At first I was afraid, I was petrified, didn't know how i'd go on level craftin' with no hand placed geo by my side.

NEW PLAN: We build the game to be fun, replayable, and hold my interest as a developer. I'm no longer making a shitty boring, slow paced game that I hope will placate new players and outsiders, THAT'S FOR LATER. Right now, we make the game fun, we develop the core system, and the level mechanics. Once the level generation is working, once the fish are in and challenging and the gameplay loop is actually fun, we develop level one and we ship this bitch.

There has been a constant nagging disfunction in development since the start of this game. That I wasn't tuning an actual game. I was tuning a hodge podge of systems that I was hoping would EVENTUALLY be a game.

Key features (I will be adding these to the TODO list):

I want level layouts to look something like this: Shallow straightaway (these sections can be populated by light NPC spawns)>> enemy spawn camp>>> moderate depth straightaway>> Another spawn camp>>>

Level sections will choose randomly from an assortment of level chunks, making sure not to use the same section twice. Every 3 - 5 sections it will insert an uncommon section. This section will be more interesting, maybe have an NPC spawn, maybe have more intense platforming elements. There will be a small% chance this uncommon chunk will be rare, and this section will have a very unique element to it. Could be a shop with VERY nice items at a great price. Could be a very powerful dangerous region that the player will do everything they can to speed through and survive! Or could be a rare fish

Straightaways will have a % chance to spawn rare sections that might have a secret area, or a rare fish spawn, or even a deep cavern that leads to a rare item in a chest.

Level chunks will have random elements within them, RANDOM RECURSION.

Floating spherical coral that can shrink and reveal a secret cave that takes you to SeaCrit caves with dangers and special loot.

Fun assortments of randomly arranged assets at the water surface that encourages fun 

OH, TIMED CHESTS THAT ONLY OPEN IF YOU REACH THEM IN TIME WOULD BE FUN at the end of the water surface section! (can't tell if i'm stealing this idea from that one game or we just came up with the same cool idea)

Unique level sections that MUST spawn at specific points in the chain, level one will have unique tutorial sections like the wave swim. Bosses and other flavor elements, shops will be unique per zone and MUST spawn at specific spots.

Level chain pieces don't have to be uniform, a bit of variety is good!

Random weight for level pieces. I want some areas to be rare, and have really neat far out crap in them. Like a 1/100 chance of getting a very difficult deep dungeon  that has a huge rare boss at the end and nice items. A difficult jump puzzle leading to a treasure chest that requires you to jump between floating water volumes above the ocean water line. Flavor NPC's with interesting, criptic messages about the story. THE SKY'S THE LIMIT!

LOTS of variety, random sub objects in level chunks. Could be a few floating rocks in this bit of a random level block, or a series of arches.

Thoughts on what this means for the game:

I fought against this for a while, but it eventually dawned on me that nothing but good things can come from this, this singular decisions solves the absolute BIGGEST issues with the game.

BIGGEST PROBLEM IT SOLVES: I am no longer bored with the game, I will be able to play it as a player and design it to be better. THIS IS HUGE.

Second Biggest problem: It empowers me to be able to create massive swathes of content as a one man team and make design decisions involving level design that affect the game globally. I will no longer have a giant, massive world that requires constant hand quality design in every region. I just need to make a subset of modular level chunks, polish the SH*T out of them, and figure out the fun from there.

ADVENTURE!: I never thought just swimming around and exploring could be so fun. I thought this game was going to be about staying in one area and just killing stuff till you were stronger like in an MMO. I didn't have the resources to make big areas. My entire outlook of this game is changing, now I'm thinking the player can simply adventure about as a main means of play, not just endless fighting and murder. It's pretty awesome. I now view SeaCrit as a sort of choose your own adventure. You can focus on items and progression, or you can just swim around and exlpore, get stronger in ways that don't involve fighting. EVERYTHING is changing in a big way with this huge pivot.

IMPORTANT: I need to be sure that there are certain BIG BEATS that don't change in specific zones. I still want there to be specific areas per zone where the player can know they will find. A certain stat they can farm, a shop with an item they know they want, things of this nature. So I must endeavor to ensure that though things are random SOME ELEMENTS can be relied upon to make things sane, UNLIKE THIS CRAZY WORLD WE- wait, no more negativity! We're gonna work hard and bring sanity and joy to this callous chunk of rock we spin upon!

Goals:

MILESTONE ONE : Get long stretches of levels working, I should be able to make an infinite stretch of a level for the player to blaze through at high speed and enjoy a sort of speed run friendly high speed romp near the top of the ocean. Need to get a few varieties of short but unique floor sections.

MILESTONE TWO: Get shops, boss sections, level end, and other key pieces in and working, this will allow for full levels to be created.

MILESTONE THREE: Secondary unique pieces, More interesting areas, more secret things, more secondary spawn area sections.

MILESTONE FOUR: Tertiary level areas, teleports to other zone sections.

Don't want to overdesign for now, I think we've got more than enough on our plate for now. Exc