I find myself obsessing about how to make this project a success in this crazy world. Maybe I should adopt a new personality, create a fictional persona for myself that's more in line with how successful games market themselves. Maybe I should make more videos showing off the game. Maybe I should be spending more time networking and get into more communities...

It drains a lot of energy mulling these things over. I posted a link to the game the other day in a forum, and I braced for success and I think the game ended up getting 2 plays, and i'm wondering "what did they think of the game!?". I dunno, maybe they just thought it was sh*t. But this I do know, stressing about it isn't doing the project any good.

So I'm choosing to go back to what was working, retreating back to this hole and just pounding out more work in the dark.

I'm simultaniously BURNED THE F*CK OUT thinking of all the work I need to do getting this damned random level generation up and running. while also being excited as hell at the future prospects of this major renovation.

I used to get a sinking feeling in my stomach when I started to try to make the game look good... if I spent 5 minutes making a little arrangement of assets look nice, if I wanted the rest of the game to have that same level of care, it would take MONTHS. And if I ever needed to make revisions now the game is going to take FOREVER to finish.

NOT ANY MORE! With modular, reusable chunks of level, I can now really key in and try to make JUST A FEW pieces look really nice. Learn from those tiny little chunks and propagate that quality to just a few others and BOOM, my entire game looks better!

And here's the kicker, same goes for gameplay. I can find what works in one tiny little region, and propagate that to just a few other pieces.

Today I'm going to work on making the tools I generated yesterday more streamlined, and I'm going to work on making the system more dynamic, so in new levels, a piece will generate, find out what level its in, and generate asset types that fit with that level type. So in zone 1, you'll see a spherical leafy, lush piece of kelpy coral, in level 2 it would sap that visual out for a rock. In zone one you'd see a 

Zone specific tunings. Weighting for environmental hazards, how many enemies spawn, what enemies spawn. Things of this nature.

Now's the time for me to go hard on making these setups relatively easy to work with, and robust. Once i've generated content and start tuning things, it becomes more and more of a headache to revamp things as content becomes invalidated.

The system is best the more work it does for me, but I need to give it the proper logic so that it's quality work that's as good as hand crafted setups.

I gotta make this system give the right variety of combat, goodies, danger, exploration. And ensure that when it randomly creates new levels, it's fresh and interesting, and not cold and stale.

One day at a time, LOTS of very tedious annoying things to sort today. I would like nothing more than to do the cool stuff that might bring interest to the project, but I'm doing what I know must be done so the game can have genuine value in the future. Trying to put my money where my mouth is, with all the decay and destruction in this world due to hairbrain short sighted monetary shenanigans, I'm going to hunker down in this squalor and try to do things the right way as best I'm able. Which I'm fully aware may be absolutely ret@rded.

MUCH TO DO! Not looking forward to it, but just a couple more days of hard work and I think I may be able to press a singular button and generate level 2.

By my calculations, in just a week or so if I can keep motivated and productive, the game will be 3x as well polished, with 4 times the content than if I'd stayed with the create the entire world by hand with total freedom.

I just realized this may be the biggest and most important factor of why this system is going to help this game be fun. I finally have restrictions, the gameplay finally has a form. And it's the age old time honored, "GO TO THE RIGHT!", and I really like that. It's both fresh and a proven system.

Not excited for the work that needs doing today, but i'm excited for the payoff that I may have in just a few days time!