Got the new machine all set up, and honestly didn't feel like gaming at all. Feel kinda empty actually. We're too old, there's too much at stake, there are too many people who need me to pull this off. No time for silly games.

No more running our mouth, no more stumbling around like a drunken idiot, giggling to myself.

We pushed ourselves really darned hard this month, we went a little crazy, if you've ever overexerted yourself for a full day, at the very end of the ordeal you can go a little loopy.

Feeling a tad embarassed at the past few blogs, but hardly the first time, we'll get over it, I'm more intimidated by the mountain of work still to do. And the world is as uncaring and cruel as ever.

Time for a break in these blogs, nothing good is coming from any of these tired posts, it's time we hunker down and get back to trying to work our way out of this hole again. The only time we're respectable at all is when we've got our mouth shut and we're working ourselvse to the bone.

It's not going to be a cringy blog post in the outscirts of this industry that gets us out of this funk, that saves this industry. It's going to be cold code, and elbow grease. And I take great solice in that. We've all got a fair shot  on this field, just gotta execute.

But it's a somber and scary moment in this industry for all of us. What even is the future? How are lone developers supposed to stay sane as they work on small indie teams without funds? What has happened to our economy? To the sanity and rules that used to compel us to wake up, work hard and produce things of value? 

What is our social contract any more?

It's all broken, gotta get to fixin' things up... or at least try. We need SOMETHING to distract us from this chaos.

The one thing I do know is now is not the time for words, now is the time for action. We have a lot of game to make, and it's not going to be easy, so it's time we get back to it. Shooting my mouth off has actually done a lot of damage. In these blogs and elsewhere. I like to think we've done some good, but if we're not careful we live to become the bad guy. Gotta focus on being a positive force, not a resentful one, people have enough shit going on.

Taking a break from these blogs, it's time to get to work doing tedious things, and to stop running our mouth acting like a fool. Might sneak a few edits in here there for very minor updates on progress.

Really thought we'd just be pumped to have a cool new toy after all these years living in squalor, but more than ever just missing the better days and the things money can't buy. 

So sad to see all this isolation. Everyone bitter, resentful, oportunist.

We've really brought the worst out of one another.

Stealth Update #1:

Was gearin' up to get back to it, but feeling a little breathless and even just a little bit of this really takes the wind out of my sails, so going to be pretty worthless. No, not going to be playing games instead, we truly are kinda in the dumps right now.

Good news is this seems to be fairly predictable at this point, this seems to set in after a few weeks of feeling decent and the severity has been getting less and less ever since i've started taking Lexapro. So could be a lot worse. Hopefully only lasts a day or so because I really do want to get back to it.

And I had this epiphany recently, we were wrong, that system we just hyped up so much while talking about all the gameplay possibilities it was going to bestow on SeaCrit ISN'T a good idea, the one about creating specific modifiers that would globaly affect all fish it's applied to while also assigning a unique material to that fish, and the reason it doesn't work for seacrit, is that it forces us to use these mods to buff enemies and what works for one fish isn't going to work for another. A strong enemy with a large health pool is going to get a much larger boost to difficulty from a regen mod, than an enemy easily killed in one hit. That's just one example, but point is, sometimes hand crafted is a good thing, and when it comes to enemy types, it's worth it to keep this 100% hand tuned. We just gotta be smart about not going overboard creating tons of fish. I think a happy middle ground will be to simply enhance enemies that spawn with a weapon or item by a set % based on that items rarity. Simple, effective, fun, and easy to implement.

KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID! 

It's a superpower to be able to admit you're wrong any more, and I  find that so fascinating. I LOVE being wrong. I love finding out that something I believed was incorrect or something I was doing wasn't optimal, because it means that from now on, we will do things better, it means there are still more things to explore, new insights to be had! Doesn't that make life so much more exciting and interesting? Than to believe you have the ultimate dogma and all has been revealed and your current judgements and affirmations are nothing more than a singular slice of the crazed madness of the day spanning across generations of time and the rise and fall of civilizations?

There are so many online situations where you have this gnawing feeling at the pit of your stomach... how do i defeat this fucking neckbeard in this argument? And you know what the absolute best outcome is in such a situation is? To just come to terms that maybe that other person has a valid world view. They may not share yours, but maybe you come to terms with the notion that other people have reasons for their beliefs just as you do yours. And somtimes it takes some soul searching to come to terms with the reasons you hold your beliefs in the first place.

Being wrong is not the end of the world, in fact it's a new beginning, it's an opportunity to start fresh and explore a workflow, or the world with a fresh set of eyes. And sometimes it's nice to be able to break bread with someone you thought was your enemy, and come to find you actually have a lot more in common than you thought. That's how true progress is made, it's not beating others over the head until they believe exactly as you do, it's making concessions where you're wrong, and others making concessions where they're wrong. And let's be honest, there's a lot of grey out there, so sometimes you just gotta suck it up.

So in a roundabout way, we actually got more than a full day of work done just stewing on what we should be working on, because saving yourself a fell day of work implementing an ill fated system, is actually many times a full work day, you save yourself the full day of work implementing it, you save yourself the days of toying with it and adding content to fill it out, and then you save yourself the heartbreak of having to take that system that though you were well meaning, just doesn't fucking work and is ruining everything.

It's taking everything in my being to NOT make an analogy to FUCKIN' COMMUNISM right now.

ANYWHO!

I could ramble on more but right now I just really want to end the blog on that. 

CIAO!

Stealth Update #2:

Well it was not my intention to lie, but towards the end of the day as it nears time to get my ass to sleep something was nagging at me. We hadn't played any badass games yet to at least put this computer through its paces. And everyone always raves about how good Doom Eternal is and I tried it once on my old crappy machine and couldn't even finish the first level and now I'm torn between Neckbearding out and talking game design and speak to what I felt the game did well, and what it could have done better and be the total edgelord freak that I am when it comes to game design, and all this bullshit is purely subjective anyway, so what all this bickering ultimately ammounts to is essentially a bunch of assholes screaming at each other, 

"BUT NO I THINK IT WOULD BE MORE FUN IF IT WERE LIKE THIS!"

"NO YOU'RE WRONG, I THINK IT WOULD BE MORE FUN IF IT WAS LIKE THIS!"

And it's like, YOU INSUFFERABLE HALF WITS, YOU'RE BOTH OBVIOUSLY RIGHT, YOU BOTH KNOW WHAT YOU THINK IS MORE FUN, GET THE FUCK OVER YOURSELVES.

My brain starts to spin when I think about how horrible this industry is at finding the next game designers, and I do realize I just made a joke of it all, game design DOES have room for superior ideas and objective design choices that make games better. I guess I'm just part of the problem, it's really easy to talk shit about neckbeards, and as a neckbeard that's very self defficating, I tend to throw a lot of shit my own way because as always, who wants to listen to a self righteous neckbeard all the time!?

So rather than get into a long, nerdy speel about why I did or didn't enjoy Doom Eternal, I wanted to talk about some memories it brought back. And this is part of my past I've kinda tried to just leave behind, partly because it's no longer relevant, and partly because it's just more good memories that went sour over time. But it is actually kinda important to the identity of SeaCrit, and obviously as part of my own identity as a game designer.

I WAS first and foremost for quite a bit of time an environment artist. And I wasn't particularly good, but I was kinda decent, I devoted a lot of time to it. And it's been many years since I really sat down in the middle of the night and just played a high end game on a kick ass new computer that would deliver that really peak graphical experience.

I've spent the past 8 years wrangling with graphical settings making SeaCrit, I think it might have been 5 years or so since I sat down as a gamer to just enjoy someone else's art. I'd be lying if I said we didn't game, I have played SHITLOADS and EMBARASSING ammounts of DOTA 2 over some of those years while blackout drunk (thank god we don't throw what little time we have left doing that so often any more), but that doesn't really count in terms of really getting in there and enjoying the nuts and bolts of all those textures, shaders, the low poly buildings on the vistas, you can pick apart the alpha planes and particles for creating those neat cloud effects.

And today was one of those days that in sitting in front of this computer brought back a lot of bittersweet memories again. Thinking of old classmates and teachers, some cool, some not so cool. Thinking back on learning the 3d model, and creating techy 3d assets in the Unreal engine that sorta correlates to the world of Doom.

Gosh, I devoted a LOT of some of my best years to learning these skills, and it's kinda sad to think about how they're all dying off. AI is going to start taking over the tasks of UV mapping, and texturing and modeling. You'll be able to just create whatever you want from a prompt and in the next few years AI will either take care of the entire pipeline, or automate it to the point that nearly anyone could do it with a few hours of training. And that just seems so sad to me. 

Every asset in a game, you see some UV seam, or you'll see a shader issue and i'll think, OH LOOK! Someone fucked up! Or, oh damn, the collision here is great, someone really put in the time to make this area feel smooth! And there's this underlying connection where you feel that connection to humans doing good work, and creating cool things, and sacrificing and working hard to make something cool. It's an extension of our humanity, it represents the good in us. Our dedication, our ingenuity, and struggle to create great and good things. 

It's depressing in the same way we don't really have photographers any more. And prior to that, the photographers putting all the painters out of a job. And the painters putting the cave artists out of a job, and the cave artists putting the people who used to draw lude drawings with Mammoth droppings in the snow.

Ok, we went a little wacky there, but it's late and I'm in a weird kind of mood. Did I mention how intense and otherworldly doom is? It'll put you in a bit of a wierd headspace if you play in in the dead of night alone, like watching a horror movie alone. I can do it, but I'd prefer to watch a scary movie with someone not as good at watching horror movies as I am (which isn't terribly well) so I don't look like a total bitch XD.

So many people and places have come and gone...

Anyway, wtf were we talking about again?

Just being melodramatic as usual. But it's hard not to think about the great ammount of loss of late. Decayed social circles, decayed culture, decayed games, decayed movies, decayed social fabric, decayed unity, decayed patriotism, decayed meaning, decayed outlook to the future, decayed career, decayed gamedev tools, decayed optiimism.

Gah, am I just a really paranoid depressed person, or has the world really dropped the ball in recent years?

No one is coming to save us.

No more Doom. But I'm glad I broke my promise, felt a bit better and played a bit. Because it reminded me of where we came from, and it reminded me that we've been busting our ass in so many realms.

I don't whine about it, or blather about it much at all in these blogs, because we play the fool, and we kinda use this space to talk about how much of a shit coder we are, which more and more I don't think we're so bad actually. But though we never were a rockstar type artist that could create awe inspiring scultps and high level hard edge modeling in Zbrush or Maya, or 3ds Max, or Blender or whatever. We were always very technically minded, and we can run the gamut of these workflows and get shit up and running pretty fucking well.

And when it comes to shaders... let's just say we're no slouch. And we've been pecking at animations and mechanim, and all the render setups and all that jazz. 

I'm really happy this blog turned around towards something a bit more optimistic, that rarely happens, usually we hit a snag and it goes down some horrible depressing circle, but truth is, I think we're actually pretty darned good at making these games, and I lot of the time I don't give myself enough credit because we work alone, and I kinda just take for granted we're quite good at all these proficiencies and pipelines and it's a lot harder to impmress yourself than other people on a team who are eager to brown nose haha!

God damn do i miss working with other people. I really fucking do. And you probably wouldn't know it, but I'm a pretty solid team player who will do damn near anything for the project and to help others figure stuff out.

Blar, now I'm just starting to feel sorry for myself. Well, it's like I say, we don't persue gamedev because we are strong.

But we've grown so much, we understand the world so much better. And though it's scary, and it's depressing to a degree, it's important that if some of the emperors aren't wearing clothes, some people notice. It's important that when everything is on fire, and we are on an ill shaped trajectory, that someone can see that's it's careening into the iceberg.

Yeah it sucks that so many people are offended that we saw the problems, that we took issue with their wonderous, perfectly cheerful and self congratulatory catapulting directly into the side of the mountain.

GOD DAMN IT ILLTEMPEREDTUNA CAN YOU ONE TIME WRITE  A FRIGGIN' BLOG THAT ISN'T GOING TO PISS EVERYONE OFF AND KEEP YOU IN THIS CAVE FUCKING FOREFVER!?

I'm fucking cursed. I'm JUST neckbeard enough to figure out all this technical shit late in life now that AI is about to take everything over and make the neckbeard worthless and to be an insufferable twat no one wants to be around. But wasn't neckbeard enough to foster these technical skills at an earlier age. Oh well, IT IS WHAT IT IS!

So I do think SeaCrit is a bit of a unique project, in a unique period of time, with unique obstacles and strengths. And who knows, now that we're feeling a bit better, we have our breath back, we remember where we came from, we remember what we're fighting for, we remember the stakes and the declines... that's purpose right there.

So the worst things get, just remember that memory of what was and could be, and if you take on the responsibility of bringing that back, the darkness doesn't seem so bad. There is a purpose to all this bleakness, a quest, a light at the end of the cave.

We can fight back into the light, or at the very least, give it our all trying.

Going to do a bit of meditating, going to think about what we need to get to work doing tomorrow. But honestly, it doesn't really matter, so many things need doing, just gotta get 'em up and running.

Everything is distraction, everything fights for our attention in the absolute worst ways. We don't have any control over that madness, we tried to be a part of it, we tried to help build great games, create great pipelines, create great works for people to enjoy. Those pipelines were stolen, inserted up their behinds, and hot smoke was blown up them.

What can ya do? Sometimes you're just born in the wrong fucking era. Or maybe this was the time we had to pick up the pieces that everyone else left on the damned floor.

Damn... all that rambling and I forgot to talk about the most important bits.

AI really worries me. And not JUST that thought that it'll become super intelligent and take over everything and extract our brain matter and leave our empty husks on the mortal plane as it ascends without us.

But what if it's fool's gold? What if it doesn't really push beyond what we're capable of? What if it's just a really good fake machine, able to sorta whip up an amalgamation of the smartest thoughts ever thought, the greatest art ever painted, the best writing ever smarmed?

What if in this world of lazy phonies who lie, cheat, and steal, and scratch backs and elevate one another in the hopes of hiding under the large blanket of mediocrity, all forward progress becomes stunted?

What if we start watering the fields with Brondo and we elect mother fuckin' Camacho as president soon?

Oh well... just more annoying and pathetic blathers. Somewhere between pretentious as fuck and embarassing oversharing, but it's been quite a journey.

One silver lining here, is we have not been burning out, for many months now we have not had any stretches of unwarrented burnout and we have been hitting this HARD. So it's not all bad! The world may be going to hell in a bucket, but at least we're getting lots of work done right on the cusp of AI invalidating it!

Normally I try to end a blog on some sort of introspection, or some neckbeard bullshit. But I don't know how to thread all these wires together at the end.

And I think that's fine for now, because I really don't know what the future entails, I don't think anyone does. And it's kinda scary how terribly everything has gone in recent years. And it doesn't seem to be getting any better. Bleh.

Just havin' one of those nights. Tomorrow back to work, back to purose, back to distracting ourselves from this terrible decline others allowed to fester.

Gotta get back to work trying to clean up all those other mother fuckers' messes while they rode high on the hog indulging themselves.

Stealth Update #3:

Not going to try to make this a great read just a quick update. Must have jinxed it because yesterday the breathlessness set in harder, and today it did the same. I'm such a whiney bitch but it is what it is. Not as bad as it used to be but hte worst it's been in months, was hoping maybe we were over the hump at whatever this was was going to slowly disapear but doesn't seem to be the case at least for now.

It's not so bad though, just bad enough to wipe us out, it's been so much worse in the past so could be worse. I'm mostly just bummed we can't get to work, even if we're burned out. I want to get these systems online. It's time. We gotta get some spawns in, some items and not worry about it being super polished. Polish will come in time... when we feel better!

I hate when i'm just whining about health issues, not getting work done, and the blogs end up being super fucking boring, not even that self incriminating, just really fucking pathetic.

IT IS WHAT IT IS!

We'll get back to being an insufferable fucktard soon enough.