SpawnPoint - Where Game Begins

Overgrowth's Terrain Nears Completion as Animation Work Begins

Posted By Deborah Willis on Dec 3, 2008

Summary : Because Overgrowth's gameplay will occur almost entirely in outdoor settings, the Wolfire team has made terrain their recent priority. After achieving realistic terrain coloring in the Phoenix Engine, Wolfire decided to put the same care into terrain lighting effects. .....

Overgrowth's Terrain Nears Completion as Animation Work Begins

Because Overgrowth's gameplay will occur almost entirely in outdoor settings, the Wolfire team has made terrain their recent priority.  After achieving realistic terrain coloring in the Phoenix Engine, Wolfire decided to put the same care into terrain lighting effects.  In addition to adding high-detail terrain shadows from direct sunlight (http://blog.wolfire.com/2008/11/high-detail-terrain-shadows/), the engine now also accounts for ambient lighting and occlusion (http://blog.wolfire.com/2008/11/ambient-occlusion/). Combined these effects have resulted in surprisingly realistic environments.

Aware that Overgrowth fans can not be satisfied by terrain alone, Wolfire lead programmer, David Rosen, also made time to demonstrate his initial work on Overgrowth's procedural animation system (http://blog.wolfire.com/2008/11/procedural-animation-redux/). Though the animation system is still in early development, fans were glad to finally see a character model hopping around on the terrain.