For a long while I recorded all my work sessions because I wanted a catalogue to show I'm not just sitting around on my ass and actually getting work done. And for some time I was pretty happy with my output and proud of all the work we were doing. As this project has dragged on, as health issues started to mount, as the world became increasingly insane, as my passions waned for not just this project, but this industry, and the world at large, and nothing seemed to make any sense or have any purpose, and hard work and quality things seemed to be looked down upon, and as our life continued on in the unrewarding darkness of this cave, it was hard to wake up every day, roll up our sleeves and get to it... And now I have a record of how little work we've  been doing the past couple months haha! Guess we better get back to work or all this ranting and raving about everyone else being lazy fucks is going to look stupid as shit XD

For the first time in a long while, I woke up today not absolutely dreading the idea of getting to work on the project. And GAH DAMN does that feel refreshing.

We're still fearful that as we add things it will break. We are still wincing at the pain that will stem from the tremendous amount of design and refactoring and iterating that will be required even if things go smooth as butter. There is MUCH to do to bring this game to its potential. And I'm still stressing as ever what the right plan is. Do we release demos early and try to get some support so we have more motivation and help pushing forward? Or do we just stay in our cave and push forward, burned out and solo, but without any noise or distraction? I'm leaning towards the latter.

We only have one chance to make a first impression and too often we developers are blinded by the potential, by what we think the game will be, and that clouds our judgement and often times we end up showing off turds to other people and get our spirits crushed. We've had our spirit crushed enough over these years. We've done ok slogging in our lonesome for many years, we can endure another month or two (watch this spiral out into years again).

Just another whiney blog rehashing all the old mundane crap!

Suppose we can go over the actual development of the game a bit....

So work went AWESOMELY yesterday, we didn't get a 15 hour dev day like the old days, but we got a very solid near 5 hour day, and most importantly, EVERYTHING FEELS LIKE ITS FALLING INTO PLACE! I'm finally happy with the workflow, I don't feel as though we're spinning wheels in mud, in fact come to think of it, for the first time ever in this projects developmental history, I believe we've got it all figured out. We know the gameplay loop, we know the content, we know the pipelines! There is NOTHING preventing us from pushing forward and making this game come together save a bit of elbow grease.

I'm so happy with how so many elements are coming together and elevating one another. I really haven't done any justice to the mechanics and fun that have been coming online the past year. It's kinda funny to me how much more game is here than most will glean from the demo. The eating mechanics, the itemizations, the class structures, the charge mechanics, the deep progression and bonus system. The growing combat systems and nuanced movement systems that influence every element of the game. And year after year we have fucking shed blood sweat and tears ensuring these systems play nice, and a variety of device (We're a poet and we didn't even know it).  I'm allowing myself to be a little goofy and happy this thread. It's been rough as late!

Waveswim has been so fucking cool, still needs some tuning, what doesn't? But it's come so far over the past year. It elevates every aspect of the game: combat, exploration, platforming elements, it's just fun to move about the ocean and that's 90% of any game really. If it's fun to just move around and do stuff in a white box area in your project, you're 90% of the way there, your levels will build themselves out from there.

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION!

I'm so glad I delayed level design, setting up combat, spawn locations, shop locations what bonuses are gained where, because now that the game is starting to come together, we don't have that giant pile of shit we have to deconstruct and try to salvage. We just get to start peicing things together in ways that are actually fun. One quick example is that we've found that because of waveswim the majority of the ocean should be sparse and open, sorta like a sonic level. You're moving fast, your don't have too much time to react to complex environments and objects will just block the player from having fun if there are too many assets. So at least for now, I'm designing the ocean to be mostly nice large rounded shapes sparsely populated and of course down the line and here and there we will create more intricate and varied environments, but for now we're finding that key chord of what SeaCrit is, the various combat, platforming, and progression elements all working in tandem to elevate each other and provide a cohesive experience.

They say when you make a game for everyone, you make a game for no one. But I dunno, I feel like this is going pretty damned well! Maybe we're kinda good at this shit!

SUCK MY WAKE M*THER FUCKERS, SEACRIT IS GOING FUCKING SWIMINGLY! While you petulant, back scratching fucking dick heads were playing your games of fuckign hate and suppression, we were hunkering down and busting our ass.