June.6/2025

• Spent a few days this week cleaning up the Unity hierarchy. Labelling all objects with icons for better readability.
• Encountered a weird camera bug. Had something to do with PlayerPrefs being saved and overwritting a FirstPersonLook script. The dangers of public variables. Fixed it.
• I haven’t had the energy to go deep into developing bigger features. Still adjusting to jet lag, sickness, general exhaustion and stress. Next feature I want to start tackling is horse camera and controller.

June.11/2025

• Crest Ocean implemented into project. Adds significantly more visual juice. Also will be useful for the final crane boat section.

June.14/2025

• In Kyoto to see Zack perform Butoh. Third time in the city, but first time doing tourist things. Found some unexpected inspiration at Fushimi Inari. I thought it was going to be a bad time with how crowded I hear it is, but it was actually very quiet (probably due to the heavy rain). It also becomes almost empty near the top of the mountain.
• The inspiration came from a statue of a horse adorned in clothes. I imagined the horse in TO:RI to not just simply be a “rideable meat vehicle” as Alice Ruppert from The Mane Quest puts it. This horse needs to be named by the player. It’s growth and time in these dream sequences shown through the flowing cloth and bells of its outfit. As you enter each dream, not only do you show signs of a great passage of time, so does your horse. And this passage of time should signify a stronger connection to the horse. Both visually and mechanically.

June.17/2025

• Managed to get the Horse Animation Pro asset working with a 3D character model. Played around with the camera and controls a lot. I was dreading this, but it wasn’t too bad. Big thanks to this Youtube tutorial https://youtu.be/dl29aMmbbns from Infinity PBR Magic Pig Games. I would be nowhere if it wasn’t for Youtube game dev tutorial videos.
• A narrative idea I’m considering. The written narrative is told through letters (To:Ri) at the end of island sequences. What if the replies to these letters were shown at the end of the dream sequences (From:Ri)?

June.18/2025

• Started drawing some storyboards for all the scenes that live in my head and in the .md design doc. Visually laying it out with pen and paper is a nice artifact to have.
• The horse scenes look great. Added a big tower in the background that gets closer every dream. Using a temp orc tower asset I found on sketchfab and a free island asset. Assets to replace later, but good enough to get a feel for the final art direction. Need to play some Shadow of the Colossus again for extra inspiration.