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[C. Shawn Smith]

Some of the answers to those questions can be found in the FAQ

[cameni]

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 ...

[PeterBitt]

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

[cameni]

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, you can check whether it would be satisfactory. If not, you can always edit it there

[corona]

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?

[PeterBitt]

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, 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

[cameni]

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.

[cloudpillow]

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.

[cameni]

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.

[cloudpillow]

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...

[cameni]

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.