usegobos

Amongst the nuggest of truth discussed during your talk with Marc ten Bosch: * richness * completeness * surprise * lightest contrivance * strength of boundary * compatibility of mechanics * orthogonality of mechanics * generosity

how do you feel the Witness shines against those metrics? I don't intend to criticize what is an honestly amazing achievement, but I feel that one nit are the puzzles that reset and force you to walk back to rework a previous panel to get another chance. Does that burden the player for doing what they naturally want to do, instead of burdening the design on discouraging guessing?

Also is there any chance of a detailed technical discussion of panel code implementation similar to the Braid Game City talk? I would be particularly interested in how designers (you or others) created new puzzles. Was it effectively a vector drawing tool? And would be willing to discuss how you Spoiler

For those interested, the nuggets of truth talk is here. It is a great talk and invaluable when reflecting on one's own designs. The Witness blog has numerous and incredibly detailed discussions on the technical and artistic implementation The Witness. Thanks Jon for being so welcoming to the community for all of this.

If you look at the terrain modelling blog entry or the algorithms they used for pathfinding, you can appreciate the depth of work involved. I imagine their office has siggraph papers tacked up everywhere.

Aaaaaaaaand, I won't be reading that. Thanks for the tag! The only reason I ask it that way is because I appreaciate his full understanding of the mechanics and I could see how he might know, at a lower level, how the permutations are quickly reduced to managable amount when certain circumstances are met.