Process

Research

• sci-fi and literary inspirations
  
• contemporary forestry and logging practices
  
• indigenous history in northern california
• reached out to Nisenan tribe spokeswoman - was enthusiastic about the project but it’s still early for collaboration
• ecology of Sierra Nevada & the foothills

• social simulation games
  
• strategy games
  
• walking sims and character action games that foreground the player/character’s relationship to nature
  
• Alenda Y. Chang Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games
  

• Collecting references for electric vehicles and green tech - art direction etc
  
• vehicle design in general

Preproduction

• Spent a lot of time iterating on the look of the characters - wanted at first to continue photogrammetry for everything but this project has really different demands than Fire Underground.
  
• Spent a lot of time iterating on trees and plants - learning how to set up trees and plants so that leaves appear properly lit and they are semi-efficient at scale.
  

• NPC coworkers who help you with tasks

• planning and executing work projects like building trails, clearing brush, limbing trees
• pathfinding
  
• animation
  
• system for queueing up and negating actions
  
• traversal of the landscape with the player character
  
• game of life type systems for plant growth