So, I'm getting a little tired of blathering about it at this point, but my plan was to go in, not stress visuals, and just get spawn systems in, get the spawns in, see which fish are fun, and NOT STRESS VISUALS AT ALL.

And i'm here making this post to say, "Eh, I've decided to do  the absolute OPPOSITE OF THAT".

I had some epiphanies heating up some food and doing a light workout. The fish are engaging enough now that I don't think I should be thinking about "enemy compositions" it's far more fun when you are fighting fish in 1 vs 1 and 1 vs 2 environments, any more than that and the game devolves into fighting a cloud of nothing. The timings fall apart, all the nuances to combat etc.

There will be a time in the future to exlpore grander, larger scale combat situations vs hordes of enemies, now is not that time.

So with these notions in mind, what really bugs me about the spawning right now is actually the visuals. The particles, the visual number that's displayed counting down how much longer till the fish spawns, it all looks kinda chintsy. And it's the biggest eye sore in the game right now. I've been improving visuals a lot lately and when everything starts to look better, some things can really become eye sores.

How enemies behave as they spawn also needs a little polish, they don't "sit well" after spawning in, they kinda look in weird directions. I'm happy with the rocks that position themselves with the timing of the fish spawning in, but the particles need a little work, and I want a fancier and cooler spawn particle that will fire off as a fish spawns in.

I've also decided that most all fish spawns will be made to sit in cool areas designed specifically to look cool and facilitate fun combat of spawns. So i'm going to spend some time making some really need mini areas that I can plop these spawners on top of.

One fish behave a little better on spawn locations, the spawn particles are better, the settings are better and I have well crafted, fun combat areas that the spawners are designed to sit directly on top of, I really feel like this world is going to build itself! WORK SMARTER NOT HARDER!

So the level design flow is starting to make sense in my mind now, we plop in these spawn sections that fill out a good bit of the ground, and then we're left with just a bit of negative space in the zone, and that's where I can fill it full of fun shops and secrets in all sorts of interesting ways.

From here I'll come up with smaller and grander spawn locations. Some will spawn mini bosses and i'll position these spanwers away from the others, and others will be smaller and designed to compliment other key spawns.

To make things interesting i'll be adding roam spawns that spawn sparsely and swim around the entire chunk. Some will be enemies, some will be rare giving lots of gold, or rare bonuses that are very powerful. Sort of like the money gnome in golden axe, rare roguelike type stuff that mixes things up.  Maybe you're used to fighting a big tough enemy but some secondary spawned creature occasionally swims by and makes the fight interesting. That's the goal!

It just dawned on me. I think we've figured this all out! I think we finally have a plan to what this game actually is, what its anatomy is, what the pipelines are. There will always be room to grow and make this whole explorative combat game bigger and better and more awe inspiring with broader exploration, combat, upgrades, etc.

But for THE FIRST TIME EVER. I'm actually really confident about creating the levels for this game!

For so long I was just throwing together these large sections of empty ocean, with spheres and cubes, etc. We were a nowhere man, building a sea of nothing for no one.

But now we know what we're building! We have a blueprint! And we think it's gonna start being fun really soon!

Sometimes just taking a moment to think over what you're going to do rather than blindly going into the todo lists thinking checking things off a list is somehow going to make a great game. NO! THINKING about where your game is at, knowing your resources, knowing your systems and coming to terms with emerging fun and recalibrating is what's going to get you to the finish line. TODO lists are often times counter productive, idiot plans written in stone by those not in the trenches.

I think I'm going to take it easy today and do a little gaming which i haven't indulged in much at all lately. We've been doing a lot of writing and working lately, we earned a little time to regroup.  I seriously think I just saved myself a full week or more of fiddling with things in a dumb way when the path moving forward seems so clear now.

Going to hit this hard starting next week! Health has been great again. Optimistic for the future for the first time in TOO LONG! And the world seems to be healing after all this madness.