The ruins of Lugaru
February 5th, 2009
People who played Lugaru will be familiar with the ruins in that game-- often simple blocks of stone-like material, they played a critical gameplay role in many of the levels. Going into Overgrowth, I thought this was one of the more original aspects of the art direction. They seemed very mysterious and abstract, and that was my favorite thing about ...
New Alpha Video
February 5th, 2009
David made this video a little while ago to help spice up our ModDB profile (be sure to join it if you haven't already!) I thought I would post it to the blog as well. Be sure to click here to watch it in HD! Be sure to subscribe to the Wolfire YouTube channel if you haven't already ...
Design Principles from Tufte
February 4th, 2009
Minoru Niijima's version of E.J. Marey's train schedule from Paris to Lyon. X-axis is time, Y-axis is space. Horizontal red lines are stations. Diagonal red lines chart out individual trains. Copied from cover graphic of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. I have recently been reading some of Edward Tufte's books on information graphics. Tufte is ...
Overgrowth Alpha 12
February 2nd, 2009
Another week, another alpha. Here is what is new in Overgrowth this week. As usual, we have fixed a number of bugs, tweaked some stuff, and implemented some new features. Aubrey has created even more art. Going through our svn the past week, here are a few highlights: - Better graphical feedback for editor - Improved feedback grid - Lighting changes on the ...
The 6 Silliest Meebo Moments
February 2nd, 2009
I've been wanting to share these with you guys for a while now, but the timing is especially appropriate in the wake of Jeff's latest post. Jeff covered all the important benefits of Wolfire's live support. We have had our fair share of exciting visits from higher-ups at gaming news sites, awesome fans who want to give ...
Why we have live support
February 1st, 2009
One advantage that Wolfire has over a lot of other companies is the level of customer service we provide. We often respond to new emails within the hour. We monitor our forum. We read all of our blog comments. What is most unusual though, is that pretty much anytime we are awake, anyone can contact us live and one of ...
Designing Cultures
January 30th, 2009
We are going to have lots of different cultures in Overgrowth, not just for each different animal species, but for sub-groups within each species. In order to plan out the background of the game world, we have had a few discussions about the specifics of these cultures and their relationships to their environment. My job in all this is to ...