I don't know what to make of this blog.

Some days I hope maybe these blathers resonate with enough people that it helps catapult the project to success.

Other days I dread the idea of people seeing it. I've been pushing hard on the project the past month, pushing through burnout and not feeling well to try to make the game actually decent. The last thing I want to have happen is some stupid thing taken out of context and the entire ventures sundered by the usual bullshit.

What if the only thing that matters in this mad world is the emotional appeal?

Do the ends justify the means?

Do we surrender entirely to guilt trips and fits of rage?

Some days I question if SeaCrit is a video game or protest. Which one gives us the greatest chance of success? Is that a moral question to raise?

Through the smoke and mirrors we hatch our plans for dominations. And you can't help but wonder... what is the truth? What's real and what's manipulation? Are higher emotions and platitudes just an illusion masking base emotions? Or are these higher states of being made up of our primal components?

When I drag my tired ass out of bed every day and use that burning anger to open up the project and throw myself at the wall time and time again... am I trying to make the world a better place? Or am I trying to burn it all to the fucking ground?

Are we seeking validation as a child does?

Are we lashing out in a fit?

What even is the nature of good and evil? When do we unknowingly become the bad guy? Or is everything relative?

We are Legend

It's funny, some days I'm more interested in the blog reaching people more than the game. All these years and having this place to bitch and blather has given us a great deal of inspiration and introspection. It's given us a voice, it's given us something to say. It's given us purpose and ambition through the burnouts and bellyache.

If I had any advice to give any of you fellow gamedevs, it would be thus: 

Get angry.

In spite of it all, we are still raging against the dying of the light.

So anyway...

I don't know where all the time goes. I know I've gotten a lot of hours in as of late, but I feel no closer to the release of this demo than I did a month back. Still perpetually 2 days away from this demo coming together. I think it's the nature of what you worked on last.

If you have a day where you're knocking things off the TODO list or working on key level design sections, you're going to feel as though you're racing towards the finish line. If you're taking the time to build up the foundations, to polish key features and try to make all those nuts and bolts that build up the core gameplay experience better, you're going to feel as though you're never going to finish.

Been doing SO MUCH revamping of the project as of late, revamping internal naming conventions and logic structures. What really sucks is that we're largely going back to how we had things set up originally .Realizing the overhead of overly complex organizational methods is more trouble than it's worth. It's very much a damned if you do damned if you don't situation when organizing things. I could write a book on all the idiosyncrasies of how code works and the IDE editor and how it feels like there are rarely good solutions to key problems.

Code is so weird. It's so NOT user friendly. It's so prone to breaking and spiraling out of control in terms of housing data in decent places where it can be easily hidden away and shown again when you need it in the inspector and elsewhere.

Eh, just rambling about stupid shit no one's gonna care about. WHAT ELSE IS NEW!?

I'm getting off topic. I was going to bring this all together and speak to the irony that when you work on superfluous bullshit and recklessly create level content you feel like you're making progress which compels us to make shit games. And when we tune things endlessly in our caves with no end in sight, that's when we're making the SeaCrit sauce that's going to give us the snowballs chance in hell.

I made a big deal in this blog about how we were going to "be better". And now that I supposedly made that change the other day, I'm not even sure what that means. Placating an judgmental world of lowest common denominator and judgements? Is that "better". Sounds like more of the same bullshit to me.

Or maybe it was just that immature mental exercise one does when they hope to will success into existence. "We're gonna be a contender!" We'll get that new haircut, we'll work out for a week, get some decent clothes, walk into that interview and GET THE JOB! Maybe this is us trying to fake it till we make it to try to convince this mad world we're not gonna rock the boat. 

Are we truly trying to make something better? Are we just jealous we didn't get to ride the gravy train with all the other backstabbers and liars? Is this "protest" just a petulant kick and scream?

It's hard to know in these confusing times, and only having this perspective from this cave can be disorienting... strange days.

It's all those things M*THER FUCKERS!

We're only human! But we're not the no talent hack shits that brought society to collapse. FUCK YES we're going to bust our ass, and FUCK YES we're going to make a better game than those pissant shits. And we're gonna enjoy doing it along the way, even in the bowels of this fucking cave to which we were cast. And should we find success, we'll use that success to build a better world.

EAT A BAG OF DICKS, GRANDSTANDING HATERS.

Ha, what a rollercoaster ride. I am so fuckign burned out, yet the hot passion to push forward still glows as we forge ourselves in fire tuning up the endless bits of gameplay in SeaCrit. Waveswim FINALLY feels good!

Will our will break brittle as we force that next hammer swing? Is the project still malleably hot? Or do ambitions shatter any day now?

Who cares? Does it matter?

We fixate the prestige, we fixate the end to the long, hard journey, that most will never know. We look with longing eyes at those made redundant, weak, and petulant by a heavy hands that feed. What a shitty fucking state of being. Let's take pride in what we've suffered. Let's take pride in our stubbornness in the face of the entire fucking world casting us aside.

Life is what happens when others are busy executing their plans and trample you to muck.

It is still regrettable to lose so many years of piss and vinegar in the darkness of this cave. So many good years simply gone. But at the same time, I feel we are on a unique and incredible journey chasing this white whale full of immense highs and lows. We are still in the fight.

The scenery never changes, cold dark seas of uncertainty in all directions, waning supplies, no idea where we are, how long remains in this fateful trip. Years we've been in this state, and yet we still float on.

Good lord, do I blather. Do I even say anything new anymore? 

Can't say I'm off to do dev this moment, feeling pretty bleh, won't get into it, but hopefully soon we're back at it. Got a lot of bonuses to throw together, and then it's spawn systems and itemizations, and then just a small bit of level design to house this new content. Trying to restrain myself or we'll never finish this forsaken project.

Gamedev is a thirsty bitch.