Angular and linear keyframe blending
April 24th, 2010
In games, character animation is usually done using keyframes. That is, by defining important poses and placing them on a timeline. For example, in a roll animation, the keyframes might look like this: Note the green and red borders around keyframes 1 and 2 -- they will make it easier to identify them again later. As you can see, there are ...
Don't you... forget about Meebo
April 23rd, 2010
With each successive Meebo post, I imagine people might get more and more skeptical over whether anything useful transpires on the Wolfire live chat. I assure you that productive things do happen but filling a post with such chats would probably scare half of our subscribers away. Since people seem to have enjoyed the previous Meebo posts, I humbly submit ...
Reverse-Engineering Binary Files
April 22nd, 2010
This is a guest post written by Wolf Mathwig aka rudel_ic. Wolf is a long-time forum member who's reverse-engineered Lugaru file formats to enable the modification of 3D models, animations and skeletons for the game. In real life, Wolf is a 30-years-old software developer from Germany. Reverse-engineering binary file formats is like learning another language without a teacher by ...
Feedback In Game Design
April 21st, 2010
This is a guest blog by Chris Hazard of Hazardous Software Inc., the makers of the upcoming time travel RTS, Achron. Feedback is a part of every day life. It occurs when the output of something is put back in as input. Positive Feedback Imagine that you're going to a local sporting event on the weekend, and because of ...
Overgrowth Alpha 75
April 20th, 2010
Here is what is new in Overgrowth in the 75th 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 ...
Catching baked shadows
April 19th, 2010
As some of you noticed in the last alpha, the rabbit would cast shadows on the environment, but wouldn't 'catch' shadows from the environment. This meant that he could stand in a shadow and remain brightly lit, like this: I had been putting this off because casting baked shadows onto dynamic objects seemed like a tricky problem, and I ...
Planning Assets
April 18th, 2010
Although there are many times when I think planning ahead for assets is not especially needed, I have decided this time to come up with a plan for making a set of temperate rainforests plants and trees. Before getting to this point I did a lot of test assets and prototypes but I am pretty sure I have worked out ...