starwick - the run finally means something

been turning the flow runner from a pile of systems sitting next to each other into a loop u actually wanna repeat.

what i built

routes arent just colors anymore. the eclipse path pays way more but the dark creeps in and might swallow u whole. the safe one keeps u calm. bond literally pulls ur companion in to cover ur misses. picking a line feels like picking a mood now instead of a number.

then the companions got personalities. vesp gives u a wider grace window, corvel just hands u steady starlight, mara makes the eclipse burn brighter but runs u way hotter, ash leaves a relic every flight. ur not collecting skins anymore, ur picking how the run feels.

and the hearth actually grows. spend starlight, a room wakes up, and it changes what ur next run can do. come back a few runs later and the place looks different.

the part that broke me

the end of run ceremony kept rendering pure black. spent forever convinced the camera was aimed wrong. it wasnt. the hearth was dropping its stars in world space and ignoring where i actually put them so they floated off in the void lol. fixed that and it was STILL black bc the ritual camera was fighting the render pipeline. ended up pointing it at its own texture and feeding that to the screen. finally bloomed.

where its at

cold open -> run -> route choice -> a small ceremony that hands u back a memory seed -> hearth grows -> next run. it loops now. still rough but it finally has a soul.

starwick - the runner finally feels like a game

quick update on the flow runner. it went from a gray ribbon in the dark to something that actually reads.

what i built

the constellation gates branch now and the branches actually mean something. safe path glows calm blue, the memory one goes violet, eclipse is angry red, and the bond route literally takes on ur companions color. picking a line feels like picking a mood instead of picking a number.

speaking of, i ripped all the score numbers out. no more x12 combo text floating around. its diegetic now - a thread weaves up the side as u travel, a little star leans toward the next gate to guide u, and the whole screen cools and dims when pressure builds. perfect hits snap the gate ring inward with a tiny punch and a note. feels good fr.

the part that ate my night

the end of run ritual kept rendering pure black. i was so sure the camera was pointed wrong. it wasnt. turned out the hearth was placing its stars in world space and ignoring where i actually dropped it, so they floated 40 units off in the void lol. fixed that and it STILL went black bc that camera just refuses to draw the way i wanted. framed it with a seperate cam and it finally bloomed.

where its at

boot into a run, weave the sky, then a small ceremony hands u back ur starlight and a memory seed u can share. notch safe areas handled too. still rough but it feels like a place now.

starwick - the run learned to sing

picked flow run back up. it worked but lowkey looked like a gray triangle in black and felt like nothing. so this stretch was jus making it feel expensive.

what i did

killed teh plain blue gate spheres. gates are glowing stars now joined by a thread u light as u trace it. gave track a glowing center seam and a starfield behind it so u ride through space not a void. every gate plays a note now. finishing one fires a chord. a harmony pad swells the longer u stay clean so ur kinda composing the sky instead of scoring points. pressure used to flash red like damage which felt cheap tbh. now dark just creeps in and ur trail frays and ur light goes cold. also added a companion that rides with u and leads to next gate and speeds up as ur combo climbs and curls up scared when dark rises. shareable run codes like CORVEL-60H-LUMEN so u can hand someone ur exact run. an auto postcard at results. an intro with no menu where u touch to light the wick drag a thread and let go to open the gate. and failure isnt a game over fr. companion catches u and run ends as a memory u keep.

what broke

spent a whole evening on a landing that wouldnt register as bad. u could dive straight into the ground and the game just shrugged. turned out air drag was bleeding off fall speed faster than i thought so the hit came in under my bad-landing cutoff. sometimes soft enough to read as a perfect landing which is kinda hilarious. so i stopped tuning the number and changed the rule. if ur diving when u hit the floor thats bad. felt right instantly.

where it stands

ngl the run finally reads like a thread of light through a nebula now. music building as u chain. dark creeping when u slip. companion reacting the whole way. playable start to finish. still uncommitted tho. and “it works” vs “it feels great on a phone” are two diff things i still gotta settle on device.

starwick - making the run mode feel expensive

starwick has two modes: a walkable cosmos and a flow-run (think endless ride through the weave). the run worked a while ago - track, gates, combo, a
relight finale - but it looked like a gray triangle floating in black. this stretch was about making it premium instead of just functional.

glyph gates and a track that glows

the gates used to be plain blue spheres. you weren’t weaving a constellation, you were hitting balls. now each gate is soft-dot stars joined by a glowing
thread that brightens as you trace it - it finally reads like you’re drawing the sky.

composing the sky, not collecting points

every gate node now plays a note (pentatonic, climbs with your chain), completing a gate fires a chord, and a harmony pad swells the longer you hold a run clean. the goal was for it to feel like you’re playing the weave, not racking up a score.

pressure used to flash the screen red like generic damage. hated it. now pressure is darkness - your trail frays, the wick dims and goes cold, the music
narrows, the frame creeps dark. failure as atmosphere, not a buzzer.

and the hearth (your home) now reacts when you get back: starlight motes flow in, the next thing you can afford to restore pulses, and restoring it moves the pulse to the next. it feels like a place that responds instead of an upgrade menu.

starwick - i rebuilt the core as a flow runner

big swing this stretch. the free-roam build was pretty but aimless so i pivoted the core into a flow runner. u ride a procedural ribbon, charge and release to glide, trace constellations as gates at speed. kept the old explore mode intact, this is a second mode built from scratch beside it.

what i built

the whole loop as systems. a deterministic flow motor, auto-run, hold to charge, release to lift into a glide, swipe to drift lanes, pure kinematics so its predictable. a seeded ribbon track with height and width curves, built in chunks ahead and recycled behind so it streams forever. gates that detect by path intersection not a button press. a combo system that chains hits into a rising harmony meter, Soft Trace up to Perfect Weave. a run director that ties it into a real ~90 second run with a relight setpiece near the end. plus a save profile and a hearth where u spend starlight to restore nodes, expression not wait-timers.

the save that lied to me

wiring the meta screen, it proudly told me id restored 4,244 stars across 9 journeys. id never finished a single run. my headless dev runs were writing straight to the real profile and it had been quietly inflating for days. fix was a dev-only backend, in headless mode the save lives in memory and never touches the real file. round-trips and version migration still work and ur real profile is yours again. made it a hard rule for the save system from the start.

where it stands

honest version, its systems-complete but not visually playable yet. no wick model, no gate glow, no hud, no hearth view. i built the whole core and havent really watched it move. next pass is pure presentation, give the runner a body, light the gates, show the hud, wire mode select so u can press play and ride. skeleton’s real, now it needs skin.

Starwick - making it look and feel premium

Spent this stretch on two things: making the realm look premium, and making it feel premium.

The realm became a journey

You now relight several star-sites in a row - a companion leads you to each, you trace its constellation, the ground warms, a new light calls you onward. Restore the whole sky, then make the choice. And there’s a roster of companions: the one you carry seeds the world - different terrain, layout, palette, color, even the music. Replay and you’re somewhere new with someone new.

Looks premium

No new art, just rendering: a filmic color grade with glowy bloom, a horizon haze with a richer nebula, crystals that went from flat cutouts to lit glass that catches light, and a focus-pull that softly blurs the world behind dialogue. Aiming at the Sky / Gris look, not photoreal - the right call for a game built entirely from code.

Feels premium

Everything reacts: a screen-punch and crystal pop on relight, buttons that pop in, a counter that punches when it ticks. Every tap, trace, and relight makes a synthesized sound, with matching haptics on a phone. None of the audio is recorded.

The day it went black

Reached for ACES tonemapping plus heavy contrast and vignette, and the whole scene crushed to near-black - nebula and terrain just gone. Swapped to a gentler tonemap, lifted exposure, dropped the bloom threshold so things glow instead of clip, and it came back better than before. Bonus near-miss: I wanted horizon fog but fog eats a star field - turns out the sky’s shader ignores scene fog, so the land hazes while the stars stay crisp. Accidentally perfect.

Where it stands

Looks and feels like a real game now Caveats: no title screen yet, and it doesn’t remember you between runs - a persistent sky and a collection screen are next.

starwick - you can walk it now

big one. til now starwick was a sky in front of ur face, a floating eyeball. now its a place u stand in and walk, where relighting a star changes the ground around u and the music shifts with where u are.

what i built

the realm is procedural. terrain is a seeded heightfield, no file, jus noise sampled into a mesh, and the same function feeds the walk code so u follow the slopes instead of clipping through em. first-person now, joystick to move, drag to look, a lantern, ground-snap. the camera stopped flying and started walking, sounds small but was secretly half the work. crystals mark each star-site, a constellation hangs above one, trace it to relight and the crystals warm blue to gold while a beacon lights toward the next.

the bar that refused to be a circle

the relight fires a shockwave ring out from the star. except it kept rendering as a flat white bar, like a highlighter line drawn across the screen. took me a while to clock it, the torus mesh sits in one plane and i was aiming the wrong axis at the camera so the ring was permanently edge-on. point its actual face at the cam and it pops into a clean expanding circle. one line. i stared at that strip way too long.

sound that follows u

the score’s layered now, a drone underneath, a pad that swells near a site, a motif while u trace, tension on a choice, full bloom on relight. the stars pulse in time, brighter when it swells. nones recorded, all synthesized in code and mixed live by where u are.

where it stands

u can walk the realm, find a site, trace the constellation, watch it warm the world, and the score moves with u. still one realm for now, more biomes next.

starwick - the whole loop finally runs

quick one. the vertical slice plays end to end now and for the first time it feels like the thing i pitched myself, not a pile of systems that happen to compile.

the loop

you’re a wick, a lil candle-soul who relights dying stars. the slice is one star. u drag across five dim points to trace the constellation, it catches, and the star reignites. motes spiral in, a core lights, a shockwave ring pushes out, ur companion reacts, the camera breathes. then the sky asks what u wanna do. let it rest or send it onward. u pick and the world shifts to match, warm gold if u send it on, colder dim if u rest it. ending plays, then it offers to begin again.

the bug that mattered

the choice screen looked done before it was. the constellation and companion both live in the world behind it and they were still listening. so a tap meant for “send it onward” also poked the companion, and a stray drag re-traced stars that were alr lit. the ui was a sheet of glass with holes in it. fix was boring and correct. one bit of state that says something modal is up, dialogue journal or a choice, and everything that reads input checks it first and shuts up. taps stopped leaking and the choice felt like a choice instead of a coincidence.

where it stands

trace, relight, choose, branch, two endings, restart, and the sky remembers the run. whats not there yet, its still a sky in front of u not a place u walk through. next is lifting the constellation into the world and building the first realm u can move around in. thats the jump from pretty to somewhere.

starwick - it moves now, and it remembers

big stretch of work. the cosmos went from “pretty to look at” to a place that tells you something and actually feels alive. three threads landed: the story shows up on screen, everything became real crafted 3d, and i finally taught my tests to see motion.

the story shows up

relight a constellation now and it speaks. a line types out across the bottom - “a star has gone dark. you feel the absence before you see it.” - the stars flare, and a memory surfaces: the ferryman’s lantern, someone who lit the way for others and got forgotten the moment they weren’t needed. those memories collect in a journal you can open. it’s the first time starwick has felt like it’s about something, not just nice to drift through.

everything got crafted

i ripped out the “glowing blobs of particles” look. the companion and the thing you carry are real 3d now - a glowing core wrapped in actual orbiting rings (generated the ring meshes in code). the lantern is an ember inside three tilted rings spinning at different speeds, like a little orrery of light. vesp got a proper body too and now spring-follows you with a bit of lag and overshoot instead of sliding around on rails - it reads as a thing with weight that’s choosing to keep up with you.

making the relight a moment

the relight used to be a flat on/off. now it’s staged: the star contracts, motes spiral inward, the core ignites, a shockwave ring blows outward, the companion reacts, and the camera breathes back. small thing, couple seconds, but it turns “i pressed the thing” into “something happened.”

where it stands

a flyable procedural cosmos, a companion that follows and sings and reacts, the relight-a-constellation loop with a real cinematic beat, and a story that surfaces as you go .

starwick - relighting the sky

third devlog. the cosmos isnt just something to look at now. u can fly through it, trace a dead constellation to bring it back, and poke the companion to get a reaction. the core thing u actually do finally exists.

the verb

dead constellations hang in the sky as dim blue stars. u drag across em in order, a line of light links each one, and when the shape closes it relights. stars flare gold, sparks burst, a star reborn. the game counts how many u’ve brought back. small moment but it feels good and its what everything else hangs off.

moving + vesp

input’s online. u can fly around, move and look, keyboard at the desk, thumbstick + drag on a phone, same code. and vesp the companion now answers a tap. it pulses and its lil tune swells for a sec. went from “thing floating near u” to “thing that notices u.”

the fight

none of my input worked and the whole thing threw on launch. turns out the project’s on the new input system only and i was calling the old input api which just throws. rebuilt it on one input layer that handles mouse and touch the same. instantly alive.

where it stands

fly through a glowing procedural cosmos, trace constellations to relight em, a companion that follows sings and reacts. all generated in code, no art or audio files.

starwick - the void gets a roommate

second devlog. last time starwick was an empty glowing void. now it’s got soft twinkling stars a proper wispy nebula and a little companion floating next to u humming its own tune. starting to feel like a place not a screensaver.

the cosmos got real

the stars used to be blocky squares. default particle no texture, looked rough. swapped em for soft round points i generate in code, basically a radial gradient sprite, plus a twinkle layer that fades stars in and out so the whole field shimmers. bumped bloom so the bright ones actually glow.

nebula was the real fight tho. first pass was a few clean soft blobs and it jus looked like lens flares lol. so i went noise based, fractal perlin clouds with a soft falloff, and overshot the other way. came out dark and basically invisible. third try i dropped the noise threshold and roughly doubled color and alpha and now its vivid purple-and-blue wisps sweeping across the sky. took three goes to land that one.

vesp

the companion. small violet mote that orbits near u, bobs around, plays a soft little bell arpeggio that layers over the ambient drone. no samples, melody’s built from sine waves like everything else.

first attempt vesp came out as a giant white sun lmao. i’d picked a bright purple but cranked the hdr way too high so between that and bloom the core blew out to pure white and it hogged the whole frame like a second star. dialed the color back, shrank it, pushed it further out, rebuilt it from a hard sphere into a cluster of soft glowing dots. now it reads like a tiny spirit drifting with u instead of a death star.

where it stands

empty void -> twinkling stars + vivid nebula -> a companion that floats beside u and sings. still all procedural, no art or audio files anywhere.

Starwick - a cosmos

first devlog. starwick’s a procedural cosmic adventure i’m building

what’s in it so far

right now it’s just the bootable cosmos. no art, no audio files, nothing downloaded, it’s all generated in code. 700 stars on a sphere around the camera, bloom and vignette, and an ambient drone synthesized at runtime (few detuned sines + a slow lfo).