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Overgrowth


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Even when you think "wow we are finished", there are a lot of things that can be added to an engine/mod/game that improve the quality and experience.

 

Here is a fine example of things that our mod still misses (and I am sure there are more): footsteps, skidmarks, soft-bones, leaning-into when running etc. Most of them will probably only possible after D3 goes open source (and after we attract a few more developers with alots of free time :), but heh, one can dream.

 

Anyway, Overgrowth really looks like a fine game, the landscape looks (and sounds thanx to wind!) fantastic:

 

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Can you tell my employer to stop blocking youtube so I can see some of these cool posts before I return to the dungeon (home). :laugh: (I'm a terrible employee :( )

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http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

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I guess this game is the sequel to Lugaru.

 

It's a good game, though it's 3P perspective and more platformy and outdoorsy than ours. But some ideas might look good in TDM.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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  • 7 months later...

The video from the dev blog are very very interesting:

 

 

It is a shame that we don't have (yet) full acces to the source, plus someone as talented as David to work on the engine - imagine what would be possible!

 

Anyway, it is nice to see the same or similiar solutions to emerge, but I am also sure we can improve our engine/code a lot. The "trace to random point on target" is a nice idea - we are using a fixed set of points, which can give ridicoulous results (imagine you are standing in front of a hoolahoop circle which covers your eyes and toes and you are effectively invisible to the AI :D

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I notice that frames go pretty low when an AI is on the opposite side of Jail bars in some missions... Maybe these are not set to invisible (nosolid?) in some missions and it's wreaking havok on pathing?

 

Something like the above would work better in that scenario I suspect?

Edited by nbohr1more

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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The "trace to random point on target" is a nice idea - we are using a fixed set of points

 

Random points is a good idea. How many traces do we fire per frame atm for each AI?

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pretty sure I brought that up at some point in the past. Would make it much better if its harder for AI to see the player through pinhole size gaps in obstructions blocking the player, or peeking around a lit corner for 1/8 of a second.

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Random points is a good idea. How many traces do we fire per frame atm for each AI?

 

I think one, but I am not sure. Anyway, the Overgrowth developer talked about "only one trace per time", so I think he just uses one per frame and uses a different random target point each time.

 

Not sure how we could accomplish that, would using random joints be already an improvement? Or does it have to be triangle points?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I'm not sure of the technical issues involved. At the moment we check 4 different points, and if the AI hits any one of them you are seen. Presumably the points are checked in sequence but I don't know.

 

In order to simulate "weight", we'd need to add more points and place them strategically. For example, we'd have to have more points in the head than the feet, so that you're more likely to be seen if your head is sticking up than if just your feet are visible.

 

If that were possible, then the system would do a decent job of simulating cover, both from corners and things like vegetation or bars. I'll add it to the tracker.

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and what ? if the game is about fighting of gigant animals,there is doesn't matter how good AI or ragdoll...

Really? <_< That's akin to calling Tchaikovsky "uninteresting" simply because you prefer Alternative Rock over Romantic music. If the composer doesn't tickle your fancy, it doesn't matter how how gifted he is.

 

Go take advanced trigonometry, calculus, physics, C++ university classes. Go work on a video game team. Then dare to assert that this is uninteresting. This is a technology demo ALPHA. This is not easy stuff to make. And it's all rather well-thought-out.

yay seuss crease touss dome in ouss nose tair

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Haven't been checking on Overgrowth for quite some time. You sure notice a lot of development. Looks a lot better by now. I'd actually like to check the alpha out, but I feel like 29$ is just too much for a preorder alpha.

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the vision cone on those rabbits is a bit high at 180 degrees, its usually about 120 degrees, only something like a chamelion has higher without having to move there head.

 

vision cones on t2 npc was set at something like 88 degrees inner and 120 outer, inner being in focus, and outer the bits out of focus. although there is a t2 fm where the vision cones were set to 360 on all npc, I never finished that one cos you just could never knock anything out plus they could see in the dark.

Edited by stumpy
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the vision cone on those rabbits is a bit high at 180 degrees...

 

Rabbits have wide-set eyes tho. ;)

And even for humans the peripheral vision or what's-a-ma-call-it still pretty big. But that would take some doing to properly simulate in a game of course.

 

I've been watching this project ever since I discovered it on this thread actually. It's really quite something.

Love how the engine he's (they're) making is focused on robust graphics instead of cutting-edge graphics. It's not often you see people do that these days. Er, OK.. It MIGHT be a little more usual in indie-scenes than in the professional realm, but meh. It's still cool.

+ The lead programmer is totally bad-ass and a huge inspiration. :D

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  • 9 months later...

I preordered Overgrowth yesterday. I have been watching their weekly alpha videos since about always now and I thought to myself, even if the game doesn't turn out to be good, seeing it come to live in those videos is actually already worth paying for. :)

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This game is taking way too long. It's almost the same problem of Duke Nukem forever: it needs more features! it always needs more features! I've just played a game where you could leave footprints on snow, we need that in our game! I understand the comparison is a stretch, one is a paid team of professionals and this is a small team (one?) indie developer. They can take more time, but still, just release the thing already.

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I have to concur with Diego, this game has been on my watch list seemingly forever. Even pre-ordered it. Every few weeks an update comes out, but it is still not really a "game", more like an extended tech demo. So I stopped updating it, and get a bit tired of following it.

 

Instead of piling on yet-another-nice-feature, I'd rather get a playable game. Footpring in snow, backlit foliage, etc could all be added after the single and multiplayer-content was released to the players.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I don't think they need to hurry anything up and "release" it necessarily. Anyone who pre-orders the game can play it so it's already "out" in that sense and they're not really depriving anyone of anything by not "releasing" it.

 

I might be kind of biased since a lot of my favorite games and mods have taken much longer than even three years Overgrowth has spent so far be released and turned out fine, but Overgrowth doesn't strike me as taking too long.

Edited by Professor Paul1290
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