So if ever you have a complex problem with your project, your best course of action is to post some blathers in a blog, rather than getting work done!

So I have these NPC item mechanics, and if you hit the enemy's items with certain attacks it will damage the item, otherwise the item gives them an innate bonus.

Shield: All forward facing attacks do severely diminished damage

Hat: Doubles enemy health

Weapon: If broken, the enemy will run away in fear

They MOSTLY work, but in many ways are very wonky.

Shields for example are often in front of the enemy and it feels weird not to be able to swim into the sheild. I JUST had an idea as I typed this that I can make a unique NPC shield animation where the shield is much more directly in front of their face. Damn this blog helps sometimes!

This doesn't solve the issue that the collision volume is really wonky, I think i'm going to refactor the code so that the collsion volume and the visual are decoupled.

The hats work pretty good, no problem there.

Weapons: Really wonky collision, as the weapon exists outside the playable plane

Not the best way of showing it, but i've sorta just stuck the collision to the side, so when they swing it KINDA affects the playable area that runs down the middle of the fish in this 2.5D game.

I Think what i'm giong to do is just make the shield volume directly in front of the fish, and ditch the weapons durability all together. Nothing of huge value will be lost! It's the shield and hat item mechanics that are the fun ones that i'm using anyhow.

From here I need to do more balancing and figure out interesting ways to make the player able to do damage to items. Currently it's only certain melee attacks and Sniper shots that can break enemy armor, and I can't even really remember how it all works!

Didn't sleep the best, not expecting a great day, but I want to at least get these item systems sewn up so starting tomorrow we can dive in and get to work on bonuses. I've been wanting to get to work on bonuses for over a month now and I keep getting side tracked.

Edit: Oh I almost forgot! Fun little bit of accidental emergent gameplay happened yesterday. I was knee deep hours into revamping teh waveswim mechanics for the 100th time, which I noticed that attacks and charge attacks were kinda killing the vibe of having this unstoppable forward momentum that can cause you to recklessly crash into walls. What fun is this crazy forward dashing mechanics if you can instantly stop on a dime just by pressing the attack button!?

So I disabled attacks and charge attacks while dashing, but it didn't feel right to just not be able to attack either, so I decided to make the waveswim fade fast when you hold the button.

Bing, bang, boom, before I knew it I had created a "brake" system and it feels pretty good!

It's not better than the overhaul I did on waveswimming, which has some new quirks I gotta iron out, but overall really happy with how it all turned out! The system is greatly refactored and simplified and distilled. "Simplified and distilled"!? Irony redundancy...

Oh well, we're not perfect, we just endeaver to be better and push hard to be so ever damn day! Game is getting better, feeling pretty meh today but as I finish up this little edit i'm going to get to work on this little item revamp, I think it'll be pretty doable. I've decided that the system will work best if I add a slot for an external visual element to represent the item otherwise it will just be a collider childed to the root bone, so no wonkiness with animations and such, but for the weapon it can be linked directly to the outside item which has dynamic positionings unlike the hat and shield volumes.

In a much better headspace today. The world may be crazy, but it's always been crazy, and that never stopped us having our ups among the downs before. There will be good days and bad days ahead, as always. We soldier on!

Ok, enough blatherin' time to get some actual damn work done!