Devlog 007: His Name Is John

Night 9, in grey box: simple shapes, before any final art.

Tonight’s passage

Luke 1:57–66: John is born, and on the eighth day the family wants to name him after his father.

Zechariah asked for a tablet and wrote, “His name is John.” And they were all amazed. Immediately Zechariah’s mouth was opened and his tongue was released, and he began to speak, praising God. (Luke 1:63–64)

The red line is gone

For two nights, a red warning has run across the screen in Play: Lumen, the engine’s lighting, was running out of room to remember the scene. The cause was our 118 prayer-stream meshes. We took them out of Lumen’s lighting (they still draw and look the same), and took 14 thin grey-box pieces out with them. In Playtest 5 the line no longer showed, over the courts or inside the Holy Place.

The arrival announces itself

When Gabriel reaches his mark at the right side of the altar of incense (Luke 1:11), two messages now show in the editor: “Arrival · Luke 1:11”, then “Arrival light up · 15.0 cd” two seconds later, when the light is full. Both fired in Play. They’re for playtests only and never ship. We checked the light from Zechariah’s view, and at 15 cd it’s clearly the brightest thing at the mark, so it stays.

The Nicanor Gate

We checked Josephus, Jewish War 5.5.3, on the great bronze gate against the Mishnah, then built the Nicanor Gate’s frame at the top of the women’s steps: 20 cubits high and 10 wide, by Middot 2:3. The doors stand open, which is our own reading, and it’s labeled that way. The wall and the gate’s two chambers wait until their sizes are sourced.

Playtest 5: too fast to land

The arrival light comes up when Gabriel reaches the column, as designed. But his flight is fast enough that he overshot the mark the first time and took about three adjustments to land in it.

So Gabriel’s own pawn gets a slow, precise mode for landing, the way walking sits beside running: a button you hold to slow down, a gentle stick tilt for slow on a controller, and an ease-in near the mark. It never steers him. You choose where to go.

Built for every controller

We wrote the controller plan for Gabriel’s pawn: one set of controls bound by button position, so the same map serves Xbox, PlayStation, Steam Deck and, later, consoles. Keyboard and mouse at full parity, every key remappable, and button prompts that change the moment you pick up a different controller.

What we decided

• The Steam page goes live as Coming Soon by January 31, 2027 at the latest, sooner if it’s ready.
• Chapter One takes 2027, and releases free at Christmas 2027.
• Eyewitness enters Steam Next Fest once, at launch: the February 2033 edition, the last before the Easter 2033 release, because Valve allows one Next Fest per game. Chapter One still comes out free in December 2027.
• PlayStation and Xbox by 2033–2034, so everything we build now has to carry over.
• Unreal Engine 6 comes after Chapter One’s engine lock, never mid-milestone.
• We build with the team we have, and add people when it helps.
• MetaHuman for the faces. Everything original.
• Streams go live at 8:45 pm, development runs from 9:00, and marketing happens off stream.

The evidence

Three sources from outside the Bible: Tacitus (Annals 15.44), Josephus (Antiquities 20.200) and Pliny (Letters 10.96).

The Gospel Point

Conviction, not condemnation (Romans 8:1; John 16:8; John 3:17).

Next

Moving to the upgraded tower. Then Gabriel’s C++ pawn with the slow landing mode, and the camera markers for our first Steam frames.

Updated November 2, 2026: Next Fest moved to launch in 2033.