We've wrapped up our first week of production for Shade and Stone, to say the least, it was busy! Lots of designing, modelling and programming going on this week, in this dev log we'll dive into what happened last week and see a little snapshot into the beginning of this week. Everyone's currently focused on getting the game ready for our first milestone version for the end of the week!

I'm Ella the narrative designer for Shade and Stone and I'll be taking you through this week's dev log. We hope you follow along with our dev logs and are excited about our game's release coming on the 8th of December.

~Design~

Design has been busy testing, updating documents and designing the level this week.

Over the last week, Braedyn has been working on helping out Connor (the level designer) to prototype and make sure everything is running smoothly. He has also been testing and providing feedback for the player movement and the camera attached to the player. Braedyn also developed a small prototype menu and helped to make the playtesting form and interview notes alongside Kian.

Connor got straight to work last week in not only creating prototypes for our level and test for the game's mechanics in Scratch. He has been designing and constructing the game's level in Unity whilst having to keep gameplay, realism and the team's design choices in mind. Connor also reexamined and reworked areas that needed improvement.

Thomas O'Shannassy has been working on making sure the team perforce has been set up and that it will work for everyone. He has also been working on cleaning up our documentation to be concurrent with what we have in our game. Thomas has also been working on making sure everything has been coming together for our playtesting at the end of the week.

Kian was also helping to develop the player testing feedback form and the interview notes alongside Braedyn and has also started our sound asset list. He's also been helping to test the mechanics that our programmers have been working on to make sure they are working smoothly in the engine.

As for myself Ella, I've been writing up documentation for narrative design and have begun to implement placeholders within our level. This includes our enemy Drokvonn's backstory, some skeletons of Life Mages who have met their demise and a short opening cinematic for the game.

~Art~

Art's focus last week was to complete the last of the concepting and begin blocking out the models to go into our level, this included our character, the enemy and some environmental pieces.

Noah helped with assets primarily these included rocks and he's started research into how to make the foliage for our level. 

Belle got right into it by making the blockouts for both the enemy and the rat. She then made the placeholders for both of the models including their respective animations. This week she's started making the sculpts for the rat and the talisman.

Bryn has been working on the environmental textures for the game and has also been working on the asset list for the game, he also made the initial blockout for our player character. Bryn has also been working on making some shaders for the enemy's alert states.

Star has done both 2D and 3D work this week, she has made turnarounds for the player character and the enemy and has also created the blockout of the player character of the game. She was also responsible for the lovely art you can see at the top of our itch page. Outside of art, she's also been working on the naming conventions for the asset list and the workflow for the technical requirements document.

~Programming~

The programmers have been busy making sure the player can move around and become a rat. They've also been working on our enemy's AI behaviours.

Thomas Baker has been focussing on creating the game's camera, providing a version that is able to snap 45° using key inputs and another one that uses mouse look so the designers can test and figure out what works best.

Hudson has been working on making our enemy character form and reform when it detects player presence. He's also been working on the invisibility cloak and ratification mechanics, this has included a foundational character transformation system for the player so they can transform into a rat.

Will has been working this week on making the enemies FOV and their behaviours. At the moment he's been working on the enemy's suspicion meter for when the player is nearby. The enemy has also now been given basic behaviours as well, but Will is still busy implementing the remaining behaviours.