What Is OverDose?
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So what is OverDose? Put simply, OverDose is an over the top, team play orientated First Person Shooter with tons of options for customisation. Now in a world that’s riddled with First Person Shooters, what exactly makes us think we can compete with the likes of the heavy hitters such as Call Of Duty and Minecraft?
Here’s a couple bullet points:
- Class Based Team Action – With a heavy focus on Team Play, OverDose takes cooperative objective based gaming to the next level.
- Player Customisation – Player classes can be customised in a variety of physical ways, from simple features such as gear and skin tones, to clan logos, badges and the like. Every weapon has multiple configurations and attachments, allowing you to create your own arsenal that suits your needs.
- Freedom Of Movement – OverDose takes team play to the next level with “TeamActions”, allowing you to help your team mates in the field. See a ledge you can’t mantle onto? Give your friend a boost up there and then ask for a pull up. Your buddy down and waiting a medic but the area is too hot for support? Get over there and drag him out! Need to get into cover quickly while under fire? Sprint over there and slide into cover directly. OverDose takes the basic staples of the genre and turns them up to 11, the way Baby Raptor Jesus intended.
- Next Gen Engine – Built on id Software’s Quake II engine (Yes, id Tech 2) [TBG] have expanded and improved upon the original engine in every way possible to bring you such graphical features as an intense fully dynamic, unified per-pixel lighting and shadowing model with shadow mapping, parallax occlusion mapping, real time sub surface scattering, ambient occlusion and advanced post process effects.
- Full EAX Support – OverDose allows its designers TOTAL freedom over its sound design in its worlds and as such allows some crazy EAX/OpenAL effects. Sound is just as important as graphics in a game and we really have given the area huge backing.
- Fast Frame Rates – Every graphical option has several levels of quality and rather than force people with set options, OverDose allows the player amazing freedom over what they see. Gone are the days of generic graphic options ruining fun!
- Full Online Ranking System – Players gain XP per game which promotes them in rank, which in turn can be used to match you up with players of similier skill. Whats more with the system being fully saved in conjunction with our master server, stats and rankings can be tracked online!
- Full SDK And Tool Set – OverDose is fully behind modifications and as such we have a complete toolset built from the ground up just for OverDose modders.
This isn’t Deathmatch. Any man out for himself will only get himself killed.
The Story So Far…
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Mankind has always had an eye for invention, and throughout the years has come up with so many wonderful and amazing ideas and implementations. Thomas Edison stood against God and created light with the means of science. Artificial limbs were created with mechanical parts to give new freedom of movement to accident victims. New hope was given to people with serious diseases and ailments. But not everything mankind has created was pure in design. As a species we have always progressed with our technology and intelligence, but the instinct to dominate has stuck with us for thousands of years. Ever since the first cave man killed for his food, man has done what’s been required of him to survive. On December 21st, 2012, mankind was changed forever. Early in the year tension mounted between the super powers of the world and before any of us knew it, entire cities were in lock down with no hope of leaving. Then, as children played in the streets innocently, the first bomb was dropped. In the space of a few hours, nations pressed the launch buttons without hesitation to counter strike the attacks. The aftermath was horrendous, the world was in ruin, and most of the world was covered with radiation… Mankind was pushed to the brink of extinction.
Now, 143 years later, the battle is still strong. The world’s population has been divided into two factions; Those who hid, and those who were left behind. The Confederate Marine Corp. does what it can to keep peace and order in the remaining safe zones. They try to provide order and discipline to the remaining civilians of the last few safe zones. The outlandish Marauders however are more machine than man now, using scraps of weaponry and cybernetic implants to keep them alive longer. Many years of radiation poisoning and complicated childbirth has left them scared and warped, like the things of nightmares. While the CMC want only to survive, the MDR relentlessly attack them for fresh supplies of their ever-growing addictions. Both factions are destined to fight until one falls. Which one is yet to be seen…
About OverDose?
————————————————————————————————————————————————-A lot of people have asked me, “Why OverDose?”. Well, here’s the story. A little while ago Berserk and myself decided to create a modification for Quake 2 that would slightly enhance a few areas of the game, like give it a new menu, a few new effects etc. This turned into this mammoth project, with a completely new per pixel rendering system and fragment/vertex program support and all sorts. In short, we turned the crusty Quake 2 engine into some new kind of animal. We were happy with what we had done, but we wanted more. We wanted to be able to do this sort of thing with more freedom. It sucked that in order to get a map looking nice, you would pretty much have to re-make it thanks to strange lighting positions and what not. So, in that second, OverDose was born.
Originally planned as a single player advanced expansion pack for Quake 2, myself and other forum members began to jot down ideas here and there, and before we knew it something big was taking shape. Images flew in left and right thanks to our amazingly skilled forum members, and we started to get the basic shape of a game in our heads. However, OverDose single player was never to appear as such. The idea slowly started to lose shape, it slowly started to just disappear, as one of those projects that would never be. Yeah, it died. But then something odd happened… Quake II Evolved sort of started to grind to a halt. Technology wise, Berserk was at the end of the road with what could be done to Quake 2 again. What followed were countless hours of talks on Windows Messenger as to what exactly we should do next, and then, the question popped up… “What if we make our own game?”. At that instant we both remembered OverDose. A lot of love and attention went into the mod from the forum members and ourselves and it was obviously something they wanted as well, but how should we handle it? Given the fact OverDose would be a brand new full game we decided to ditch Quake 2 in the title to avoid any legal issues that could crop up. So, Quake II Evolved: OverDose was now known as just “OverDose”. The “Strogg” were replaced by an equally evil race known as the “Marauders”, and the Marines were given a complete makeover; But what about the actual game? Well, Starting and completing a single player game is no mean feat. It needs some complex AI, some great scripting and no end of other technical issues. It could also take forever to complete, and that’s something we didn’t want. So, OverDose Single Player was put on hold, and a new game took shape. OverDose was now Multiplayer.
The reborn OverDose was to be just multiplayer only. The reasons behind this are obvious, but it’s just easier to make a multiplayer game compared to single player. Sure, there are countless balance issues and what not, but those are “issues”. Its like saying “Do we paint this wall black, or white?” It doesn’t make a difference, the walls still made, it can be changed at will. Compare that with a full single player game and the countless problems are far more obvious.
Engine Features At A Glance…
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Renderer
OverDose uses a very advanced rendering system which allows us to create highly detailed and incredible looking effects. Listed below are just a few of the rendering engine capabilities.
• Fully dynamic, unified per-pixel lighting and shadowing model
• Soft shadows
• Parallax mapping
• Subsurface scattering
• Detail texturing
• GLSL shaders
• Material system
• Screen space ambient occlusion
• Post-processing effects (bloom, color correction, motion blur, depth of field, etc)
• Terrain and foliage
• Skeletal animation
• Portal and PVS visibility determination
• Sky portal, mirror, portal, and remote camera subviews
• Volumetric fog
• Volumetric lights
• Decals and particle effects
• High definition cinematics and in-game videos
• Widescreen support
Sound System
Sound is one area we feel many games these days don’t put enough focus on. Sound can make or break a game, even if you don’t know it. Many times I hear stories of people playing games, saying “do you remember that bit? I heard the “X” and I knew I was gonna die!”. We feel sound is just as important as graphics, if not more so. Here are a few of the features of our sound engine.
• 3D sound spatialization
• Surround sound support
• Sound shader system
• Doppler shifts
• Low-pass filters
• Volumetric sounds
• Environmental reverberation effects
• Obstruction, exclusion, and occlusion effects
• Dynamic background music
• Hardware acceleration support
Collision Detection
Nobody wants to get stuck on an odd polygon sticking out in a map. That’s why we have taken the utmost care and attention to detail to bring you the best possible compromise on detail and speed. Here are a few key features.
• Very efficient brush-based BSP trees
• Per-polygon collision detection on curved surfaces and models
• Per-polygon hit detection on skeletal models
Networking
Because OverDose is focussed on online play, our networking code needs to be as polished as possible. Nothing hurts more than lagging out at the wrong time when it’s not your fault. Here are a few key features.
• Based on the well-proven id Tech 3 networking technology
• Up to 64 players supported
• LAN and Internet play
• Voice chat support
• Packet compression for reduced bandwidth usage
• Demo recording and playback support
Input
A player is only as good as the keys he’s tapping on, which is why OverDose supports a wide range of controllers, mice and keyboards.
• International keyboard support
• Support for high definition mice and a wide array of game controllers
• Full support for the Xbox 360 controller for Windows
• Force feedback
File System
Creating a secure online game that still gives the nod to modders and mappers to add extra content to the game easily and safely, is no easy task. We feel we are more than up to the challenge.
• Add-ons and game modifications support
• Auto-downloading support (including HTTP/FTP redirects)
• Pure servers ensure all clients are using exactly the same game assets
• Compressed PK3 files allow easier distribution of patches and add-ons
Editing Wiki/SDK
Team Blur Games is committed to bring the best possible experience and tools to both the gamers and the staff working on its projects. That’s why every project we create we develop a full SDK with tutorials and explanations on everything from audio, texture, materials and map compiling. We also provide fully original and working tools for the artist to create his own media, such as model converters, map compilers, and font renderers. Each of these tools is a perfect way to work with the engine because it has been designed and created from scratch for work with OverDose, so you can guarantee 100% compatibility.
• Integrated entity, light, speaker, FX emitter, post-process, and reverb editors
• Real time in-game editing: what you see/hear is what you get
• User-friendly GUIs
For full access to our editing wiki, please visit: http://www.team-blur-games.com/wiki. Please note this wiki is updated on a regular basis with the latest information and tutorials.
OverDose System Requirements
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OverDose requires quite a beefy system to run. Please check over the following to see if OverDose will run on your system.
Minimum:
* CPU: Dual-core AMD or Intel processor
* RAM: 1 GB
* Video: ATI Radeon HD 2000 series or NVIDIA GeForce 8 series with full OpenGL 3.3 support
* Sound: Windows compatible sound card with full OpenAL 1.1 support
* Network: broadband connection for Internet play and network interface card for LAN play
* Storage: 8 GB of available hard disk space
* OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7
* DirectX: DX8 for mouse and game controller input
Recommended:
* CPU: Quad-core AMD or Intel processor
* RAM: 2 GB
* Video: ATI Radeon HD 4000 series or NVIDIA GeForce 200 series
* Sound: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi and surround speaker setup
OverDose provides full support for the “Xbox 360 Controller for Windows” under Windows XP with Service Pack 1 or later and DirectX 9.0c or later.