I have had a recent epiphany on how wounds and damage over time mechanics can work in SeaCrit, and I'm excited to share them with you here!

Presently, both bites and slash weapons apply wounds, slash weapons applying a higher Damage per Second, and Bites applying a longer duration, and it was my intent that players would maximize them by employing both. 

I had a great epiphany on how to improve the systems and make it less muddy, more "Organic". I love when I can make play more sensible, more immediately rational and fun in the players mind. So I had this new notion for how wounds would work, and how bites would interact with them.

Given the choice between being slashed with a great sword, and being bit by a rabid squirrel, we would choose the squirrel. But the threat from each is different, most all of us know that while that rabid squirrel isn't going to sever a major artery, IT MIGHT infect us with some horrible disease that will kill us off in time, it could be even more lethal than the sword wound!

So in my search to give bladed weapons a unique mechanic, I came up with a new damage system: Growing wound damage. The more you slice and enemy, the more they will become wounded, and the more wounded they are the more damage they will take from the bladed weapons. I also thought it clever that the work I came up with for this damage is "GREWSOME" damage, because it GROWS SOME... with every hit.

GET IT!?

One thing I'm really proud of with SeaCrit is how we find fun little punny ways of reinforcing game mechanics that just make sense!

I always enjoyed the scaling damage mechanic of Ursa from Dota 2, and I realized with a few minor tweaks we could have that tremendously satisfying system for edged weapons!

So how do we balance this for SeaCrit? Well, swords are already inherently at a disadvantage. They cannot tap life, and they take the spot of a sword and shield, so overall the player is giving up a huge amount of survivability if they choose duel wielding bladed weapons. So we better make using them worth while!

So in Dota 2, Ursa has uncapped damage scaling, every hit he applies to the enemy will result in more damage, meaning if you hit an enemy 40x, you will receive the damage bonus 40x. This is WAY too powerful for SeaCrit, so we'll probably put a soft cap on it, maybe something like a 5x damage boost. Which still feels overpowered but I don't want balance to go straight out the window either!

So here's where I had a neat idea to tie bite back into the mechanic of wounds.

When you BITE an enemy that has amplified wounds from your sword, you convert the wounds on the enemy to a new status effect entirely called "INFECTED WOUND" which provides less or none of the stacking damage amplification, but will now deal damage over time! Infected wounds also heal much slower, allowing the player to "lock in" the ailment on the enemy and perform whatever attacks they are happiest with. Normal wounds will heal relatively quickly, so bladed weapons don't really lend their enhanced damage to other attacks as they will heal fairly quickly.

I brainstormed the idea that sword finisher could consume all wounds on the enemy for some kind of big damage hit, but I kinda feel like things just get too muddy at that point. How about the sword finisher just gets amplified by the wounds? That feels like a big enough payoff on its own.

I'm beginning to believe that we shouldn't star the player with ranged form and two weapons, and we should hold their hands a bit more with a bit of educational areas. But I need to get feedback first. If people love having all the options right out of the gate, it would be really dumb of me to spend time to make the game WORSE. I also like the idea that if the players accidentally press buttons and swap form early, they will learn how the controls work, rather than pressing things early or holding buttons early and believing they don't do anything at all.

It's quite the conundrum. Gamedev is so complex, so multifaceted, that you can rationalize doing all manner of things for a multitude of reasons. And sometimes the best option is to just let it sit and get to things you KNOW need doing without any debate. So that's what we're going to do today!

Going to get to implementing these new wound mechanics, and weapons and bonuses that make these new mechanics possible. 

Whew, so much to do... but we're getting a little closer every day. It's important we have a milestone, something we can aspire to that isn't so far out in the distant as to crush our spirits.

So short term our goal will be to get these mechanics in, and start building out an area where an NPC will explain these more advanced weapon interplay mechanics. Adding that to the TODO now. Oh, speaking of, we upgraded from Notepad to Notepad++ which has a spellcheck if you add some plugins and some little formatting bits that I rather enjoy, so we'll be able to write up NPC dialogue with a bit less user error without feeling we're selling out our Amish roots to use one of them fancy word documents.

Just don't feel the anger much any more. Feels like the mad machine is crashing and burning every day. The SeaCrit is out. We have no need to climb atop a giant mountain and try to scream some sense to the world.

The rot and decay is clear for all to see, all the self serving nonsense has been laid bear.

We've nothing left to do but make a great game. And acting like an abject fookwad on the internet just doesn't feel pertinent any more. Maybe it's all the good will towards man that's permeating this holiday season, or maybe we're going a little soft... (IMPOSSIBLE!). But anyhow, we've let anger and bitterness dictate this blog for a  very long time, and to be fair to ourselves, I do actually believe it was warranted.

It is absolutely revolting what was  done to this world by the soft handed up in their high towers. But we've spoke to that in great detail. There is nothing new to add, and as others wake from this fever dream, they will bring to light what we have been screaming into the void all these terrible years.

I'm happy to just be working on the game today, and hoping for a better tomorrow. I REALLY like our chances in this new emerging world, a world devoid of the fingers on the scale, a world devoid of the vitriol and smoke screens and the gas lighting and the stiff armed opinions of the self serving jack offs!

We're getting up there in years, if I were looking to send my resume to various game studios it'd probably get dumped in the trash, but luckily that doesn't matter. Because all that matters is if SeaCrit is any good or not. Doesn't matter we're self taught, only got into coding less than a decade ago, we squandered all our best years to this dysfunctional machine.

All i know is I am a better dev today than I've ever been, and we are kicking so much fucking ass, and the game is about to come together and show all the little bits and pieces of fun we've been amassing in SeaCrit all these crazed years.

Suddenly the world seems to think small projects with great creative direction with interesting fun mechanics was the new hotness. I coulda told you that 8 years ago before everyone put their money on soft handed dip shit commies! (Sorry couldn't resist)

GAH DAMN IT WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE TOTALLY PROFESSIONAL ALL THE WAY TO THE END OF JUST ONE DAMNED BLOG POST AND TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF.

Eh, who gives a shit? If it wasn't for the freedom of being a shut in game dev workin' in a cave, we'd have nothing at all. So cranky it is! And soon, cranky with a great game we built entirely by ourselves with nothing but a shit computer and a  box of scraps!

EAT SHIT GAMES INDUSTRY! STILL PLAN ON MAKING A BETTER GAME IN THIS FUCKING CAVE THAN ALL YOUR BILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND YOUR HORDES OF SELF SERVING POSERS.

Ok, enough buildin' ourselves up. We have a lot of tedious, gut wrenching work to get to before we'll ever get a return on this endless investment and suffering.

Oh well, at least we have hot jams to listen to while we work.

As always: time to get busy devin' or get busy dyin'