Development Log

The scythe becomes playable

Three weapons now share one proven pipeline—spear, sword-and-shield, and scythe—with their own locomotion, movement speed, blocking strength, and action sets.

• Two-handed scythe locomotion, movement speeds, blocking, and bash now work on the new weapon foundation.
• The scythe received its own weapon type instead of borrowing another, leaving loot and damage rules free to treat it distinctly.
• Co-op has completed two dedicated correctness passes, while saves now persist world state, player attributes, quest progress, and graves.
• Still open: scythe attack animations, a co-op pass on the two newest weapons, and the remaining UI-restyle phases.

Shield complete, save bug fixed, scythe begins

• Finished the one-hand-and-shield weapon set: locomotion, movement speeds, full-damage-reduction blocking, shield-bash damage, attacks, heavy and sprint attacks, jump attack, dodge, parry, block, and guard break.
• Shield bash now deals damage and feeds the enemy stagger meter.
• Stagger now responds to weapon damage type: blunt doubles stagger, piercing halves it, and cutting remains unchanged.
• Fixed health, stamina, and mana silently resetting to full after a save and restart by repairing serialization, the restore target, and load timing.
• Capped weapon sprint speed so no equipped weapon makes the player faster than unarmed sprinting.
• Removed 377 redundant duplicate animation clips shipped on the wrong skeleton inside the shield pack.
• Started the scythe: 833 clips prepared, twenty pose-search databases built, chooser dispatch wired, and weapon blocking configured.

Co-op fixes, blocking, and the shield

• Fixed guests being unable to move on join, the host's detached head, guest quit taking down the host session, and the in-game day failing to replicate.
• Completed spear blocking with real damage reduction, guard-safe hit reactions, and per-weapon block sounds.
• Movement speed is now authored per weapon, preventing animation packs from stretching strides to fit one forced pace.
• Forked the modular-body retargeter and corrected the pose that left the character on the balls of his feet with over-bent knees.
• Imported and prepared the sword-and-shield pack: clips relabelled, flags and curves applied, twenty databases built, and chooser dispatch extended.
• Restyled the pause-menu background and fixed the XP-bar fill.

Motion matching lands and the spear pilot is complete

The largest technical day of the fortnight rebuilt locomotion and completed the first weapon on the new pipeline.

• Ported motion-matching locomotion onto the project skeleton, repaired root motion, and removed inverse-kinematics compensation introduced during the port.
• Filled and validated 56 pose-search databases clip by clip.
• Completed the spear pilot with heavy attack, jump attack, dodge, parry, and block; dodge distance now matches its animation.
• Completed UI-restyle phases three and four and finalised stat bars with proper fill and empty materials.

Spear combat and the UI restyle begin

• Finished spear blocking with stance blending so raising and lowering the guard reads smoothly.
• Simplified equipping to one montage per weapon covering both draw and sheathe directions.
• Wired the wooden tier-one spear attack combo.
• Started the UI restyle with a new texture pack, project theme, HUD stat bars, compass, and ammo plate.

The animation foundation is rebuilt

Spear development exposed an animation setup that could not support clean per-weapon movement, so the foundation was rebuilt.

• Moved the entire project onto one character skeleton, ending the chain of retargeting hops that degraded every animation clip.
• Built a per-weapon equip system so each weapon declares its own draw and sheathe animation.
• Purged and cleanly re-imported the spear pack, then rebuilt its moveset on the new foundation.
• Baked distance curves onto every start and stop clip so the character's feet match the ground during acceleration and braking.

A restored quest fix and spear groundwork

• Fixed restored talk-to objectives never completing after a save load.
• Retargeted spear animations and replaced the borrowed staff mapping with a dedicated spear moveset.

Quest tracking and performance

• Completed kill-quest counting end to end, including repeat objectives, live HUD updates, and persistence through saves.
• Restored both overhead and compass quest markers after loading a save.
• Compass markers are now removed when they unregister instead of lingering.
• Replaced weapon-trail effects with an improved pack.
• Converted terrain meshes to Nanite, clearing a shadow warning caused by ten thousand shadow-casting instances of one bush.
• Imported the spear and horse animation packs.

Save system v2 and safer quests

• Introduced split save slots, simplified sky state, and graves that restore correctly.
• Replaced a crash-prone quest-objective lookup that could take down the game during completion.
• Excluded mobs from world saves so spawners remain the only enemy source and half-initialised creatures cannot reappear after loading.

World saving, landscape recovery, and AI movement

• Added persistent world-state save and restore, a day counter, and saves on exit.
• Fixed walking skeletons freezing mid-pose and sliding by authoring four missing walk-start turn animations.
• Repaired three separate animation-initialisation races that produced sliding or unresponsive characters.
• Added rock and ice to the footstep surface set.
• Recovered the landscape after a shader-complexity overrun by removing twelve dead material switches.
• Migrated icon generation along with several mob and effect packs.

Water, weather, and terrain audio

• Added the ocean, rebuilt the island materials around it, and set the game to boot directly into the world.
• Enabled swimming through the framework's swim state.
• Connected dynamic weather to both the landscape and player.
• Moved the sky system to sea level so its height fog no longer drowns the map.
• Added terrain-aware footsteps for dirt, sand, snow, stone, and mud.
• Brought the landscape master material in-house to prevent vendor updates from disrupting terrain work.
• Prototyped, evaluated, and closed out a trail-and-trample system.
• Fixed a bear that jogged when it should have walked by enforcing its authored gait.
• Corrected the fifth spell slot and left unused slots empty instead of showing placeholders.
• Player data now saves whenever inventory changes.

Co-op crafting pass

Every crafting station was audited for two-player use and rebuilt around the interacting player.

• Added single-user locks to the cooking pot, cooking rack, spinning wheel, workbench, tanning rack, water well, scribe table, alchemy lab, prayer statue, grave, and banker.
• Crafting, cooking, and bank interfaces now open on the client who actually interacted with the station.
• Materials are checked and consumed from the correct player.
• Crafting output, experience, movement, and prayer credit the interacting pawn.
• Graves now lock so two players cannot loot the same corpse simultaneously.
• Reduced the cooking-pot fuel timer to 60 minutes and reset cook flags correctly between attempts.

The daily development log is live

A new home for the smaller steps, fixes, and discoveries that happen between the major chapters of the Development Chronicle.

• Added a dedicated, date-based development log for short daily updates.
• Kept the existing Development Chronicle focused on larger milestones and video features.
• Prepared a simple entry format for future game, systems, world, art, website, and fix notes.

The Reaper boss-fight loop closes

• Reaper loot drops completed and the boss's aggro and sight ranges tuned.
• Door slide and latch sounds authored, routed through the game's volume settings, and given proper 3D attenuation.
• The grave now relocates outside the arena and snaps to the ground after a death.
• Fixed a stray currency bag appearing on death and stopped corpses from blocking AI.
• The death menu no longer pauses the live world, keeping the flow safe for multiplayer.
• Empty graves now clean themselves up after interaction.

The cathedral becomes a functioning arena

• Added keyed double doors: a skeleton key grants entry, the doors lock as the player approaches, and they reopen when the boss dies.
• Built staged interior darkness that deepens as ritual torches are lit, with the boss spawning on the final torch.
• Completed a detail-texturing pass to improve close-up material quality.
• Tracked down an engine-level quirk that silently disabled bounded post-process volumes and fixed it with a one-property change.

The Reaper arena takes shape

• Specified the Reaper arena design.
• Built the cathedral set piece as a Blueprint prefab near the cemetery.
• Scaled the vendor mesh for a proper boss arena and added a two-sided interior with working collision.

The cemetery event works end to end

• Closed out the current migration sweep.
• Ported the bird mob and reinstalled the cemetery vendor pack.
• Staged the sword-animation and werewolf packs for future bosses.

The character pipeline is hardened

• Completed the gendered armor system.
• Hardened the full character pipeline from the main menu into the game world.

Character creation works end to end

• Saved the first complete character through the new creation flow.
• Fixed both Play-in-Editor crashes.
• Started the character-select screen scaffold and hardened the save library.

Character creation takes shape

• Scaffolded the character-creation screen with a live character preview.
• Verified gender, hair, and marking customization.
• Unified hair into a single cross-gender set.
• Added splash-screen and icon artwork.

The main menu boots to life

• Built the title screen and home menu with Play, Options, Credits, and Quit.
• Added the menu layer host and settings page.
• Filled out the widget registry and configured the game to boot directly into the menu map.

Death handling comes online

• Designed and implemented a gravestone that spawns at the point of death.
• Unequipped items transfer into the grave, and the revive sequence is safe for cooperative play.
• Fixed most cases of mobs intermittently sliding instead of walking.
• Planned the recreation of the main menu.

Music, ambience, quests, and NPCs migrate

• Brought the music and ambience system online with exploration-to-combat crossfading and day/night ambience.
• Imported four combat-track tiers and wired in the standard melee track.
• Migrated nine quests, eleven NPCs, their dialogue, and voice audio.
• Repointed 43 stale quest markers.

The world comes alive

• Enabled all 36 AI spawners with natural walking patrols and home leashing.
• Finished the icon migration.
• Resolved the consume-input bug.

The Reaper entrance and quick slots are polished

• Added a cackle and fight-introduction voice line when the Reaper becomes aggressive.
• Tuned the entrance volume and aggro range.
• Finished consumable quick slots on the F and G keys.

AI spawning and the Reaper fight migrate

• Migrated the AI spawning system and placed 36 spawners in a staged, disabled state.
• Fixed the melee skeleton with a dedicated combat data asset.
• Fixed bows for both the player and AI with an ammunition whitelist.
• Authored the Reaper boss fight with a five-attack rotation, scythe entries, and a combat-entry bark sequence.

The move to Unreal Engine 5.8 begins

I began porting the game, piece by piece, into the latest Unreal Engine 5.8 version. This will be a slow process, but I want to get everything working properly. I can also fix issues system by system as I port them. With so many great new features and performance improvements in this version, the work will be worthwhile for the player experience.