When the game started taking shape, I realized it would be a lot of work. To keep myself on track, I’ve been posting a mini dev diary every week. Thank you for stopping by. I hope you enjoy them!
No. 33
October 15, 2026. Weekly Dev Diary (Week 33)On X →
No. 31
October 3, 2026. Of course I stay up late at night working on the sleeping mechanic for my game. Weekly Dev Diary (Year 2, Week 31). See you next week!On X →
No. 29
September 19, 2026. Added a rabbit to the hunting prototype. Weekly Dev Diary (Year 2, Week 29). See you next week!On X →
No. 27
September 5, 2026. Some basic polish makes game dev 10x more enjoyable. Player HUD structure is done. Weekly Dev Diary (Year 2, Week 27). See you next week!On X →
No. 25
August 22, 2026. Weekly Dev Diary (Year 2, Week 25). See you next week!On X →
No. 23
August 8, 2026. Weekly Dev Diary (Year 2, Week 23). See you next week!On X →
No. 21
July 24, 2026. Added a global wind system to make the world feel more alive. Weekly Dev Diary (Year 2, Week 21). See you next week!On X →
No. 19
July 9, 2026. Modeled a foliage atlas in Blender for baking maps. Lot more effort than drawing, but it looks SO MUCH better in 3D. Weekly Dev Diary (Year 2, Week 19). See you next week!On X →
No. 17
June 26, 2026. Dug into a pivot painter foliage example project by @MSzellas and spent the week taking it apart and porting it into my existing system. Now it can handle any number of bears, trails, etc. Now I'm working on adapting it to my SpeedTree foliage. Weekly Dev Diary (Year 2, Week 17). See you next Friday!On X →
No. 15
June 12, 2026. This week I put together a couple of inventory interfaces prototypes that felt more spacial. I actually didn't like any of them I'll focus on something else next week to come back with fresh eyes and avoid scope creeping by adding more. See you next Friday!On X →
No. 13
May 29, 2026. Re-implemented my day/night cycle. Made a much cleaner version, but the new lighting scenarios conflicted with my shader so I changed it to use a light curve instead. Definitely need to add some audio now. See you next Friday!On X →
No. 11
May 15, 2026. This week I started my first Houdini project! Ben, the creative director at my work showed me how to bake a water sim into cheap animated mesh I can use in game for water splashes. Planning on taking a break from fishing into something else next week. See you next Friday!On X →
No. 9
May 2, 2026. It's the first iteration, but it took so many smaller systems. Fish AI, rope physics, lure attraction system, bobber and reeling, and more. Was really excited so I stayed up late adding a stylized water ripple system. I love the look! Working on fish luring next week! See you next Friday!On X →
No. 7
April 17, 2026. As skills develop old assets look out of place. New fish looks a lot better and will be easier to recognize underwater. Hope you like the new, more accurate, look! Working on the fishing pole casting next week! See you next Friday!On X →
No. 5
April 3, 2026. Was planning on hand painting the environment textures and ended up recreating all of the trees while I was at it. Started organizing them in an asset zoo so I can see how areas compare side by side. Still, I took the time to paint each texture in photoshop. I think it looks a lot better. Next week I'm working on fishing! See you next Friday!On X →
No. 3
March 20, 2026. Character creation UI is up and running in-engine. The bears are using the mutable plugin in Unreal to make everything work so the setup was pretty easy. Next week I'm taking a break from this and working on the NPC conversation system. See you next Friday!On X →
March 6, 2026. A year ago, I was shooting the shit with a couple coworkers while Unreal churned out a package. We decided to work on a game. Almost a thousand hours later I realized that would become one of the mostOn X →
No. 34
October 24, 2026. My plants do a little happy bounce when you water them Weekly Dev Diary (Week 34)On X →
No. 32
October 10, 2026. Weekly Dev Diary (Week 32)On X →
No. 30
September 26, 2026. Weekly Dev Diary (Year 2, Week 30). See you next week!On X →
No. 28
September 12, 2026. Got the hunting rifle back in the game! Dev Diary (Year 2, Week 28). See you next week!On X →
No. 26
August 29, 2026. I'm stealing now and I'd do it again. Weekly Dev Diary (Year 2, Week 26). See you next week!On X →
No. 24
August 15, 2026. Feels like decent enough progress for a solo dev with a day job. Also, day drinking mechanic! Weekly Dev Diary (Year 2, Week 24). See you next week!On X →
No. 22
July 30, 2026. Finally added some tree occlusion! Now I need to dress up the spots they covered Weekly Dev Diary (Year 2, Week 22). See you next week!On X →
No. 20
July 16, 2026. Foliage system working end to end with interaction system. Walking through the wilderness feels much for satisfying Weekly Dev Diary (Year 2, Week 20). See you next week!On X →
No. 18
July 4, 2026. Feels really great though and it works with any number of bears/objects instead of the original single actor. Weekly Dev Diary (Year 2, Week 18). See you next Friday!On X →
No. 16
June 19, 2026. This week I worked on my SpeedTree skills and made small bits of foliage to practice. Made some pondweed, salal bushes, and sword fern. Working on a wind & interaction system for my foliage. See you next Friday!On X →
No. 14
June 6, 2026. Wow, what a week! Created a fork of Unreal to improve my cel shader. It perfectly blends the tones with the world lighting and requires 0 post process! Started a sound system that dynamically changes the rustling of leaves depending on the position of trees (green sphere markers in the video). AND figured out how to make the water sound work. These both felt like big technical hurdles knocked out. See you next Friday!On X →
No. 12
May 22, 2026. This week I found a great post from @3DPoveda showing some foliage tricks I used to make my redwood trees look better (along with some fresh painted textures). I hope you like it! Planning on doing some extra art side work next week. See you next Friday!On X →
No. 10
May 9, 2026. The bear will now spook the fish if they run into the water. If you cast your line from inland, the fish will keep flopping to get it back in the water as you pull it out. Been doing a lot of small tweaks to the fishing. Hoping to have it in a good spot next week. See you next Friday!On X →
No. 8
April 24, 2026. Fishing pole casting is working! Instead of the default UE5 cable, I learned to code a verlet rope sim from scratch (from a Unity guide) to animate it when reeling. It's feeling good! Working on fish luring next week! See you next Friday!On X →
No. 6
April 10, 2026. This week I worked on the fishing mechanic. I want every fish to be a physical fish that interacts with the world. I created some custom fish pathfinding that simulates swimming. The obstacle avoidance is a little fishy so they sometimes run into each other. Works for the time being! To house those fish I worked on some art assets particularly the water shader and some little bits of underwater junk. I'll keep working on fishing next week! See you next Friday!On X →
No. 4
March 27, 2026. Made a dialogue system for the NPCs. Played Disco Elysium a couple weeks ago and haven't stopped thinking about it so I made a system vaguely like that to get it out of me. I think it actually works well for this. Next week I'm taking some time to play around with digital painting textures. We'll see how it goes! See you next Friday!On X →
No. 2
March 13, 2026. Dodge roll mechanic debugged. Cleaned up all found bugs and fine tuned it so the bear feels heavy. More like a souls fat roll. Started work on character creation. Customization framework is already built, so I started doing some UI look dev. Fairly pleased with how it's coming along (thought it will probably change at some point). Next step is hooking it all up and making it work! See you next Friday!On X →
March 6, 2026. Almost a thousand hours later, that became the biggest decision of my year. Here's what happened: 1/7On X →