Early in our gamedev journey, we're so ecstatic when somehow something works by an means possible. "IT DID THE THING!" Off to the next system! We're playing with all these new toys and everything is magic, iterating and improving and adding to systems is such a foriegn notion that it doesn't concern us.

But there comes a point where the magic fades, and we find ourselves surrounded by the cold reality of the things we've built for ourselves. These are the tools we work with every day, these are the systems we must upkeep through our future game ideas, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

And thus, we must endeavor to create things in elegant simplicity, we must train our muscle memory to perform actions that are congruent to consistent uninterrupted progress. An overengineered monstrocity holds no value. Something clear and true that communicates its intention at a glance with nothing clever or hidden. That is the goal.

So many times I have in a moment taken the shortcut, thrown code at the wall and created a spasm of functions and logic that take up as much real estate as the core processes of the game.

What's it matter? I'll never have to look at this code ever again, who  cares if it's clean, who cares if it's artfully ergonomic and concise so at a glance we know how it works?

At some point you take the short cut, and the floodgates open, the code becomes another mass of insanity, a well for edge cases, for "clever" tricks that get the solution you wanted, but will confuse future users of the code base for months on end.

We have to be really careful about creating new things that will have new edge cases that require new solutions, we need to isolate new additions as best as possible so there is no bloat, and we can find new issues that arise based on the new system implemented. It's SO SO SO important that we not just inject things needlessly into a growing code base, so that core logic isn't surrounded with malformed trash code injected on a whim. 

In the long run, we will create this endless mental drain, the work we do today we will be working with time and time again, so it's up to us to make sure if we add to it, that it's palatable, that its well organized and concise and not prone to breaking in a myriad of new ways.

I've learned so much over the past few years of beating my head against this wall. Gamedev is still as interesting as ever, if a bit more taxing and old pat.

Just gearing up for a bit more fruitless toil... I often wonder if i'm crazy in this cave. If I'm delusional, if this is all just stupid... not sure where i'm going with this.

Anyway, gonna cook up some chicken and do more stupid game dev!

HERE WE GO!