As for the the trees, I agree, they would look great if more stylized.

Jonathan Blow:
The focus will be on creating interest with environmental sounds.

That’s music to my ears. Thank you!

omg c’mon! its been a long time already. i don’t want you to spoil anything or tell us something really important in the game but just like a little something… i dont know what though.

Jonathan Blow: At present there is no music in the game.
The focus will be on creating interest with environmental sounds.

Hells the fuck yeah!

And whether or not we can get a teaser of a song featured in the game?

I think the foliage looks a bit too detailed compared to the other terrain and architecture at the present time.

My brother got 3d Construction Kit (aka Virtual Reality Studio) back in the 90s and used it to make puzzle games for me to play, it was the first time I had seen anything like this.

Jonathan, I’d be interested to know if you ever came across 3DCK, if you had it would be great to think it had influenced you on some subconscious level – it was ground-breaking stuff at the time!

lost sucks, is wayy too long and j.j. abrams sucks!

I’m basically referring to the seminal “puzzle games” of the last couple of years: World of Goo, Osmos, Portal, maybe Braid etc.

With regards the grass, I think the point where it meets the ground is the issue – I suppose changing the ambient lighting will make these two contrast less so that would be good. Is it all possible to feather the point where the grass meets the ground, or always make sure another smaller piece of less contrasting grass surrounds the base of larger grasses? This might help smooth the transition between the flat ground and the vertical bitmap of grass, and be more visually pleasing.

I’m sure you’ve tried loads of different techniques already and this isn’t very useful – after all, I don’t know if any of these ideas would be too ‘expensive’.

Keep it up though, I can’t wait to play it, regardless of how the grass looks!

btw, it would be nice if you’d add a Lost reference. Maybe a button and hieroglyphs in a bunker or a hatch?

It’s also likely that we will start introducing more variety, so the grass doesn’t look like the same bitmap over and over. In some areas where we have done this it looks *way* better.

After these two things are done we’ll assess what else may be helpful!

About the game being playable by non-gamers: it is my hope that this will be true, but we’ll see. It’s hard enough to make a good game that is this unlike other games… one can only solve so many hard problems at once.

Keep up the good work,team witness.

I really love the look of the autumnal area, by the way. The verdant area looks kind of weird with the lightmapping issue, but if it ends up looking similar to the concept shot, it’ll be great too.