Miscellaneous questions.

[Zhukov]

Title prettymuch says it all. The following is a bunch of things I (and possibly others) am curious about regarding Overgrowth. The developers claim to read everything in the forum, so I thought I'd try my luck.

1 - Will there be any form of trade? (Shops, gold, barter, loot, currency etc etc.)
2 - Will there be non-weapon items or devices that can be obtained by the character? (Food, bandages, non-armour clothing, keys etc.)
3 - There was once mention of a modifiable armour system. The example used was being able to put a spike on Turners footwear for increased kicking damage. Is this still planned?
4 - Will each species have an entirely different set of combative moves? Or will they all share the same basic moves with only 'special moves' being different? Or something else entirely?
5 - Will all individuals within a species fight in exactly the same manner? Will getting in a fight with a drunk dog in a bar be any different to fighting a disarmed dog soldier? (Will baby wolves do roundhouse kicks just like their daddy does?)
6 - Will Turner learn new abilities as the game progresses? Or does he know them all from the start?
7 - Will similar weapons use the same animations?
8 - There has been mention of a "climbing system" a la Assassin's Creed. Is this true?

That's the lot. Please note that these questions are motivated purely by curiosity. They aren't "requests" or suchlike. That's not my place. Besides, I for one am ambivalent about most of the above.

Cheers.

*crosses fingers*

[tokage]

Seconded.
Anwsers would put an end to many futile subdiscussions here.
BTW nice compilation Zhukov.

[Endoperez]

One of the two dog swords is one-handed, the other is two-handed. Spear and Glaive would have been a better example, but still far from perfect.

[Zhukov]

*bump*

*fingers still crossed*

[Glabbit]

I've got my pinky and ringfingers crossed, my middle and indexfingers crossed, my arms crossed, my thumbs crossed, my legs crossed twice, my big toes crossed with the corresponding toes next to them, and plenty of my hair crossed.

And that's no joke.

[tomascokis]

I think I can answer some of these from my memory, ordering them from 1-10 (if Zhukov could edit his post and make it that way, that would be nice)

1. Maybe, however it has been stated that overgrowth will keep the linear feel as present in lugaru

4. I believe it was mentioned somewhere that as you described, there would be a set of generic moves with each races special move pinned on. Remember though that its likely all moves will have there own animation per species, so things will look different between a dog and a cat, in addition some moves will probably be modified to more suit the race, even in lugaru most of the wolf's moves where changed to more slice then whack, and nearly all of them pierced the skin.

5. although I can't claim any real knowledge of the procedural animation system my understanding was that later down the track things like gravity and individual limb mass could be modded/edited for individual characters, hopefully setting one arm with a large mass would make some 'drunk' wolf's walk lopsided, I was even hoping that you could set it up so if a rabbit got slashed in the arm then the arm would droop a bit when walking around and stuff. This is just my guesses though, the devs might have something else planned. Also, hopefully with the procedural animation it'll work out so characters with smaller proportions will look/move correctly and i'm hoping (again) that the devs will include some kind of system to limit moves, ie, disable kids so they can't perform leg cannons

6. I can only restate what I said for Q1, but I personally don't really want it to be like that

7. Not really, I think the plan is to have a different animation for every weapon, and the procedural stuff will come in here again, hopefully with stuff like weapon mass, ect

I think I just turned this into *another* suggestion thread

[Endoperez]

7. Not really, I think the plan is to have a different animation for every weapon, and the procedural stuff will come in here again, hopefully with stuff like weapon mass, ect

Spear-thrust and glaive-thrust don't necessarily differ that much, and different species' weapons will probably overlap a bit. I'd be surprised if similar weapons did NOT share any animations. That'd be like not sharing any walk animations, or all the races having a different straight punch. It'd be silly NOT to reuse at least some of that stuff.

[Johannes]

4-7, possibly 8 depend on how dynamic the animation system will be. I'm sure ideally they want to be able to have all the animations look unique, but it might be the case that making animations of the quality they want will take a bit of time and so it wouldn't make sense to make unique ones for every type of character.

The framework for the animations editor has been in the works for a few weeks now, and once it gets to the point where we can actually start to see stuff, many of the answers to these questions should become more apparent.

concerning 8, there is an old blog post that shows off turner grabbing for a random location. if this is made accessible in the editor then getting turner to grab for a specific model, in a specific way should definitely be possible, especially once you can assign physics objects to more complex objects. Placing ledges to make him grab areas that would make sense to grab when climbing should be easy then.

[BunnyWithStick]

I've got my pinky and ringfingers crossed, my middle and indexfingers crossed, my arms crossed, my thumbs crossed, my legs crossed twice, my big toes crossed with the corresponding toes next to them, and plenty of my hair crossed.

And that's no joke.

You forgot to cross your middle and ring fingers after crossing your index, middle, pinky and ring fingers. And you forgot to insert your ring finger that is now sticking out to one side into the hole in the middle of your other hand's abomination of fingers.

Seriously, you can't cross nothin' until you can do that.

[invertin]

You also forgot to somehow make your entire body doublejointed.

Then cross your spine.

[Glabbit]

I've got my pinky and ringfingers crossed, my middle and indexfingers crossed, my arms crossed, my thumbs crossed, my legs crossed twice, my big toes crossed with the corresponding toes next to them, and plenty of my hair crossed.

And that's no joke.

You forgot to cross your middle and ring fingers after crossing your index, middle, pinky and ring fingers. And you forgot to insert your ring finger that is now sticking out to one side into the hole in the middle of your other hand's abomination of fingers.

Seriously, you can't cross nothin' until you can do that.

Ouch... No, I'm pretty sure I'm not quite that nimble... xD

You also forgot to somehow make your entire body doublejointed.

Then cross your spine.

*crack*
*never appears on the forums again*

[Endoperez]

concerning 8, there is an old blog post that shows off turner grabbing for a random location. if this is made accessible in the editor then getting turner to grab for a specific model, in a specific way should definitely be possible, especially once you can assign physics objects to more complex objects. Placing ledges to make him grab areas that would make sense to grab when climbing should be easy then.

Thanks, I hadn't seen these earlier blog posts.

[Johannes]

concerning 8, there is an old blog post that shows off turner grabbing for a random location. if this is made accessible in the editor then getting turner to grab for a specific model, in a specific way should definitely be possible, especially once you can assign physics objects to more complex objects. Placing ledges to make him grab areas that would make sense to grab when climbing should be easy then.

Thanks, I hadn't seen these earlier blog posts.

Yeah, you should definitely go back and look through the blog from the beginning if you ever have time
You'll notice that for a while they were going to have their own custom UI and many things like water and other effects were already implemented, but later temporarily scrapped and rewritten or yet to be fully implemented when they started working on it fully and it gained the name 'Overgrowth'

[Zhukov]

*Performs thread CPR*

Answers, got. Finally.

I cornered Jeff on the IRC channel and - lo and behold - some answers ensued! I thought you folks might be interested, especially those of you who do not frequent the IRC channel.

1.
Q: Trade? (Shops, gold, barter, loot, currency etc.)
A: "Possibly, not sure yet."

2.
Q: Non-weapon items? (Food, bandages, keys etc.)
A: "Yup indeed, gonna be awesome."

3.
Q: Modifiable armour? (Spike on boot for extra nasty kicks etc.)
A: "Maybe, not sure about that."

4.
Q: Different moves for different species?
A: "Probably some overlap."

5.
Q: Different fighting styles for individuals? (Baby wolves and daddy wolves etc.)
A: "Possibly. We haven't started fighting yet so it's hard to say."

6.
Q: Turner learns new abilities or knows it all from the start?
A: "Probably will learn some new stuff."

7.
Q: Same animations for similar weapons?
A: "Not sure: it's too early. Fighting is the last piece of the puzzle."

8.
Q: Climbing system to rival Assassin's Creed?
A: "Yeah, we are working on it."

So there you have it. Some good news, some bad news and a lot of possibly-maybe-probably.

[marmorek]

8.
Q: Climbing system to rival Assassin's Creed?
A: "Yeah, we are working on it."

Most excellent.