All Project Feathers Developer Diary entries
Creature diary··6 min read

Added a playable predator and wild hawk

A second feathered body became both a playable creature and a wild hawk that patrols, circles, dives, and can be driven back by cover.

Project Feathers / Field recording

Portrait archive

The lake needed something that could look back. Until now, its wildlife was food or scenery. The new predator changes the feeling of open ground because it is built from the same physical language as Aurelie—wings, feathers, airspeed, contact, and a body that has to move through the world.

The dark hawk began as a complete second creature with its own groom, proportions, flight poses, grounded movement, and climbing mantle. It can be selected as the playable body, which forced the character systems to stop assuming that every feathered thing shares Aurelie's shape.

The lake changed the moment one of its creatures began making a plan about the player.

The wild version uses that same rig as an enemy. It enters from a distance, patrols overhead, circles when it finds the player, and commits to a stoop. Trees matter because cover can deter the attack. A strike costs health; losing the target changes the hunt rather than leaving the hawk glued to an invisible waypoint.

For testing, P can summon or dismiss the hunter. In normal play the Wildlife setting now starts it disabled, so the player can learn the lake without being immediately hunted and turn the full food-chain pressure back on when ready.

The clip combines an automated playable-predator flight with a disclosed wild-hawk encounter reenactment. The encounter starts from a staged clear attack path, then uses the game's unmodified dive and strike AI; fixed-step capture is not a live performance benchmark.