DEVLOG

Dear players,

Thank you for joining us for the 7th issue of our "Time's Shadow Pursuit" development log. Pangea Interactive (Nonexistent) wishes you a happy life!

The second phase of offline testing has concluded, and we are grateful for the feedback you've provided. Here’s a summary of your input:

Also, our v0.1 version has been released, and we welcome everyone to continue participating in the online trial to provide us with feedback! <https://drive.google.com/file/d/15uNT-7t5F9ogZ5qtJNtf2Klmkd1AB95Y >

### Audio & SFX

- General Issues

  - BGM is too loud

  - BGM should fade in, not suddenly blast

- Level 2

  - Death audio plays twice

    - A few seconds after the first death audio plays, the second one interrupts and continues

  - Death sound effect continues to play until entering level 3

### Gameplay

- Level 2

  - Clicking RETRY after death doesn't restart the level

  - Behavior: After clicking RETRY, enemies freeze, and the protagonist can escape

  - Time travel can be used multiple times due to a bug

  - Enemies' desire to attack is low, but their speed is too fast

  - Camera clipping through walls bug

- Level 3

  - Horror element warning can't be exited with ESC

    - Pressing ESC opens the settings menu, hidden under the horror element warning

  - Oil lamp and fuel

    - Press “P” to turn the oil lamp on and off, which is not intuitive (players suggest changing to the TAB key)

    - Oil lamp depletes too quickly

    - Remaining fuel display

      - Numeric approach: Remove the decimal point, as rapid changes can prematurely induce anxiety in the player's flow state

      - Visual approach

### Level Design

- Level 2

  - Missing pendulum in the past

  - Players don't care about the map and blueprints, level guidance needs redoing

- Level 3

  - Players instinctively follow the fire traps

  - Level guidance issue (internal discussion)

### Conclusion

This update has revealed many technical and design issues, which we plan to gradually fix in future updates. We are working hard for the final version in early April!

Thank you for your support.

Pangea Interactive (Nonexistent)

March 12, 2024

Dear Players,

Thank you for joining us for the 7th issue of our "Time's Shadow Pursuit" development log. Pangea Interactive (Nonexistent) wishes you a pleasant day!

This week, we bring you information about the upcoming **Playtesting 2** of *Time's Shadow Pursuit* and the updates we've made this week. Our focus has primarily been on fixing Level 1 mission guide bugs, adding new tutorial prompts, and enhancing the triggering logic for Level 2 events to improve the overall gaming experience, and developing Level 3.

### Playtesting 2 Info

"Time's Shadow Pursuit" will participate in Playtest 2 at York University's ACW103 classroom on March 11, 2024, at 10:00 AM (ET). In this phase of development, our emphasis is on refining narrative design, level design, enemy AI, and mission logic. Our development team has put in tremendous effort to present players with a more complete and exciting gaming experience.

### Gameplay

1. Introduced a local UI pause interface to optimize the game control experience, allowing players to pause the game more easily for adjustments.

2. Introduced the protagonist's attack attribute, which is a freezing mechanism for enemies.

3. Thanks to the efforts of **@Henry**, the enemy AI has been further updated.

### Level Design

1. Level designers **@Lee** and **@Niko** have completed the construction of the *Level 2 and 3*, and developers **@Harry** and **@Henry** are adapting game features and mission logic.

2. Added scene interaction and level performances for the *Giant Bell Market* in *Grindale Town*.

3. Based on suggestions from **@Harry**, we have prepared some *"surprises"* for players in the Level 3.

### Narrative Design

1. Fixed Level 1 mission guide bugs and added Eagle Vision tutorial prompts to enhance the narrative fluency and coherence of the game.

2. Optimized the triggering logic of Level 2 event segments to ensure the coherence of game progression and difficulty balance.

3. Refined the Level 2 mission system, adding more tasks and challenges to enrich the game's content and replayability.

### Art Design

The extensive support from the art team has provided crucial assurance for the visual representation and immersive experience of the game. Their meticulously crafted character designs, scene layouts, and special effects allow players to immerse themselves in the rich and vibrant game world. In every game detail, the hard work of the art team quietly adds brilliance to the game's quality and the players' experience, laying a solid foundation for the game's success.

### Future Plan

The main focus will be on refining the game for Phase 2 testing, ensuring that the most basic gameplay runs smoothly.

- Further refining the mission logic of the three levels.

Addressing some issues:

  - Enemy AI, pathfinding logic, and collision volumes for other objects.

  - A few rebellious lighting effects.

- Further enriching the scenes.

### Conclusion

In this issue, we've shared the latest updates on "Time's Shadow Pursuit." Excitingly, we're gearing up for Playtest 2 on **March 11, 2024, at 10:00 AM (ET)**, aiming to showcase significant progress in narrative design, level design, enemy AI, and mission logic.

Over the past week, we've fixed bugs, improved tutorials, and enriched the game's narrative and gameplay. With the support of our team, we're committed to refining the game further and ensuring its success. Thank you for your continued support!

Pangea Interactive (Nonexistent)

March 7, 2024

Dear players,

Happy Chinese New Year! Today, we conducted our playtest 1 demonstration in room ACW103 at York University. Here's a summary of our playtest briefing:

### Development Updates

We made a tough decision regarding the third level. Originally planned as a complete demonstration level with a serious narrative design and level performance, due to the short development cycle, the design approach for the third level in the actual demonstration shifted to showcasing lamp functionality and resource management.

The primary purpose of the current three levels is to test whether the three core mechanisms can operate smoothly and complement each other. In future alpha testing phases, we will introduce more comprehensive level performances.

### Playtest 1

#### Level Designer @Lee's idea on Horror Game Level Design

At the testing venue, our level designer **@Lee** shared his thoughts on the level design process:

> All puzzle-solving games involve riddles. The key tools for puzzle-solving games are finding things, guessing passwords, and assembling puzzles. Essentially, it's a cycle of **lock-and-key**. If you look at the entire process of *Outlast*, it's all about **finding keys, being chased by monsters, opening doors, then moving to the next location, finding the next key, being chased again, and opening another door**. Everything in *Outlast* follows this pattern, involving picking up batteries (resource management) along the way. The success of *Outlast* is inseparable from its excellent level performances and atmospheric rendering. In fact, the core gameplay of *Outlast* is very simple; all its mission levels are about going to different places, finding keys, and opening doors. Even *Outlast 2* just added a core gameplay of **camera and sound-based positioning** on this foundation. You'll find that the core of horror games and puzzle-solving games is these two things: **solving puzzles and avoiding monsters**, fundamentally still a **lock-and-key** loop. Lock-and-key can be nested; as long as you keep locking and nesting, you can create a complete level design.

#### Current Known Issues

- Eagle-Vision texture transparency is too low.

- Default mouse sensitivity is too low.

- Exiting the game requires pressing alt+F4, xD.

- In the second level, falling off the cliff prevents level restart.

- Footprints and correct guidance directions in the third level are not just unrelated but completely opposite.

- Bug in the third level where the password display (digit 2) cannot be input.

- Regardless of what the player inputs in the third level, the password is always correct (What?).

- Upon returning from the third level to the first, things that were originally only visible with the eagle-vision skill appear in non-eagle-vision mode.

Pangea Interactive (Nonexistent)

February 12, 2024

Dear players,

We are pleased to announce the initial development of all three core mechanisms, and we've made some progress in building our first Playtest demo level.

### Core mechanism development progress

#### Eagle Vision

- **Info:** Players need eagle vision to find things they can't see, which could be key items, text clues (or even hidden levels?).

- **Developer:** @Harry

- **Date:** January 24th, 2024.

- **Update Description:**

  - Complete all Eagle Vision system development, including code logic and visual effects

  - Add character pickup animation

  - Added character interaction collision logic

#### Timeline Switch

- **Info:** Use different timeline to Bypass obstacles and look for clues.

- **Developer:** @Henry

- **Date:** January 25th, 2024.

- **Update Description:**

  - Press 'V' to change in StarterAssets/InputSystem

  - If there is an obstacle at Timeline-change destination, Timeline Switch cannot be actived to prevent the situation like stuck in the wall etc.

#### Lamp

- **Info:** Lamps have two functions, one is lighting, one is heating. Players need to collect fuel and manage resources to explore.

- **Developer:** @Niko

- **Date:** January 30th, 2024.

- **Update Description:**

  - The lamp can be turned on and off

  - The fuel replacement and fuel consumption logic of lamps have been developed

### Level Design Progress

Currently, The Playtest 1 levels we've set up so far are as follows:

- **Level 1:** Introduces the basic features of the game, including walking and dialogue.

- **Level 2:** Demonstrate the core mechanics and have a simple puzzle.

- **Level 3:** Game level grey box, containing serious narrative and level design. (The future development will be based on this demo)

- Back to the **Level 1**

**@Harry** has finished Level 1, **@Henry** is leading the development of Level 2.

Level 3 is the most important part of Playtest 1. Therefore, **@Lee**, the core lead of this part, is negotiating with the level design team(**@Lee**, **@TK**, **@Niko**) and trying to sketch the level.

Art team is supporting **@Lee**'s work, and currently  **@Bella** and **@TK** are finding and painting textures and processing them in Photoshop. At the same time, they're Working on 2D levels which introduce about the plot written by **@Lee**.

### Conclusion

We have finished the initial development of three core mechanisms: the *Eagle Vision system*, *the Timeline Switch*, and the *Lamp system*. These key features are now in place and functional. Concurrently, we are actively working on the development of the Playtest 1 levels, progressing towards creating a comprehensive demo for Playtest 1.

Pangea Interactive (Nonexistent)

January 31th, 2024

Dear players,

We are pleased to announce that our game has officially entered the development phase. Here is some of the intelligence that has become publicly available and that we hope to share with you.

### Game Project Overview

- **Project Name:** Time's Shadow Pursuit

- **Engine Choose:** Unity 2022.3.15f1 LTS

- **Graphic:** 3D, Third Person View, Mid-age Setting

- **Category:** Adventure, puzzle, horror, single-linger process, story-telling game

- **Audience:** Mature

- **Publish Date:** April 3rd, 2024

### Background Story

We need to thank for **@Lee**'s contribution on writing the story:

>John is a young man living in a medieval town. One day, a plague suddenly broke out in the town, and John's family and friends were infected with the plague. John decides to go to meet Albert, the only doctor in town, to get the cure for the plague. But when he arrives at the doctor's clinic, he finds Dr.Albert dead in his own clinic...

### Core Mechanism

- Timeline Switch

  - Use different timeline to Bypass obstacles and look for clues.

- Oil Lamp

  - Oil lamps have two functions, one is lighting, one is heating. Players need to collect fuel and manage resources to explore.

- Eagle Vision

  - Players need eagle vision to find things they can't see, which could be key items, text clues (or even hidden levels?).

### Conclusion

Now that we have settled on the general story and core gameplay, we will split the entire dev team into two groups, one responsible for continuing to refine the story and level design, and the other to start implementing features. A beta version is expected within two weeks.

This concludes our 2rd development briefing. Be sure to tune in next time for more development news!

Pangea Interactive (Nonexistent)

January 24th, 2024

Dear players,

This is DATT3701 24W Group 1. We name our group *Pangea Interactive* ( Pangea Interactive is a fictitious team name representing our student team's creation, and does not represent any real company or studio.). In this term we are going to work together on a game project. Here is details on our member and role.

### Pangea Interactive Members and Roles

- Members

  - Haobang Deng (@Henry)

  - Haoqing Gu (@Harry)

  - Hongji Tang (@TK)

  - Siyu Pan (@Bella)

  - Yinqi Li (@Lee)

  - Zhiyi Yang (@Niko)

| Role | Member |

| ---- | ------ |

| Plot | @Lee |

| Level | @Lee @Niko @TK |

| Numerical | @Harry @TK |

| Git | @Lee @Henry |

| Art | @Bella @TK |

| Environment | @TK |

| 2D | @Harry @TK @Bella |

| 3D | @Harry @TK|

| Characters | @Harry @Henry @Lee |

| Enemy | @Harry @Henry @Lee |

| Programing | @Harry @Henry @Lee @Niko |

| Animation | @Harry |

| Sound & Music | @TK @Bella |

We sincerely hope to bring you a great game experience in the next three months！

Pangea Interactive (Nonexistent)

January 12th, 2024