Design is approved. The build begins.

October 18 2026 at 4:33 PM MDT

P1 1 Planning the production record

Today I expanded the production plan and established the journal that will follow SWASHPAWS through the build. Phase 0 is complete. I have divided the remaining work into nine phases, starting with the Coming Soon website and BTS blog and ending with deployment of the game and contest release.

The plan retains the full sixteen-character cast, thirteen environment areas, wardrobe, tools, weapons, treasure, destructibles, Adventure, secret crews, river, bosses and separate PvP session. It also defines numbered steps, acceptance checks and a consistent process for documenting progress.

The first public production task will be the landing page and /bts. I want the blog and visual checklist available early enough to cover the work as it happens. Enhanced art belongs in that website step. For this checkpoint, I have written the plan and prologue; I have not built or published the site, changed DNS, created models or implemented gameplay.

For the origin article, I reviewed the Ghosts repository overview and commit history, earlier design discussions and saved project notes. Those records support the theme-park setting, overlapping realities and substantial animation and cleanup work. My own chronology supplies the September 30 start, the approximate pivot and the conditional return in 2027 or 2028.

I checked the plan against the current scaffold and verified its source commit on GitHub. The check validates document links, manifests and the existing scaffold boundaries; it does not test gameplay. The next action is to review this Phase 1 plan, then authorize and begin the Coming Soon and BTS site work.

October 18 2026 at 4:51 PM MDT

Public article review

I reviewed the origin article for publication and removed details that do not belong in the public development story. The article now focuses on the game, the work completed and the change in creative direction. I also added a publication review rule to the production plan so future entries follow the same standard.

October 18 2026 at 6:03 PM MDT

Preparing the public home

I inspected the domain and source repository before changing the hosting. SWASHPAWS still points at its parked destination, so the public website is not live yet. I recorded the current setup and the remaining connection work rather than treating a successful local build as a published site.

The next pieces can move forward while the domain connection is resolved: original website art, the Coming Soon page and the BTS journal. This step remains in progress until the intended hosting and domain are connected.

October 18 2026 at 6:09 PM MDT

A new view of the pirate cove

I created a new wide illustration for the Coming Soon page using the approved SWASHPAWS artwork as the visual reference. The fox, bunny, otter and raccoon gather around treasure beside a bright cove, while the white-cat princess waits in the distant fortress.

The scene leaves room for readable website copy and keeps the marketing camera separate from the game’s true top-down view. I prepared smaller web versions, preserved the original art and prompt, and checked the image files and their hashes. These are promotional visuals, not gameplay screenshots.

October 18 2026 at 6:13 PM MDT

Building a home for the adventure

I built the first local version of the Coming Soon website. The new cove artwork introduces the game, while short sections explain the cavern adventure, pirate alliances and race to the princess. The page leads into Behind the Scenes instead of presenting an unfinished game as playable.

The website build produces six static pages, including the prologue, the daily journal and a Coming Soon destination for the future Play link. Internal links, asset files, page structure and public-content privacy checks pass. It is ready for browser review; publication and real-device checks remain separate gates.

October 18 2026 at 6:18 PM MDT

Putting the whole production on the map

I completed the BTS page structure with a journal feed, a sketchbook and an expandable production map. The map covers all seventy steps across Phases 0–9. Phase 0 records the completed design work; later phases keep their actual planned or in-progress status.

The checklist can filter completed, current and planned work. The prologue remains untimed, and each development day has one continuing article. A reviewed export connects the Word journal to the public website without publishing raw planning files. Future video segments are described as a plan rather than represented by empty players.

The local build and interaction checks pass. The site still needs authenticated hosting, public HTTPS and desktop/phone visitor verification before I can call Phase 1 complete.

October 18 2026 at 8:00 PM MDT

A simpler entrance and living water

I revised the first website after seeing it in context. The entrance needed to be simpler: one illustration, Coming Soon and a link to Behind the Scenes. I moved the journal presentation and production details away from the main page. A white and lavender palette gives SWASHPAWS its own identity.

I added a WebGL layer that refracts the painted water and changes its highlights while keeping the pirates and shore still. It repeats on a twenty-four-second cycle. Visitors can pause it, and the ordinary illustration remains available when motion is reduced or graphics support fails. Those controls pass automated checks; the final appearance and phone performance still need browser review.

I also prepared cleaner public illustrations of the underground landing and raft river. Labels, camera markings and material panels belong in the design work, so they are absent from these promotional images. The original design sheets remain preserved.

I installed the official Cloudflare development tools and completed CLI authorization. That gives me the access needed to inspect hosting and prepare the domain connection. Installation and authorization are progress, but neither means the website is already published.

October 18 2026 at 8:39 PM MDT

The first public website and a water revision

The Coming Soon website and BTS journal are now published on swashpaws.com. The domain is active on Cloudflare, and the landing and BTS pages returned successful HTTPS responses. The source remains backed up on GitHub. Automatic deployments from future pushes still need a dedicated build credential and trigger; the initial publication used an authenticated manual deployment.

The first water effect was too subtle. I increased the ocean motion with travelling crests and moving reflections. That helped, but the stronger waterfall treatment introduced bright patterns and animated areas beyond the painted falls. I removed that added colour and confined gentler motion to two clearly defined waterfall interiors. The improved ocean waves remain unchanged.

The build, privacy, links, checklist controls and animation lifecycle checks pass. The public pages respond correctly, but final animation appearance and real-phone performance still require visual review. A successful deployment does not replace that review.

October 18 2026 at 10:01 PM MDT

Giving the title its own place

I brought the gold SWASHPAWS sign forward as its own transparent layer above the cove illustration. The weathered teal wood, rope ties and dimensional lettering carry the same pirate identity as the promotional artwork. The sign floats and tilts slightly on a repeating loop, while the background water continues independently.

The sign uses perspective transforms over a rendered illustration; it is not a rigged three-dimensional game model. I kept its movement small and made the artwork scale together on phone and desktop layouts. The animation control stops both the sign and water, and reduced-motion preferences leave the sign still. That control also works if the water graphics fail.

The build, public-content checks and animation-control tests pass. Responsive rules preserve the scene proportions and provide a forty-four-pixel touch target. Those checks do not establish real-phone performance or visual approval; both still need a browser review.

October 18 2026 at 10:22 PM MDT

Keeping the production record in sync

I made the production map, daily journal and source history part of the same completion rule. Every finished step now requires all three to agree. A change to the journal or a completed work push also means checking the map. Revisions stay under their existing step rather than inflating the count.

I corrected the map to reflect what has actually happened. The domain is connected, the Coming Soon page and BTS journal are live, and the written journal exports into the blog. The landing page remains ready for final visual review. Automatic deployment from future source pushes and real-device checks are still unfinished.

Phase 0 is complete. We remain in Phase 1, with four of its seven steps complete and ten of seventy checklist steps complete overall. That count is a record of milestones, not a measure of how much of the game has been built. The playable multiplayer foundation is the next phase; gameplay production has not started.

October 18 2026 at 11:01 PM MDT

Completing the website phase

Landing page approval

I approved the landing page after testing it on mobile. That closes the presentation work in P1.4, including the layered title, living water and responsive layout.

Automatic deployment

P1.6 now has a working GitHub-to-Cloudflare pipeline. A real source push started a cloud build, passed the website checks and deployed successfully. The public website reported the exact pushed source version. The deployment credential is dedicated to this website workflow and stored in the hosting service, with no secret in the repository or public journal.

Public visitor verification

For P1.7 I checked the public landing, BTS journal, prologue, daily entry and Coming Soon destination. Their linked resources loaded, the missing-page route returned the intended 404, and plain HTTP now redirects to HTTPS. The main and www addresses work. An Android browser request also succeeded; the mobile visual approval comes from my own testing, not from that request or an automated GPU benchmark.

Phase one complete

All seven Phase 1 steps are complete. The production map, this daily journal and the versioned source record are being closed together. Thirteen of seventy checklist steps are complete, including Phase 0. This remains a milestone count rather than a claim that a comparable portion of the game is built. Phase 2 has not started; the next authorized work will establish the playable game foundation.

Steps P1.4 P1.6 and P1.7 completion. Verified work commit 57924619b8578796473fd4764f1ddd9dfdefa006.