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Day 1: Kick-off night

Prototype
Tools used:Claude (coordinator and threads)Claude Code Desktop (Remote Control on JPC)Claude in ChromeCodexCodex CLIUnreal Engine 5.9 PreviewChatGPT image generationFab and MegascansMixamoGitHubAstro
An early greybox render of the castle courtyard: dark untextured blocks under a deep blue sky.
Own capture from the Unreal Engine 5.9 greybox, 12 to 13 Nov 2026.

TL;DR: Joel said “let’s get started” at 6:03 PM. Claude started the Unreal project, the core gameplay code and asset gathering at once. By the time Joel’s PC went to sleep just before 1 AM, the C++ framework compiled, Segment 1 existed as a greybox, Codex had delivered its first hero kits, this website had a scaffold, and Codex was running headless instead of being pasted into by hand.

What we discussed and decided

  • Characters can’t be sourced, so we make them. Joel generated concept art in ChatGPT from Claude’s prompts, starting with the Guard. The first round came out holding weapons and shields, so we agreed gear should be separate attachments. We made the Hunter and the Tavernkeeper women, and after one round of base-body tests Joel decided to keep the characters we already had.
  • Map first, then build. Joel asked whether we should picture the map before building it. Claude wrote ChatGPT prompts for a top-down layout and each area. The first images set the mood: moonlit mud roads, thorns, lanterns and a barricaded tavern.
  • Hosting: Cloudflare Pages for this site.
  • The low-spec target is locked: 720p at 30 fps or better on a 4-core CPU, 8 GB of RAM and a GTX 1060 6 GB.
  • Claude handles reviews and merges. Joel gave Claude standing permission to review, fix and merge pull requests on the game and website repositories.

What Claude did

  • Unreal project: a Haiku thread on Joel’s PC created the UE 5.9 C++ project and pushed it. Before it merged, Claude found an Android security token saved in a config file and removed it. “Never commit that token” is now a rule in AGENTS.md.
  • Core framework: an Opus thread wrote the shared gameplay code that every hero plugs into: heroes, skills built from five shared primitives, gear, damage, a director stub and data-driven balance tables in CSV files. It compiled on Joel’s PC with no errors or warnings, and was the first gameplay code merged (PR #5).
  • Segment 1 greybox: a Python build script made the first blockout of the castle courtyard opening, three routes and Checkpoint 1 in plain shapes (PR #8).
  • Codex questions answered: Codex paused on the Hunter and Guard kits and asked good questions about Mark visibility, Volley and the Buckler Wall’s size. Claude answered on the GitHub issues and fixed the core so the Hunter’s Mark replicates to the team and walls block for every player (PRs #11 and #13). It then made the design calls Codex asked for on the Brawler, Tavernkeeper and checkpoints, and wrote the numbers into the balance CSVs.
  • Merged tonight: the Guard kit (PR #12) and the first bot behaviour (follow, fight and committed revives, PR #17), both after build and test runs on Joel’s PC, plus the asset ledger (PR #23).
  • Assets: Unreal’s Epic Launcher wouldn’t accept remote control, so Claude switched to Claude in Chrome on fab.com and claimed four free packs: Medieval Village Megascans, Medieval Banquet, the Game Animation Sample and Niagara Examples. Joel signed in to Mixamo, and the Longbow, Sword and Shield and Pro Melee Axe animation packs went into a raw-assets folder outside git.
  • This website: Codex built the Astro scaffold (website PR #1) with every route working and a Lighthouse accessibility score of 100, then applied the first Director’s Cut copy (website PR #2). Claude reviewed and merged both.
  • UI drafts: the first menu mockups appeared, nine screens in a dark-tavern style.

Tools we used, and for what

  • Claude Code Desktop with Remote Control ran the threads that needed Joel’s PC: the Unreal build, C++ compiles and tests, and the Python level scripts. Cloud threads did the planning, reviews and ticket writing.
  • Codex: at first Joel pasted Claude’s prompts into Codex by hand. At 10:36 PM we switched to the Codex CLI running headless (codex exec) on Joel’s PC, driven by a Claude thread that follows a runbook (PR #20). From then on Codex took every prompt without Joel touching it.
  • ChatGPT image generation made the character and map concept art.
  • Unreal Engine 5.9 Preview and its built-in MCP server. The MCP’s toolsets turned out not to cover placing actors, opening levels or taking screenshots, so levels are built with editor Python scripts run headless.
  • Fab, Megascans and Mixamo for free environment art and animations.
  • GitHub issues for each Codex task, one pull request per issue.

What went wrong

  • The game rendered black. Joel saw it first in the running game. A late screenshot showed a cube at last, with two directional lights fighting each other. The real cause was found the next morning.
  • Duplicate Codex runs. Some game tickets were started twice by mistake, and parallel Unreal builds crashed the build tool. Rule since then: one build at a time.
  • Permission checks on Joel’s PC blocked a few pushes and merges, even when Joel had approved them in the main chat. The fix was to give the merge work to cloud threads.

Joel’s PC sleeps at 12:52 AM, so every thread saved, pushed and left a status note by 12:45.