Here is what is new in Overgrowth in this weekly alpha. If you are confused what a weekly alpha is, or even what Overgrowth is, please read our fancy FAQ. Basically, we are developing a massive video game from the ground up -- we are able to do this completely independently by accepting preorders for the game before it's done!

- Hotspots can now be linked to scripts
- Scripts can now be associated with levels
- Initial object browser
- Group browser
- Shadow quality improvements
- Shadows are now dynamically calculated
- Ambient occlusion*
- Bug fixes

*disabled for now

Jo-shadow is in charge of organizing the community maps and has done a great job in his thread in the Secret Preorder Forum.

Thanks as always for all the support! See you guys in IRC and the forums.

Up until now, Overgrowth has been using the default Windows and Mac file browsers to load objects. This is functional enough, but it's slow, ugly, and no fun. One of my favorite things to do in games is to scan through all the cool items and upgrades one can get. At their best, these inventories have the same appeal as consumer catalogs (anyone remember the old lego catalogs? those were my favorites). A lot of games have done a good job capturing the thrill of consumerism: e.g. The Sims, Diablo, Little Big Planet. I think these games are successful in this respect for at least three reasons:

1. They showcase items in a clean, visual inventory.

2. There's a clear progression from dull, easy to obtain items, to drool-inducing, hard to obtain items.

3. There's a critical mass of items, and new ones are continually added through mods, expansions, and procedural generation.

Usually these principles are applied to in-game looting, but I think they can also be applied to level editing. In fact, I think this is a big part of how The Sims and Little Big Planet make editing fun.

Right now we're working on #1. Here's a picture of the preliminary browser:

#3 is also a high priority for us; it's a big part of why we're focusing so much on easy modding and community generated content.

#2 suggests some interesting new possibilities. Perhaps achievements in Overgrowth could open up new assets for level building? For example, maybe you can't place wolves in your own levels until you've defeated a wolf in the game. Maybe you can only add the Mythic Cudgel of Whalemanic Justice if you've already found it in its secret cave.

What do you guys think about incorporating consumerist gameplay into the level editor? One potential problem is we don't want to limit players who just want to make an awesome, unrestricted mod. Any ideas on how to support both options? If we just let players toggle a switch, it sort of ruins the fun of working hard to unlock everything.

And, do you guys like how the object browser is looking so far?

P.S. Anyone in SPF should also check out Jo-Shadow's mockup suggestion of a more intricate content browser (see thread too). It's quite awesome.

I just started working on baking ambient occlusion into the lightmaps. This is currently performed by accumulating the shadows from 64 random light sources in the sky, and using the resulting ambient occlusion map to modulate the indirect lighting contribution.

Here is what the Foothold map looks like with ambient occlusion enabled (above) and without (below):

It's a fairly subtle effect, but I think it makes it easier to see the spatial relationships in complex scenes like this. Here is what the ambient occlusion map looks like by itself:

Here is a perspective that illustrates why indirect shadows are important. Even without direct sunlight, tunnels and interior areas should be a lot darker than outdoor areas.

There are a lot of other lighting features I could work on, such as radiosity and point light sources, but I think this is all the complexity we need in Overgrowth. It will mostly have outdoor scenes lit by the sun, so those extra features may not be worth the development time.

Hey guys. We've been working hard on the blog to keep you up to speed with all parts of the Overgrowth development process. The truth is we could talk about more than could be fit into a thousand blog posts but we really want to focus on the things that people find most interesting. If we use the number of blog comments a post receives as a success metric, our top ten posts have been:

1. Female Characters In Overgrowth (119)
2. Small Tank (93)
3. Storyboards For Overgrowth (87)
4. Getting Girls Involved In The Community (81)
5. Fighting Design Doc 1st Draft (79)
6. Designing Cultures (68)
7. Why you should support Mac OS X and Linux (66)
8. A Few Thoughts About Interactive Music (65)
9. Dog Weapons Part One (61)
10. Fighting As An End In Itself (61)

However, I'm sure this doesn't tell the whole story. Rather than try to abstract your preferences from blog data, we figured it was about time to ask you directly: How's our blogging? What have your favorite posts been so far and what do you want to see more of in the future?

Here is a smattering of topics we could focus more on:

• The Overgrowth World (cultures, factions)
• Hardcore Technical Posts
• Tech Demonstration Videos
• Concept Art
• Story Boards
• Game Design
• Design Tours
• PR Strategies
• The Overgrowth Fighting System
• Weapons
• An Exclusive Interview With David
• Funny Meebo Conversations
• Indie Games that Inspire Us
• The Origins of the Name Wolfire
• Why Ninja Rabbits?
• Should John Shave His Hideous Beard?

We'd be very excited to hear new topic ideas that we haven't thought of yet.