July.4/2025

• Making good progress on the dream sequences. Scenes are starting to connect and its really starting to feel like a full experience. The polish isn’t there yet, but the structure is in place.
• Made a scene for the horse introduction. A grassy field and a hill. Getting grass to work with Unity terrain was really buggy. Turns out the grass asset I was using has LODs which unity doesn’t like. Wind zones don’t work. Luckily a Nature Manafacturer shader in my project fixes this.
• I’ve been doing some game inspiration study. Vane, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus. Taking a lot of notes on what I like and don’t like. The list of likes is waay longer. Need to be careful to get inspiration without being a mishmash copy. Everything is a remix, but the remix needs to feel fresh still.
• In the early phases of thinking about the key art. I have a moodboard. Need to flesh out the visuals more. Still too early for an artist to hire. This is such an important piece of marketing I’m willing to allocate a large part of the budget for.
• Also thinking about finding a 3D artist for some architecture pieces. Also very important. Maybe my small budget isn’t enough and I need to find more funding.

July.5/2025

• Save system. Boring stuff. It works using PlayerPrefs to track what chapter you’re on so it knows what to load when transitioning from chapter to dream or what scene to load on start. I don’t think there’s going to be much things to save in the story so it probably won’t be more complex than that.

July.6/2025

• Went to a big forest park and fed some crows. Saw some ducks too. Weekends are for touching grass.

July.7/2025

• The save system works well. I can play through every scene in its pre polish stage without having to exit into the editor to load the connected scene. Its all starting to resemble a playable game.
• A bit stressed about the horse asset I’m using. Horse game fans can spot it easily and it has a bad reputation for not being accurate. Gives off asset flip vibes. Luckily there are better alternatives that have been recommended. The issue is that that they don’t have a horse controller functionality and I’m a bit worried with how difficult it might be to remap the animations to a new mesh.
• Thiking about sound design more. FMOD implementation is something I’m considering. Would be nice to pay a sound designer to help out with things in the future if the budget allows it. Otherwise its more hats to wear and this hat stack is getting too heavy.

July.14/2025

• Added a crossfade transition effect between cameras. I’ve always loved seeing this in films. It evokes a certain feeling. Like lingering in a momemt. Signalling that two events are happening at the same time. Constrasting visuals. Or complementary visuals. A slow movement between time and spaces. There’s so much creative choices with this.
• Broke the horse controller by doing this. Tried debugging for hours but gave up. I think its a reference error because I moved the objects into a different scene. This seems like some engine error that I’m not aware of.

July.23/2025

• Watched Winged Migration. Good film with lots of visual inspiration

July.24/2025

• Morning walk to mountain park. Lots of nature inspiration.
• Added some terrain making assets to the project. First big step in making the dream chapters. Already have a desert setup.
• Made a lot of edits and additions to the design document. Tip to anyone considering making a game - your design document is not something you only make before you start developing. It’s something that will always change as you develop. It’s basically an updating wiki of the state and potential future state of the project.