Hotspots Part 2: Race Course
May 4th, 2009
After my last hotspot post, a lot of people recommended various ways we could make our hotspot and scripting interface more user-friendly. Accessibility is a big priority for us, so we are definitely working on this. As a first step, I've added a hotspot browser. This browser lets users select convenient, prepackaged hotspots and place them in the map ...
Introducing Wolfire WebKitten
May 2nd, 2009
Often, when I wear my Wolfire T-shirt people compliment me on my nice FireFox shirt, exclaiming their love for the browser. I thought I would confuse people even further by making Wolfire's very own web browser! I teamed up with AJS, the creator of Awesomium, to bring you guys Wolfire WebKitten: Wolfire WebKitten What is WebKitten? WebKitten is a ...
Subgroup Selection
May 2nd, 2009
In the Overgrowth editor, groups usually behave as encapsulated units. However, it's often useful to select and tweak the individual elements of a group. For example, you might want to copy an individual object in a group. The group browser provides one way to do this. But it can be disruptive to rely on an abstracted browser window for ...
Four myths about JavaScript
April 29th, 2009
Hey guys, we are using JavaScript for the scripting system in Overgrowth. Unfortunately, every time we bring it up, we get a lot of flak about the language. Here are a few common misconceptions and my response to each of them. Myth 1: JavaScript is just a clowny version of Java JavaScript is actually totally independent of Java. The only ...
Always initialize your memory
April 26th, 2009
I ran into an interesting bug when I was messing with an early version of David's shadows. I was a little surprised to see my full name projected onto the ground: My name inscribed in the terrain I often hear that you should always initialize your memory before using it, but I had never seen such a vivid example ...
Group Browser
April 25th, 2009
Keeping track of all objects, groups, hotspots, scripts, characters, and more in a big Overgrowth level can quickly become a headache. We started noticing this with Hale's massive Foothold map, and it's becoming more apparent now that I'm adding hotspots and other new entities to the editors. So, we've been playing around with a number of ...
Post processing - part two
April 24th, 2009
I had a lot of fun the other day experimenting with post-processing effects, so I made a video to show how they look in action, and to explain how some of them work. While they are fun to play with, we will probably focus on them last -- we want to make sure that Overgrowth looks great even without post-processing! However ...