Item mods have felt "off" for a while.  And now is the time to revamp the system as I have not yet begun to implement recent revisions.

The standard for items is you a get a modifier that has some kind of range like +50 - 125% damage. Pretty simple. But what I'm finding, is that the range just doesn't feel right, it inflates the UI and often times I'm feeling the need to make something that could be a simple +50% movement speed ramp up to 100% movement speed, and that often doesn't feel good, it doesn't feel like a great item, it feels like something that breaks the tuning of movement.

I've also been confused at how I should set up the power per level of the upgrade. Level 1 of an upgrade needs to be potent provide at least +50% to some bonus, then additional bonuses are added on top of that at a much lower level, like 5% more per level, or should it be 1%? It starts getting really muddy.

So here's what I've decided to do. I'm going to gut the concept of bonuses per level, except for specific upgrades meant to incriment to high levels like HP, extra damage, etc. The vast majority of upgrades will be a singular mod that has a flat bonus, with very measured bonuses beyond that if at all.

So let's say you find some armor "Flipper's Vest". Flippers will be the mod that gives +30% bonus wave movement. Boom, simple. No tuning the game for some random range, wondering if it's going to throw off the gameplay and break everything. I create a bonus that makes sense, no messy randomness or additional values to display that clutters the UI.

SeaCrit is a condensed ARPG, it doesn't currently save items, there isn't that notion of needing to extend the late game so the player might find an item 4% better than their current one because of rare mods. Because of this, the entire need for random mods goes out the window and SeaCrit becomes much easier to design and maintain without so many extra values and functions to maintain.

I'm going to be gutting a lot of existing upgrades. I'm going to be simplifying the few I keep. Much better to have just a few very fun, well tuned mods for the current state of the game, and build upon a foundation of quality than keep a slew of muddy, sorta okish mods that I developed months ago without any idea what this game would become.

Kinda hard to stay focused as of late, but going to try to keep the momentum going. I'm as confident as ever SeaCrit will some day be a quality game, but the world isn't any less crazy than it was yesterday, so who knows what the future holds for an idiot neckbeard buried deep in a cave.

Ain't been pretty on this rollercoaster, but gonna ride this dev train like a bat outta hell!

Little bit of dev from yesterday:

Post Work Edit:

One of the craziest days of dev I've ever had, started out terribly, was attempting to consolidate the item system and ran into massive issues. But soldiered through it and got it working. No longer do I have to go into the player to augment upgrade powers, now I just create an upgrade type, link it very simply where it belongs in the game logic, and all its settings are tied to scriptable game objects. It's so much nicer than the hodge podge that existed before.

Lots of other tweaks and adjustments. Solid 14+ hours, crawling out of the baby hours zone. It's so weird to have better health and being able to work solid hours again for weeks on end, like the past few months were just a terrible nightmare.

I could ramble for pages all the gunk and issues I waded through today. There's always this element of paying the piper. Of fixing issues you didn't know existed because of your reckless and amatuer development yesterday. I did a LOT of paying the piper today, but that mama jamma is paid off so he shouldn't be hounding me tomorrow so maybe i'll finally be able to get to work on those 2 days of work that stand between me and a new demo that i've been trying to get done for over a month now.

SO MUCH to do. Gotta get these items online, gotta get new purchasable upgrades developed and online, gotta add shops that sell those, gotta get the base zones up and running. Gotta get secret areas in the game. Gotta tune all these new items and upgrades, gotta fix up the upgrades from the ground up now that the entire system is revamped from the ground up.

Just spelling it out makes me lose motivation. But if I can get a few more days like I had today, we're going to be in good shape. Very excited for how things are coming together, and glad I took the time to make these systems semi competently before diving in and locking everything in stone with more content.