Outerra forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Download Outerra Tech Demo. Unofficial Outerra Discord server, MicroProse Discord server for OWS.

Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6

Author Topic: Podcast about Outerra  (Read 91515 times)

SpaceFlight

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 252
Podcast about Outerra
« Reply #45 on: June 16, 2011, 04:52:55 am »

Quote from: cameni
and that Wolfire game, what'sitsname ...

oh, those violent rabbits give me nightmares. ;)

Quote from: cameni
with normal speeds achievable with vehicles in game, you don't have to wait for a download anymore, it gets delivered on the background by the time you need it.

I would not mind downloading the whole thing if it is necessary for flying supersonic jets.  :D
Logged
"You see, Killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them, until they reached their limit and shut down."
Zapp Brannigan

PeterBitt

  • Member
  • **
  • Posts: 62
Podcast about Outerra
« Reply #46 on: June 16, 2011, 05:34:13 am »

Quote from: cameni
So it's 250kB (kilo bytes), not 250kb (kilo bits, 8x less).
a small "b" means bits and a big "B" means bytes, i didnt knew this, sorry.

Quote from: cameni
250kB is fine for Outerra. Our current server caps the speed per download to around 250kB, so that's what we are getting too when testing the initial download, except that at the end it spawns more (3) downloads in parallel so it goes higher than that.
cool  :)

i dont want to criticize your work at all, but iam just curious what holds you of to release an offline version too?
it would be great to be able to roam through outerra on my laptop with no internet while on vecation or something :)
Logged

cameni

  • Brano Kemen
  • Outerra Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 6721
  • No sense of urgency.
    • outerra.com
Podcast about Outerra
« Reply #47 on: June 16, 2011, 06:41:43 am »

Quote from: PeterBitt
i dont want to criticize your work at all, but iam just curious what holds you of to release an offline version too?
it would be great to be able to roam through outerra on my laptop with no internet while on vecation or something :)
Oh, come on, Outerra on a vacation? I assume you have a high end laptop :)

You will be able to roam through Outerra world in the offline mode. Roaming doesn't require you to log in, so in this case offline puts you into the free roaming mode. Any areas you've visited (thus downloaded & cached) while in online mode will be available to you in the offline mode, we only need to come up with a way of notifying the users that some areas of terrain weren't downloaded. The terrain will not be refined in that case, which can be mistaken for a bug.

Also, free mode will use the built-in bittorrent service to get the data when connected to internet, which is less reliable but reduces the load on our servers.
Logged

PeterBitt

  • Member
  • **
  • Posts: 62
Podcast about Outerra
« Reply #48 on: June 16, 2011, 07:24:54 am »

Quote from: cameni
Oh, come on, Outerra on a vacation? I assume you have a high end laptop :)
depends on how many options to lower the graphics quality will be implemented :)

Quote from: cameni
Any areas you've visited (thus downloaded & cached) while in online mode will be available to you in the offline mode, ...
now i have a good reason to visit as many places as possible, to get the full offline experience :D

thank you for the fast replies, much appreciated.
Logged

George

  • Jr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 11
Podcast about Outerra
« Reply #49 on: June 21, 2011, 03:37:54 pm »

Oh wow Outerra demo in the summer? It's like a dream come true.
Logged

Jagerbomber

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1564
Podcast about Outerra
« Reply #50 on: June 21, 2011, 05:46:52 pm »

IT'S THE FIRST DAY OF SUMMER! WHERE IS IT?!?!  :P
Logged
"Perhaps this speaks to some larger trend within society today...  A prevailing desire on the part of indie developers to recreate the entire world into one where you can charge more than $15 for your game design degree coursework." - Yahtzee ;) :P

MiB

  • Jr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 34
Podcast about Outerra
« Reply #51 on: June 22, 2011, 06:31:21 am »

Which year's summer ? ;-) ... just joking ... ;-)
Logged

cloudpillow

  • Jr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 24
Podcast about Outerra
« Reply #52 on: June 25, 2011, 07:47:08 pm »

Quote from: cameni
It will be certainly very alpha when released, so it's the preorder-and-get-alpha model known from the Minecraft and and that Wolfire game, what'sitsname ...

I think it will be like this - the free demo will allow roaming around the world anywhere, and upon registration (through the in-game browser) people will get access to two prototype vehicles.
People who preorder the alpha will get more vehicles and the ability to build stuff in sandbox mode (locally), and then in the online game mode they will be able to claim their own land anywhere in the world (except game specific forbidden areas) and build their stuff there, following the economic game rules.

How does that sound?

Money is really just a proxy that represents energy and resources. What functional level of simulation will the game be? Is it going to be like there are only so many trees, oil, resources in the ground and that dictates larger macroeconomic forces from a bottoms-up perspective, or are you going to do some sort of divine intervention and enact a top-down fiscial policy like in 2nd Life by arbitrarily printing gaming currency? Or will you let "emergence of complex systems" happen and allow a  natural world-central-reserve and monetary policy to form based on the available resources on planet earth and the population?

If the latter, does this mean if someday the mmorpg gets too popular we will have to deal with "peak oil" and other resource limits to growth? Or will you magically create oil "out of thin air"?
Logged

cloudpillow

  • Jr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 24
Podcast about Outerra
« Reply #53 on: June 25, 2011, 08:02:32 pm »

Quote from: ZeosPantera
Quote from: cameni
will be able to claim their own land anywhere in the world (except game specific forbidden areas)

So I am to assume the summit of Mt Everest would be off limits? I can only imagine the difficulty of getting there if the flying vehicles were limited to a certain realistic altitude. That's where I would build my retro 80's gaming bar.


Is this simulator supposed to be exactly a replica of Earth, like a Google Earth but for gaming? Since the planet is 70%+ water/ocean, couldn't a "game specific forbidden area" simply be an "artificial"  island created in some sea/ocean somewhere? If this is really going to be as large as the earth, why would the developers worry about ever running out of "land"?

If spaceships are allowed (like OrbiterSim), it should be quite easy to orbiter into space and reentry on top of Mount Everest. Incidentally, the Quterra "Earth" in its current form does not look realistic from the vantage point of outer-space/orbiter... compare to OrbiterSim's "earth".
Logged

cloudpillow

  • Jr. Member
  • *
  • Posts: 24
Podcast about Outerra
« Reply #54 on: June 25, 2011, 08:34:17 pm »

Quote from: cameni
The tiles are just atomic units of land. One player will be given, like, 20 or 100 of them, initially?
Or more precisely, player can claim the number of tiles corresponding to what his economical status allows, those initial 20 or how much is just the basis.

Minerals - there's enough of minerals everywhere, it's just that the profitability of mining becomes lower after you exploit the easy sources. It will need a better tech for it, ore enriching etc. For some materials the technology will be only available at Mothership, that will trade with you.

There should be way of determining the quality of the ore, the percentage of precious stuff contained within it. Technically, if you filter a ton of common dirt you'll still be able to extract some small amount of metals from it, but of course you'll be motivated to find a better source. The distribution of these richer ores will be determined by fractal, and you will have to make measurements and infer the location of deposits from them.
There will be mines that can be built, upgradable by enrichers so that it's possible to reduce the volume needed to be ferried to the base where the separator is stationed ..

So maybe this could be a lesson in 2nd law of thermodynamics, entropy,  EROEI (energy returned on energy invested), quality of resource inflection points, and Peak Oil, etc

This can be an economic simulator too! From micro to macro scales!
Logged

ZeosPantera

  • ||>>-Z-<<||
  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2520
  • #1 Outerra Fan Boy
    • My Youtube
Podcast about Outerra
« Reply #55 on: June 25, 2011, 11:08:20 pm »

Quote from: cloudpillow
Incidentally, the Quterra "Earth" in its current form does not look realistic from the vantage point of outer-space/orbiter... compare to OrbiterSim's "earth".

That is due to the fact that you are missing.. And by you I mean CLOUDS are not yet present. I am sure those are somewhere on the to-do list.
Logged
"Fear accompanies the possibility of death, Calm shepherds its certainty" - General Ka Dargo

cameni

  • Brano Kemen
  • Outerra Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 6721
  • No sense of urgency.
    • outerra.com
Podcast about Outerra
« Reply #56 on: June 26, 2011, 04:37:14 am »

Quote from: cloudpillow
Money is really just a proxy that represents energy and resources. What functional level of simulation will the game be? Is it going to be like there are only so many trees, oil, resources in the ground and that dictates larger macroeconomic forces from a bottoms-up perspective, or are you going to do some sort of divine intervention and enact a top-down fiscial policy like in 2nd Life by arbitrarily printing gaming currency? Or will you let "emergence of complex systems" happen and allow a  natural world-central-reserve and monetary policy to form based on the available resources on planet earth and the population?

If the latter, does this mean if someday the mmorpg gets too popular we will have to deal with "peak oil" and other resource limits to growth? Or will you magically create oil "out of thin air"?
I'm imagining that for gameplay's sake there could be some resources sparser than others, and technologies that use one material while it can be more easily used, available and cheap, but switching to another material (+tech development) as the first one is getting depleted. Cost of input materials can be determined by market, but ultimately (minus market speculations and niches), and for self-sustained economy it's driven by the energy needed for the extraction: if there are mines with 3% content of some metal, the overall energy needed to extract it will be considerably less than what you have to put into filtering out 3x that much gangue.

I don't think we should be afraid of total resource depletion, like say in the old AoE. First the land is enormous and civilization will be sparse, and second the economic model will be able to adapt, as in RL.
We aren't thinking of making an artificial game currency there. We would really like to leave it on the people and the game. Though there probably will be an artificial entity trading with energy and precious materials - the mothership - but I'd like it to be a part of the game as far as the economic rules go. Basically, adapting to the market. Losing and winning.
Logged

cameni

  • Brano Kemen
  • Outerra Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 6721
  • No sense of urgency.
    • outerra.com
Podcast about Outerra
« Reply #57 on: June 26, 2011, 04:42:59 am »

Quote from: cloudpillow
Is this simulator supposed to be exactly a replica of Earth, like a Google Earth but for gaming? Since the planet is 70%+ water/ocean, couldn't a "game specific forbidden area" simply be an "artificial"  island created in some sea/ocean somewhere? If this is really going to be as large as the earth, why would the developers worry about ever running out of "land"?
The forbidden land is not because we need a piece of land for ourselves, we can always create a different realm on the same Earth and have it all for ourselves.
It's going to be there because the game has a story and these places will be special, controlled by ... something :)
Logged

Grind and Click

  • Member
  • **
  • Posts: 62
Podcast about Outerra
« Reply #58 on: June 28, 2011, 01:18:38 pm »

Sorry i think this may of been mentioned, but will there be PvP combat? Or i think you said for now there will be AI that attack your base?
Logged

cameni

  • Brano Kemen
  • Outerra Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 6721
  • No sense of urgency.
    • outerra.com
Podcast about Outerra
« Reply #59 on: June 28, 2011, 02:21:03 pm »

No PvP initially, but some AI creeps will be coming - probably not right from the start though.
Logged
Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6