Tonight we uncover the SeaCrits of gamedev!

Sometimes an idea hits you, and you just FOOKING KNOW that's the missing ingredient to the SEACRIT SAUCE you've been trying to cook up for years!

Forget why but I was thinking about SeaCrits and upgrades, and I remembered being a kid again and playing that first level of Castlevania and I remember attacking that random block and finding that SeaCrit turkey that healed back all your life or finding that block you can push in Zelda that lets you get the boomerang and it played that time honred noise: DEE DEE DUN DUN DEE DE DUN DUN

I'M ADDING THOSE JOYOUS SECRETS TO SEACRIT DARN IT

Oh I remember why I was thinking this stuff over now! I just got this new visual upgrade system in yesterday.

And now i'm rarin' to get more upgrades and bonuses into the game so the player can play dress up! I don't care how much Testosterone you have in you, collecting cool ass looking items to sport on your character is FUN AF! (Might battle axes and massive sniper rifles are kinda ok too...)

So i've got the whole thing ready to go in my mind, I've done this shit for so long for hours on end i'm able to just get the whole damned job done ahead of time knowing all the functions, what i'm going to name them, the material setups i'll use, how i'm going to register hits and set cooldowns and offset assets and whether they'll be static or dynamic objects in the scene, and how random script elements will generate the random assets that will choose from further lists of random assets...

All that's left to do is roll up our sleeves and get to bleedin' sweat and tears into the maw of this ever-thirsty beast of gamedev.

Love when everything is coming together at just the right pace. I got this cool new visual system for displaying cool upgrades on your fish, adding to the games "Conveyance" and now I have this idea for randomized "SeaCrits" that will give the game its namesake, and all this whole new cool explorative aspect of  finding SeaCrits and smashing blocks apart as they shake and fall apart tossing rubble and flashing with damage as they chunk away revealing the goodies of bonuses underneath!

I've only got a couple assets in for now. I've got the "vampire" bonus that allows you to get lifetap when you attack a stunned enemy to display long fangs on your fish! And when you have the "Blowback" upgrade, which has a small % chance for all ranged attacks to stun and knock back enemies will apply cool flashy muzzles on whatever gun you have equipped. 

Able to set these systems and propagate them to all assets pretty effortlessly because of all the time and setups we've put into prefabs and prefab variants. It's a shame all the people over at Unity are suppressive, subversive sh*t heads who only platform people who share their ideology like big headed bullies, but so it goes. At least they've shown to the world who they are. I hate to say it but I don't think we'll be staying around with this engine, as much as we've invested into becoming competent with these tools over the past decade. 

Once dreamt of working with them to make a better environment to make great products for everyone, but it's clear these assholes are idiots who can only see the short sighted visions of grandeur in front of them, and look to destroy all who they perceive as the other as they court the likes of Apple, Microsoft, and Google. 

How incestuous and incompetent this industry has become...

And this all feeds into building up areas with cool fun to reach areas and enemies that drop different upgrades and provide new challenges in a way that will create that wonderous chord of fun.

I really feel as though we've masterfully navigated that problem of scope quite well of late, not TOO ambitious for our small means, but ambitious enough to be pumped to make awesome shit that leads to a fun game!

Slept like crap, but feelin' pretty good. We'll fumble around in Blender a little bit developing some blocks, maybe we'll pull out the free paint program GIMP! and gimp out in a visual software package that we absolutely SUCK ASS IN while trying to make some remedial textures for blocks. You know what? Screw that let's just find some generic brick textures and move on to better things!

Hot damn, after all the years of endless and hopeless decay... finally feeling optimistic again. Finally feeling a little confident about kicking ass and doing a good job again and that maybe... just MAYBE we can give something cool for this world and for the first time in a very long time, maybe we get something back too.

I've played the fool for a long time in these parts, it's kept me sane for many years as the back scratchers and brown nosers danced on our shallow grave.

I'm feeling more myself these days, after sucking down this toxic sludge of subversive poisons pumped into the river for years on end, feeling confident again, ready to whoop some ass. 

Feel as though I could... like I could... TAKE ON THE WORLD!  

We ain't out down for the count just yet m*ther fuckers.

Firin' up Unity soon. Tonight we breathe life into this dastardly, cantankerous Engine that's been sullied and left for dead like so many of our digital heroes of late.

Damn it feels good to still have the fight in us, to still have that spark of passion to make a great game, and be happy to be puttin' the axe to the grind.

TO DEVS! (Soon as I get a little snack, get some cardio in, and dilly dally with some YouTube!)

POST WORK EDIT: So after all that chest beating, I was too tired that night and didn't get any work done, haha. Oh well. We whooped the lama's ass yesterday and got a solid 9 hour dev session and got the system fully in and running! We have blocks, they play well with NPC's, ranged attacks, melee attacks, and for an initial implementation, I think it's pretty damned good!

WE'RE STARTING TO GET GOOD AT THIS SHIT!

My plan for today is to get secrets shoved into the game all over and build up a few more upgrades with cool visuals. There are several visual elements within the player shader I can play with as well to display various levels of upgrades.

Oh I just had an idea! We can add doodads to fish and change their looks in a variety of ways with shaders and include mulitple upgrades into a singular asset that displayed on the fish, like maybe if you have any of a few different upgrades that enhances guns will put a special muzzle on your guns, but one upgrade make its a brighter red. Another makes it larger, and another still makes it glowy with particles or something... Lots of ways to consolidate the visuals of all the upgrades!