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[Anarkist]

Hey guys,

I would like to make an open world action adventure game which features a detailed setting drawn from the Pulp Adventure Magazines of the early 20th Century. Think Indiana Jones, the Rocketeer, the Phantom, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow etc. I believe the Outerra engine is one of the few game engines capable of bring my vision to life. Its terrain and ocean rendering technology are unbelievable and easily rivals that in AAA engines such as Cryengine and that overlooks the shear scale of landscapes rendered by Outerra.

I have a few questions though.

Are there any limits in the size of game objects which can be rendered by the engine? I ask because I would like to eventually import a model of a flying aircraft carrier inspired by the Royal Naval Aircraft Carrier which was in the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I would like to enable aircraft to takeoff and land upon it and players to walk around and man gun stations to defend it from attackers. Will that be possible?

The inability of players to walking around large moving objects is an engine limitation of the one behind Armed Assault, though it may be a design decision due to difficulties with multiplayer syncing. Something which may not be an issue in this case?

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?119492-submarine-walk-in-cargo-ships/page4

A project being worked on by a novice developer using the Cryengine SDK, includes a drivable Aircraft Carrier, which allows aircraft to land and take off from it. It was necessary for the developer to divide the model into over 3000 objects and import them together using a custom script. Will this be necessary or even possible in Outerra?

http://www.crydev.net/viewtopic.php?f=280&t=25876&start=1245

Will it be possible to introduce underwater level geometry which allows a level designer to exclude water while allowing players to view ocean scenery through portals? It would be mandatory to allow me to include underwater bases and vehicles which a player can both pilot and view the ocean scenery through portholes. Its an issue that developers using the Cryengine's SDK have yet to find a workaround for. I hope it will not be the case in Outerra.

 Imagine exploring an underwater base like that in Bioshock's Rapture or operating a submarine similar to Captain Nemo's Nautilus featured in the League of Extraordinary Gentleman. 

[cameni]

Well the limits are set quite high as far as the rendering goes, you should be able to import it as a single object. But you may encounter some physics-related limitations later. I don't know how big is that carrier, and the physics system is still unfinished too, we'll see.
It should allow interactions between objects, like landing and docking on another object, but there's still a lot of work needed in this direction to make the physics system work globally and effectively.

Excluding water from the undersea geometry - will be possible using a stencil technique, that will require the objects to have outer shell geometry.

[Anarkist]

hey Cameni,

Thanks so much for the very prompt reply. Congratulation for developing such a stunning piece of technology. I'm sure the praise is only too familiar by now since Outerra has received a great deal of well deserved attention on the web. So I will resist pouring it on too thick. I really appreciate the level of engagement you have with your "community" even before the tech has been fully complete, with the level of workload you're under which that implies.

I was rather tired when I posted my comment and left out an important part of my query. I actually would like to model a flying aircraft carrier, which players would be able to land on and take off from, while also being able to get out of their planes and walk around on. In other games players can't even walk around on small objects like boats or inside transport aircraft, so to allow what I want is an impressive feat.

To get an idea of the scale of the flying aircraft carrier I want to model, check out below.
http://www.thefront.com/vfx.php?view=2

I know its early days yet as to the limits of this engine, but the inclusion of the International Space Station in one of the videos made by a user of Outerra is a promising indication.

In terms of the limitation of the importer Angrypig has confirmed the size limit of models which can be imported is 65536 vertices, but the object can be divided into smaller ones and imported together into the engine.

http://www.outerra.com/forum/index.php?topic=1118.msg12885#msg12885

I guess the only way to find out is by getting my hands on the Outerra demo, the model importer, and starting working on the model, piece by piece. Optimizing it as best I can.

[cameni]

The 65535 limit is for the individual meshes, since there are 16-bit indices used for meshes as 32-bit ones would be wasteful and splitting meshes is easy.
But you can have unlimited amount of meshes in the model (well, I think there's another limit for total meshes count somewhere but it's high). And you should use geometry instancing as much as you can since it reduces the amount of meshes.

Landing and interacting with objects is possible with Bullet physics we are using, if implemented so, but we need to interconnect it with JSBSim physics that we are using for aircraft.

[Anarkist]

hey cameni,

thanks once again for your reply and for clarifying about the model exporter.

Will it be your intention to interconnect Bullet and the flight physics as you say? I guess its not such a high priority.

Will Outerra be released as a general purpose game engine like Unity3d, Cryengine, or Unreal? Or will you it just be a renderer and terrain engine which developers will just be able to integrate with their own game engine components? I know you've said Bullet and JSBSim are currently being used for demonstration purposes to show the capabilities offered by the engine when its integrated with other components.

[cameni]

Strictly speaking, OT is a specialized engine so it's not exactly competing with general purpose game engines, although I guess the overlap is quite large. Initially we plan to open it up as a platform for games and simulators, where you will be able to reuse the world and implement your own game logic and game play in a module loaded from the launcher. Initially as mods, later complete games, but still based on the common platform that takes care of syncing planet data, version updating etc.

The interconnection of Bullet and JSBSim is planned, ultimately you should be able to plug in also a custom physics handling for people who need a world renderer for their specialized simulators.

[Anarkist]

hey cameni

thanks for taking time to answer my inane questions. I'm getting even more exciting about Outerra if that were possible.

When you say first as mods, do you mean once your game is complete, modders can modify it before new games can be developed or do you mean modules which will add particular functionality needed for specific gameplay? Different physics middleware, A.I. etc?

Sorry for taking up more of your valuable time.

[cameni]

When you say first as mods, do you mean once your game is complete, modders can modify it before new games can be developed or do you mean modules which will add particular functionality needed for specific gameplay? Different physics middleware, A.I. etc?

Actually both; new games need the game scripting interfaces and functionality that's being developed along the way of making our game, as needed. Another part of our plans is the use for simulators, and there we are interested to open the API for functional plugins - as you say, extending the physics, AI, inputs etc. It's kind of a hybrid, and I reckon we'll need to better differentiate it in the future. For now Anteworld is a tech sandbox, meaning to grow into a game but also to lay down the basis for the game/sim platform.

[Anarkist]

hey cameni

thanks again for your reply. Whats the likelihoods of providing a Lua wrapper for scripting fuctionality. With its integration in many AAA titles like the Civilization series and Crysis, Outerra will have a already well established pool of potential developers with the skills necessary to introduce gameplay possibilities you guys either haven't thought of or don't have the resources to implement yourselves.

Will simulataneously developing a game and providing a SDK for developers stretch your resources beyond your capacit?. Would you prefer to dedicate your attention to making the game before committing resources to Third Party developers?

Its just that I am eager to get my hands on your technology. I'm convinced nothing else available right now is up to the task. All have their own inherent limitations that impose game breaking restrictions.

[cameni]

Will simulataneously developing a game and providing a SDK for developers stretch your resources beyond your capacit?. Would you prefer to dedicate your attention to making the game before committing resources to Third Party developers?

We are only releasing the API parts that we need ourselves to make the game and to support our other commitments, so it's no dedicated effort to produce an SDK first. Our API system is very convenient though - we have a tool that creates C++ and javascript interfaces directly from our code with minimal effort. Technically it's possible to add a LUA binding generator to it as well, that would be producing identical interfaces, but I don't possess enough knowledge of LUA internals yet for it.
Anyway, our ultimate goal is to have an option that would compile the script into a native code. Provided that you don't use some special constructs in JS, it should be possible to have it translated into C and compiled. That would be merging the best of two worlds - being able to edit the scripts dynamically when creating and debugging, and have a native code speed in the production. With fallback to normal JITted JS for more complex scripts.

[seppen]

In fix anything relatet 2 Space.
I´m gifted in that department lol.

[Anarkist]

hey Cameni,

Thanks again for your quick and informative reply. Nice. Thanks for the letting me know your intentions and explaining your reasoning. Understandably you'll be working with JavaScript if you're more familiar with it. If anything more people are likely familiar with it than with Lua.

All the best. I'll be waiting eagerly until I can work with Outerra myself. I won't take up more of your time.

[Sunnyyello]

I love the era that you're trying to recreate in game form. I've always wondered what these would look like in a massive open world. (Especially The Rocketeer and The Phantom).

[Anarkist]

hey Sunnyyello,

Glad I'm not the only one interested in that era. Sadly few games have tapped into the deep source of inspiration for their game settings. One of the best in my mind is Crimson Skies, which criminally haven't received a remake though it was very successful on the original Xbox console.