Let's get back to things!

I felt like it was a good time for another ramble and to go over the state of things, and collect ourselves and try to see clearly the path forward that hopefully drives us back to the light.

Let's begin by going over the things we've done right. Let's think about all that darned hard work we've been doing for years that is now largely sewn up and going to form the foundation of the content we create in the coming week(s)

I kinda had it in my head that i would write about every single system, and I would speak about the years of iteration and all the stuff that each system now does down to each variable, but I kinda just want to save my energy for just getting actual work done. How's this? We do one system per blog and we let the inspector window speak for itself. Or maybe we just do one and you guys can just assume everything else kinda follows the same design sensibilities and I stop blathering and get to work on the darned game!?

Quick Video showing the design revisions in action, allowing me to quickly sort through the noise and get to adjusting and debugging various systems at a given time:

Here's some variable setups using Odin Inspector:

And here are some conditionals for the enum sorting:

(It was important combat stats only show at runtime, as many variables requires initialized scripts with correct references that only take hold after the game runs)

So what I was trying to get at is... a lot of this stuff is largely online now, and it's only now dawning on me. The attack scripts, the AI scripts, the items, the prefixes, the input, EVERYTHING is kinda all entering a "mostly done" state, and it's kind of hard to believe, because for the past 5 years everything has been in a state of great revision and iteration. I don't know what the heck I'm going to do with myself... I guess just make content and make this a game!

There is still so much to do, and i'm trying to stop thinking I need to make an entire game in my lonesome. I need to get the game good enough that one way or another we can get the support to make this the amazing game it can be. From the very onset I didn't want this to be just MY game. I wanted SeaCrit to be GOOD, the kind of good that comes from more than a singular person and for better or worse, that'st he trajectory the project has, though more and more I'm starting to think I could go the distance on my own... I simply don't want to. I want to work with others, I want to do something that stands on something larger than a desolate, tiny little island.

I want SeaCrit to be the start of something larger, I want other's to learn how to start kinda of coding, and see this project as an exaple that anyone can make a game, a game that's better than crud, and it really feels like we're checking things off the TODO list and making solid progress!

Ok, Im' getting way off topic. So let's wrap this sucker up... TODO!

1. Revise the scribbles I wrote in the blog the other day and get the dialogue game ready by writing writing writing. You gotta read this stuff over and ove rand over again, make it more concise, make it not so preachy, take the redundancies out (I ALREADY SAID MAKE IT MORE CONCISE MORON!). You get the drift. We gotta add some fancy words with nice alliterations and rhymes and arrangements of words that just form together satisfying shapes with their alliterations of alludiation. (Let's save some creative juice for the actual in-game blathers)

2. Create the unique game chunk where these story fish will reside, the first decline in the ocean that leads to the first Legion enemies to fight, leading to a dark cavernous area that winds downward full of bone and death with some dramatic lighting. I need to create the in game chests and item assets for the ex-Calliber and the Mass O' Moon. I need to create the Unique NPC variants and visuals for the ghost legionaire of the light and the incarnation of Shade.

A non-trivial amount of work. I'll be very happy if we can  get this done today, but if not, we'll have solid progress. Once this is done I'll be feeling really good about the amount of story for this demo and how it touches on all the core elements of the storyline that I want going forward. The only thing we'll be lacking is very memorable characters and bosses with real names that we develop a relationship with that I'd like to do in the future (think Undertale), but I'm actually pretty happy with the writings and storytelling elements in the game thus far, it's enough for now.

So yeah, we're on the precipice of getting all these mostly done systems into the game to show their potential! Am I burned out working on the project endlessly 5 years straight? %$&* YES I AM. But I'm also excited as heck to see all this hard work come together, and who knows, maybe some day the world will be sane (or is it crazy?) enough that some force out there will want to collaborate to make this game more awesome and we can work together to make a better industry.

One inch at a time, another night clawing our way forward through the burnout and uncertainty. Nothin' new!  

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I hope I ain't jynxing this, but I don't feel like i'm dying any more. My health feels actually pretty darned good. Hallelujah!  I'm sure I'll wake up tomorrow and things will swing back to terrible but for now looking forward to gettin' back to work. Maybe it's the time I took to take a deep breath from the project and not stress. Maybe it's something rotten in my body finally healing up or getting over a virus, or who the heck knows. Or maybe this small dose of anti anxiety stuff i'm taking is actually havnig a very big impact. I don't know. All i know, is it's so nice to not feel like death or have a sense of despair of late. 

Amazing what a long stint of poor luck can do to make you feel grateful for the little things and enjoy a very mediocre day of grind. 

In a weird way I'm grateful for the bumps in the road.

Quick Edit: Whew, now that i'm feeling better I thought I'd just be RARIN' to get to work! But I forgot how hard it was to throw myself back into the grinder regardless! I think the notion of having to do writing and then get to world building and then getting to lots of content creation is throwing me off. Gonna allow myself to fart around for maybe one more hour then it's to work darn it! At the very least, we get a very solid bit of writing and revisions done today and the NPC fish set up.

Post Work Edit: I don't normally do this, but I did a video recording of some dialogue writing, thought it would motivate me to get work done, and it DID! But it's also stressful and I don't think i'll be doing it again:

PERFECTION IS THE ENEMY OF PROGRESS! Gearing up to get more work done in just a bit. I will be limiting myself to just 4 hours of work a day so i can hopefully go the distance. I'm so weak these days... but we're getting there.