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[Occams Razer]

Hi, all.

I've long felt Outerra to be unfortunately quite empty of gameplay. Lots of space, but not a lot to do within it unless you're a content creator. Now, as I understand it, this is due to the fact that Outerra is tentatively being developed to support a myriad of systems, rather than a cut-and-dry game. Admirable enough, and the thought of an all-across-the-board flight/driving/rail/ship sim does sound awesome.

So, my solution: scenarios¹.

What they would consist of is a file, selectable from the pause menu, that contains at least three pieces of information: the coordinates used for the player's start, what the player is possessing (bipedal characters, wheeled vehicles, aircraft), and the coordinates of their objective marker. During the scenario, the player will be unable to leave the character or vehicle without either quitting or finishing the scenario, and a timer will count up from the beginning, adding a lightly competitive edge².

The beauty of the system is in its simplicity: the small number of fields in need of being filled in would likely make it the easiest form of content to create, and community members could share their favorite drives, flights, hikes, and beauty spots across the Outerra world with the community. Even sharing times, to add competition without needing networking. Moreover, the simplicity would make implementation relatively basic, keeping most development on the pressing matters of constructing the world itself.

I feel like this would be the most simple, unobtrusive way to add an extendable gameplay-oriented system to Outerra. And hopefully, the gateway to being able to fully enjoy the world the devs have given us.

¹ This is a term that I'm plucking from BeamNG.Drive, which implemented scenarios in order to introduce objective-oriented gaming into the physics sandbox in question.

² Obviously, more complicated systems could and should be possible. Time limits, limits on finishing conditions, scenarios with more than one objective, etc. But that would complicate the initial introduction of the mechanic, and for the time being, are unnecessary.

[HiFlyer]

I was just thinking about things to do as well, and came up with the idea that Outerra could probably do something very much like battlezone (multiplayer) fairly easily.

I think your idea is probably more imaginative, though. 

[fly77]

Scenarios ! Interesting idea. Driving from point A to point B in the shortest time along a given road, without missing any intermediate points. Climbing a selected mountain under given weather conditons for instance with my wanderer (that already gets tired and feels weather conditions) from a given base. etc.. seems the most simple form of game in outerra that makes good use of its gorgeous environment !  Just need one vehicle/character/etc.. a counter and some way of sharing the game scores and eventually paths covered to give it a competitive aspect. Will give it a try