Also keep in mind that the stuff in this post are under extremely early development. Like literally five days old. I figured you guys would like to see how it progresses though, and early feedback on this would be useful.
Here's some info on how mods are going to be handled in Overgrowth. This is just for the UI - I'm going to start another thread about the stuff we are planning to add in game.
One large piece of news is that we are embedding the rendering engine, WebKit, inside of Overgrowth. WebKit is the fastest, most advanced browser rendering engine, used in Safari and Chrome. It is used all over OS X, for example, it is what powers the widgets in the dashboard and in the iPhone.
We are going to be using WebKit to power all of the UI in Overgrowth. From the main menu, to the in-game dialog, to the palettes in the map editor.
So how does this fit in with mods? Well, Overgrowth is going to have an integrated mod browser where you can view mods from inside the game and play them seamlessly.
You will access the mod browser like you would the Apple App Store (we were toying with the name Mapp Store). Just click install and it will seamlessly download and install the mod. You can then launch the mod from inside of Overgrowth.
When you launch a mod, the mod has full control over the entire UI - except for a little menu at the top that lets you return to Overgrowth. The mod author will interface with Overgrowth using a javascript API. For example, you could make a button that has onclick=''overgrowth.loadlevel('mylevel');" . When the user clicks the button, it would tell Overgrowth to load that level.
Here are two examples of what I am talking about. To view them, you must install Safari: http://www.apple.com/safari/download/
This is critical because other rendering engines don't support the features used in these demos.
Simple map campaign: http://wolfire.com/ui/modexample/modexample.html
More complicated campaign: http://wolfire.com/ui/modexample2/modexample2.html
I made both of these last night - they are pretty ugly, I know, but it's a testament to the power of Webkit and what can be accomplished with it rapidly.
We are really excited to see what kind of things people do with this.
Here are a few more examples of webkit stuff:
Overgrowth console: http://wolfire.com/ui/console/console.html (press `)
Map editor palette: http://wolfire.com/ui/palette/palette.html
Map editor inspector: http://wolfire.com/ui/inspector/inspector.html
Mod launcher: http://wolfire.com/ui/modbrowser/modbrowser.html
Again all of this stuff is v0.00001, but that's what SPF is for!
