Outerra forum
Outerra Engine => Ideas & Suggestions & Questions => Topic started by: cloudpillow on June 26, 2011, 12:36:30 pm
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I've emailed Brano because I was interested in finding out if there was a way I could pay for the game and reserve my allotments of the land even before the alpha is officially released and even before it is possible to "claim" land in-game.
Brano suggested that I could create a post/poll to see what the community reactions were. In essence, I asked if I could make payment right now to secure the area of land that represents my home town/city in 'real life' so that I may have permanent access to it on whatever future implemented version of MMPORG in Outerra whenever the alpha/beta/final release comes out and players are given the ability to select land in the meta-online world.
Brano replied back suggesting that at the moment its not possible to reserve land as the mechanism for this is not yet coded or in place in the game. Also he stated that he wasn't entirely certain if the alpha version will initially implement this mechanism from the very beginning. He hinted at the possibility of creating a "map app" where people can select their places of interest even before the actual mechanism is implemented in the game.
So I view this as a sort of ad hoc, stop-gap measure, a temporary pre-reservation system in the interim. In my followup email I inquired to the possibility of registering land the "old school way" so that I can claim /hold/reserve the online land that I want even before the map app became a viable possibility...
I hope I am allowed to quote Brano in our email correspondence, if not, moderators/admin please redact this part....
"But let's say we will honor the locations specified in the thread for those who want to be sure."
Okay, I read some posts but never found a definite answer. What is the reasonable *MINIMUM* (lower bound) surface area of land that each (paid) player should automatically be entitled to in the online version? If I know this value I can better make adjustments to the land that I would like to request....
But for now, I'd like to request the reservation of Denton, Collin, Tarrant, Dallas, Rockwall, Kaufman, Johnson, and Ellis county in Texas, United States, Planet Earth as an upper bounded maximum.
(http://i54.tinypic.com/2vn0wo2.jpg)
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LOL. You're taking my home town in all of that (I live off Lake Lewisville).
I think a single county-sized area would be best to start off with. As you "grow in power" in the game, then you can try to take over or purchase other plots.
Personally, I'm considering somewhere in the Washington State area, thinking of interesting locations. Mount Saint Helens would be one of my first choices, I think (so long as Cameni doesn't implement volcanoes O_o)
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LOL. You're taking my home town in all of that (I live off Lake Lewisville).
I think a single county-sized area would be best to start off with. As you "grow in power" in the game, then you can try to take over or purchase other plots.
Personally, I'm considering somewhere in the Washington State area, thinking of interesting locations. Mount Saint Helens would be one of my first choices, I think (so long as Cameni doesn't implement volcanoes O_o)
Lake Lewisville huh? That is artificial lake just like Lake Arlington? I live off Lake Arlington. Too bad in the game lakes are not yet implemented. I'm talking about natural lakes as well as artificial man made lakes. I think they should at least try to do the natural lakes.
That is the problem of land reservation. Part of it is demand/supply issue, but also it should be first come first serve basis.. I don't think anyone would claim that it would be unreasonable to give each paid player at least the size of an average city to start off with.. the problem with that is what if people wanted their own cities/towns and second person from the same town/city to sign up will be left out...
So for the Outerra people in charge, here are my preferences list in ORDER of preference:
#1 - Denton, Collin, Tarrant, Dallas, Rockwall, Kaufman, Johnson, and Ellis county in Texas, United States
If I am not allowed to have that much arable land... or if there are territorial disputes (see above) I would like to have access to the Strait of Hormuz, more specifically
#2 - A 80 mile radius around coordinates 26°43'0.78"N ; 56°33'58.24"E (basically the region of water and land surrounding the narrowest point of the Strait of Hormuz)
Failing that.. I would like to have access to the following
#3 - A 50 mile radius around Mayyun island ( 12°39'16.11"N; 43°25'25.25"E ) near/in the strait that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden
If any of the #1, #2, #3, preferences can be locked in, please confirm and PM me with the payment cost and method. Thanks
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Hmm, I wonder if this is not a bit premature?
I would be interested in the area around and including Mount McKinley or Anchorage and surroundings, both Alaska, USA.
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Good thing I live in Houston...
This first come first serve thing is not all that great in my opinion but since it might happen I wouldn't mind claiming a large chunk of Houston myself.
County sized selection would be good actually as cshawnsmith mentioned.
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Good thing I live in Houston...
This first come first serve thing is not all that great in my opinion but since it might happen I wouldn't mind claiming a large chunk of Houston myself.
County sized selection would be good actually as cshawnsmith mentioned.
I wonder if the game allows for arbitrary selection of land (such as city, county, etc) or does it use some kind of grid system and we have to select based on a certain grid size? I hope it is more flexible. If I cannot get a good chunk of DFW metroplex then I want a radius of a more strategic location such as strait of hormuz.
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There were some numbers in this post (http://www.outerra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=4278#p4278). The game doesn't know anything about counties, it's year 2600 ±200 and the planet was emptied of people and we are starting anew, no old boundaries apply unless enforced by the players themselves.
To simplify the code dealing with ownership and privileges, the land will be divided in a grid system that derives from the mapping used by the engine. The basic unit is around 2446m by the side, and that's the granularity that will likely be used. It can be finer, but it would burden the game with more processing needed. We shall see how it works and can adjust later.
Additionally, the grid isn't precisely rectangular, it can be skewed in some parts, it's not aligned to longitude & latitude. Here's how the first two levels map to WGS84 projection (http://www.outerra.com/images/mapping.png).
The "map app" is something that would allow to select a number of these atomic tiles in a continuous block. Not sure how many of these tiles should be given to the players, the amount will be probably adjusted along the way as well.
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I knew I recalled "roughly 2446m by the side. That is close to 6km²"
So calling entire counties and 80 Mile diameters around points is a little exuberant.
A question is would players be allowed to deforest surrounding areas around a claim and build roads through unclaimed lands. I imagine that would have to be the case to get road systems to work. But that would also impede other plots if YOUR road is going through it.
Damn-it I hate politics and city planning!
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I knew I recalled "roughly 2446m by the side. That is close to 6km²"
So calling entire counties and 80 Mile diameters around points is a little exuberant.
A question is would players be allowed to deforest surrounding areas around a claim and build roads through unclaimed lands. I imagine that would have to be the case to get road systems to work. But that would also impede other plots if YOUR road is going through it.
Damn-it I hate politics and city planning!
And what about the question of how far out from the coast is considered to be territorial waters... and will there be an game enforced distinction of international waters? (I assume we will be able to sail ships in this game)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/Zonmar-en.svg/402px-Zonmar-en.svg.png)
And along those lines, how will we deal with the concept of "airspace"?
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Airspace_classes_%28United_States%29.gif)
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It did'nt take long for organisational politics to rear its ugly head..... The way I interperate the demo scenario is that each colonist/player will be responsible for all that they are able to take and keep controll of. Adverse possesion rules... wild frontier stuff and all that. Protecting your turf might be a full time job.
Lots of room for negotiated exchange of goods/currency/access to be developed. It seems that as soon as there is "contact" with other players there will need to be a unit of currency and a medium for exchange of wealth. Just like ZeosP..... there is no love lost by me for politics.
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There should somehow be a quick way to contact somebody that owns a piece of land even if they are "offline" and have conversations about that specific piece of land. Hopefully contact between players will mostly be friendly and constructive and there could be multiple "owners" of pieces of land. Eventually as the popularity grows there's bound to be jerks n stuff, so maybe there should a way of reporting these people or some other way that the players themselves could deal with these people (though that could also probably be abused. :/ )
Also, there would probably have to be a loss of ownership of land owned by somebody who doesn't play anymore.
(On a side note: I think the players/land owners should get the ability to reset pieces of land back to it's default state before it was modified.)
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and the most popular places will be sold on ebay for thousands of dollars by the players who own them :D
with this in mind, i want to reserve my hometown berlin!
currently it would be a pretty boring place, but with lakes, rivers and vegitation this will be very nice.
is it known how much detailed the lake & river references are? i mean will even the small rivers and lakes show up in the engine? most of our lakes and rivers are not as big as in the usa ... well nothing here is as big as in the usa ;)
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We'll start with the bigger rivers and lakes, gradually adding the smaller ones. I guess the data will have to be fitted and it can become more and more tedious process with each finer level of detail. Maybe we'll make the respective owners to do it :D
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Good Luck to whoever takes on the Amazon Basin it would be hard to get bigger or more convoluted than that :rolleyes: :-))
Given a reasonably "Ogre proof" tool to use I can imagine I might enjoy bringing irrigation waterways to an area. Admiring the scenery, seeing it being brought to life by all that water, great fun.
We'll start with the bigger rivers and lakes, gradually adding the smaller ones. I guess the data will have to be fitted and it can become more and more tedious process with each finer level of detail. Maybe we'll make the respective owners to do it :D
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We'll start with the bigger rivers and lakes, gradually adding the smaller ones. I guess the data will have to be fitted and it can become more and more tedious process with each finer level of detail. Maybe we'll make the respective owners to do it :D
So there are no lakes in the Outerra world yet? I'm curious to know is the Great Lakes a topographical feature already in the game or is it considered a lake that needs to be "created"?
Would Lake Arlington be considered a big, medium or small lake? (even though it is a man-made lake)
For navigation purposes will there be a Panama Canal?
And also, how will you do the Africa Sahara and Middle East desert terrains? Amazon rain forest? So far we have not seen any of these parts of the world. And there is only one tree variety? No clouds, no weather yet still. I know all this is a bit much to ask for the alpha but do you eventually plan to do/model all of this?
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Some of the answers to those questions can be found in the FAQ (http://www.outerra.com/forum/viewforum.php?id=10)
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Terrain is created from global elevation dataset that contains elevations of terrain measured by a satellite instrument. Lakes appear as flat terrain there.
Creating lakes in Outerra will employ modifying these data in a way that will get us heights of pure terrain without the water first.
Then vector polygons will be applied that define water surface. These will come from vector datasets, for example from OpenStreetMap. Eventually every lake that is defined there should make its way into Outerra.
Different climate types will be supported too, we are processing auxiliary data that are needed for it, but it needs to be made in a way that brings seamless, fractal-refinable terrain and vegetation. It takes some time ...
But in fact I don't even believe it could be sped up significantly by throwing more manpower at it, that is if we had some more ...
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so there are no good references for the lake and river bottoms present right?
does this realy mean you will have to do this by hand?
or will you add the shape of the rivers and lakes with map data, and generate the bottom randomly by the size of the river/lake?
well are there even good references for the shapes of the smaller rivers and lakes around?
with wich programm do you generate the vector datasets? if its something like adobe illustrator, i can offer to vectorize some lakes in my free time :P
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I didn't find any global compilations, but there are several local ones. We won't do it by hand - there will be an algorithm that guesses the depth from the distance to shore and some other parameters like the shore steepness, ± some randomness.
The shapes can come from OSM (http://www.openstreetmap.org/), you can check whether it would be satisfactory. If not, you can always edit it there :)
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I still don't understand how this is supposed to work.
What does it mean to "own" land? Can nobody go there? Can you go but be kicked out? Can you go there but not build? Can you conquere others land?
All the popular places will fill up really fast, leaving new players with no area they are interested in. If it can be conquered, for people not having much time its pointless, you will be conquered in no time. If you can be kicked out, its nothing but annoying, there you are strolling along looking at the awesome scenery, and boom, owner throws you out.
Whats the concept here, what can you do with land you own? And what can you not do in land you do not own?
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We won't do it by hand - there will be an algorithm that guesses the depth from the distance to shore and some other parameters like the shore steepness, ± some randomness.
cool, thats what i wanted to hear :)
The shapes can come from OSM (http://www.openstreetmap.org/), you can check whether it would be satisfactory. If not, you can always edit it there :)
i will definitely check how i can edit at that website, i have much more detailed maps for the shapes of the lakes in my hometown than the ones that are present there.
but the detail there is quite ok i think, if you can implement everything that is blue there it will just be awesome!
now i start thinking about the mass of features that are planned for outerra (lakes&rivers,clouds&weather,climazones,trees&vegitation,wind,sound,...), can you give a short explanation wich of these many features is a "must" for the demo in your mind?
personaly i cant wait for this demo and would rather play with the current version, than wait till next summer ;)
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I still don't understand how this is supposed to work.
Apart from other things it's meant to solve problems with griefers in online games, especially with world building/transportation/exploration game like it is meant to be.
Owning land means only you can build there. Other people can freely go there, without realtime multiplayer servers you won't see them (initially). No kicking anyone - it's not meant as a private ownership, rather a man-clan colonizing given piece of land, and strangers strolling by.
You can build on land nobody owns, but once somebody claims it, it's theirs.
I think the Earth will be quite sparsely colonized, so there will be different problems than those you are describing. But if something shows to be problematic, we'll try to find solutions during alpha regime.
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I still don't understand how this is supposed to work.
What does it mean to "own" land? Can nobody go there? Can you go but be kicked out? Can you go there but not build? Can you conquere others land?
All the popular places will fill up really fast, leaving new players with no area they are interested in. If it can be conquered, for people not having much time its pointless, you will be conquered in no time. If you can be kicked out, its nothing but annoying, there you are strolling along looking at the awesome scenery, and boom, owner throws you out.
Whats the concept here, what can you do with land you own? And what can you not do in land you do not own?
If I had to guess I'd say probably "ownership" of land will mean that you can only build on your own land and that others cannot build on your land (at least without permissions... rights... etc to do so) I think anyone can freely travel or visit to anywhere, but you cannot build on land that is owned by someone else.
I don't think the sim will handle the forcible takeover of someone else's land... You can't fight wars to take over land. The grid system doesn't work that way, anyway. If the concept of "fighting" is incorporated then so will the concept of "weapons"... What if someone had a couple of SLBM in a silent sub off the coast somewhere and retaliated with a thermonuclear strike? All it takes is one rogue player to knock out entire cities.
"All the popular places will fill up really fast, leaving new players with no area they are interested in. "
- actually I don't think this will ever happen. The earth is VERY BIG. In real life we have close to 7 billion population. I doubt all 7 billion people will be playing on Outerra, especially given that most people still don't have access to electricity. Probably less than 0.1% of the population has access to the hardware required to run Outerra. Think about the game GTAIV and Liberty city... It seems like a big world but it is actually very small! Sames goes for WoW, 2nd Life, etc... None of these games have ever simulated an ENTIRE EARTH to SCALE before. So we have the concept of "land will get filled quickly".. but that's only because we've always played in miniature cities in the games and never a to scale world.
Even when everyone wants to get to the most popular places in the world, there will still be no "overcrowding" simply because the land is WAY too vast... I think if anything, people will complain about land being too vast, players being too few, and that its hard to find anyone to come into contact with.
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now i start thinking about the mass of features that are planned for outerra (lakes&rivers,clouds&weather,climazones,trees&vegitation,wind,sound,...), can you give a short explanation wich of these many features is a "must" for the demo in your mind?
personaly i cant wait for this demo and would rather play with the current version, than wait till next summer ;)
Yes, it's a lot of stuff.
A must for the demo? Probably nothing from that list, we want to get the demo out in time. But I'd like to get at least the sound there ... the rest will follow gradually.
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now i start thinking about the mass of features that are planned for outerra (lakes&rivers,clouds&weather,climazones,trees&vegitation,wind,sound,...), can you give a short explanation wich of these many features is a "must" for the demo in your mind?
personaly i cant wait for this demo and would rather play with the current version, than wait till next summer ;)
Yes, it's a lot of stuff.
A must for the demo? Probably nothing from that list, we want to get the demo out in time. But I'd like to get at least the sound there ... the rest will follow gradually.
What is the definition of "summer"? When I check wikipedia I'm told :
"Summer began on Tue, Jun 21, 2011 and ends on Fri, Sep 23, 2011 (in 87 days) "
So the demo/alpha will be release in 87 days?
When you say "sound", will you make sound accurate? If we see explosion on far away mountain the sound should not be instant... And if aircraft go faster than mach 1 there should be a sonic boom...
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:rolleyes:
Oh, come on. We wish it was sometime in summer. Maybe it won't. We are not giving definite date because we don't know. We have other activities with the engine that are taking our time, but are supporting us so we can continue with this. Don't overanalyze it please :)
I meant environmental sounds. There will be no explosions and mach 1 aircraft in initial demo/alpha release, so no such problems yet.