We were kicking around ideas of what a Witness poster would look like if we were to make one. We eventually came up with one that we really liked, and we’ll release that at some point in the future. But in the meantime we thought it would be nice to show some of the runner-up concepts.
Feel free to use these as desktop images or whatever. Unfortunately we didn’t mock these up at high resolution; what you see is all there is!
It’s been a while since the previous post, so here’s a new island snapshot.
Most of what we’ve been working on lately is not visible in this shot, though! The biggest obvious changes are probably in the forest and beach on the left-hand side.
Andy’s got the iPad port far enough along that you can sort of play the game now. Here’s a short video:
There are some basic hacks going on; for example, right now, we are not drawing the real sky; it’s just solid blue. Also, right now we are just loading this starting area, but it should not be long before we can load the whole game (Salvador wrote the streaming system a while back and we have been testing it extensively on the PC, so for the iPad it should Just Work. Famous last words.) Also, as you can see, the panel-tracing controls could use some work.
When we can wander around the island generally, I’ll post another video update!
Can it be that we haven’t posted an island snapshot since January 3rd?
Well, you got a pretty good look at the island in the trailer we recently released in conjunction with the PlayStation 4 announcement. That version has a lot of new modeling compared to the January snapshot, because we were working on the trailer pretty hard. But some new modeling has happened since then, and there are some subtle but nice things to see here.
Since someone is going to ask: The current puzzle count is 499.
as seen in today’s PlayStation 4 announcement:
(Watch it in HD + fullscreen if you have the bandwidth!)
(This is a crosspost from WabiSabi Sound’s blog).
I didn’t think Witness was going to be an easy project by any stretch, but I certainly didn’t expect it to be one of our biggest creative challenges. I’ve worked on nearly 80 projects spanning feature film, games, ads and other sorts, and my job as sound designer had always been to broaden the experience in every possible way. The Witness inverts this notion.
A tree of any significance in a film or game will have a bird perched on its branches chirping away. Cicadas will buzz. Wind will rustle its leaves. Branches will creak, stress and morph right before your ears. All this happening without you actually seeing it…or really expecting to, interestingly.
In The Witness every element has purpose. A key game mechanic, in fact, relies on the player’s perception as they explore. So, we’re not just talking aesthetics…noise (literally stated) ruins the game’s playability. Noticing, as a buddhist would call it, is key to discovering solutions and even finding the puzzles themselves. Nothing in the Witness is superfluous.
All this said, the island is a tangible living breathing organic place following roughly the same laws of our universe. The trees exist. They have mass and energy. My eyes receive bands of light reflecting off them, and in fact they are quite beautiful. So then what do my ears hear? Silence is not only a bad artistic choice, it’s untrue.
At this point, you’ve probably asked, “What about music?” It’s no spoiler that there isn’t a gigantic speaker system in the sky fed by a mic’d orchestra. So….
None the less, the island is a fascinating place, with lots to see, hear and do. Geoff and I ‘the audio team’ have had an interesting time exploring 1000′s of layers of sonic subtly, and finding ways to engage players to listen ever deeper. This is a unique project for game sound, and we though it would be of interest to share our challenges and discoveries since starting with Jon in 2010 (and of course the challenges yet to meet).
On January 31, 2013, Tom McShea of Gamespot interviewed me as part of their Break Room Interview series. It was an interesting conversation!
… you may wish to see Antichamber, which has just been released on Steam.
The game’s web site.
The Steam page.
The game is primarily the work of one designer, Alexander Bruce, who has been working on it for six years. Players seem to be really into the game, and it’s been the top-selling game on Steam for two days so far.
Island Snapshot
… which doesn’t look too much different from last time’s. Partially this is because we’ve been working on things that you don’t see from this angle.
Here’s a shot from a different angle:
We still have so much to do!
On my end, I’ve been working for the past couple of weeks on UI-related things. For a week I was doing better touch controls (perhaps we’ll post a video of this soon), and for a week I was somewhat-rewriting the code that implements tracing lines on panels. This can get surprisingly complicated, and I’ve rewritten it a few times. I think this is close to the last time, though.
The game tells me the current puzzle count is 574, which is higher than I expected, but hey.