thousand dollars for all fish and environments and I am on good terms with all prior talent.

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World builder/ 3d artists: I'm happy with the art in SeaCrit, but the actual world building is something that obviously needs building up if you've tried the demo. I do not currently have a big sprawling world with artic regions of ice, to underwater toxic realms of lethal coral shooting spikes at you. Imagine a sprawling ocean that takes hours and hours to swim across with seacrit hidden treasures, powerups, shops, and sinister side characters rooting for your demise. Such a sprawling world, if it is to build up to the quality of the other elements of SeaCrit require the full attention of talented artists and world builders.

That said, I have a fully realized system in place that loads and unload assets on the fly allowing for great performance on the lowest end machines. The scene and prefab structures within Unity are realized to a degree that I am VERY happy with, and any professional team jumping into the project would be happy to dive in and build up the world to their hearts content. My current system is performant and easy to pick up to anyone familiar to Unity, and my organizational structure will meet or exceed any other professional team out there. Years of grueling overtime and late nights in many roles are behind the planning of core infrastructure in SeaCrit.

Many years of experience have gone into developing these pipelines of prefabs, level structures, and performance systems. SeaCrit as it stands is tidy and easy to work with right out of the box right now. But I am also on a shoestring budget, I am using free rocks from the Unity asset store, the terrain system is glitchy and I'm still feeling out the best ways of building out this world so it can be a sprawling, massive world of fun and exploration, made competently, performant, gorgeous, fun, easily iterated upon and updated with new art and level setups.

I'm proud of how much has been created with SeaCrit with so little. I've been around the block enough times to know that more cooks in the kitchen DOES NOT equate to better product, modern gaming exemplifies this. I'm interested in working with highly motivated individuals who want to have a huge impact on the team and in the game. People who are excited to make the next big thing, have tried new things in the past and found success. I'm looking to find developers of rare talent who can see beyond discipline lines to build a revolutionary game that isn't just pretty, but FUN... beyond all belief. Fun in ways never thought of before, and I hope that I have already given a taste of that in this initial demo, or this post is going to be really silly!

For old time's sake I want to post this Image

9 years ago I posted this to show how far the game has come along, been a long, long, bumpy road...

Here are some MSC shots of some of the systems within SeaCrit, many many years flushing these out and organizing them, testing and iterating. There is a story behind every value and slider, but quality, innovative gameplay demands it. This is just the tip of the iceberg, there is so much that goes into making SeaCrit what it is, perhaps soon I'll have a bit of help composing this crazed symphony that has so much potential.

Edit: Got a little work done! Wasn't happy that the current web build doesn't show off fun aspects of the game like itemization, so I threw in some more item fish to the initial zone and I quickly walled off a secret area that doesn't really fit any more. Might be a bit too crazy for a starting area now, but at least core elements of the game are more obvious from the start. It's a better demo. And hey, little bit of work done, been a long time. Quick personal update, feeling a tad better every day, brain fog isn't gone but it certainly isn't getting worse and I'm finding I can still make progress, just not in huge quantities like I did before just yet. I'm optimistic for the future in many ways, getting health back and pushing the project forward. Just waiting for the build to finish, and it's a new version of Unity so small chance it will solve the nefarious phone performance bug (I'd give it a 5% chance).

Edit 2: Performance on touch bug still persists, oh well. But new web build is up! Much easier to see the itemization aspects of the game and fight against various enemy types in the starting zone. A few bugs that I ran into, but nothing game breaking, much still to do just cleaning up existing content. I did run into an issue where sniper rifles had their force values reset so shots were sending the player forwards not backwards due to a recently revamped force system, got that fixed up. Those force values need tuning... all values need tuning. But hey got some work done! I've been terrified for some time if I opened up the project my brain would freeze and I wouldn't feel like getting things done. I looked over code, but my brain isn't so broken that I can't work with the project. This is a big deal, feels like old times getting things done and moving forward. Onwards and upwards.