I was such a huge proponent of prefabs for years now, they are content propagation tools in Unity that are AMAZING (especially for environment work), but they can be a bit of a crutch. I used them for EVERYTHING. Want a new fish with new stats and visuals and a different material? Just make a prefab variant and switch up what you want! Why develop new code and systems when you can just change anything you want with zero restrictions in the future? You can do ANYTHING and prefabs will allow for it!

Well we've been in the trenches for years and we've learned the problems that stem from unlimited freedom in design, the tiny little human errors, the design bloat, the massive garble of properties and variables that get int the way of tuning that finite state of things you need to adjust at any given time!

It dawned on me last night that we are SO CLOSE to being able to offload all unique fish variables to a small set of scriptable objects. One contains all fish sounds, one are the stat tunings and creature size, another determines the ability list the fish has access to. And I got to thinking... Wait a minute! The ONLY thing that's determining these fish variants, are these initializations of a few values, there isn't really any unique data whatsoever on the different fish types any more.

So tech jargon aside, I don't need 10 different variants of a fish in this project taking up tons of space and bloating the project. I just need 1 shark fish, and then I can create a few unique variants without duplicating that shark, I just assign that shark a few unique materials and ability lists setups. It means we can instantiate and preload FAR FEWER FISH, as instead of having 10 different varients of fish, we only have 1 and reinitialize them at respawn.  It's cleaner, less bloat, less user error, better performance, and easier to design and keep tidy.

It's SO MUCH BETTER!

Keeping things clean and tidy and knowing what  your content is is so key to going the distance, and this is another aspect of gamedev that most people have no clue even exists let alone been finagling with it for so many years on end.

So imagine you had a closet and it had 500 pairs of shoes in it, and 50 of them were the exact same shoe just with a different color.

HOLY BAJESUS I just had a friggin' revelation. I have been creating material variants for fish, and each one is a variant  of variants that have unique settings for the normal texture and the diffuse texture and becasue of this I have materials for fish scattered ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE. BUT I CAN TOTALLY JUST HAVE  A SMALL SET OF MATERIALS THAT LOOK COOL AND HAVE NEAT DECALS AND SIMPLY APPLY THE APPROPRIATE NORMAL AN DIFFUSE TEXTURE. WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THIS BEFORE!

It's been a minute since I've been working on gameplay systems and setting up the actual game, because I'm taking my time to do this RIGHT. We are building up the core systems so that when we're ready to make this game, we GON' MAKE A M*THER FUCKIN' GAME M*THER FUCKERS. Just a matter of time....

Whew, we've had a crazy week, I haven't even been able to upload each dev video because our sessions accidentally run over 12 hours and youtbube won't allow those vids to be uploaded.

This past week may be the absolute best dev week we've ever friggin' had. Feeling healthy, just got a solid workout in, feeling energized, feeling motivated. WE READY TO FRIGGIN' GOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

So yeah, gotta clean up our pipelines today, this is the opposite of death by a thousand cuts, this is salvation through a thousand sutures.

Best part is I feel as though we have all the time in the world. Our competition has dug themselves the deepest of holes, all we have to do is stay the course and push ourselves, we are LIGHTYEARS ahead of them, we were lightyears ahead when we started the project!

Feeling empowered as hell. Game is KICKING ASS. And each and every day it's getting better at an exponential rate.

We just gotta make spawning fish and generating content is as polished as possible.

We're really at the turning point. I haven't spoke to it much in these blogs because we play the fool in this mad world that I had little interest in working with or gaining attention from in some respects. Screw the gatekeeping and spiteful publishers, the brown nosers and saboteurs of this industry. I have no interest in working with these vandals.

We are fast approaching the content phase, and this game is going to show its potential VERY fast. Most games flounder around and produce huge amounts of crap content and they slowly find their footing and slowly polish a huge turd over many years.

That's not how we're approaching this. We're perfecting our pipeline first, and once it's ready, we will be able to generate fish, spawners, environments, bosses, items bonuses, and all sorts of other gamedev goodness in very fast order.

WE ARE KNOCKING ON THE DOOR!

Game is already showing so much potential in the core systems, but the content is WAY further along than any of the blogs have let on.

We're leaving our angry phase. The world has changed and it has changed RADICALLY and those systems and the assholes that so casually suppressed and scratched one another's backs and played their vile games are being exposed, and their gluttony and their mishandling of the world is clear to all, even themselves at this point. It's slowly setting in. It's not going to be overnight, but people know the gravy train is over.

We were stubborn, we didn't bend to the madness, we stood our ground, we BUSTED OUR ASS. Even when it was not advantageous to do so we stuck by what we knew to be good and true and now we're in a great position, and we didn't have the smallest bit of help from this petulant world of lazy back scratchers up their own asses. And I'm proud as fuck about that.

But we have had the fortune to have wonderful people in our corner putting up with us over these terrible years. They are not forgotten. This project only exists because of their grace of love and support.

There's a bit of slog still to go, but for the first time ever, we've got the winds at our back, we're on a downward slope.

We're kickin' ass and taking names