Firewatch | First Person Narrative Exploration Wyoming Simulator | Out Now!

TychoCelchuuu

Reviews

• Rock Paper Shotgun.
• The A.V. Club.
• Shacknews.
• Polygon.
• PC Gamer.
• Forbes.
• IGN.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d02lhvvVSy8








Firewatch is a first person exploration adventure game where you play as a man named Henry, who is a fire lookout in the Wyoming wilderness a little while after the Yellowstone fires of 1988.



Your only contact with the outside world is via your handheld radio, through which you talk to your supervisor, Delilah. Your first day on the job, something mysterious draws you out of your lookout, and from that point on you begin exploring the wilderness.



The game has a focus on narrative, dialog choice, natural conversations, exploration, and probably fire?



It's out for Windows, OSX, Linux, and PlayStation 4.




Firewatch was made by Campo Santo, a new video game company formed by the two lead writers of The Walking Dead (Sean Vanaman and Jake Rodkin), a lead designer of Mark of the Ninja (Nels Anderson), the guy who does all those sweet movie posters (Olly Moss), and other people. Check out the development blog for more information about the company and the game, or read the first Campo Santo Quarterly Review, compiled by the Campo Santo Ombudsman, to get a feel for the company.

• Official Website
• Slides from a GDC talk given by one of the lead designers, all about narrative and immersion
• IGN.com preview: "Why Firewatch is One of Our Most Anticipated Games of 2015"
• A bunch of wallpapers of that sweet art at the top of this post
• A blog post about the process of turning art into game models

Zenitram

Has too much potential to drop to the fourth page.

TychoCelchuuu

New blog post:

Oh hello again.

I was working on materials today. I like doing these “before and after” shots to compare results, and also to show the team in our group chat to get feedback. I figured you all might like to see them too.

While we are aiming for a stylized aesthetic in Firewatch, we want the world to feel like a tangible real space for exploration. Paying attention to subtle surface detail makes a big difference between the space feeling like a toy versus a space that you can suspend disbelief in.

The shots labelled “Diffuse only” use basically a flat shader that takes a flat color map and nothing else. The ones labelled “with Gloss & Normal” have a diffuse color map, as well as a specular map telling the shader what areas are shiny, and a normal map adding the illusion of higher resolution details to flat geometry. (It is kind of a misnomer for me to say “gloss” in the image, because it technically did not have a gloss map yet but oh look at that shiny thing over there.)

The greyscale image is the specular map used on the white deck.

The blueish purple image is the normal map used on the white deck.

They are both generated using NDO2, which I just started evaluating today; it’s impressive.

TychoCelchuuu

New blog post:

Summer is here, which strangely means I cook food that fills the office with heat. But summer is blueberry season, blueberry pie is delicious, and the office has windows and A/C.

Farmer’s Market Blueberry Pie

Crust
Go buy your favorite store-bought, non-frozen pie crust. I think this was Safeway brand. I am not good enough at making pie crust for it to be worth it, and it requires planning for pie a day in advance, which is too long to wait.

Filling
1 pint blueberries
1 lemon, for both peel and juice
1/4 cup tapioca pearls
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
Heavy pinch of cinnamon
Heavy pinch of all-spice
Hearty slug of brandy
1/8 cup water
1 tablespoon butter

Preheat your oven to 400°.

To make the filling, pour half of the blueberries and the water into a sauce pan over medium heat. Simmer until the blueberries are soft, then smush them with the back of a wooden spoon.

Add the sugar, the spices, the grated peel of lemon. This will cause foaming, so keep a sharp eye on this. Stir regularly to prevent scorching. Once this has reduced to a thick syrup, add the brandy, then kill the heat.

I don’t like my fruit pies overly sweet, so this is far less sugar then most recipes call for. If you do like your pies sweeter, feel free to adjust. Personally, I find fruit to be plenty sweet all on its own. And I feel less guilty about eating half a pie.

Let the filling set for a minute or two, then add the tapioca, and stir to combine.

Add the other half of the blueberries to the thick, lumpy syrup.

Pour into a pie pan, lined with dough.

Top with the juice of a lemon, and add the butter cut into tiny cubes.

Take a second piece of pie dough, and form a lattice on the top. There are great guides to making pie lattices online. Like this one: http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/how_to_make_a_lattice_top_for_a_pie_crust/

Throw your pie in the oven for 40 to 50 minutes on the center rack. You want to bake it until the filling is making big slow bubbles up through the lattice. It should also have a golden brown crust and smell amazing. If you find the edges of the pie crust are cooking too fast, you can slow that down by placing a strip of aluminum foil covering the out edge of the crust, shiny side out. (The foil reflects the Infrared radiation from the heating elements in the oven, preventing much of the thermal energy from reaching the pie crust directly. Air is a terrible conductor.)

Once the pie is done baking, place it on a rack or your stove top to cool. I almost never let this cool enough, since I am not a patient man. Really, you want the pie to get cool enough to set through–it’ll be barely warm. I don’t mind runny pie, so I tend to attack early.

Blueberries won’t stay in season long, so get them while they are good.

If you want, you can freeze the filling for later. Instead of pouring the filling into a pie crust, pour it into a foil-wrapped pie tin. Let it cool completely, and then place it in the freezer. Once frozen hard, take it out of the foil and place it in an airtight container.

When you want pie later, take the pie disk out of the freezer, place into a pie dough lined pie tin, and toss in the over. You will want to cook it longer and at a lower temperature, until it starts bubbling.

Mike Danger

I'm so excited for this. The art that's been shown so far is conjuring up memories of wandering in the backwoods in Alan Wake, which is a good thing

davidsdurions

Yes, I will play this.

TychoCelchuuu

Some cool book covers have been posted on the blog. Samples:

TychoCelchuuu

New blog post - experimental with first person animations. A sample:

GMaster7

I'm a big huge fan of Idle Thumbs, the weekly podcast that these guys do, on which they talk about what games they're playing but in which they also dive deeply into the trials and tribulations (and triumphs!) of game development. They're great and I have really high hopes for this game.

TychoCelchuuu

If there is anything I could conceivably type to encourage you more strongly to read the Campo Santo Quarterly Review Vol. 1 Issue 2 than this post you're reading right now, please imagine that I have typed that.

Meanwhile, the guy who did those animations above is benson, who has been a member of these forums since 2012! With zero posts. He also made, among other things, this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nds1T7U9FqY

yossarian_lives

Oh man this looks pretty cool. I grew up in Wyoming so there's some question as to whether they can really show just how beautiful the area can be.

For example, this is the church my family attended for many years. My dad used to give services there.


The glass window behind the altar faces Laramie Peak. The church is located in Esterbrook, quite a ways from Yellowstone but it should give you an idea as to just how amazing the scenery can be.

So on one hand, I'm super excited for this game. On the other, I'm fairly certain I'll be disappointed.

TychoCelchuuu

Two of the devs grew up in Wyoming too so it's not like they have no chance of making the game look nice.

yossarian_lives

Oh, I have no doubt it'll look nice. I just think it'll be difficult for the devs to capture the real thing in a game.

TychoCelchuuu

New blog post by the new graphics and engine programmer.

TychoCelchuuu

Small update:

surrealitycheck

the porky hands are makin me giggle

this shit looks interestin and should be great with a rift

TychoCelchuuu

New pretty pictures, including:

Ov3rcharge

I love Sean Vanaman's writing but I'm disappointed that it's going into yet another walking simulator.

TychoCelchuuu

New programming/design blog post about the HUD and feedback.

TychoCelchuuu

Introduction from the animator, including a video on animation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAMEIH2_f1k

TeeMan

I would like to know more *bookmarks dev diary*

Drake

Mmm. Love that Olly Moss touch.

TychoCelchuuu

Blog post about a new tool the programmer whipped up which also confirms that beer, whiskey, and antlers are in the game.

TychoCelchuuu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA0AzORiGOg

yossarian_lives

Bullshit! I've never seen a nerd on a mountain before, other than myself of course, and my buddy Clint (but he was more of a moron than a nerd. Seriously who throws rocks at a moose? It's the size of a horse and has fucking antlers!) I'm fairly certain that I'm the only person who ever played Tie Fighter and hung out on the Rockies in the early 90s. Must be a brave new world.

Sterica

Mountains are the nerd's natural enemy.

TychoCelchuuu

The game will be at PAX Prime.

curly haired boy

this looks hella immersive

TychoCelchuuu

The third issue of the Quarterly Review is out!!!!

Jutranjo

Where is the trailer or the screenshot, I see neither.

TychoCelchuuu

The game will premier at Saturday, August 30 at 10:30am in the Hedgehog Theatre at PAX. They'll show gameplay and a trailer. The presentation will also stream on twitch.tv and then of course it'll be online for everyone to watch.

Mike Danger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d02lhvvVSy8

God, this game looks good

Bubby

Not a fan of the huge Pixar-hands.

The Ender

If I asked my supervisor if my fire lookout job was dangerous and they said, "PFFT. GETTING OUT OF THE SHOWER IS DANGEROUS KID. PEOPLE DIE FALLING OUT OF THE SHOWER ALL OF THE TIME," I'm pretty sure i'd go looking for new job.

davidsdurions

Bubby wrote: »

Not a fan of the huge Pixar-hands.

Well if they wore some gloves during that rope descent, we wouldn't have to worry about the chubby hands.

Game looks interesting still though.

agoaj

This game looks güd,
not a fan of the voice acting though.

curly haired boy

awwww yiss

immersive as hell

surrealitycheck

this shit looks doep

im ready to both walk and touch

cooljammer00

The Ender wrote: »

If I asked my supervisor if my fire lookout job was dangerous and they said, "PFFT. GETTING OUT OF THE SHOWER IS DANGEROUS KID. PEOPLE DIE FALLING OUT OF THE SHOWER ALL OF THE TIME," I'm pretty sure i'd go looking for new job.

I mean, in a way being a firewatch lookout is both dangerous and boring. It's boring when there isn't a problem, but when there's a problem THERE'S A BIG PROBLEM.

Fencingsax

cooljammer00 wrote: »

The Ender wrote: »

If I asked my supervisor if my fire lookout job was dangerous and they said, "PFFT. GETTING OUT OF THE SHOWER IS DANGEROUS KID. PEOPLE DIE FALLING OUT OF THE SHOWER ALL OF THE TIME," I'm pretty sure i'd go looking for new job.

I mean, in a way being a firewatch lookout is both dangerous and boring. It's boring when there isn't a problem, but when there's a problem THERE'S A BIG PROBLEM.

Also, there are pretty clearly some emotional shenanigans going on.

cooljammer00

Fencingsax wrote: »

cooljammer00 wrote: »

The Ender wrote: »

If I asked my supervisor if my fire lookout job was dangerous and they said, "PFFT. GETTING OUT OF THE SHOWER IS DANGEROUS KID. PEOPLE DIE FALLING OUT OF THE SHOWER ALL OF THE TIME," I'm pretty sure i'd go looking for new job.

I mean, in a way being a firewatch lookout is both dangerous and boring. It's boring when there isn't a problem, but when there's a problem THERE'S A BIG PROBLEM.

Also, there are pretty clearly some emotional shenanigans going on.

Yup. It seems a bit too telegraphed, but it's still early.

I guess I'm just a bit let down. I knew walking through an Olly Moss drawing would be impossible, but the game does just seem like it's only slightly Moss-ified. I was expecting like an Unfinished Swan type thing. Also, being a firewatch lookout seems like an interesting enough plot without drama stuff. You're out there by yourself for months.