Sky
December 23rd, 2008
Since most of the gameplay in Overgrowth takes place outdoors, it is very important to have a sky that looks good and renders fast. The fastest possible way to render a sky is to just draw an image to the screen, and the best source of realistic sky images is reality, so all of the skies in Overgrowth start out ...
Happy Alpha Day! Alpha 6 is here!
December 22nd, 2008
Hey guys, we are continuing our experiment with open development. So far it's been a success! It's Monday, so as promised: another week, another alpha. Per tradition, it has been posted in the secret preorder forum. Here's what's new! - David made some improvements on the way the Phoenix Engine handles the sky and shadows. Look for ...
Object Lighting part 1
December 22nd, 2008
To define the surface material of each object, we have a diffuse(color) map that defines the color and subtle shadows of the object, and a specular map that defines which parts of it are reflective. We then multiply the diffuse map with the diffuse lighting, and multiply the specular map with the specular lighting, and add them both together ...
Interview with David Rosen
December 21st, 2008
Since we announced Overgrowth, we have been doing a number of small interviews with various sites. We will probably post a compilation at some point, but one inteview in particular really stands out: GameCyte's interview with David Rosen. I'd like to highlight this one, because it's really well put together, is an interview of our fearless leader ...
Off the Grid Terrain
December 20th, 2008
Hey guys, here is the first part of the long ago promised post on our terrain simplification. Like most other 3D games, we're generating terrain meshes from heightmaps. The easiest way to do this is to just sample from the heightmap at regular intervals and place corresponding vertices on a regular grid. Unfortunately, this can lead to chunky looking ...
Overt Ops continues!
December 18th, 2008
Hey guys, here is a small update to Overt Ops. In case you don't know what this is, the idea is basically that Wolfire is a tiny, indie game company. However, the world is a huge place. While we can contact most of the video game magazines and websites in the US, we don't even know the first ...
Overgrowth Alpha 5 unleashed!
December 17th, 2008
Hey guys, you can get the fifth weekly alpha of Overgrowth in the usual place! If you haven't preordered yet, I hear that this week is the best week to preorder Overgrowth. New this week are a bunch of new models, textures and art from Aubrey. We will probably be showing them off soon in dedicated blog posts with ...