Seems like the end of January is upon us already. I hope you all are having a good start to the new year. This is going to be something of an odd devlog if I’m being honest. That said the purpose of this is to keep everyone reading informed on what is going on with the game and tangentially speaking this is very much related.

To dispel any potential mounting worry I’ll start by saying the game is still being worked on and work will continue. As most anyone reading this probably knows I develop this game by myself. I have a few artists I contract, but the coding is all me. I say this to basically explain that progress happens at the pace I can manage, so if I slow down not much happens.

Anyway, I don’t mind being open about this stuff so I’ll just bluntly say that I have general anxiety. I’ve had it for a very long time now. I take medication for it, and to be honest I don’t think I’ve had an issue in many years. This month though the medication I take decided it doesn’t want to work anymore. Or more accurately I grew a tolerance, which can happen and is apparently pretty normal.

Long story short, I’m in the midst of swapping to a different medication (actually picked it up today). I expect this will solve the problem and I’ll be back to normal. That said it takes time for this stuff to kick in as I’m sure anyone who takes this stuff is aware. Usually a few weeks at most. In the meantime, I’m somewhat indisposed. I’ll occasionally feel like doing some work, but I’m fairly unmotivated. Since this is all coming with no further context I feel I should also say there’s no need to worry about me personally or anything. Like I said, been here before, had this for a long time. Its funny after dealing with this several times throughout my life its honestly more annoying than it is terrifying. Just sort of waiting for my brain to shut up so I can go about my life lol.

To reiterate, the game will continue to be worked on, but I’m moving a bit slow at the moment and it might take a bit to get back on my feet. I don’t mean entangle my personal life with these sorts of posts I just wanted to give an explanation of things as they currently stand. Also, I don’t think its too common anymore, but I know subjects like this used to be hush hush. I think it helps to know that if you feel like this you aren’t really alone, its actually fairly common as far as I can tell. So if you also happen to have this sort of problem I hope you maybe find some solidarity in knowing that other people have these issues too. All things pass in time and this will too, so no worries.

In any case, that’s it for the personal stuff. Whew, that’s way too heavy for gaming talk lol. And you might think that I have nothing else to say, but I did actually get some things done this month so I have a bit to discuss. The first of the two things is combat. Its still in progress, but we are further along now.

A good chunk of work this month was doing some modifications to the data so that it can be used by the system. At this point I have a general combat algorithm in place. It still needs work, but a lot of the behind the scenes on how buffs and calculations play out is in place. Its sort of hard to put into words, but a lot of the combat system revolves around buffs and debuffs so having that logic in place is actually a large part of the system. Still plenty to do of course, but I think a fairly large portion of the system is functional.

Aside from that, there’s really just one other thing that is more conceptual. My determinations on this are still a bit up in the air due to the aforementioned issues, but I wanted to mention what I’m thinking about. And that thing specifically is the mines. Since I’m working on combat and the mines are a primary location for that I’ve been contemplating my plans for it.

If you’ve been following these devlogs I’ve been talking about turning the mines into something closer to several dungeon levels. Instead of hundreds of randomly generated floors you’d have just a few floors that are hand crafted. These floors would have a set layout that would weave back in on itself and create shortcuts. The floors themselves would have puzzles or challenges that you would complete once and doing so would unlock better mining areas on that floor. Sort of a dungeon like progression, but with the rewards being more available minerals each day.

I’ve been contemplating that in general and the things I would put into the levels. The problem I was starting to see as I fleshed out the idea more and more is that mining was rapidly becoming a secondary and even tertiary activity. It was getting to the point where going to the mines was more about clearing obstacles than just mining.

While this pain point would slowly fade as you completed the challenges on each floor it seemed sort of strange to have to bother with systems like that in the first place when you probably just want minerals. And then even once you finished the challenges you were left with a level which was only partially conducive to mining since it was made to be a dungeon.

All this is to say, I think the idea grew out of hand. I’m starting to think that the simpler approach would be the better one. There are enough systems going into this game that I think depth can be counterproductive in some situations. Mining should first and foremost be about mining.

So, I believe I’m going to simplify the design back down. Thankfully I hadn’t put any real work into the new version so no time has been lost. I haven’t decided exactly what I’ll do yet. My last thoughts on the matter were something like creating levels where there is always a place to mine by default but by bringing certain items or having higher level tools you can access bits of the floor with rarer (or just more abundant) resources. Sort of similar to how currently you can blast specific areas with dynamite and you’ll get a room full of stuff as a reward. Basically more elements like that.

My guess is that if I go this way, I’ll end up going back towards random level generation. I was considering still dropping the 100+ levels and instead still making 5 larger floors but they also re-randomize once per day. I’m not 100% yet, but that’s sort of what I’m considering for the moment. If you have an opinion on it I’d like to hear it, feedback is always appreciated positive or negative.

But I think that’s it for now. Hopefully you didn’t mind the personal stuff at the beginning of this log. With any luck by the time the next devlog comes around things will be very different. As I said before I hope you all are having a good start to your year. You’ll hear more from me in a month as usual.