Studio log
Milestones
The short version of a much longer internal log. Newest at the top. Dates are from the commit history, not from memory.
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neon-sunset-studios.com
The studio gets a website, an email address, and this log. Built in one session, with an interview first.
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Clod Commander kicks off, and the studio gets a logo
A new space combat game in its own universe, the Reach, with a bible, a design document, an engine decision (Godot 4.7) and a staffed roster: one model per role, local open models through LM Studio for the bulk writing, a GPT as fresh-eyes reviewer. Milestone M0 landed the same night: the project, a headless test harness, CI and a Windows export. A bake-off of eight local models picked the staff writer. And after a three-round exploration with four models drafting in parallel, the studio has a mark: a sunset seen through blinds.
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The Studio Board
Every repository standardized: issue forms, labels, one project board across all of them, a contributing guide for finding, claiming and handing back work. Night Shift's CI, red for eleven days because its sound test was being cut off by a timer, goes green.
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Night Dispatch arrives
A narrative dispatch game in Godot, in its own universe. Nights 1 to 3 are final and playable start to finish; nights 4, 5, 7 and 8 exist in draft. The campaign layer is in: a logbook that persists between nights, a handover, a case board.
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Reboot's Phase 0 toy, playtested by hand
The Unreal Engine 5 game builds and passes its self-tests: a raid with a HUD, a payroll uplink, a way to get laid off and a way to clock out. The same day the studio writes its web design guide and a playtest questionnaire for the Port Indulgence games.
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Port Indulgence: Reboot moves into Unreal Engine 5
The co-op extraction shooter gets its own repository, a game design document, a story document with the Prologue and Act 1, and a vendored copy of the bible.
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Night Shift's look, approved
After the soft-shaded pass, five style explorations and two craft briefs were all rejected, a reference image and a rebuild from scratch (autotiled terrain, outlined flat sprites, drop shadows) got a yes. The motel was restyled to match. Wave 2 brought the whole opening, lift and throw, chests, the Union card and six original songs.
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The split: one repository per game
Three games and a draft came out of one repository into five, the way a studio would do it: each game at the root of its own, the bible in a repository of its own that every game vendors at a stamped version, MIT licence everywhere, CI green on every branch. Uncut Tournament tagged alpha 0.1 the same day, after a Rookie difficulty, cheats, an input-debug overlay and two fixes to a lost Fire binding; a human completed its Tournament to the credits for the first time. Night Shift got a playable slice, built by eight builders in parallel from a one-page contract.
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WVMR goes on the air; Night Shift is forked
Vice Mayor's radio station plays nine original songs with an on-screen radio. Night Shift, the 16-bit sequel, is forked from Hero of Tiles and registered as the third Port Indulgence game. Uncut gets a capture-the-flag map in orbit.
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Uncut Tournament, and a bible to share
A late-nineties-style arena shooter in WebGL2, with every texture, model, sound and song generated in code. The Port Indulgence bible is written the same day so the city builder and the shooter tell the same lies.
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Vice Mayor, in one evening
From a spec and a tone guide, Claude Opus 5.5 and a handful of parallel builders produce a working isometric city builder with a vice layer between 7:35 and 8:05 in the evening: zones, networks, demand, a budget, advisors, disasters, the Red Light zone, the Ski Club, Heat and raids, rendering, audio and tests. Twelve snapshots in thirty minutes.
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Hero of Tiles gets a soundtrack
A four-channel chiptune engine (two pulse waves, triangle, noise) with a text notation, a validator, and nine original songs, each reviewed for resemblance to existing music and for musicality.
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The first game
Hero of Tiles: an eight-bit action-adventure made by Claude Opus from a single prompt. Ten files, about thirteen hundred lines, an overworld of scrolling screens, a sword, a shield, a boomerang, two enemies and a subscreen with a map. It ran. The studio did not exist yet; this is why it does.