Thus progress becomes much more complex, and cleaning things properly takes on an entirely new dimension. The best way to clean is from the top down, this way as the junk is eliminated, it falls downward, and you make actual progress.

Gamedev is such a broad and intangible thing, that we simply cannot perceive the Todo list, we cannot even itemize it. I started a month ago to start to revamp and retool systems to make them easier to work with, and after a solid month of tedious work I now feel as though there is MORE TO DO THAN EVER! I need to redo abilities and skills that now feel slightly off, I've been working with these systems so intimately the past month I never want to even look at them again.

BUT! This is how you finish a game. You FINISH THINGS. You clean TOP DOWN! You develop your method, you learn how to work in the optimal orders, and you take the time to do things right or you will cost yourself untold hours and sapped passions in the future.

I feel as though my todo list is longer than it's ever been. As you revamp systems you break things that need retooling, and you lose focus, and dev starts to feel like a tedious exercise that doesn't create anything, your Todo list grows longer and longer and longer as you work and work and work. And it's very counterintuitive, because it FEELS like you're no progress at all. You work and you work and that mountain gets bigger and bigger.

But we must realize, that the mountain never got bigger, we simply were never able to fathom its scope from the onset. We have scaled insurmountable distances, and while the peak seems to rise ever higher, we lose sight of the monstrous tracks of uneven terrain we have already scaled.

I THINK we're mostly all done with cleanup, with revising systems. Wounds are in a good spot now, penetration projectiles are in and working. The bonus system is kicking arse.

I can't believe I'm saying this because i've thought I would be saying this for two weeks now, but I think the systems revisions are done. It's time to get in there and tune. Which sucks because I'm so friggin' burned out right now dealing with all these systems. When you're knee deep in everything and everything is breaking in a multitude of ways, you start to develop this fear of working with the systems, like a beaten dog.

Going to suck it up and work on the key setups today. We're going to try to polish up most all combat systems.

This is the most important thing to keep tight, because if you're constantly loading up your game and the enemies that you engage with around you aren't well tuned, everything is going to feel like wasted effort, that the project is doomed. This base enemies for too long have had really poor attack timings and they're not fun to engage with at all. I'm going to try to keep in mind, these NPC's aren't supposed to be some grand challenge, they're not supposed to require the player to react fast to windup visuals, or anything fancy. They're supposed to just be big fat meat sponges that are fun for the player to unload on, so mostly just need to make their attack cooldowns sane, make sure their attack collisions don't feel cheap, and their attacks don't feel totally avoidable, but also not impossible to avoid. I'll also be working to dial down the over the top berserker mechanics, overpowered alt attacks, and overpowered dash movements here and there. Will also be knocking random things off the todo list. I also want to do a pass on all upgrades and decide which ones I should prioritize for the near future and which ones can wait till later.