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[Omkalfatre]

I was just wondering, what are the challenges of making a "wikipedia style" project out of this, with easy to use mod tools? I understand that a lot of work would go into making such tools, but is it possible? Or would the memory footprints of manually editing (templets provided in the tools, not talking about making own models and such) be to big? With tools being able to edit placement of things like houses, roads, landmarks etc, not the already procedurally generated terrain, vegetations and water.

I`m sure there is a tecnichal limitation to this (why no one has attempted this before), but could it be done within this engine?

[cameni]

Technically it is possible, though it requires several clever approaches to object and memory management and such things.

In fact we would like to make something in this style for game makers or groups of enthusiasts - the ability to simultaneously edit the world and modify it to their image. Then a game can be run on a snapshot of this world. The difference between editing and gaming modes can be arbitrarily wide, depending on the game/project type.

But yes, it will be a lot of work, we have to go through several iterations to gain expertise and to work out the details. The general idea is nice, but I suspect a successful implementation will have to solve many important details - access rights, resolution of edit conflicts and many more.
Initial goal is to make realms where different groups can develop their own scenarios. The groups would manage their own members and access privileges. I guess a completely open world editing model will need additional measures.

[Omkalfatre]

First of all thank you a very good answer!  

I`m part of the flightsim community in Norway, and we`ve discussed this several times. To make models and place them in MSFS for example is to complicated using the tools provided. (Needs to be point and click).

I guess it would have to be organized in a clever way with groups and subgroups. But there are many people willing to contribute in a very serious way to such a project/type of game, that I`m sure of!

Thanks again!

[Seth]

Sounds great, I see the direction you are suggesting, I think its called Synergy.

I think that the flightsim community will be the first to benefit from this, since it is an Outerra is an obvious choice for any developer.  

As regards to your "point & click" request, I believe, and Cameni will have to help me out here,  that the current "average pc" might not be ablr to handle a full on editor.

On the other hand, and don't laugh, a console could. Yes I have inside info, 8th Gen on the horizon, no not Sony nor M$. From what I have heard, it built like a Supercomputer.

Anyway  

[Jak_o_Shadows]

Has anybody ever played sauerbraten? Thats the sort of community feeling (not exact implantation) that i would like to see (of course, i'm not talking about the map wreckers).

You basically got 8 or so people zooming around and making buildings. It was all a grid system (which outerra isn't really) but the feel when you built a huge city was great.

I don't honestly know how i would like the map-editor to be. I'd like to be able to import files (.blends or exports of such) into outerra, but then where are the files hosted if i'm playing multiplayer? Back to sauerbraten, you joined a game and the map was empty. Then you pleaded for 5 minutes for somebody to type "/sendmap" which would upload the map to the server. Then you would "/getmap" and download the map from the server. From then on all players would be in sync and free to save the map onto their computer.
If somehow only the changes were transferred, it would result in lower bandwidth.

On the notion of props, I firmly believe that there should be a large standard library (likely helped along with community contributions) that players can just pick and choose from. Sadly  i don't think we're quite at the stage yet where each users computer is a server ( give it a few more years), so user-based hosting (not distributed, just client-server, with the server being the users computer (user being the person with custom content)) probably isn't an option. The integrated web-browser would be a nice catalogue maybe, with a service similar to google warehouse?

Placing wise we're all used to the standard found in RTS games. Click , hold to rotate, place. This unfortunately lacks detail and suitability to the ground. Another placing method would be using latittude and longitude, but unless there's an easy way to measure and record lengths and locations, this could get tiresome and it still doesnt' solve the problems in the RTS method (but it does make pre-built worlds easier, so maybe good enough for those who license the engine).

Customs props are necessary and a good idea. Obviously you're going to get some vulgarity and the like (*shudders*) but it would really make outerra (the game thingo) in my opinion. To more easily make 3d models of buildings destined to go in specific places, perhaps it would be an idea to be able to extract a low-detail heightmap that could be imported into your favourite 3d modelling program.

For the props database, perhaps it would be a good idea to make them all parametaric. If you're not used to some of the more advanced CAD programs this means that you can change almost all parameters of the object (such as the length/width, height, skirting board size/profile) and everything else will update itself and it will still work. For example, a minor and simple use of this would be to add length using an array, or change the profile of a doorknob (one of those round ones). The base 3D model information would be the same, so the file would only be hosted once, but bits of it would be altered to suit.  This might be similar to http://www.openscad.org/ or not, never used it, but it is similar to a carefully designed autodesk inventor object.

Wow, i've warbled on a lot.