Overgrowth - Weird combat game made by some guy for PC

Well, damn, I don't know what magic the devs did under the hood, but now the game runs smooth as silk for me. I guess it just sets all the options for the best performance or something. When before I couldn't fight two guys without tons of lag, now the game runs smoothly with a bunch of enemies on screen, even with full dripping blood.
 
Bushido Blade Usagi Yojimbo game!

Yes, Please!

uy5.jpg
 
Wanted to see how the later fights in the arena were, so I spammed the insta-kill lightning till my skill level was around 200+

Next thing I knew, I was fighting enemies who were twice my size and/or just insanely fat with muscle, and so powerful that one hit sends me flying from one side of the arena to the other, and could counter and attack too fast to react to.

I'll take a picture next time, but it was crazy. That aspect of the arena needs to really be balanced out.
 
Wanted to see how the later fights in the arena were, so I spammed the insta-kill lightning till my skill level was around 200+

Next thing I knew, I was fighting enemies who were twice my size and/or just insanely fat with muscle, and so powerful that one hit sends me flying from one side of the arena to the other, and could counter and attack too fast to react to.

I'll take a picture next time, but it was crazy. That aspect of the arena needs to really be balanced out.

To be fair, you cheated and probably weren't intended to get that far. I'd imagine it's like an arcade game that keeps getting faster and more difficult until you are guaranteed to lose.
 

kick51

Banned
holy crap this is fun.

though I guess I should turn something down that's spiking my GPU to 80+! my first time getting a game this early in dev, so I guess I should look out for stuff like that.


Wanted to see how the later fights in the arena were, so I spammed the insta-kill lightning till my skill level was around 200+

Next thing I knew, I was fighting enemies who were twice my size and/or just insanely fat with muscle, and so powerful that one hit sends me flying from one side of the arena to the other, and could counter and attack too fast to react to.

I'll take a picture next time, but it was crazy. That aspect of the arena needs to really be balanced out.


yeah, that "insta-kill lightning" sounds a little OP :p
 
I think Overgrowth has replaced Broforce as my most played indie games. 10 hours on Steam so far and none of that is idling, nor is it counting the 2+ hours I played of the DRM free version. I just love the game. The combat and movement is endlessly satisfying and the details just make the game so good, from the best blood effects of any game ever to how physics factor into everything. The editor is so easy to use, and the whole experience feels very polished, despite still being Early Access
 

kick51

Banned
heh, bumping graphics options got my GPU up to 80c. I should prob read a few things about how I should be running this before I play more of it...haven't been in a prerelease thing like this before.


edit: i seem to be repeating myself. chalk it up to old age. i have a daughter....
 

broham

Member
wolfiredavid said:
I have always received job offers from bigger companies, though nobody has offered to buy the company entire yet! In the early 90's I made a 3D light-gun style shooter (kind of like Area 51) in Hypercard using Infini-D, and uploaded it to AOL keyword "Mac Games". It was pretty successful, and I actually got a job offer from Blizzard because of it! I had to turn it down though, because I was still in elementary school.
Been reading through that reddit AMA and I found this pretty funny.
 
Been reading through that reddit AMA and I found this pretty funny.
Damn, is he like a prodigy or something? It's probably challenging to be able to program something like that at that age. No wonder a two-person team has been able to developer such an ambitious game
 

kick51

Banned
I get a black screen on launch now, shit.

And it does always crash when you're just starting to have lots of fun. :(

(yes, i know what i signed up for, it's still worth it)


EDIT: Fixed it by going to config settings and turning off "media mode"
 

kick51

Banned
is there one weird trick to get this thing in a decently stable state?

i wanna edit text and i just get booted left and right.
 
New blog update:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C_x08ZvE-M
In this Art Asset Overview I show the new dog armor set and the new rat characters. While I think this armor set is cool, I plan to make fewer, bigger pieces of gear in the future. It's easier to line up the bigger pieces when attaching them, and it's less work to make a few big pieces of gear rather than a dozen smaller ones. Adding more armor sets for the different species is one of my next major tasks, and I'm looking forward to making more gear for the rabbits and rats.

These last few months have been pretty busy for us here. The time around GDC is always a great to talk with inspiring game developers, try new games, and catch up with friends who travel here to San Francisco. It's also disruptive and exhausting. Since then, we have been slowly getting back to our normal routine, and it's nice to not have any other plans for the next several months beyond "make stuff for Overgrowth."
 

Ivan

Member
Awesome work.

I want some of this in next gen fighting games. Just imagine it with bigger budget and different art styles in some new games...
 
You can play Alpha 206 on Steam. To access it, you must join the advanced testing by going to Overgrowth in your library > Properties > BETAS > advance_testing

Changelog
- Removed intel GPU warning
- Improved gamma correction compatibility
- Added debug options to disable animation features
- Improved dialogue text positioning
- Fixed dialogue camera preview
- Fixed split screen rendering
- Objectives and achievements are now stored in level parameters
- Improved wind effect on ears
- Fixed "GL_prefix reserved" error
- Controllers can be plugged and unplugged while game is running
- Automatically recognize common controller input (via SDL game controller db)
- Updated SDL to 2.0.3 (fixes some controller and windowing issues)
- Added cats and rats
- New mesh simplification algorithm for character LOD
- Arena preloads all necessary files (no stuttering from file I/O)
- Improved running bounce animation

The main things to test out:
- The '3' and '4' keys should switch the player to a random cat or rat
- The arena should run much smoother
- You should be able to plug and unplug game controllers while the game is running, and most controllers should work fine without having to rebind buttons and axes, even on Mac and Linux
 

DocSeuss

Member
The GDC presentation about procedural animation in Overgrowth is up and publicly viewable, and it's pretty interesting, he gets more movements out of a dozen pose than some triple A games do out of a hundred animations:
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020583/Animation-Bootcamp-An-Indie-Approach

I wish I had the ability to license his tech.

I LOVE his "hippocratic oath" thing, the "do no harm to the gameplay." More people need to think about that. Gameplay is your primary tool for storytelling, if you're telling a story, not something that gets in the way of it. Likewise, your animations shouldn't take priority over the game's actual interactivity.
 

Dex815

Member
Thanks for the video, very interesting! I love how a single person has developed an engine so powerfull putting simple and logic pieces together when the big companies stay with such old standards.

This guy has more creativity than most of the AAA companies from these days.
 
I've been playing this game for 3 years. Always a good time slaying rabbits and it doesn't hurt that you can create levels. Plus there is 600+ mods for it.
 

Lafazar

Member
Great talk. It demonstrates quite well how helpful an understanding of physics and math is in game development.
 
The GDC presentation about procedural animation in Overgrowth is up and publicly viewable, and it's pretty interesting, he gets more movements out of a dozen pose than some triple A games do out of a hundred animations:
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020583/Animation-Bootcamp-An-Indie-Approach

Great presentation. Love his voice. Laughed at the 2 keyframe movement. Synchronised blend is so great. Bicubic interpolation shows this man is such a whore for attention to detail, no wonder there is a slow-mo button to see how great the animations are!

Nice to see my previous gifs with this new information in mind.
i1QE0IloQTIV.gif

iJMHd0kJXsAmM.gif


Oh man, laughing so hard during the ragdoll section.

Rain World and Gang Beasts love, hell yeah! They look so more cinematic even though they're not as photorealistic visually.
 

jpax

Member
The GDC presentation about procedural animation in Overgrowth is up and publicly viewable, and it's pretty interesting, he gets more movements out of a dozen pose than some triple A games do out of a hundred animations:
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020583/Animation-Bootcamp-An-Indie-Approach

That was one of the most impressive things I have ever seen! And to think about the possibilities for future games if this is applied, it is just awesome.
Thank you for posting
 

Zaptruder

Banned
The GDC presentation about procedural animation in Overgrowth is up and publicly viewable, and it's pretty interesting, he gets more movements out of a dozen pose than some triple A games do out of a hundred animations:
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020583/Animation-Bootcamp-An-Indie-Approach

Need more guys like him. Should team up with epic and sell his animation stuff to them for a gazillion dollars (or at least make it available for other developers... but then he's given this talk and made his ideas freely available - so theoretically, you could just write your own implementation of it and make it open source for other devs to rift off).
 

Ivan

Member
The GDC presentation about procedural animation in Overgrowth is up and publicly viewable, and it's pretty interesting, he gets more movements out of a dozen pose than some triple A games do out of a hundred animations:
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020583/Animation-Bootcamp-An-Indie-Approach

Hats off to this man, awesome work. I tried to think in that direction many times, but he did it in such a great way.

We have to see more of this approach in future games.


Responsivness and rich and good looking animations together. Easier and cheaper to work on. Amazing.
 
Top Bottom