By Jeff on December 31st, 2008
Happy New Year!
Wolfire New Year!

It seems like just yesterday we officially formed Wolfire Games and announced Overgrowth. In just a few short months, I think we have accomplished a lot and Overgrowth is really starting to pick up.

2009 is going to be awesome, and I can’t wait to show you guys what we have in store.

By Jeff on December 31st, 2008
Happy New Year!
Wolfire New Year!

It seems like just yesterday we officially formed Wolfire Games and announced Overgrowth. In just a few short months, I think we have accomplished a lot and Overgrowth is really starting to pick up.

2009 is going to be awesome, and I can’t wait to show you guys what we have in store.

<a href="http://nimblebit.blogspot.com/2008/12/zero-gear-trailer-1.html">Click Me!</a>

December 30th, 2008 by Jeff

At Wolfire, we don’t take breaks for pesky occasions like Christmas or Hanukkah. One of the advantages we have over the big guys is our insane work ethic. Continuing our fine tradition of weekly alphas and open development, I bring you Overgrowth Alpha 7!

Following right on the tail of our unexpectedly hot post about why you should support Mac OS X, we’re eating our own dog food.

The big news this week is that THE UI WORKS ON OS X. We are using Google Chrome for all sorts of hot stuff in Overgrowth, including the user interface. I’ll explain this in more detail later, but Chrome is not very Mac friendly (yet).

However, in the spirit of the holidays, I recently gave my personal Macbook Air to the Webkit genius AJS, and a Christmas miracle happened: the Chrome underpinnings used in Overgrowth are now Mac OS X compatible!

We also have PPC support, courtesy of the god-like Ryan Gordon. If there ever was a time to be an old school Mac user and Wolfire fan, it’s now! The PPC build is untested right now except in emulators, so let us know how it works in the secret preorder forum.

Also new this week are more map editor improvements (blog post on this coming soon), dynamic shadows (so objects can have shadows cast on them, not just terrain), and some other hot stuff.

To see the pictures please go to:

http://blog.wolfire.com/2008/12/overgrowth-alpha-7-mac-os-x-hotness/

December 30th, 2008 by Jeff

At Wolfire, we don’t take breaks for pesky occasions like Christmas or Hanukkah. One of the advantages we have over the big guys is our insane work ethic. Continuing our fine tradition of weekly alphas and open development, I bring you Overgrowth Alpha 7!

Following right on the tail of our unexpectedly hot post about why you should support Mac OS X, we’re eating our own dog food.

The big news this week is that THE UI WORKS ON OS X. We are using Google Chrome for all sorts of hot stuff in Overgrowth, including the user interface. I’ll explain this in more detail later, but Chrome is not very Mac friendly (yet).

However, in the spirit of the holidays, I recently gave my personal Macbook Air to the Webkit genius AJS, and a Christmas miracle happened: the Chrome underpinnings used in Overgrowth are now Mac OS X compatible!

We also have PPC support, courtesy of the god-like Ryan Gordon. If there ever was a time to be an old school Mac user and Wolfire fan, it’s now! The PPC build is untested right now except in emulators, so let us know how it works in the secret preorder forum.

Also new this week are more map editor improvements (blog post on this coming soon), dynamic shadows (so objects can have shadows cast on them, not just terrain), and some other hot stuff.

To see the pictures please go to:

http://blog.wolfire.com/2008/12/overgrowth-alpha-7-mac-os-x-hotness/

December 29th, 2008 by Jeff



We finally have become the number one search result for Overgrowth! Thanks to turbochop in the secret preorder forum for letting us know!

Overgrowth on Google

This sounds kind of dumb, but you would be surprised about the difference between the number one result on Google and the number two. One of the biggest things you learn in web development is that you really have milliseconds in order to get someone’s attention. You’d think intuitively that if someone reads or hears about Overgrowth somewhere, and decides to Google for us, they’d look through all the results and not be deterred that the first result is not Wolfire Games. Well, our search engine traffic for the keyword “Overgrowth” has just about doubled over the past few days!

We love Google and are very thankful for their benevolent dictatorship. Just for fun, here are ten services from Google that we use extensively.

1. Feedburner
2. Gmail
3. Google Analytics
4. Google App Engine
5. Google Alerts
6. Google Calendar
7. Google Checkout (see our blog post on it)
8. Google Chrome (built into Overgrowth)
9. Google Docs
10. Google Website Optimizer

I could write massive blog posts about each of these services because each of them are critical to us and totally awesome. Maybe I will some day. :)

Google is an amazing company that is pretty much key to our ability to bootstrap Wolfire Games. It is amazing because they are giving us enterprise level applications absolutely for free (well, ad supported in some cases). Most of their stuff puts even the expensive enterprise software that I used at other places to shame and we’re not paying a dime.

The downside is that Wolfire is completely hitched to Google, so if they ever decide to turn evil, I guess we will have to migrate to another service? I guess I don’t really see the downside! I love Google.

December 29th, 2008 by Jeff



We finally have become the number one search result for Overgrowth! Thanks to turbochop in the secret preorder forum for letting us know!

Overgrowth on Google

This sounds kind of dumb, but you would be surprised about the difference between the number one result on Google and the number two. One of the biggest things you learn in web development is that you really have milliseconds in order to get someone’s attention. You’d think intuitively that if someone reads or hears about Overgrowth somewhere, and decides to Google for us, they’d look through all the results and not be deterred that the first result is not Wolfire Games. Well, our search engine traffic for the keyword “Overgrowth” has just about doubled over the past few days!

We love Google and are very thankful for their benevolent dictatorship. Just for fun, here are ten services from Google that we use extensively.

1. Feedburner
2. Gmail
3. Google Analytics
4. Google App Engine
5. Google Alerts
6. Google Calendar
7. Google Checkout (see our blog post on it)
8. Google Chrome (built into Overgrowth)
9. Google Docs
10. Google Website Optimizer

I could write massive blog posts about each of these services because each of them are critical to us and totally awesome. Maybe I will some day. :)

Google is an amazing company that is pretty much key to our ability to bootstrap Wolfire Games. It is amazing because they are giving us enterprise level applications absolutely for free (well, ad supported in some cases). Most of their stuff puts even the expensive enterprise software that I used at other places to shame and we’re not paying a dime.

The downside is that Wolfire is completely hitched to Google, so if they ever decide to turn evil, I guess we will have to migrate to another service? I guess I don’t really see the downside! I love Google.

Hey guys, we just heard that Overgrowth was previewed in Igromania, the largest video game magazine in Europe! We are pretty much speechless. We’re just a humble, indie video game company, and we have a full page in Igromania! One mantra we have at Wolfire is “What would Ron Carmel do?” He probably would shrug it off and keep working.

I promptly told everyone I know and printed out a copy and put it on the fridge.

Thanks for spreading the word, guys! This preview was no doubt a result of Overt Ops. Keep up the good work! We know this kind of stuff happens because of you.

If you run a website, magazine, tv show, or blog, no matter the size, we would love to spread the Overgospel to you. Please contact us and we hope we can spread the word.

To see the original PDF file please go to:

http://cdn.wolfire.com/blog/igromania.pdf

To read the english translation please go to:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhrgz8cb_0w7vwnmdb

Hey guys, we just heard that Overgrowth was previewed in Igromania, the largest video game magazine in Europe! We are pretty much speechless. We’re just a humble, indie video game company, and we have a full page in Igromania! One mantra we have at Wolfire is “What would Ron Carmel do?” He probably would shrug it off and keep working.

I promptly told everyone I know and printed out a copy and put it on the fridge.

Thanks for spreading the word, guys! This preview was no doubt a result of Overt Ops. Keep up the good work! We know this kind of stuff happens because of you.

If you run a website, magazine, tv show, or blog, no matter the size, we would love to spread the Overgospel to you. Please contact us and we hope we can spread the word.

To see the original PDF file please go to:

http://cdn.wolfire.com/blog/igromania.pdf

To read the english translation please go to:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhrgz8cb_0w7vwnmdb

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 blog posts featuring these soon.

- Massive progress on the multiplayer browser! Last week we announced that we reached a pretty big milestone in multiplayer, with the ability to join a server and chat with your buddies — now we actually have a first stab at a UI for finding servers! For some reason, it is very pink right now. Don’t judge:

Overgrowth Server Browser

- Great improvements in the map editor. Phillip, John, and I made a kick ass level in LittleBigPlanet this weekend, which represents many hours of research on LBP’s map editor. Expect to see a lot of LBP inspired features in the coming weeks. This week, Phillip continues to polish up the basics with the ability to select multiple objects at the same time and seamlessly copy things with the alt / option key. He also fixed a number of issues with the editor.

- Tooltips. Our tooltips are hot. They have a graceful fade in / out animation when your mouse moves over things.

- Some hot new art and models from Aubrey.

Finally, we are all testing Phillip’s map editor tools and building little houses in the game for fun. Aubrey, our kick ass artist, is in the middle of some other stuff, so for this alpha, the default level is Phillip’s “house”. We are kind of having a competition between the programmers to see who can make the best house — luckily, Phillip’s looks kind of funny. Also, new rule, this counts as his final entry.

To see the pictures please go to:

http://blog.wolfire.com/2008/12/happy-alpha-day-alpha-6-is-here/