For that you want “Sir, you are being hunted” (http://www.big-robot.com/tag/sir-you-are-being-hunted/), available on Steam, which is full of procedural generation and beauty (but not as vibrant colours as The Witness!).

When the game is released, I’ll be sure to keep a detailed journal of what my game experience was like – just for the amusement of the development team.

We will do some kind of slightly public beta at some point, but we are still pretty far from that.

I don’t think the Minecraft model really works for a single-player puzzle game, because what happens is, all the game’s biggest fans get to play the worst version (slightly broken / not yet tested / etc). That is backwards, I think!

But, I am glad you are interested in the game. We will figure something out.

I’m very interested in your game design processes and I’ve been following this game since it was announced, so like most people reading this blog entry I would love a chance to provide any helpful feedback or testing.

Chances are it’s way too early to make any comment on this topic, or that it would simply be unnecessary work for your company, but I can’t help asking since the future of the game is more interesting to me than anything else publicly announced.

This approach to sound worked incredibly well in Riven. The sound made the mostly static images that made up the game come alive. I’ve always been surprised that more games haven’t tried to emulate what Cyan did with that game, there really hasn’t been anything like it since.

Okay, I am really jealous now.

Disregard this post. I probably should have scrolled down an inch to see JB’s reply.

Yeah. If there are, say, 15 terrain types (and I’m probably low-balling it), that would be 75 recordings for each, which is only a little bit in excess of variety.

CHECKER = C Hecker

That’s one of the puzzles solved.

I CANNOT wait to play this thing. I’ve actually playtested the very first area on XBOX at the Gaîté Lyrique last summer in Paris, and it was really good. That’s when I looked at the brochure and saw “Jonathan Blow” and got real excited (I’ve played Braid, loved it).

Anyways, thanks for doing this development blog: as a 10th grade student and aspiring game programmer, it helps me get some insight into the dev process. Oh, and one last thing. What’s a good way to learn some C/C++? Self-teach on the internet? Wait ’til college?

Anyway, thank you for doing what you do, Jon and the rest of the team. You guys are shaping the gaming imdustry with this. I might go so far as to say you’re making history.

Matt

About those footsteps… wow, that’s pretty hard out. Multiple sounds for each foot, and for different surfaces, and even overlaying them. It reminds me a bit of the particle effects in Braid: they weren’t obvious or anything but they were there, and had a subtle but significant impact on the entire atmosphere and mood of the game. I tried making a level without them and it looked way too flat.

Yes, it was the Indiecade finalist judging panel. http://www.indiecade.com/2012/

Never talked about being on the podcast!

I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while now, but were you recently on a judges panel for some kind of videogame competition with Emily Gordon? She mentioned on her podcast that she was judging something with you, and I was curious if there was any talk of you appearing. I discovered you in the first place from her (and Kumail’s) podcast, and purchased Braid not long after.

Was an appearance on their podcast ever discussed?

Sold!

The plan is still to have it in there. It depends on certain parts of the game getting done, though. We’ll see.

I don’t even think this one was my idea! It organically fell out of the development/discussion process.

It’s not even that, because the game is not done. It is like watching the dailies of a movie all the way through the filming and production process.

If there are other ambient sounds (ocean, wind rustling leaves), do you have similar statistics you can share?

Hi Linus – Technically Cyan is still around, they are just working on much smaller projects these days, unfortunately. (Prior Cyan art guy here.)

That said, you’re right… very few developers seem to be doing games with such a strong focus on environmental exploration and discovery. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with what we’ve been working on in The Witness.

I’m currently playing a bit of Sleeping Dogs, and I find that running down the street sounds like a horse. It’s really quite distracting.

Keep up the great work,
Rick

Hello Johnathan

Ever considered Brian Eno’s theoretical ‘generative music’ approach for making unique sounds – or indeed entire islands?

The thing about a specific graphical aesthetic or overall look is that it has (obviously) changed over time. But then, the final result can be seen / read as arbitrary..

Yet if that’s the case why not use Eno’s generative approach, where instead of building pixel by pixel, one sets the boundary parameters of interdependent code systems – eg. shape, scale, color, density – which then interact in unexpected / nonlinear ways.

That is, your sublime little island looks ‘organic’ enough to have been grown / procedurally generated by a computer. So why can’t it be?

Near-examples of this approach are regularly seen in the awesome “Demoscene”, where entire landscapes and accompanying soundtracks explode forth in realtime from a mere 4k. (The difference there is, unlike with Eno’s approach, all modular sub-systems are ‘locked down’ – the Demos and the music are the usually the same every time.)

Basically, it would be neat to see aspects of the island Evolve in small, delightful ways.. and despite its puzzles, I think your game as a whole symbolically displays a (wonderful) lack of Telos; it appears open ended – something a lot of ‘indie’ games seem to share, unconsciously.

Anyway.. just thinking out loud. L8ers. -Phil Raptor

(The loudness of the dirt texture sound will be scaled by how much dirt is poking through the grass).

After reading this sentence, I felt obliged to say that I might as well be in love with you, Jonathan. There are many amazing indie game developers out there, developing interesting business models or technological advances, but to me, you’re the best of them all. You’re the person who makes great games by making each aspect of them perfect, by obsessing over every little detail, by making the game alive. You’re the one who makes it worth saying that video games are, in fact, art.

Thank you for this, Jonathan.

If you look closely at his Steam Library, you’ll notice that Mr. Hecker is playing Monaco too :)

When you start selling pre-orders with access to the beta, I’m totally there.

This is grand. One of the reasons I instantly fell in love with Thief: The dark project were the footsteps on different surfaces.

I shouldn’t be allowed to post comments after 10 PM…

But now, the question must be begged:
Who do I sleep with to get into this beta? :P

Keep up the awesome work, people! :D

Is the lecture still going to appear in The Witness? I imagine it was cut in one of the narrative reworks you mentioned a while back. It’s pretty clear to me that the game’s development has been pretty heavily influenced by the lecture. I hope you’re able to achieve everything you’re hoping to with this game. Regardless of what happens, I’m sure it’s going to be “awe”some!

P.S. I’m sure you’ve been inundated with these, and I know I’m nowhere near qualified for this, but if you’re looking for a beta tester to provide lengthy, detailed feedback, I would love to help.

I think that means the number of the footsteps should be even. Unless (SPOILER ALERT!) a hero becomes a cripple or a mutated creature at some point.

At least, I can play SpyParty while checker plays The Witness.

The combinatorics add up pretty fast.

We have different sounds for left and right foot, always. For any given material there are 5-6 variations for each foot, to avoid mechanical-sounding repeats; let’s just say 5 is average.

So for walking on one material, you have 10 footstep sounds minimum. Thus 1119 sound effects would be about 112 materials to walk on.

But actually, it’s fewer materials than that, and more footsteps. We have reverb footsteps for specific locations, where we blend reverb in and out, or crossfade between two reverbs, depending on where you are in a room or hallway. We also have “texture footsteps” that are meant to be layered onto a base sound… so if you are walking on grass, but a little bit of dirt is poking through the grass, the game will play the grass footstep, but with a little bit of dirt texture overlayed on top of it. (The loudness of the dirt texture sound will be scaled by how much dirt is poking through the grass).

The reason behind all this is: The Witness is a game about you wandering through a deserted island. You are the only active character in the game, so the sound of your own motion is hugely important for establishing setting and mood.

The guys at Wabi Sabi sound are doing all this work. It is coming out very well!

More likely a combination of both: A bunch of different terrain types, and a bunch of footstep sounds on each terrain type.

Since Cyan Worlds effectively closed their doors, The Witness has been my best hope for being able to revisit a carefully constructed, self-consistent, and ultimately fascinating world full of meaning and discovery. I sincerely wish you and the team the best of luck over the remaining course of your development cycle.

This feels funny, asking about footsteps. :P