Fighting Design - Second Draft
June 11th, 2009
I've started prototyping the fighting in Overgrowth, and found that the charged attacks in our old design doc were too complicated to be fun. For now I reverted to the Lugaru attack style, where players hold the strike key down and automatically attack when the opponent is within striking range. However, I've also added initial blocking and grappling ...
Imbalanced fights
June 6th, 2009
Game developers often talk about balance. Fighting should be balanced. Characters should be balanced. Weapons should be balanced. Balance is definitely important. But I think there's a place for imbalance too. Indeed, I often find imbalanced, David versus Goliath fights to be the most captivating and memorable. Here are four reasons why imbalance is important. 1. Imbalance makes for ...
Ranged weapons in Overgrowth
May 25th, 2009
We've already given you a sampling of the kinds of melee weapons that will be included in Overgrowth but a lot of people have been asking me about ranged weapons. This is a tough design problem -- we would like to include ranged attacks, but we also want to maintain the focus on close-quarters combat. Many fighting games that include ...
Why ninja rabbits?
May 18th, 2009
John reports that "Why did you pick ninja rabbits?" is one of the most commonly asked questions from interviewers and fans on our live chat. For Lugaru, the answer is simple -- back in high school, I thought it would be fun to make a game about my dog Wolfie. This idea evolved into a game about wolves fighting rabbits. A ...
What makes players care (or not care) about NPCs?
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 ...
Non-lethal fights with lethal weapons
May 6th, 2009
After watching a lot of swordfights in movies, I've noticed that many of the most memorable ones are not 'to the death', despite the use of deadly weapons. Many, if not most, movie duels end with the winner disarming his opponent, or stopping just short of a lethal strike. Non-lethal endings allow for a wider range of motivations than ...
Object Browser
April 13th, 2009
Up until now, Overgrowth has been using the default Windows and Mac file browsers to load objects. This is functional enough, but it's slow, ugly, and no fun. One of my favorite things to do in games is to scan through all the cool items and upgrades one can get. At their best, these inventories have the same appeal ...