Duck the Rules
RU Discord (opens in a new tab) Join the waitlist
Logbook

Week 10 · October 17 to 23 2026 · days 62 to 68

The first minute

  1. Sat 17
  2. Sun 18
  3. Mon 19
  4. Tue 20
  5. Wed 21
  6. Thu 22
  7. Fri 23
October 21. A new game starts at a desk. The lesson is going, it's quiet, and there's one hint at the bottom
October 21. A new game starts at a desk. The lesson is going, it's quiet, and there's one hint at the bottom

Log entry: day 62

Saturday, seventeen commits.

We started with the J board. The flight engineer drew three sheets: newspaper clippings, strict capitals and black labels. I took the newspaper: headlines like clippings, ruled paper.

Three versions of the board: newspaper clippings, strict capitals, black labels. We took the first
Three versions of the board: newspaper clippings, strict capitals, black labels. We took the first

Then I nitpicked the words. About the sheet with the clues: "the wording is a nightmare… the sheet is just hell, some kind of repetition." And: "the section title is Clues, and on one sheet, not scattered around." About the "without something" pattern: "it's bad to use the 'without something' pattern and put a cross on it. Just the name of the clue and a tick or a cross!" So that's what we did. I asked to move the days of the week out of the card and up above, "otherwise it clutters it too much."

The J board in the game: the case, the investigative experiment in numbers, and the clues on one sheet
The J board in the game: the case, the investigative experiment in numbers, and the clues on one sheet

Then the word "ban". The game said "break the ban", and I wrote: "we must not and have no right to say that you need to break a ban. It's an investigative experiment, after all… think like a prankster." Now the case cover says "Run an investigative experiment", and under the frames: "Repeat his prank", "Stay unnoticed", "Find the clue". The lightbulb on the board says: "Compare the clues with the photos, cross out whoever doesn't fit." And on the T-shirt, instead of "Nobody", there's now a Sherlock hat: I took the first of four sketches.

I didn't like the cover either: "I hate the large number of fonts and styles." Now it's one paragraph in one font, steps in numbers, and the "Play!" button in plain letters. And about how it appears: "the moment it appears is very sudden." The cover now slides in a second and a half after the sticker has been read.

Also, the thought about the first clue was cut off by the journal opening by itself. I wrote: "the thought showed up and got interrupted by the journal auto-opening!" Now a thought stays up at least 3.2 seconds, and the last line waits until I press J. And I added: "the system doesn't tell you what to do: a sticker with a lightbulb hint in the corner." The lightbulb went up on the board. And bottom left there's now a plate with one mission, so I don't forget about the journal.

The courtyard was going on in parallel. For the information stand I picked the fourth of four options: "a two-sided island, but put it flush under the canopy, on the edge of the atrium… we'll break up the space." The face has a "you are here" map, INFO and a clock, and the back, toward the corridor, has notes and an exhibition of work. For the oak I asked for "a two-tier round or oval bench", and dead wood at the root. We took "Oval". And about the railings in the courtyard I said: "it'd be awesome to bring the railings to life." Three rounds of sheets. I rejected boxes with garlands every other one: "creepy", "so the pattern doesn't read." We took "Scatter": different plants at random, on the ledge behind the bars. The greenery along all the galleries added half a millisecond to a frame.

The info island in the atrium: a map, INFO, a clock, a bench with sockets and a planter with greenery on top
The info island in the atrium: a map, INFO, a clock, a bench with sockets and a planter with greenery on top
Greenery on the railings in the game: the whole courtyard, above the island, from below, from the gallery
Greenery on the railings in the game: the whole courtyard, above the island, from below, from the gallery

In the evening the flight engineer moved us to AnimationTree. Before, the code mixed the poses; now they're clips from Blender, and the game only says how much of what to switch on. A pose is calculated faster: 39 microseconds instead of 108.

Nine poses: on the left as it was, on the right AnimationTree
Nine poses: on the left as it was, on the right AnimationTree

Then I looked at the walk through the tree and wrote: "because the pant legs are static, there's no feeling that the leg is moving right. From the pelvis." It turned out the hip joint sat ten centimeters below the groin, right at the hem of the shorts. The shorts hung on the pelvis like a box, and the thigh came out 9.8 centimeters against a shin of 17.4. The joint was raised to the groin, the pant legs started moving with the leg, and 26 bodies were exported again.

Before and after: the seat of the shorts on five looks on a chair, with the hip joint raised to the groin
Before and after: the seat of the shorts on five looks on a chair, with the hip joint raised to the groin

While at it, the seating check first found a "problem" that wasn't there. It measured the back with a box and decided the hood of the emo kid was sticking out of the chair back. The hood was just hanging above it. Rays along the chair and the body found the real problem: the chair back leaned forward, although it was meant to lean back eight degrees. Because of that the dandy's sweater stuck out of the plywood at the back. The chair was rebuilt.

Log entry: day 63

On Sunday I played the start and wrote ten notes with screenshots. Three commits that day: the rest of the work from the parallel sessions only went into the history on Tuesday.

The last point didn't go smoothly. I wrote: "the teacher is going through the wall with her textures." The body capsule is the same width for everyone, but an adult's look is stretched as a whole: the teacher's hair sticks out 37 centimeters from the axis, her sleeves 41. The path on the navmesh ran along the wall tight against it, and the look went into it by 14 to 18 centimeters. The first try: make the capsule wider. A check went red: the teacher never got back to the board in 40 seconds, and the passage at her desk got narrower. The change was rolled back. We did it differently: now the path keeps the body away from the walls by the width of the look, where there's room. Without the fix, a hand with the journal went into the wall by 10 to 16 centimeters; after it, by less than three and a half.

I also watched the teacher at the board and wrote: "the idle animation is so buggy that the legs bend the wrong way, the wrong direction." All lesson long she "shifted her weight", and her feet slid 14 centimeters back and forth and 6 sideways. Now sideways it's no more than a centimeter, and back and forth only the pelvis lagging in a turn is left, which is intended. The flight engineer made three versions of the idle, and I answered: "the signature sway is the thing, that's the whole point… you can swap all these types one after another at random." The base stayed as it was, the spring. Between it, every 5 to 12 seconds, there's an insert: weight on one leg, a shuffle, or "stirring" a numb leg.

The main thing on Sunday was the distraction lesson. It's the first window of the game: everyone has looked away, "NOBODY'S LOOKING", and you have to get up and act. Three rounds of sketches. I turned down the gray of the slow-motion because "it feels like you lost". I chose this: "just show this bar and this plate right under the text in the middle, and then it smoothly moves off to the place where it'll always be."

Three frames of the lesson: the caption and the bubble large, the world speeds up, the bubble moves to its place
Three frames of the lesson: the caption and the bubble large, the world speeds up, the bubble moves to its place

Then I played with this lesson once more and wrote it down point by point. "In onboarding the chair can go. I can walk into the school anyway. Take it out. Later we'll teach sitting and throwing." "Too many clouds at once when you sit down… that thought needs to go altogether." And about the announcement: "she came and was like 'we're having a film'. I got totally confused." The training chair was removed, and the extra thoughts too. The "we're having a film" announcement now comes only when the plate is about the experiment. When the journal is thrown out of the classroom, the teacher goes after it herself: that's intended. I said: "we leave it, but let a 'where's the journal?' cloud hang over her as she leaves, so it's clear where she's going."

Log entry: day 65

Monday had no commits. On Tuesday I was going through where a newcomer loses interest in the first minutes of the game. For a start the flight engineer cleaned up three quiet breakages. Each one had a check that went red on the old code.

Then the duck. I wrote: "the duck keeps looking off somewhere to the side (in the game too), that's ridiculous." The duck stood at the rules board facing me, and her head with the beak looked sideways.

Before: the duck at the rules board, the beak looking sideways
Before. Before: the duck at the rules board, the beak looking sideways
After: the duck looks at the schoolboy
After. After: the duck looks at the schoolboy

The cause is simple. A grown-up was given the "look at their own business" glance once, at their post. For the duck that's the door of her office. Wherever she went after that, her head held that door for as long as her neck allowed. Now, on the move, a grown-up looks the way they're going, and standing somewhere that isn't their post, looks where they're facing. Before, on the way to the rules board the duck looked away from her path in 788 frames out of 837. Now she looks along it, and in turns she lags in no more than one frame in seven.

The rest of the day went to the new start. Twelve versions of the prologue clip piled up on Tuesday. And a sheet of nine frames appeared: a crime prologue and a start at the desk. By the sketch, it's about a minute to the first clue instead of three or six.

The "New start" sheet: two frames of the prologue and seven frames of the game
The "New start" sheet: two frames of the prologue and seven frames of the game

Log entry: day 66

I accepted the sheet: "I accept all your proposals." The prologue went into the game. It's a comic of photos that fly onto a table. Evening, a shadow comes into the classroom, hides the journal in a drawer and leaves. Morning: the teacher complains to the duck that somebody is moving things around on her desk, and the duck hangs up "NOBODY hides the class register". The hero with a magnifying glass turns to the viewer: "You're a detective. Repeat his prank, and you'll find out who it was." Then the title like a punch, and a slogan about thinking like a prankster.

It's filmed from the game itself, the lines are voiced with speech synthesis, with no narrator, in Russian and in English. It plays after "Play", when the school has already come up. You can skip it with Space, Enter or Esc, but not with just any key: last time hands on WASD skipped the fly-over. The films themselves aren't in git: "just local". Each is about 19 megabytes.

The prologue: evening, a shadow hides the journal, morning, a complaint to the duck. This is the version without voices

After the film the player is sitting right at a desk in 1A. The lesson is going, the journal is on the teacher's desk, the sticker with the ban is already up. There's no porch, no "walk, door, board, sit" steps, no logo when you sit down, no case cover before the game and no paragraph of rules on the title screen. There are three hints, each at the moment you can act on it. "Mouse look around" at the desk. "E to stand up" at the moment of the marvel outside the window. "WASD to walk" once you're up.

With the J board we teach by hand, not with a sticker. You look at a student up close, and there's a quiet "click": a viewfinder frame on the face, the photo flies to the corner of J. You find the first clue, and the J board opens by itself on your class. Rays on the clue, its meaning in a cloud, rays on the photo it crosses out. Tap, a cross, the rays go out. The first "no" is shown once, by flipping the rule. I clarified: what bothered me was the case folder opening by itself, not the board. The yellow lightbulb sticker lived four days, from Saturday to Wednesday. Now it's gone.

The new start: from sketch to game

The J board sheet: a click on a face, the first clue, a cross, the rule flipped
The J board sheet: a click on a face, the first clue, a cross, the rule flipped
The first clue on the board: rays on the line and on the photo, the meaning in a cloud
The first clue on the board: rays on the line and on the photo, the meaning in a cloud
The start at the desk: "Mouse look around", nothing else
The start at the desk: "Mouse look around", nothing else

And then I looked at the frames and wrote: "what a mess, so much info… is that only in the test or will it be in the game?" Part of the overlays was the tool's staging: a click in 1A, where you already know everybody, and a clue without a prank. Part was real. The real part was removed. The task plate at the start doesn't slide out in the middle of the frame, but sits in the corner. The "WASD to walk" line stays silent while there's a thought over your head, and lasts no more than six seconds. A one-off thought waits until the journal scrap has finished celebrating. One message at a time.

Log entry: day 68

Thursday and Friday had no commits in the game. A week ago the game greeted a newcomer with a porch, four steps of a primer and a case cover before the game. Now after "Play" they watch a comic of photos and sit down at a desk where the lesson is already going.

Where it came from

Two runs through the start of the game, mine. Ten notes with screenshots from October 18 and "what a mess, so much info" from the 21st. Sheets of options, one each for the bench, the island, the greenery, the pant legs, the idle, the board and the distraction lesson. And a review of the start of the game: where a newcomer loses interest in the first minutes.

The week in numbers