Wrote a long ass blog entry and accidently deleted the darned thing! Oh well, nothing new, just blathering about how I wish this gamedev thing wasn't so hard to do in your lonesome.

Trying to get back into this, there is a mind numbing amount of things to do. One step at a time.

Going to try to build the world up a bit today, that's what's freezing me up the most. So much potential, potential I can't pursue alone unless I want to work on this project for another 5 years in squalor. That's not an option. Let's get what's hopefully a passable world and start filling it with fun stuff. Doesn't have to be locked in, let's start feeling out the general layout of the world and building modular chunks.

Perfection is the enemy of progress.

We're gonna get to making mistakes and imperfect things. It's all you can do, really.

I'm praying all this hard work comes together. Kinda terrified I finally get the bits and pieces in from the past several years and it comes up short.

Que Será, Será

Damn the Torpedoes. TO DEV!

Edit: Oh yeah! I got a little work in yesterday. A paltry 2 hours, but let's try to get this momentum moving again. Fingers crossed health keeps getting a bit better day after day. Taking a little break from exercising and eating healthy, seems to be helping me feel better for some weird reason.

Post work blather:

Only about 4 hours of work today, but we're inching back into respectable work territory. I don't want to burn out all at once, I want to ease back into the grind without hitting the coffee too hard all at once. So far so good! Getting some neat things into the game and fixing bugs as I go. It's VERY EASY to underestimate the sheer volume of things that are going to go wrong when you're pushing forward as fast as I am, but one by one i'm getting things in the game. Got some water volumes in the game, got chests back in the game giving cool items. Getting spawned fish in.

Didn't cover as much ground building out the world as I wanted, but that's ok. An almost solid day done and don't feel like total death, hopefully that maintains, things can go south in an instant lately. Hoping for more work tomorrow and on and on. REALLY close to putting out a new demo. Won't be THE demo, but it will be close. Gotta get feedback on what's most fun and what needs work, before I go on too far building out the game in a cave with no feedback.

Some final day musings:

So I got a bit more of the world built out, and at the end of the day I started getting some spawning in. I think it's time I switch gears and start to build out the gameplay mechanics. I'm being pulled very hard in both directions. I NEED TO BUILD OUT THE WORLD! FOR ALL I KNOW PLATFORMING AND ADVENTURE should be as big a part of the game as combat! And I wonn't know till i build things out!

NO FOOL! You need to develop combat more, that's where all the years of dev went into! Items, mods, weapons, different fish types, chargeable attacks, stuns, slows, wounds, a ton of mechanics to master and learn, progression to put into the game!

I'm not sure it really matters what I tackle first. I guess what it comes down to... is after feeling like crap as of late, I really just want to get the stuff in the game so it shows potential sooner rather than later. I know it's going to take a lot of work, but a lot of thigs will require polish and finagling as we add them to the game. Coffee really didn't sit well tonight. Gonna try to dev on a lot less tomorrow.

It never ends, but it's also better than it's ever been. Excited to see how things go in the coming days if I can get things into the game and kinda fun. Fingers crossed we don't run into any crippling bugs or issues and I can get a new mini demo out soon.

I'm flustered because I know how much better so many of these systems could be if I had a solid week to focus on that solitary system and clean up the code and setups, and the breadth of work it will take to elevate everything to their full potential, utlizing all the systems I've brought online. But I also know this: even at 50%, this game is going to be pretty darned decent, and I take solace in that. One step at a time.

We do a little stealth update:

Quick little update. I hope I'm not jinxing anything, but today is the first day i've just felt good in a long long time. It's been some pretty dark days of late that I've tried not to harp on too much. But I was starting to wonder "Is this how it ends"? My health falls apart and once i get the game on the verge of starting to come together, I feel like death, can't collect my thoughts for longer than an hour at a time? And just work to put out some rudimentary crappy demo?

I'm just so grateful to just feel "normal" right now. I feel like I'm about to get back to work soon with nice long hours handling complex sh*t again gettin' the mama jamma on the road.

Feels good man.

Hope i'm not jinxing it. For all I know i'll wake up tomorrow short of breath or who knows what. But for now, THE DREAM LIVES ON, WE BACK IN 'DIS B*TCH.