Applauding Recent Modding
March 6th, 2009
After mentioning Nimai's great works in our Alpha 16 post there has been a continuing flurry of Lugaru and Overgrowth modding activity. Overgrowth Modding: Jo-Shadow recently posted a dissertation on creating, skinning, and loading custom models into Overgrowth. He carefully describes everything from setting up UV maps to creating a clean *.obj file that can be used by our ...
How I Make Overgrowth Assets: Part III, The Base Model
March 4th, 2009
Here is the third part of how to make an Overgrowth asset. This time I will talk about making a base model to sculpt from. This is the first of the 3 models I will make to create the final asset. I built this using 3D Studio Max 9 with the intention of importing it into Mudbox 2009. Box-modeled base ...
The Linear RPG
March 3rd, 2009
I just came across The Linear RPG by Sophie Houlden, and thought it was a brilliant example of focused gameplay design. Usually we don't post about other games, but I think this is a good way to learn about the core mechanics of RPG games. At the heart of most role-playing games are two forms of progression: leveling up ...
Overgrowth Alpha 16
March 2nd, 2009
Here is what is new in Overgrowth this week... If you are confused, please read our fancy FAQ. There is not a lot of really hot new tech stuff to show you guys because we are working on the animation editor. However, we did get some fixes in and Aubrey has included a number of new assets that we will ...
Overgrowth Voted 5th Best Indie Game on ModDB
March 1st, 2009
The ModDB Mod of the Year Awards have recently been announced. In addition to Overgrowth's nomination for the Editor's Choice "Best Upcoming Indie" award the final polls have been announced and Overgrowth has been voted ModDB's 5th Best Indie Game. We're very honored that Overgrowth has achieved such recognition at this early stage in its development ...
Google App Engine for indie developers
March 1st, 2009
As promised, here's the second part of my post about web hosting. I thought I would highlight the technology that we use for the main Wolfire site, Google App Engine, and explain why we chose it. Before I explain what App Engine is exactly, let me talk about what I look for in a web host. - Scalability and reliability ...
Editor Paintbrush
February 28th, 2009
To create natural environments in Overgrowth, we will need to be able to quickly populate the landscape with lots of semi-randomized rocks and vegetation. Doing this is pretty tedious with the current editor toolset. So, I've begun work on a 'paintbrush' tool for quick object placement. It's still in its early stages, but I've found it fun ...