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jeffr

Jeffrey joined Nov 26, 2008

Co-founder of Wolfire Games

News RSS Feed Summary List News (0 - 30 of 79)

Posted | Game Title | Author

Fast object instancing

Dec 08, 2009 Overgrowth 11 comments

When I was testing out character shadows on Hale's Riverhurst level, the framerate was not as smooth as I would like it to be. To remedy this, I'm taking...

Triangle Mesh Voxelization (aka LEGO rabbits)

Dec 04, 2009 Overgrowth 19 comments

In my recent post on automatic skinning, one of the steps involved creating a voxel representation of the character. I couldn't find any explanations...

Overgrowth Rap - HD Video

Dec 02, 2009 Overgrowth 26 comments

David suggested a while ago that I try to make an informational video to help familiarize people with Overgrowth. I thought oh snap, maybe I should try...

Volumetric heat diffusion skinning

Nov 25, 2009 Overgrowth 15 comments

After seeing our rigging tutorial, a number of you asked me how we calculate our vertex weights. However, many of you reading the blog are probably asking...

Character shadows

Nov 23, 2009 Overgrowth 17 comments

The existing Overgrowth shadows worked well for static shadows and ambient occlusion, but didn't have the detail required for character shadows. To achieve...

Xtreme plant optimization

Nov 17, 2009 Overgrowth 18 comments

A lot of people have mentioned the plants as an area we could improve in Overgrowth. For this reason, I made a point of trying out games that have great...

Wolfire IRC Channel

Nov 14, 2009 By jeffr 4 comments

Mibbit is a small web startup that provides a web-standards-based widget to interface with IRC channels. Sort of like the recently-mentioned Meebo, but...

Why we are not using Euphoria

Nov 12, 2009 Overgrowth 25 comments

Whenever we post about physics or animation technology, people always ask why we don't use Euphoria. Instead of replying to all of these comments individually...

Building a tower

Nov 09, 2009 Overgrowth 24 comments

A few months ago I decided that I could make better environment art but improving in art is hard, and often requires trying something completely different...

What is Overgrowth? [HD Video]

Nov 02, 2009 Overgrowth 34 comments

People that follow Wolfire regularly already know what Overgrowth is. However, many people who stumble across our videos end up confused by what they...

Open development vs. spoiling the story

Oct 29, 2009 Overgrowth 12 comments

We've explained the virtues of open development in depth, but it's not obvious how this development strategy should apply to the Overgrowth story. I've...

Animation mixing UI [HD Video]

Oct 26, 2009 Overgrowth 15 comments

A couple of days ago, David asked me to add a new feature to the animation editor UI - animation mixing. Here's a video of how the UI works!

Initial rigging and animation tech demo [HD Video]

Oct 23, 2009 Overgrowth 40 comments

It's been a little while since we've done a tech demo, and I've heard some clamoring on IRC and elsewhere for an explanation of how our new features work...

Soft normal maps for fur

Oct 20, 2009 Overgrowth 30 comments

The rim lighting shader went a long way towards making the fur look soft when lit from behind, but it still looked hard when lit from the side. This problem...

Transparent shadows using stippling

Oct 19, 2009 Overgrowth 13 comments

Most modern games use a form of depth-map shadow mapping, because it's efficient on modern graphics cards, and simple to implement. However, it doesn't...

Overgrowth Icons

Oct 15, 2009 Overgrowth 18 comments

When we made the first Overgrowth alpha a long time ago, we needed an icon. Aubrey quickly whipped up a stylized Overgrowth "O". This was, of course...

Character normal maps

Oct 12, 2009 Overgrowth 21 comments

We've discussed a lot of the subtle techniques we're using to make the Overgrowth characters look realistic, but we still haven't explained the most important...

Overgrowth auto-updater UI

Oct 09, 2009 Overgrowth 8 comments

Each week we release a new Overgrowth alpha. Since there is no incremental update system in place, those ~500 megabyte zip files really add up. We use...

How Saving Mechanics Affect Fun

Oct 07, 2009 Overgrowth 31 comments

Game saving feels like a fairly benign topic at first. However, if you stop to reflect on the issue, the mechanics of progress saving have a dramatic...

Ambient occlusion for characters

Oct 05, 2009 Overgrowth 22 comments

We've already discussed ambient occlusion for terrain and for objects, but we haven't yet discussed how it applies to characters. Ambient occlusion (AO...

Character rim lighting

Oct 01, 2009 Overgrowth 28 comments

When I loaded Aubrey's new rabbit model, it was clear that we needed a new rendering method in order to do it justice. Our basic object shader works best...

Normal map vs. mesh

Sep 29, 2009 Overgrowth 37 comments

Whenever we post a new model for Overgrowth, a comment we often get is "there's no way that can go in the game -- there are way too many polygons!" That...

Resolution Independent UI

Sep 23, 2009 Overgrowth 22 comments

Most UI is designed in terms of pixels, with the assumption that a pixel is a constant unit of measurement. This is troubling because, depending on the...

GDC Austin: Wolfire’s PR Tips

Sep 21, 2009 Overgrowth 18 comments

As you might know, we were recently invited to give a talk at GDC Austin about our PR strategy, which is essentially to be as open and transparent as...

Character Stats vs. Player Skill

Sep 16, 2009 Overgrowth 22 comments

The goal of almost all game designers is to make games that are fun. A common method for giving the player a "fun experience" is to let him start out...

Dog club sculpting timelapse (HD Video)

Sep 14, 2009 Overgrowth 20 comments

Here is the next part in my 3D model tutorial series (part 1, part 2, part 3). This part covers sculpting the high-detail model that will later have its...

A WebKit primer part 2 - CSS transitions

Sep 12, 2009 Overgrowth 1 comment

This is the second part of my WebKit primer series, where I introduce various aspects of WebKit and CSS3 and how we are using them in Overgrowth.

Trees in the breeze (HD video)

Sep 09, 2009 Overgrowth 32 comments

On a rare excursion into the outdoors, I noticed that real plants seldom remain perfectly still. Even on a calm day, some tiny disturbance in the air...

A WebKit primer - part 1

Sep 07, 2009 Overgrowth 9 comments

WebKit is an amazing rendering engine, and what I'd like to accomplish in this article is give you a run down of various awesome features the WebKit rendering...

The value of game design docs

Sep 02, 2009 Overgrowth 16 comments

In the comments for my last post (about how game ideas are not very valuable), some readers pointed out that not all ideas are low in value -- design...