There are questions that drives me mad: Why are only greedy, sheltered, bubble-huffing, gatekeeping manchildren in charge of tech? Why is it locked in a cage in a basement? Why are pipelines and practices hoarded? Why don't we do more to make coding palatable? Why don't we expose children to quality coding courses and foster creativity in the most important tech sector in existence? Why don't we expose more people to the nature of this realm in palatable and inviting ways?

It is bizarre in totality. Tech may be the most important element of the human race to ever exist, it will be the springboard from which the next level of morality and intelligence will spring from if we are able to  transcend... 

...and it's locked up in a cage in some weird dude's basement.

Imagine a world where people had conversations about code around the kitchen table like they were talking about the differences between a v6 or a v8 engine. Imagine if you wanted to make a game, and you could pick from 4 physics solutions, scaled and perfectly made for the type of game you were making. Imagine if you could dive deep down into every function call, every tiny chunk of logic and each one was meticulously commented out to explain the reasons for the practices at play and a link to a youtube video explaining how you can understand these things. Imagine if every game ever made, the developers focused on one key piece of tech, and made it portable and usable by other teams, and we had this wonderous, incredible library of digital tools and communal knowledge where everyone was learning not just best practices but fundamentals, so that we don't lose the lessons of the past. A living, breathing beacon of creativity and hard work growing better and stronger year after year.

I do not understand how this world is so f*cking stupid, so f*cking up its own ass, so greedy, so gatekeeping, so horrendously self destructive and self serving at the same damned time.

It's actually revolting. And every day things get a little worse, the state of how bad things are gets normalized a little more.

We don't look at the state of decay properly, we look at things and we think, well we still have food water and shelter, but you can't simply compare in a linear fashion the state of things to see how well things are going, you have to look at the rate of decline. For some 60 years things got better and better and better at a faster and faster rate. It's not our prosperity level stagnating that is alarming, it's the rate of decay onsetting that is alarming, and a signifier of the foundations of society that have collapsed.

If we get our act together RIGHT NOW, things will not improve tomorrow, we will have to lay in the bed we have made for decades.

Culture is a funny thing, and it's the bedrock upon which everything sets upon. It's not forged in a day, you can't change someone's fundamental belief in the world or their character overnight. The petty nothings we have thrust into the limelight will haunt us until the end of our days, but the future is still worth fighting for. It's no one's fault they were bred into a cloud of toxicity.

Do I blog too much?

Yes.

FUCK YES I do.

Anyway, a thought crossed my mind. I fixate the end goal too much, it breaks me day after day as the final payoff eludes me. It robs me of the satisfaction I could enjoy fixing one system at a time. So I will no longer be fixating putting out a demo, I will simply seek to do things right with no shortcuts, no quick solutions to get me where I want to go faster because that means some day we have to pay the piper. And i'm so done paying that m*ther fucker.

Had a pretty great day of dev yesterday, just worked a solid 12 hour day, haven't had one of those in a while, and at the end of it I was as hungry as I was last time i ate a lot and my health nosedived. Blood sugar was at an 89 which is the lowest i've ever seen it. I don't know if that's good or bad, but I know I ate a shitton and was bracing to feel like death today. Don't feel great, don't feel terrible, i'll take it, hitting a 190, which is a bit high but I ate so damned much it's to be expected. ENOUGH BITCHING ABOUT HEALTH!

Today i'm going to get to work on upgrades. I'm going to try examine if they're worth having, and if not, BOOM GONE! I'd rather have the player collecting a small handful of upgrades and they be GOOD rather than shuffling through crappy ones and not having fun. I have one chance to leave an impression on the player if someone finally tries the damned game, and if they get an item I want them to think "HOT DAMN THAT'S NEAT!"

So i'll be trying to do double time not just trying to get the things in, but cleaning up naming conventions of functions, adding little bits of functionality and design wherever I feel I can improve the process of making these bonuses. There are so many facets to these systems, some upgrades feed into other upgrades, the UI elements have really ballooned, I've got upgrades you find on items, I've also got upgrades you get as drops from fish, and I have some you buy in stores. And in the near future i've got upgrades that you can buy and have permanently even if you log out of the game.

I guess you could say today we're... upgrading the upgrades.

I have this lofty dream of success, like if this project ever starts going well, things will suddenly get better. It will be a paradigm shift in the world and we will all work to improve everything and make this industry better. That is no guarantee, in fact it's a total pipe dream. Much more likely terrible things would follow any eyes getting on this project in this terrible world. I need to take solace in where we are, we are free of distractoin, free of tertiary things that could destroy the project in a multitude of ways.

In this cave we are free to work with 100% focus on the project. No sabatures, no too many cooks in the kitchen, no idiot publisher to have their way with the pristine back end of SeaCrit.

The grass is always greener... Life has its ups and down, and this is certainly a slog, but it's a slog with purpose, and that's better than many alternatives.