I am really burned out.

2 of the last 3 days I spent migrating complex, core shaders to shader graph, and the tool is terrible. Slowdowns, not performants, impossible to keep clean, just a total mistake followed up by an even worse experience trying to migrate to the High Render pipeline in Unity. I did this because I figured they were official tools and they would be kept up to date, but after trying the High Definition Render Pipeline, I've lost a lot of faith in Unity and this engine and the future that they're steering towards. Sometimes I wonder if I complain too much, not supposed to rock the boat as everything goes down the tubes.

It's been a rough week. Many hours sunk into nothing. Many hours fixing things i didn't know were broken. I need a solid day doing things that move things forward, but it's hard to do that knowing so many things need doing.

I did have an epiphany just now. I'm spreading myself way too thin in ways that aren't necessary. I'm currently planning on on expanding 5 zones, building out multiple shops, and tuning something like 7 fish all at once. Better two have 1 quality experience than a throng of crappy ones!

Better plan is to work on 3 fish, 2 zones, and one shop. Make them GOOD! Use what I learn working on this small handful and quickly built out the rest later when the gameplay sings. I can even put out a new build and get feedback soon!

THE PLAN!:

Start feeling out zone arrangements, get some good ones together and start piecing together the zone. Add a few fun secret areas, some secret shops with cool upgrades, get some cool items dropping, get a couple mini bosses in that provide a fun bit of challenge but nothing too much. Feel out what the core play is, stop playing this game every moment as if it's a quick test of a singular feature and start thinking about WTF this game actually is again.

I'm finding myself entering a routine of malaise. I open the project, I'm already defeated, I'm going to work on some boring sh*t, I'm going to get burned out after 8 hours and not even know what I finished, and then I'm going to close the project and wonder what I'm doing with my life.

A LOT of good things have been going on the past few days, I wish I had time to finesse these things, but I don't. It's pretty good for a one man band, I have to accept that and move on or I never leave this cave.

So tomorrow: WORLD BUILDING! Set up arrangements that play well in gameplay and in visuals and design. Create unique pieces for things like secret areas and teleports that allow for quick iteration so I can find the fun, so i don't lock myself into a certain setup because it's a pain to try new things.

I am SO burned out. But what keeps me going, is I genuinely think this sucker is becoming good. I'm spread so damned thin, wish I could clone myself a few times, focus on NPC's, Items, Upgrades, level design all at the same time, work a long day and be able to see the cool stuff my clones were doing.

I'm starting to wonder if maybe I'm putting off working on the core game because I'm afraid to find out the game isn't good enough yet. I don't know, part of me thinks I've just finally figured out how to make this responsibly, and that involves doing things right and building a proper foundation, and that's taking longer than expected as issues pop up and I'm having to spend the proper time to set things up in a way that they are healthy moving forward.

Edit: I think we get too far in our heads sometimes. Gotta keep pushing forward, gotta reach that milestone, gotta get that big week of work that will make all this investment worth it!

We take shortcuts, we cut corners, and one day we wake up and we look at our work and we're just like "ugh" all the things I don't like about working on my project are still there.

I'm going to  focus today on setting things up such that the project is inviting. Going to work on combining zones volumes within their physical manifestations of 3d Assets, this way I can move them about and they can be independent. I'm going to work on making teleports to be super easy to slam into a scene and I wont dread implementing them later. And I'll be setting up zone arrangements and spawns. This all sounds very doable! Good day to end the week on after spinning wheels in mud.

Great powerful spirit in the cosmos, give me the power of Greyskull to accept that bits of sh*t tech that I cannot change, the ferocious neckbeard energy to code the things I can, and the wisdom stats to tell the difference.

My brain and body feel ravaged from too much coffee and sustained work from the past few weeks. Decided to take a breather today, going to come at this with a vengeance in a couple days! Was tooling with a few things just now and I happened upon one of the new fish setups and fought the fish. It's feeling really good! I love when you inadvertently play your game and you think to yourself "wow, that wasn't half bad!"