id Tech 2 engine

Merry Marchmess people, and what better way to start the new year-ish than with a media blow out and new information. So, buckle up buckaroos, and let’s dive in…

First of all, an update on OverDose progress. As you can see, it has stalled in recent months, with media none existent and news few and far between. Sadly, we hit a bit of a road block code wise with our physics system, and are currently in the middle of trying to squash a rather tedious bug. Yes, one of those bugs that seems to not obey the laws of code. Rest assured it’s being worked on, however. But otherwise progress remains good, for a one man artist anyway. It may look like not a lot has been going on, but here is the latest update on what we have worked on over the last 6 months:

- New physics engine
- New GUI
- New PBR rendering
- Changed every single art asset to work with PBR
- Remade 50% of the media (Models/textures/materials) to current standards
- Added fallback materials for every surface to better work with multiple system configurations.
- Added parallax occlusion maps for most surfaces, as well as fallbacks for lower end configurations.
- Made every model (Thousands) have at least 2 or 3, sometimes more, LOD model alternatives.

In short, this last gap we have been VERY busy, what with going over every single asset and in most cases remaking them, or at least re-tooling them for modern standards. As you can see in the new pics, the PBR rendering alone makes things work a whole lot better. But still, code wise, improvements have been slower, what with us being back down to a single coder while Buzz finishes his studies.

So, as you can see, we still need help. Whether it’s with code, or art, maps, we always need help. Its great being known to everybody as the team that pumps out this stuff with this few people, but I would rather be known as the team that gets things done. I think we deserve it for the time we have spent on OverDose, don’t you?

Time to spruce things up for the modern era. The old OverDose logo was getting tired. It looked very late 90’s and wasn’t fitting in with what I wanted the game to convey, so I spent a little time researching what I could do to change things, and came up with more solutions than I could hold. Seriously, it’s silly when you think about it, but the new logo conveys lots of ideas. The colours are the good in white (or green in our case but that doesn’t make a very good logo colour, trust me) versus the orange Marauders. The logo splits in two, to show factions. The roughness signals a dysfunctional world. I put emphasis on the “V” and the “S” to show the VS battle of two sides, good versus evil. In short, yes, it’s a logo… But it’s a logo with a story. Everything in OverDose has a story, even the miscellaneous newspapers have legit readable things on them, sometimes silly, sometimes a little close to home. Nothing in OverDose is just made at random. But anyway, enough blabbing. I present the new OverDose logo:

But that wasn’t all. I always disliked our Team Blur Games logo. I tried my best back in the day to ape off the developers I liked, but went with something that was very “Bungie”. It didn’t sit with me, or what I wanted to achieve however. So… Again I went back to the drawing board, and came up with something a little more “us”.

The website is still coming. I haven’t actually got around to getting a new host yet, as I’ve been toying with what’s best for us in our current position. I will however be trying to get in touch with whoever the kind soul is who updated out current website to show concept art and link to ModDB. So if that was you, please drop me a message, as I want to thank you and talk about what I can do next. But rest assured, the website, and yes, forums, are coming.

If you like what we are doing on OverDose, why not donate? Nicolas always needs new shoes, and my CPU is from 1994. Donating helps us keep things going smoothly, and allows us to attract new talent. Every donation received is noted, and will appear in the credits of OverDose, so that when it’s completed your grand kids can see you were a good guy. Not you, you will be long dead by then. But hey, it’s party time for all the little worms!