So... we got the fog in. I actually think it kicks ass, shoutout to fog and mist2 on the Unity asset store.

But the build suddenly just renders totally black in the web build. UI shows fine, game plays, you can hear sounds, but everything is black. I was changing all kinds of stuff trying to debug a silhouette issue I ran into. I have NO IDEA what's causing this render issue, it could be literally anything. It could be the new fog stuff I just added, it could be a setting I accidently changed, it could be a glitch in the matrix. I dunno. I'm just bracing for having to hunker down and tear apart my project bit by bit while i was already stressing about getting actual work done on it.

This is gamedev. Being surrounded by rolling boulders and hails of arrows as your precariously try to balance the house of cards of this giant ball of digital duct tape and shards of glass.

We targeted every platform, every input device, we stress optimizations so it can run on anything. And we're spread thin as hell and who knows what changes are happening in the Unity engine. I'm so tired, so ready for the smallest amount of help.

I can't even discuss these issues because i'm banned on the Unity Forum for being a jackass. But IMO we need more jackasses talking about this shit so we can fix all these damn problems.

I'm going to fix this damned issue today. Or at least give it my all. Might sap out all the remaining strength I have for this damn project but it's of paramount important i get the web build up.

I'm very happy with how the game looks now. If we can get this sorted I will be very happy knowing that we have what i think is a great lookin game. The volumetric fog looks even better than I hoped it would, we got pretty good at messing with tech and tuning dials over the years of working with VFX and code and design.

Took an hour to  get the new version of Unity, hope that magically fixes things, I know it wont. Now that that's installed it takes an hour for it to recompile everything. Somehow it switched from web to PC build, so i figured what the hell let's try a build of that and see if this is a global rendering issue or affecting only WebGL. The game runs perfectly fine in the editor BTW.

40 minutes into waiting for all these shaders to compile for the build, these fog volumes are taking FOREVER. So we've thrown a new wrench into the whole process,  that we'll be dealing with for the foreseeable future. God damn, I know this is whiney, I'm just so f*cking over gamedev in this moment.  It's moment like these I really wish I had an ounce of help, someone to press the build button while I'm crashed out, some form of support troubleshooting some inane technical issue so i can focus on getting back to getting the fun online. It's been so damned draining and unrewarding working alone in this damn cave.

You claw your way to your project, try to get a few inches of progress, end up sending 7 hours wrestling with technical issues largely out of your control. Gah! This engine has been so poorly managed over the years, so many poor decisions from cowards and backstabbers all stacking up on top of each others leading to this f*cking mess I'm having to sort through here while the passions die out.

Bleh. So it goes. This is gamedev. Like it or not, you want a cool game that pushes the envelope, you pay the damned piper. Just tired of feeling as though I'm footing the bill alone.

UPDATE: I've got a lot of free time waiting between builds and swapping between target platforms so i'll be posting updates as we go today! So the PC build works fine. I guess that's good. If it didn't work it would have meant i could have trouble shooted the issue in a more stable environment. Oh well! Swapping to web build now, if we're lucky, it might just work out of the gate for some unknown reason. Gamedev is fun WEEEEE! Good god I complain a lot...

Web build taking as long as PC build. The thought of having to try to find the needle in the haystack issue causing the black screen between 1 hour+ build times is kinda terrifying RN, fingers crossed this issue magically fixed itself somehow.

UPDATE 2: Screen in still black, time to roll up our sleeves and get to diggin' for bugs. Don't usually screen cap this shit, but gonna do it this time, compile times and builds and all.

UPDATE 3: FINALLY GOT IT! Fixed the black screen only to have a new issue with no geometry rendering. It never ends... but in the long run we fixed that one too. Took a lot of headache to get this crap up and running, but the deed is done. No more dev today, I don't think. New fog looks AWESOME, especially for running on phones. I think it might be the sort of thing that looks cool enough that maybe it draws some eyes in the future. There comes a point where trying to make the gameplay perfect is stupid, you gotta make the visuals pull people in to attract people. Probably helps to actually upload videos too! We're getting close to that phase. Tomorrow we're gonna get those spawns in and kick some arse!

Crisis averted! But damn are these speed bumps a PITA!

Stealth edit: I MAY have uploaded a new web build with the new volumetric fog effects. And it will PROBABLY break terribly on phone, testing soon!

It works, it runs well on phone, and it looks pretty durn good! WE BACK! Work commences again tomorrow! So I did some tests, it DOES have some pretty damned terrible performance for many machines, going to implement a FPS check system to auto set quality tomorrow.

This random thought pops into my head from time to time. It's easy to think about how simple life could be, how much better it would be if we were all ants. 100% selfless, perfectly in tune with the hive, all working in fluid synchronicity towards a streamlined future of cooperation and progress... but if you think about it. How boring would that be?

We think about these aliens, or travelers from afar with superior intillect and societies and technology. And they're always so BORING! Like imagine you're some super being, and you've solved hunger, energy, travel, in the blink of an eye... what's the next drive? We always think of the singularity as this explosion of perfection transcending us to the next plane of existence but how much more meaning can we find if everything is always sunshine and rainbows.

I know it's trite, but in a very real and inescapable way, that darkness within us, the cognitive dissonances, the lying, the cheating, the tirbalism and the warring and the strife... it makes things uncertain, even though we have the capacity to make life very easy for ourselves.

And in that uncertainty, in the conflict, in the struggle to try to do right among all these jokers and jackasses, there's a deeper meaning. All the grifters, the crooks and liars, in a weird way, they create a sort of mystery box, something to strive for. We're all part of this mad machine, we're all in one way or another telling white lies to ourselves and others because we don't want to hurt others, and we tell ourselves it means well, but does it? Are we being too kind? are we being cowards? Does it matter?

We may be the last generation to not understand the inner workings of the human brains, this may be the last moment in human history before the collective human consciousness is thrown into a machine and shaken together before coming to the exacting, robotic conclusion that all this humanity was a big waste of time.

What if the only thing keeping us sane from the darkness of infinity is this notion that there is struggle? That there is a fight worth having for existence, and if we ever were to get our act together, evolve, work together, end hunger, war and all strife, maybe we'd all be on a spaceship somewhere just incapable of even wondering what the point of it all is. Just knowing every limit of this dimension and wanting to go back to the old struggles and stupid nothings.

Weird time to be alive, wondering if anything is real at all. If we're a distorted memory in some machine as old as time, or maybe an offshoot of a simulation serving some purpose we could never understand. Are we the fading aftershocks of perfect order changing and scattering in chaos with an unknown future, or just trapped in some sort of perfect compilation of energy and matter locked away as a reminder of how crazy the universe once was.

Who knows... we used to get philosophical about this stuff back in the day. Nowadays it's all gone retarded, we just  find things to get angry about so we can run on that base emotions and turn our brains off and we can enjoy our animal natures. It's all so silly, but like I said before, it sure makes things interesting. At least it's not boring these days. 

As humans we're a really funny species. Who'd have thought "sacks of meat" would be the dominant intellect on the planet. If we were to have been designed by some sort of sentient species or if we are some sort of simulation from a greater being, it makes sense that they would create a species that was hyper tribal and prone to lies and deceit, and craziness. Because I would imagine being an all knowing, all powerful being would get to be really really boring and maybe they would start to ponder, what would existence be like if instead of evolving into the perfect, rational, helpful being, everyone was just insane and spiteful and interpreted reality in a way that f*cked over everyone else but enriched themselves for no reason whatsoever except to fuel petulant desires of superiority.

Whatever happens, the future's gonna be pretty fucking entertaining.