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[ZeosPantera]

Then all we need are some physics .. and then we have the perfect sandbox game.

Outerra currently employs the BULLET open source physics engine which is pretty damn capable.



Just no way to see it quite yet. Plus it may need to be "tweaked" for vehicle tire and track interactions.

[Klugschwätzer]

Well my video was focused more on deformation physics (softbody or whatever). I have no idea if BULLET can compete with that. Anyway: I LOVE physics sandboxes. Used to blow up hundreds of stacked cars and barrels in the Crysis editor. :-)

[Midviki]

Hello, I have read all this topic, and I have a question cause it seems I did not understood clearly.

- Will I will be able to remove a continent? or all the continents and leave the planet empty... just with the oceans?

- Or modify the ground under the ocean so I can build cities there, algae, ocean animals(dolphins,whales,sharks,all sorts of fish) and other high-tech things that a city could have under water(mostly if I would want to have some kind of jelly fish kind of animal submarine to transport me... how would that behave under water?) , or castles, and make my own from scratch? Or if players would have their own buildings and modify the terrain, would it make a major impact on the other players conquering their caster or even destroying it? (ofc all the models / materials for building, behavior or movement of the animals in cause to simulate an realistic movement under water would be imported, but the rest?(like under water light, whirlpools,tsunamis?)).

And I'm not saying maybe all these features will probably come at the release, but do you have in mind or planing to after the release?(At least the major ones)

[cameni]

It's important to distinguish between the engine itself, which just renders a pre-compiled planet and allows for small-scale real-time modifications of the terrain, and a planet-creator software that would use the engine for the rendering. Removing a continent would certainly fall into the latter category, since it's not something you could attain with normal energy levels during gameplay.

Small scale terrain modifications (small in comparison to continent or planet size) are possible, and it's up to the game mechanics whether it will require you to collect the energy needed to move hundred tons of dirt and rock while leveling or preparing the terrain, or if it would downplay it. But all such decisions would have impact on the gameplay.

As far as Anteworld goes, it will try to be more realistic with energy spending. Also, given that you have all the landmass of Earth available, it won't focus on undersea settlements and water physics beyond what ships and submarines are going to need. Of course that doesn't mean that there can't be a game based on OT that does, in the future.

[Midviki]

Small scale terrain modifications (small in comparison to continent or planet size) are possible, and it's up to the game mechanics whether it will require you to collect the energy needed to move hundred tons of dirt and rock while leveling or preparing the terrain, or if it would downplay it. But all such decisions would have impact on the gameplay.

As far as Anteworld goes, it will try to be more realistic with energy spending. Also, given that you have all the landmass of Earth available, it won't focus on undersea settlements and water physics beyond what ships and submarines are going to need. Of course that doesn't mean that there can't be a game based on OT that does, in the future.

- Small scale terrain modification, I can work with that! Modifying islands like Sicily in like 1-2 days working on it and managing to cut it in half not to look the same.
That would be great!

- I was more afraid of the fact that I'm writing a book for my future game, and I have maps and places that don't need to look like Earth major land masses.(so like 3-4 months of work it will do the job on lets say Africa even with little power of modeling small place, slow but good!

But for starters if it is possible to modify small islands or create new small islands that is great!

- But the part with the underwater or swimming?For now the lighting underwater seems dark, but that will be probably solved.The part where swimming under water may seem distant.Do you think till the release of the engine will be possible like with my human / wild life 3D models to be Flagged, so it could recognize the swimming animations once they get more deeper in the water or under it?But I did saw some video on youtube where ships where involved, so they where floating, so I may assume that options is already implemented?

[cameni]

Anteworld's not meant for that. It's a demo game designed so that it can showcase the engine in its early state and as it's being developed. The sandbox mode will allow you to perform some of those actions, but it will be your local copy. Anteworld is also helping to develop the Outerra engine, so when it's finished it's likely that OT will be made available too, with a wider range of options and tools, like designing your own planets etc.

Swimming animations should be fairly easy to handle.

[FreeUser]

Hello, some more questions

1) is it possible to use this engin for hybride fps/rts ?
2) What about IA ?
3) Will we be able to generat our own map, planets ?
4) What about gravity and Newton physiques ?
 

[PytonPago]

3) Will we be able to generat our own map, planets ?

They plan to make a Planet-creator, doe, it is a lot of time to wait for it, cause first Earth should be finished properly whyte all its sparkles.

4) What about gravity and Newton physiques ?

Bullet physics takes that sort of things sorted out. Some stuff will be added to use it in more interesting ways ... still, biomes and clouds need to come first. Just hang on from month to month.

As for AI, i know there was talk about some low-wildlife to be put in OT a long time ago, but im not sure of the depth Cameni and AngryPig plans it for Antenworld. Doe, this needs animations done finito first too.

I dont think there should be much problem to do a FPS/RTS combined game using OT. It surely has not only the potential ... just have to wait for some nice-plan motivated developers to make it come true.

[jokoon]

Could you expand a bit about the fractal part ?

I don't have a degree in math, but I can't the relationship between fractal and terrain geometry. I guess that makes me twice as ignorant, but I think I understand a little what a fractal is in general when I read a wikipedia article.

When you mean fractal, do you mean you use some kind of recursive function to load different data geometry, to dynamically adjust the LOD ? Does that mean it continuously transfers geometry data on the GPU memory if I fly very fast ?

[KW71]

Could you expand a bit about the fractal part ?

I don't have a degree in math, but I can't the relationship between fractal and terrain geometry. I guess that makes me twice as ignorant, but I think I understand a little what a fractal is in general when I read a wikipedia article.

When you mean fractal, do you mean you use some kind of recursive function to load different data geometry, to dynamically adjust the LOD ? Does that mean it continuously transfers geometry data on the GPU memory if I fly very fast ?

This may help:


http://forum.outerra.com/FMX/presentation/

[jokoon]

Thanks, I'll definitely go through this!

I quickly browsed the blog, outerra have been in development for 8 years now, that's pretty impressive, I hope the efforts are paying.

I've read that outerra is mostly used for a military simulator, but this sort of engine have a really big potential for gaming application, or am I mistaken?

I don't really know what the dev team thinks about gaming, and if there were offers at some point, but as a developer this engine makes me dream. I'm curious to think what a game designer would think about this engine, and what would be possible to do with this.

I always had this idea that p2p networking/clustered game servers with a very large world like anteworld could really bring a lot of new possibilities for online gaming. For example the multiplayer experience of GTA 5 seems like it's popular, but with anteworld it would really be something else... but maybe I have illusions of grandeur.

I hope OSM data with cities will happen soon!