http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/05/races-in-overgrowth/

By Aubrey on May 10th, 2009

Below is one of the first pieces of concept art I did when I first started working with David. I decided to show it now because we have been talking again about the scale of the characters in game, and maybe making the height differences even more extreme.

Sorry to get your hopes up about the other critters. There won’t be any fox, tiger or panther characters in Overgrowth. Those races were all eaten by the Whaleman.

We still haven’t finalized the height of the races, what do you guys think?

http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/05/races-in-overgrowth/

By Aubrey on May 10th, 2009

Below is one of the first pieces of concept art I did when I first started working with David. I decided to show it now because we have been talking again about the scale of the characters in game, and maybe making the height differences even more extreme.

Sorry to get your hopes up about the other critters. There won’t be any fox, tiger or panther characters in Overgrowth. Those races were all eaten by the Whaleman.

We still haven’t finalized the height of the races, what do you guys think?

http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/05/initial-inspector-ui/

By Jeff on May 9th, 2009

We decided that it was high time for Overgrowth to get an inspector palette. The inspector will let you get extra info and edit all types of objects in the map editor. If you click on an object, this will be how you change its material, reorder the decals on it, toggle its visibility, or whatever else turns out to be useful.

What’s more exciting to me though, is that this will provide a standardized way to modify scriptable hotspots. For instance, remember when we were placing race start, checkpoint, and finish line hotspots? With the inspector, you will be able to click on a hot spot and change whatever parameters the modder decides to expose to you. That is, a checkpoint hotspot would let you change how much extra time it gives you. Modders will be able to expose any kind of variable they want and choose the appropriate UI to change it. If your script uses colors, you can bind that to the color picker, or if you need one line of text, you can tell it to show an editfield.

So let me introduce it, so far. Thanks to our decision to use web technologies for our UI (WebKit embedded via Awesomium) this sleek inspector represents about a day of work.

All the controls function exactly as you would expect, all the way down to being able to tab between them. I especially like how the muli-line text area can be resized by dragging the little corner on the bottom right. What happens when you click the color picker? This pops up next to it:

All of these controls (the checkboxes, radio buttons, etc.) were just off the top of my head. What UI elements would you guys like to see added here?

http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/05/initial-inspector-ui/

By Jeff on May 9th, 2009

We decided that it was high time for Overgrowth to get an inspector palette. The inspector will let you get extra info and edit all types of objects in the map editor. If you click on an object, this will be how you change its material, reorder the decals on it, toggle its visibility, or whatever else turns out to be useful.

What’s more exciting to me though, is that this will provide a standardized way to modify scriptable hotspots. For instance, remember when we were placing race start, checkpoint, and finish line hotspots? With the inspector, you will be able to click on a hot spot and change whatever parameters the modder decides to expose to you. That is, a checkpoint hotspot would let you change how much extra time it gives you. Modders will be able to expose any kind of variable they want and choose the appropriate UI to change it. If your script uses colors, you can bind that to the color picker, or if you need one line of text, you can tell it to show an editfield.

So let me introduce it, so far. Thanks to our decision to use web technologies for our UI (WebKit embedded via Awesomium) this sleek inspector represents about a day of work.

All the controls function exactly as you would expect, all the way down to being able to tab between them. I especially like how the muli-line text area can be resized by dragging the little corner on the bottom right. What happens when you click the color picker? This pops up next to it:

All of these controls (the checkboxes, radio buttons, etc.) were just off the top of my head. What UI elements would you guys like to see added here?

http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/05/decals-editor-part-one/

By Phillip on May 9th, 2009

A few weeks ago, David overhauled our decal engine. Leveraging off this, I’ve recently started implementing our decals editor, and I can now show off some fancy (but very preliminary) screenshots. I think decals will add a lot to the immersiveness and liveliness of our environments.

In Overgrowth, decals will serve at least three purpose. First, they will add variety and detail to our textures. This will, effectively, explode the number of assets we have at our disposal. Each model will be reworkable in countless distinct ways just by mixing and matching decals on its surface. For example, in the screenshots above, all the rocks are derived from the same model. I rotated and scaled them to make them seem varied, but, I think it’s only with the lichen that they really come to life as individual entities.

Second, we will use decals to blend across abrupt intersections, such as between objects and the terrain. So far, we’ve been relying on models that tend to mesh well together, and on ambient occlusion to soften the seams. Decals will add a lot to this effort. Decals are like graphical glue. They make everything gel together.

Third, and lastly, we will use decals for slapping Wolfire logos all over the place. Here’s how my rock garden turned out after I sent it down to our corporate branding division:

What do you guys think of the decal system so far?

http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/05/decals-editor-part-one/

By Phillip on May 9th, 2009

A few weeks ago, David overhauled our decal engine. Leveraging off this, I’ve recently started implementing our decals editor, and I can now show off some fancy (but very preliminary) screenshots. I think decals will add a lot to the immersiveness and liveliness of our environments.

In Overgrowth, decals will serve at least three purpose. First, they will add variety and detail to our textures. This will, effectively, explode the number of assets we have at our disposal. Each model will be reworkable in countless distinct ways just by mixing and matching decals on its surface. For example, in the screenshots above, all the rocks are derived from the same model. I rotated and scaled them to make them seem varied, but, I think it’s only with the lichen that they really come to life as individual entities.

Second, we will use decals to blend across abrupt intersections, such as between objects and the terrain. So far, we’ve been relying on models that tend to mesh well together, and on ambient occlusion to soften the seams. Decals will add a lot to this effort. Decals are like graphical glue. They make everything gel together.

Third, and lastly, we will use decals for slapping Wolfire logos all over the place. Here’s how my rock garden turned out after I sent it down to our corporate branding division:

What do you guys think of the decal system so far?

http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/05/what-makes-players-care-or-not-care-about-npcs/

By John on May 8th, 2009

This topic spawned out of a conversation the Wolfire team had at dinner last night and I wanted to share it with you guys to see if we could get some feedback that will help us as we craft Overgrowth. First ask yourself “When have I really cared about a character in a video game that wasn’t playable?” (I take it for granted that all players at some base level tend to care about their own character.)

Now ask yourself “When have I really cared about a character in a book or movie?” In books and movies we can’t control anyone at all so everyone is arguably a non-player character (NPC). However, based on discussions I’ve had, I have the impression that movie and book characters tend to pull on our heartstrings more than NPCs. Personally, I know that I respected Obi-Wan Kenobi more than Deckard Cain and worried more about Valentine Wiggin than Alyx Vance. So what’s going on here? What stops us from taking NPCs seriously?

Graphical Limitations
Perhaps the uncanny valley hurts the credibility of game characters. Why take something seriously when it looks jarringly unreal? Movies get to use real people and books render characters with the reader’s own imagination so these media get to completely avoid the uncanny valley. At the same time, if this explained the whole issue how could movies like WALL-E make us feel so attached to CGI robots?

Limited Interactivity
Interacting with a world should make it more immersive. However, perhaps because player interactions are limited to a finite set of pre-programmed activities, every action is in some ways a reminder that the player is only playing a game. There’s no reason to get too worked up about the well-being of the pawns on your chessboard (unless maybe the pawns make you laugh).

Lack of Consequences
Modern games are full of quicksaves, checkpoints, regenerating health and other devices that make it OK for the player to do things wrong and rewind like nothing ever happened. If we could live our lives this way we’d probably be inclined to take the real world much less seriously. Part of what makes a book or a movie so suspenseful is that every new development is meaningful. There are no do-overs.

Give and Take
The easiest way I’ve seen games motivate players to have feelings towards NPCs is to have them directly affect the player’s character. If an NPC regularly gives your character better items or stats, you’re probably going to like him and make some efforts to keep him alive. If an NPC takes things away from you, you’ll probably dislike him and want to get even. Of course, such NPC relationships are very shallow.

Do you think it’s fair to hold video game characters to the same standards as book and movie characters? What NPCs have had the deepest impact on you and why?

http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/05/what-makes-players-care-or-not-care-about-npcs/

By John on May 8th, 2009

This topic spawned out of a conversation the Wolfire team had at dinner last night and I wanted to share it with you guys to see if we could get some feedback that will help us as we craft Overgrowth. First ask yourself “When have I really cared about a character in a video game that wasn’t playable?” (I take it for granted that all players at some base level tend to care about their own character.)

Now ask yourself “When have I really cared about a character in a book or movie?” In books and movies we can’t control anyone at all so everyone is arguably a non-player character (NPC). However, based on discussions I’ve had, I have the impression that movie and book characters tend to pull on our heartstrings more than NPCs. Personally, I know that I respected Obi-Wan Kenobi more than Deckard Cain and worried more about Valentine Wiggin than Alyx Vance. So what’s going on here? What stops us from taking NPCs seriously?

Graphical Limitations
Perhaps the uncanny valley hurts the credibility of game characters. Why take something seriously when it looks jarringly unreal? Movies get to use real people and books render characters with the reader’s own imagination so these media get to completely avoid the uncanny valley. At the same time, if this explained the whole issue how could movies like WALL-E make us feel so attached to CGI robots?

Limited Interactivity
Interacting with a world should make it more immersive. However, perhaps because player interactions are limited to a finite set of pre-programmed activities, every action is in some ways a reminder that the player is only playing a game. There’s no reason to get too worked up about the well-being of the pawns on your chessboard (unless maybe the pawns make you laugh).

Lack of Consequences
Modern games are full of quicksaves, checkpoints, regenerating health and other devices that make it OK for the player to do things wrong and rewind like nothing ever happened. If we could live our lives this way we’d probably be inclined to take the real world much less seriously. Part of what makes a book or a movie so suspenseful is that every new development is meaningful. There are no do-overs.

Give and Take
The easiest way I’ve seen games motivate players to have feelings towards NPCs is to have them directly affect the player’s character. If an NPC regularly gives your character better items or stats, you’re probably going to like him and make some efforts to keep him alive. If an NPC takes things away from you, you’ll probably dislike him and want to get even. Of course, such NPC relationships are very shallow.

Do you think it’s fair to hold video game characters to the same standards as book and movie characters? What NPCs have had the deepest impact on you and why?

http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/05/what-tools-does-an-artist-need/

By Aubrey on May 6th, 2009

I am often asked about the tools I use to make art. I use a lot of tools on a day to day basis for Overgrowth depending on what job I am doing. Some of these have taken me years to learn:


3DS Max 9 for 3D modeling
Mudbox 2009 for 3D sculpting.
xNormal for baking normal maps and ambient occlusion.
Crazybump for making tangent space normal maps from heightmaps.
Photoshop CS2 for making 2D art and color textures for 3D objects.
Wacom Cintiq 12WX tablet for drawing input into Photoshop.

All of them are pretty critical, but the most important tools I have used as an artist are a lot cheaper and easier to use:

Paper
Pen

The fact is that the basics of art are the same no matter what tools you are using, so if you are just starting out you may as well use what is available. I still like to sketch in my notebook now and then. Even with all those fancy programs, the amount of control and immediacy I get with pen and paper beats anything with the computer.

I used to draw in pencil, but these days I like the pen more. Since there is no way to erase mistakes it forces me to pay closer attention to what I am doing. Are there any other artists here? What tools do you use? Feel free to post links to your own sketches!

http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/05/what-tools-does-an-artist-need/

By Aubrey on May 6th, 2009

I am often asked about the tools I use to make art. I use a lot of tools on a day to day basis for Overgrowth depending on what job I am doing. Some of these have taken me years to learn:


3DS Max 9 for 3D modeling
Mudbox 2009 for 3D sculpting.
xNormal for baking normal maps and ambient occlusion.
Crazybump for making tangent space normal maps from heightmaps.
Photoshop CS2 for making 2D art and color textures for 3D objects.
Wacom Cintiq 12WX tablet for drawing input into Photoshop.

All of them are pretty critical, but the most important tools I have used as an artist are a lot cheaper and easier to use:

Paper
Pen

The fact is that the basics of art are the same no matter what tools you are using, so if you are just starting out you may as well use what is available. I still like to sketch in my notebook now and then. Even with all those fancy programs, the amount of control and immediacy I get with pen and paper beats anything with the computer.

I used to draw in pencil, but these days I like the pen more. Since there is no way to erase mistakes it forces me to pay closer attention to what I am doing. Are there any other artists here? What tools do you use? Feel free to post links to your own sketches!