Designing Cultures
January 30th, 2009
We are going to have lots of different cultures in Overgrowth, not just for each different animal species, but for sub-groups within each species. In order to plan out the background of the game world, we have had a few discussions about the specifics of these cultures and their relationships to their environment. My job in all this is to ...
What I do on my days off
January 22nd, 2009
If you follow the blog you probably already know we work on Overgrowth almost all the time. You may be wondering if we have any time off at all. Actually we do. Unlike a regular game company we don't really keep normal hours. It is kind of understood that we are going to work on the game as much ...
A few thoughts about interactive music
January 22nd, 2009
This post is by Mikko Tarmia who is working on the music for Overgrowth. You can listen to some of the Overgrowth music on the Overgrowth ModDB Page. I want to share some of my thoughts about music in games. Games are now a huge consumer of people's time -- some of us spend more time playing games than doing ...
Female characters in Overgrowth
January 16th, 2009
In Overgrowth, we are working on creating many unique characters of different species, body type, sex, and occupation. Communicating distinctions between male and female characters in Overgrowth is especially challenging because of some of our basic design choices. No Hypersexualization Many games show that characters are female by making them look like strippers. That is, giving them breast implants, tiny ...
Step-wise Creation of Modular Buildings
January 13th, 2009
I have worked on a few commercial games and I am pretty familiar with the methods used to make cities or towns. Usually you start off with a detailed picture of what you want. An image of some cool building. Then you plan out the fewest modular pieces you will need to make that building. After that, you plan out ...
Are games art?
January 9th, 2009
The Debate Roger Ebert largely reignited the debate over whether games are art back in a 2005 column, when he claimed that not only are games not art, but they can never be art: "the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art." In a later article he retreated a little to say ...
Overgrowth Level Concepts
January 2nd, 2009
One challenge I have as the artist on Overgrowth is working with David so that each area can help tell the story of the game. As a gamer, I don't like having to sit through drawn-out cinematics when I could be playing. To help avoid that, I am working hard so that the visuals of each level tell you ...