I really don't like down time, I like to open the project and just slam out work as issues come to me in the engine. Every day I don't work I feel like i'm inviting failure, i'm rolling the dice and accepting that the odds of failure just grew a bit higher. Momentum is the lifeblood of dev.

But there are times where things come together in my head and I have a vision for what might tie up several loose ends and I just had an epiphany a moment ago and I don't feel so bad about taking a breather. If i'd been knee deep in the project today, I would have built up a lot of content and maybe stunted the project forever, this idea is a core pipeline addition. I didn't have the idea just now, but i decided to act on it 100%, it's going to be worth it and make forward progress sustainable and meaningful. 

The LAST thing you want to do when you make a game is spin wheels in mud, you must keep trust in your decisions that you are not causing yourself to waste time. Once you have learned that you cannot make quality decisions, that you will allow yourself to sacrifice precious passions on frivolous nothings, that passion never comes back, your project becomes permanently stunted as your brain fights against all future work, and rightfully so. Careful planning based on hard earned lessons from learning the hard way is the absolute key to achieving victory, and the vast majority of all projects fail because they do not understand this key strategy.

The main thing I was stressing about:

Developing enough level space to make the game interesting, building out a large world and having to spread myself thin as I create more and more unique areas to house more unique fish and secret areas.

I've decided to double down on an idea I had to repurpose the secret area and shop mechanic, where a teleporter takes you to a unique spot, and that unique spot then generates a unique set of assets, whether it be seacrit powerups or the correct items that correspond to that shop loadout.

But now i'll be creating just a few areas like a cave, or an open sea area. And rather than feeling as though I need to build unique sections all over, I can simply teleport to these areas and link unique spawns and seacrit areas.

Think of it like in link or metroid, they have these cookie cutter chunks that load with unique enemies per screen, but on a bigger scale, and instead of side scrolling screen by screen, you have a couple teleporters that take you to these places.

This will amplify the quality over quantity approach i want to take with level design right now. I don't want to build out a TON of sub par content, I want to build very quality pieces and those pieces can be iterated on, polished in play and visuals, and every area of the game they are used will improved.

It goes into the whole modularity concept. SeaCrit is going to be just a few core pieces VERY WELL POLISHED that will build on each other, and if I keep the pieces down to a minimum, it will allow for a tremendous shine. But that doesn't mean the game will be shallow, oh no! These tiny pieces will be dynamic and hyper tuned to allow for exponential gameplay possibilities. This kinda reminds me about another blog post I wanted to write up about how content is envisioned for seacrit, how fewer, but important powerups and abilities is the way i've chosen to go. I want every single piece of content for this game to be relevant at every stage of play. I don't want people just doing cow runs forever, I don't want a single move to be the best, tapping life, instilling debuffs, and doing the most damage all in one all the time. Anyway, a subject for another time!

Feeling a bit better today, getting my head back into dev but still feeling a little off. Glad to have a point of dev i'm excited about that will hopefully give a framework to the rest of work. Once I create these reusable areas that unique levels can link to I'll be much better able to feel out the best path moving forward dev wise. Learning a lot! Tons of areas of the game to work on at once, it's a little overwhelming, but we've been doing well as of late! Hopefully we pick this back up tomorrow and whoop some arse. Today focusing on some light exercise, eating well, and hopefully feeling better tomorrow.

To figure out: How best to create an open zone and have a teleport take the player there. Can't just block it in or it ends up just being a sort of cave... can limit the top with the water plan, can block the bottom with sea floor section, I KNOW! I'll just put a teleporter that links to the other side. that will make the zone feel nice big and open, and right in the middle will be the cave entrance they came through that they can leave from.

Once these reusable areas are fully onine, creating more content is going to be so darned easy, and any polish passes on level sections will greatly improve hte quality of the game! Really happy with how scene and level management and level design is going right now. It's not perfect, maybe not even ok, but the important thing is that it's being built in a way that it can improve in the future.

Edit: Changed me mind. Not going to focus on making these areas modular for now. I'm not building out 5 different levels, just focusing on area 1 and 2 for now. What I CAN do is make level 2 a bit modular and reuse it for areas 3 and beyond in the time being. It's time to get more spawns in, get some secrets in, get some items in and get the low hanging fruit, get this initial demo fun and playable, we're close. Think maybe 2 solid days and I'll have something worth replacing the existing downloadable builds with.

Gonna drink some strong tea and hope health holds up today.