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[Angry_Groceries]

I'm not sure how much you're planning on leaving to modders or what your intention is with this game; but something like this could really take off if it's a good game in itself.

As amazing a full world like this is, it's something that will only be entertaining for a few hours at most if you're unable to interact with the environment. A flight sim\driving sim doesn't really make the cut...

Here's a few ideas you may want to consider that will make a huge difference;

1.
Interactive environment. It doesn't have to be completely realistic, if you run into a tree it's very cool if the tree actually breaks or gets knocked over (along with your vehicle getting knocked back or even taking damage), it's the difference between "Oh look, trees." and actual immersion into this world. They don't need to stay as knocked over tree-carcasses, just have a tree death animation and have it fade away, same thing with any buildings that may exist.

You may want to consider adding random pieces of terrain like boulders or rocks that can actually be kicked around, the more you remove the game from a static environment, the more it goes from a "cool" to "Damn! I want to show this to someone!" This is why cars on roads, birds, random animals, weather, even something (probably impossible) like avalanches are so sought after. We see so much potential in the game and would love to be immersed in a world, not just have an interesting environment to look at. We want to be part of it.

2.
The first thing I wondered when I saw the youtube videos was "Can I walk around?"
The vehicles are okay, but you really want to have a 'guy' that can enter and exit different vehicles and actually walk around on foot. Again, it's for the sake of immersion.


3.
Climates, and making it interesting to explore the world:
 If every part of the world looks the same as every other part of the world then there's no point to actually exploring the world. Having some mountain areas, some desert areas, some flat areas and other slightly hilly areas with different types of trees and wildlife organized in different ways will greatly increase incentive to explore.


more
Often times unrealistic or very different atypical environments can be very interesting to explore while still being believable.

Don't just give us some static world we can only pass by, immerse us.


Wishful thinking:
-Cities
-Clouds and weather
-Capability to have cities in the oceans and ocean life (coral reefs, kelp, whales) in a similar way trees are generated on the surface

-Capability to construct buildings and actually go inside of buildings
-Weapons and enemies that we can turn on\off
-Capability to go to other planets within the game
-Destructible buildings
-Caves


Extremely wishful thinking:
-Towns that grow over time and become more advanced over time
-"Nations" with territories that expand and come in conflict with other territories, and they actually fight each other over it.
-Actual 'space physics', spaceships, spacebattles, SPAAAAACEE! :p
-The larger the nation, the more technologically advanced it is - going from wagons to cars, huts to skyscrapers, eventually a large enough nation can explore and colonize space.  Maybe even have it ongoing on alien worlds that may want to come and forcefully colonize earth.

bombs,grenades, nukes that leave craters

I know it's just a small team working on this game, but there's so much potential with something like this that at the very least it's fun to come up with possibilities that could become part of it.

[cameni]

For 1), what you describe would be desirable in all games, yet we hardly get it even in games with tiny environments in comparison. It would be definitely nice for the immersion, but in itself it brings only so much fun. Probably also depends on the game type. Anyway, pure exploration won't last long for anyone but the hardest of explorers.

Walking on foot, sure, that was there from the start, it's the vehicles that were added as an extension. Or do you mean a 3rd person view here, specifically?

3) is in the plan and in the works. One needs to realize that every other gradually rarer environment usually requires more work than a common one. While everybody here would like to have it all, it's limited by the ability to set a realistic goal and being able to fulfill it too.

Just don't let your dream carry you too far out from what is possible in given time. Don't let the potential fool you, it's still loads of work even if we had a stronger workforce

[Abc94]

Anyway, pure exploration won't last long for anyone but the hardest of explorers.

That's me.  

[Seth]

Just don't let your dream carry you too far out from what is possible in given time. Don't let the potential fool you, it's still loads of work even if we had a stronger workforce

I am right in saying that there are 3 of you working on Outerra?

If you could hire people to work on Outerra, how many would you hire?
Assuming they are all fully trained and as good as you.

[cameni]

Nope, just 2 core people. The third one got into a state of permanent lethargy and feel off a long time ago, somebody should fix the Wikipedia entry
There are a few others cooperating with us on various other tasks related to our work and company.

How many we would hire - depends on the target product. It's expected that the engine can find its use in a wide array of applications, be it simulators, games, visualization sw ...
If we focused just on making a commercial sim engine, we would perhaps need 3-4 more people for the core,

[Seth]

Just 3 or 4, cool.

By the way, was your post finished?

[cameni]

Why is it cool?

I probably started to expand it, but then rolled it back
3-4 additional people is also the team size that we find manageable without losing too much of our effectiveness. But finding the right people directly is hard, and growing our own would take a longer time. We've been already wondering about how we would be expanding our dev team, should the need and the possibility arise ...

[PytonPago]

 Well, hello at first !
Im new in this forum, but im already following the progress of your Outerra program for a longer time. As long as this thread is about Dynamic environment, i had an idea i would like to ask you of its create-ability. What if you would add to the engine for the Earth an two-step environment system:
   - The first "layer" would be an definition of overall temparature-interval for the whole Earth, while it would have a decline tendency whyte the growing distance from the eqatorial to the poles, (eather as an direct function, or in ekvi-distant areas placement) and it capability to choose, weather the area has rain/snow or even ice blocks (of rising growth and numbers to the poles) in the seas and oceans near the poles.
      There would by a capability to tune the whole system for the distance of the Earth to Sun (so the year-seasons would be created for the far, but oncoming inter-planetary relations during the ellipse-shaped track of the Earth around the Sun) whyte a simple constant or function added to the complex one.
      This same function would, at the same time, decide the snow/grass "event" for hills and moutains whyte growing height (also as an direct function or ekvi-distant height areas) that would enhance the current global ekvi-distant height capability to the pole regions, making the snow come down the hills closing to the poles and higher to Africa.
     - The second "layer" would then be a direct outcome of the first one and would imitate basic circulations of the Earth air among the areas created from the first layer from the eqatorial distance. Something like from the example picture (butt rather simplified):
http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sect14/atmospheric_circulation.jpg
and it would decide the wind/cloud vector direction in the oncoming cloud environment.

    I know, it will be werry hard to create such a environment system and it will have its limits to the hardware reqirements and tweaking it. But even applying the first layer would make the realism (in the snow-effect) much higher and at the same time give an future opportunity for using this functions in oncoming upgrades of the environment. And maybe, if it would be really working, enhance the first layer to the realistic rotation of Earths rotation-axis.

( Well, i realized the overall complexity of this approach mainly at the end of writing this post : ) )

P.S.: Sorry for my English and, of course, WELL DONE SO FAR AND GOOD LUCK IN THE FUTURE OF OUTERRA! Looking forward to the end-outcome of it (Ewen if i would have to wait 60 years, it would surely pay for it ) !

[cameni]

Welcome here.

Actually, what you describe is partly being done even now. The snow line depends on both altitude and latitude (and will depend on day of year as well). The same will work for vegetation. The way it's done is by computing a virtual altitude: one degree north or south from equator is roughly equivalent to climbing 100m up, with regards to temperature. We transform the latitude (or rather the proportional amount of sun light) into the corresponding addition to the altitude. This way we basically get rid of one parameter, and can design the vegetation system to be dependent on land type, moisture and virtual elevation alone, with the elevation directly corresponding to the temperature, and thus defining what can grow there.

We need to factor in the moisture, and also use a differential map to adjust the values that are changed by local phenomena like ocean currents and mountain ridge air current shields.