Short and sweet little blerb tonight!

Still high on the notion that the game is coming together. We had a clear vision for development, create  a very small section of ocean, create just a few enemies, a few items, but make them dynamic as hell and create a tight fun core movement setup and combat system that's fun before we worried about the form of the world.

The story and level design has sorta been genstating over the years and while I used to be mortified of trying to come up with ideas of what's fun, through trial and error we've learned what doesn't work. And all those failures out of the way, I feel like we can throw together some passable level sections moving forward really quick.

All these years devoted to making it impossible for future content to NOT be fun.

I'm stoked.

Everything mostly works now, everything is ready to come online, just need a solid work week for things to start coming together. Web build is running better than ever, just got a random post on the game saying they like the mouse controls! Shout out to Dutch for that. That's 2 engagements in a week! That's like doubled the engagements we've gotten in 8 years! HOLY CRAP WE'RE POPULAR AS SHIT NOW! WOOOO!

On a whim I tried to fix the crash bug with audio, and because of all the audio house cleaning I did a couple weeks back it was really easy to select all sound files, change some settings and do a new build. And so far no crash! It's entirely possible the crash is still there potentially, but so far so good! And even better, the loading sound issues seemed to also disappear, which is debatably an even more important issue. 

The game feels POLISHED now in the web build. Which is a really good feeling.

Rofl, and maybe I shouldn't be so petty, but I ran into one of the petty, loser pieces of shit that tattle tailed on me for linking a critical drinker video on the Unity forums and claimed I was making a "political post" to get me banned on those forums. I can't discuss bugs now, i can't give them feedback. I loved posting in those damned forums and neckbearding out.

So anyway, got to give that little cancel pig bitch out in the wilds of Twitter a piece of my mind before he promptly blocked me like the little coward he is. I don't consider myself a bully, but I don't take well to them either, especially when they are causing the downfall of western society and acting like a smarm fuck. If you follow this blog, you may know by now I have a thing about smarm fucks. Believe it or not I used to be way more low key, live and let live type but i'm getting crabbier these days and I'm just a little too old for this shit. Our time in this world is short, and too much hand holding and singing Kumbaya and everything goes to shit.

Was so glad to get compliments on the controls and slick animations and to hear people think the game is fun! Maybe we're not crazy! Maybe this game truly can be great!

So much cool stuff coming online soon. Even I equip some peice of armor and remember, OH SHIT, I FORGOT I MADE THAT STUFF! There is SO MUCH cool shit I get to simply add to the game soon. Then it's just a matter of getting a bit of balance. But the game is going to show it's potential soon.

Whew, so much hard work coming online. So many years of sacrifice maybe finally having value as the petulant assholes kick and scream.

Hope everyone had a great Father's day. Mine had it's up and downs but still a good day.

Here's hoping for better days in the future.

Quick little edit, just had an epiphany. I was thinking about all the people who say this warning "It's a small industry, word gets around quick". It's like this fun little thing they love to say, "We'll destroy you, we'll ruin your life and you wont be able to escape, we have eyes and ears everywhere so you better treat us nice." The games industry attracts weak, petty people. And a bit ago it just used to be insufferable. You'd just have lots of neckbeards in a room and they'd rant and rave but that was just what nerdy shit way. You listen to people get riled up easily, attack others, but nothing came of it. Because it was so obvious how petty and easily emotional people got, you wouldn't take it to seriously. Oh well, just another neckbeard rant.

But at some point enough people got on the same page with the same chips on their shoulders and they started this entire cultural shift, they started creating this sort of neckbeard hivemind. It wasn't just a bunch of incessant anger and prejudice and tantrums canceling each other out as grown children bickered and came together to work on games. Instead it became this sort of hate club. You come in, you share the same hates, the same subversions and now you were part of a team. That anger that used to get dispersed and redirected and through the petty squabbles became diffused was not compounding, and growing and festering and becoming a means of rallying around a central ideology.

It became a crutch, it became an in. You could simply scratch the right backs and excel in allegiance to the grift over having the best portfolio, over being the most competent, over working the hardest. You could just be the biggest hater, be the biggest brown noser, be the biggest cheerleader's to the emerging soft handed throng of disruptive jerks.

I remember watching this video where this women was talking with so much authority and this was around the time I graduated from college and was trying to find a job so i could support myself. And she was talking about how it was an antiquated idea that you want to find some nerd that locks themselves in a cave to make games. Those people are terrible at making games, you need people who take vacations, go and see the world, ride bikes, go on picknicks, those people with the full range of experiences those are the people that are good at making games! And it was like a punch in the gut. Gosh, all that time I had spent developing practices and skills and work ethic to shackle myself to a cave for years on end to produce a painful product just evaporated in that moment.

It didn't matter if thigs were true, it only mattered that enough, and the right people believed something to be true, or at least wanted to believe it was true. If you get a large enough cross section of people all willing to say the same lie at the same time, to promise moral highs, to promise profits, to promise pats on the back, to promise shelter from the shamings and cancelings, you can uproot the whole of society, you can get anything your heart desires without a lick of sacrifice until the gravy train stops chugging along with absolutely nothing to lose.

Maybe we fixate on this too much. Maybe we don't fixate on it enough. Maybe far more has decayed and fallen to dirt than needed to, but better late than never. It's been many years since I worked in this industry, but I still feel the fallout radiating in every corner of our society. The aftershocks of all the weakness and tribalism that was allowed to fester and disrupt lives for so, so long.

I feel bad for the youth of today. They don't know what it's like to take pride in anything of value, to have true aspirations, to know what it was like to live in a world full of wonderful, fulfilling things created with care and righteous ambitions. But with that comes and certain excitement that maybe some day they might get to experience these things for the first time. I'm probably embellishing this a bit. There is always good and bad out there, be it  music or movies, or whatever, and it will always be relative. But you know what I mean. Things can get better, and I think things will get better, even if we have to be dragged kicking and screaming.

Anyhow, as always, GET OFF MY LAWN!