Quick little blog. BOY HOWDY did we splerg out on that last blather! Enough worrying about this sh*tstain of a world, let's get back to neckbeardin'.

So I had a notion today that I don't like how zones are setup. And I think i'm going to gut them. I'm going to add a new system that houses a list of zones, and then i'll just have triggers that set the zones. I'll make an instance for the zone manager so it can be called anywhere at any time.

No more messing with huge trigger volumes to detect when a player enters a zone, i'll just make smaller ones at the entrance and exit. This will mean I can clean up the in game scene!

I'll also be removing the zones specific difficulty mods. I had this idea that each zone would have its own unique enemy health mods, damage, speed, etc. And the more I think about it, the more I don't like it.

So i'll be adding a new means of scaling difficulty that's much simpler, the further you go to the right, the more health and damage fish do. SIMPLE! This will work with the already implemented system that scales difficulty the longer the game goes on.

This will make working in the game SO MUCH CLEANER. These zones and difficulty settings were always something taxing on my mind, little edge cases that would always nag at me. "Is the zone loading properly? Is there some issue with trigger volumes or whatever? This is going to be WAY cleaner. Just one zone handler with an update on it that transitions lighting and colors and music and such. THAT'S IT. Zone assets will be persistent and their locations will be irrelevant so i can sort them and stash them away somewhere tidy and it'll be a breeze to work with zones. I can even enhance how i tweak lighting and colors in realtime. Blather blather, who cares about these technicalities.

I've also decided i'm going to ditch the in scene large cave that i don't use. Also figured out how to use multiple scenes so the entire dev environment is so much more compact and tighter now, and i have an additional scene where all the level assets are that i can toggle in and out of existance that won't mess with the logic of other assets in the game.

So cleaning up difficulty and setting up this revised and clean zone system is the goal for today, if I have time for it, I want to move onto getting back into dailies!

Everyday:

New NPC fish

New upgrade for that NPC to drop

New Chunk to explore

And in the future:

New weapons and armor every day.

If we can keep this up for several days. It's gonna be new demo time! We're fast approaching this game coming together!

Let's get to it.

EDIT: Work went really well. I don't want to jynx it, but lately feel like I have my life back, health has been so much better. Got the zone revamp totally done. Lots of other MSC things and fixes and fixes to new problems every single day. I keep pushing hard hoping I'm going to have that day i FINALLY throw some fish in and some levels, and a few items and it'll finally be a game, but I keep running into tertiary things that need doing.

I THINK all the little bits of polish are adding up, but who knows... hard to have perspective any more. The mass insanity clouds your judgement, clouds what's real, what's decent, what's fun. You start to think only big multi billion dollar games are legitimately more fun simply because there's more buzz around them and they've got the fancy logo's and all that nonsense.

Gotta keep the eyes on the prize. One grueling day at a time.

I come down like a hurricane sucked up inside
Now I spit out the suffer, oh yeah
You said you want a revelation
Revel in this, my lover
You're free, at liberty
Is this what you want?
Sometimes, I wonder

There's a highway to
To the edge, yeah
Once a night, you will
Drive yourself there
At the end of the road, you will
Find the answer
Oh, at the end of the road, you will
Drink your fear

I come down like a bloody rain cuts up flesh sky
A pulse beating under, yeah
Meat petals bloom in a bone garden
Ain't no god, no ghost gonna save you now
I sell souls at the side of the road
Would you like to take a number?

There's a highway to
To the edge, yeah
Once a night, you will
Drive yourself there
At the end of the road, you will
Find the answer
Oh, at the end of the road, you will
Drink your fear

Oh, oh, oh-oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh-oh, oh, oh (ah!)
Take your time, come on
Get what you come for
Don't waste my time, come on
Get what you come for
Don't waste my time, come on
Get what you come for
Don't waste my time, come on
Get what you come for

There's a highway to
To the edge, yeah
Once a night, you will
Drive yourself there
At the end of the road, you will
Find the answer
Oh, at the end of the road, you will
Drink your fear

I watched you burn
In the eye of my sun (whoa, whoa)
In the eye of my sun, yeah, yeah (whoa, whoa, whoa)
I fucked you in (whoa, whoa, whoa)
In the eye of my sun (whoa, whoa, whoa)
In the eye of my sun, yeah, yeah (whoa, whoa, whoa)
I watched you burn
In the eye of my sun
In the eye of my sun, yeah, yeah
I fucked you in
In the eye of my sun
In the eye of my sun, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah

What a fucking banger