I decided that it would be a cool experiment for the blog to post some of the informal discussions I have with other game developers. Perhaps this would give people some more insight behind my motivations as part of the Overgrowth team, but also give people a raw look at what being in the game industry is like.

Jack Monahan is a good friend and ex-8monkey coworker of mine. As a professional level designer and concept artist he has really clear insight into game design, and a good feel for development realities. Here is part of a somewhat edited conversation I had with him about mastery of gameplay in games:

Some of Jack's awesome concept art

Aubrey: what should your intro be?

Jack: well you can say i was always into games, but got here via an industrial design degree at Notre Dame. more importantly, my education at polycount was during the same period. i did contract concept work for several years after, traveled, and then came to 8monkey. my next immediate project is to punch kojima in the face.

Aubrey: before I post anything I will send you a copy in case you want any changes. I may have to edit stuff

Jack: totally fine. In fact, edit in things i say to make me look more pompous... hard to do i know

Aubrey: haha

I had a realization about darkSector and Portal-- I actually started another game of darkSector (you unlock "brutal" difficulty after you beat it). I felt like I wanted to play more because it was only during the last boss fight that I really felt like I was getting the hang of it.

Jack: we know about that from working on a game... we become masters, and games used to be more about mastery. i think that's a lot of what Portal does for people-- makes mastery more assured. it's easier in some ways, but the game doesn't cheat you of the accomplishments. it also democratized the appeal of mastery more than most games these days.

Aubrey: I am not sure if it is a problem that you feel the need to test your skill more after the game is done-- it seems like the end should be cathartic, but the feeling of playing well and winning while still improving makes you want to keep playing. I beat Portal 3 times from start to finish and it isn't like I don't have other games to play

Jack: heheh right, and that's the thing. it should feel that way

Aubrey: Maybe that too is why stories will fail in good video games. If the story is the best part of a game, coming to the end can be cathartic. You were just playing for the story, so once the story is done, you are done

Jack: immediately losing interest, exactly. that's where i get on peoples' cases about spoilers with books and movies. it can be important, but if it's everything, there's a problem.

the books and movies i love the most, i already know what happens. the plot is never the big draw.

Aubrey: hmm, I see what you mean-- some books or movies you can only really enjoy them the second or third time through

Jack: people read junk like dan brown in the airport when they want plot in the driver's seat, not craft. it's worthless once spoiled, just evaporates. a great book can't be encapsulated by a plot summary... and in fact some of my favorite authors don't bother much with plot at all.

Raymond Chandler largely wrote the same story over and over, a detective doing the detective thing, and they were mysteries, nominally, but it's not why he's still read today

Aubrey: Right. I am thinking of JD Salinger, no plot

Jack: i think it's the same with games. there might be some huge dorks replaying some older games only for "story," but i doubt it. they play 'em because they still are excellent, mechanically. Just moment to moment what the games do for you, like Fitzgerald's descriptions.

Aubrey: yes, the prose itself. The prose in a book is like the gameplay in a game.

An image from one of Jack's Darkest of Days levels

What do you guys think of the amount of skills required in games? What should learning those skills be like for the player? Do you think it is bad to reach the end of a game and still want to play it more? It would be great to hear your comments!

After witnessing the magic of modding in Lugaru (from the 3rd party campaigns Empire and Temple to Lotus Wolf's Weapon Shop), Wolfire has been steadfastedly committed to getting players as many mod tools as possible for Overgrowth. You guys are simply too creative and too talented for us to do otherwise.

After we made our commitment to modding clear, you quickly returned the favor by persistently heckling me on IRC and meebo to create an Overgrowth ModDB page. I confess to being such a noob at the time, that I didn't even know what ModDB was. However, per your request, I contacted the friendly guys in charge of ModDB and they helped us get the page started. I had my doubts about how significant our page would be but nearly the instant it went up, you guys were turning my boring attempt into something cool.

The Overgrowth ModDB page has been completely fan run for the past few months now (thanks Silverfish) and catches the eye of a few more people each day (including the guys running ModDB themselves). With the good impression you made for us, we were able to land an audio interview on ModDB's Developer Banter podcast. This is a big deal for us because it is Wolfire's first podcast! It runs pretty long, but many people claim to have found it interesting. Listen to it here.

Thanks again for your help everyone. I hope you'll continue to throw ideas at me in Wolfire's IRC Channel or on our nifty meebo widget.

In Overgrowth, we are working on creating many unique characters of different species, body type, sex, and occupation. Communicating distinctions between male and female characters in Overgrowth is especially challenging because of some of our basic design choices.

No Hypersexualization

Many games show that characters are female by making them look like strippers. That is, giving them breast implants, tiny waists, heavy make-up, and skimpy clothing, as seen in Tomb Raider, Dead or Alive, Soul Calibur, and so on. This approach certainly sells games and gets banner ad clicks, but it really cheapens the whole experience. Not only is it demeaning to women, but it would also not mix well with animal characters.

Animal Characters

In most games with more normal female characters, as in everyday life, there are subtle cues that make it obvious. For example, in Half-life 2, Alyx Vance is not a traditionally feminine character. However, her clothes, hair style, and face and body proportions make it obvious that she is female. For Overgrowth characters, we can't rely on most of those cues because their proportions and clothes are alien to us.

No Voice Acting?

In animated films like Madagascar, Ice Age, or The Lion King, the visual distinction between male and female characters can be extremely subtle. This problem is negated by the voice acting, which makes it immediately obvious. However, we have still not decided if we want to have voice acting in Overgrowth.

So What's Left?

There are still significant differences between the proportions and height of the male and female characters, as well as more subtle distinctions in their facial structure. We are also trying to separate their clothing choices in various ways, such as color, style and texture. Finally, there will be important differences in their movement patterns.

Here is a concept drawing Aubrey was working on today, showing a rabbit priestess lighting incense at a lunar shrine. Please let us know what you think in the comments, especially if you have any ideas on this subject!

We have been using Vimeo for a while to host David's design tours. Sadly, yesterday, Vimeo notified us that the design tours must be removed. Vimeo has a strict no video games policy, with the sole exception of video games you are developing yourself. Unfortunately, since David's design tours feature other indie games, they are not welcome on Vimeo. The ironic thing is that many of the games we featured actually use Vimeo themselves. I can't say I understand their business model, especially given that we are a paying customer, but it's their service.

The result is that we have migrated all of our videos onto YouTube. Check out the new Wolfire YouTube channel! Be sure to click the subscribe button to be notified of new Wolfire videos.

Furthermore, in light of getting kicked off of Vimeo, we contacted GameTrailers, who happily agreed to host our videos! Please track us on GameTrailers! We are really excited because GameTrailers has a much larger audience than Vimeo. In a single day on GT, more people watched our OG videos than cumulatively on Vimeo.

Finally, we are working something out with GameTrailers so that David can have a regular spot for his indie design tours. If this works out, then this will be huge, not only for us, but for all the indie games we cover, since it will be going out to a more mainstream audience, beyond the indie blogs (thanks, as always, Offworld, TIGSource, and IndieGames Blog!).

Still, getting the boot is a pain in the ass and I highly recommend other indie developers migrate off of Vimeo. Here is a word from the whaleman:

Wolfire on YouTube
Wolfire on GameTrailers

I have worked on a few commercial games and I am pretty familiar with the methods used to make cities or towns. Usually you start off with a detailed picture of what you want. An image of some cool building. Then you plan out the fewest modular pieces you will need to make that building. After that, you plan out your texture sheets because you want to reuse as much as possible. Often in the end you can only make one cool building and it's a lot of work. I wanted to do something different.

I wasn't sure where to start so I figured I would make a few big tiling textures for things I knew I would need. Walls, floors and roofs. Here is an image of my first test from 3D Studio Max.

I thought that wasn't a bad start. I put those in the game and started playing around with them. Seeing what I liked and didn't like. Since most buildings have windows I made one of those next. Then I needed something ultra generic to make steps or curbs or pillars, so I made a column of blocks.

I think at this point I realized how I was going to make all the building assets. Every time I made something new, I would play around with it in the editor until I decided what would be the most useful thing for me to make next.

I needed a door, then a better curb, after that a stone wall... etc. At each step I was actually trying out and seeing what I liked. There were a few points where I realized I had forgotten something crucial; for example when I made the roofs but forgot the triangular side wall. Not everything I made was good enough or worked like I had imagined. A few things got thrown out. What was left though was very versatile.

This worked so well because I do concept art, modeling and level design -- but the most important thing is that the other guys here trust me to do all those jobs well. In a big company I would have to ask the concept artist to make designs for the thing I needed, and then one design would have to be approved by the art director, then modeled by the 3D artist. It would take weeks and when it was done it might not even be anything like what I asked for.

So far I have made 21 building pieces and I am just covering the basics! A lot of our technology for our buildings is still in progress too. Soon we'll add lightmaps and decals. By then this stuff should be looking pretty good. There is a lot of stuff that goes into making a game and we are taking it one step at a time.