Linear algebra for game developers ~ part 1
July 1st, 2009
When I posted about decals last week, a number of readers commented that they would be interested in posts about linear algebra as it applies to game development. I decided if I'm going to write about that, I might as well start at the beginning! This will be review to many of you who have written games before or ...
Physics Editor ~ Part I
June 27th, 2009
The latest toolset I've been working on for Overgrowth is the physics editor. There are three big pieces to this, and each is now well underway. First, users need to be able to make and manipulate simple physics primitives (such as boxes, capsules, and spheres) that can be inserted into the Overgrowth physics world. Second, we need tools to ...
How to make a seamless tiling texture
June 25th, 2009
What are seams? Tiling textures are much more efficient than unique textures, which is especially important for large objects. The main cost of this efficiency is that tiling textures can look unrealistic when used incorrectly -- real rocks are not made of repeating tiles. The tiling is most obvious when there are distinct details that repeat, and the worst kind of ...
How to project decals
June 24th, 2009
We've been talking a lot about decals recently, showing off our editor and explaining how the shading works. However, we haven't explained how the decals are actually projected geometrically onto complicated objects. We've been getting some questions about that, and I remember how hard it was to find information about decals when I was getting started, so ...
Overgrowth multiplayer chat
June 21st, 2009
This is a post from Iiro Jppinen. He is responsible for most of our GUI design -- the parts that look good. Hello everyone! Some of you might have seen me mentioned on the blog before, but for those who haven't, let me introduce myself briefly: I'm the lead GUI designer for Overgrowth (a nice title I just made ...
Decals Demonstration Video
June 21st, 2009
We've been gradually improving our decals over the past few weeks (blogged in parts 1, 2, and 3). Now we're ready to show off the whole system in a video. Since my last decal update, I've added a few new specialized tools. In the video, you'll get to see how we can now manipulate and shuffle ...
Cliff Rocks
June 18th, 2009
When I am designing levels, I always seem to need more big rocks. The tricky thing about making really massive rocks is that they require equally massive textures, which can use up too much texture memory. We can use tiling textures to use less memory, but they usually look bad because they don't match the geometry. However, a tiling ...