Anteworld - Outerra Game > Game & gameplay discussion
Anteworld Game Design Think Tank
inactive:
I honestly hope if Outerra's going to have multiplayer, that there's both singleplayer and multiplayer options. For multiplayer, it can be like Blockland, where a player can host their own server and password it or make it public. If possible, the mods that the player are using can be downloaded to some cache file also like Blockland, as opposed to making all of the people who join said server download all of the mods being used.
As for players themselves, I think the playermodel customization should be like a mix between Garry's Mod and Saints Row.
There can be 2 options:
1. The player can customize a character and change their clothes/look/hair/skin color/eyes/etc similar to in Roblox/Saints Row/GTA Online.
2. The player can import a model, similar to in VR Chat or Garry's Mod.
Another thing is placements of objects in the game. Yet again, like Blockland (and also Garrys Mod), object placements (and hopefully some day vehicles) can be saved to a file, and cleared, and loaded again at a later time by the player. (like if i wanted to make alternate versions of some city) A thumbnail can be displayed on the save file, and if possible, show the mods it uses and the bounds of the save on a map (pretty much a box around where all the objects on it are)
Next up, it'd also be nice to see weapons in the game. Guns, melee, etc. As well as tools, but i think these are obviously going to come anyway, so.
Last but not least, while likely not possible yet, it'd be cool to see AI in the game, and have animals in the forests, people and cars on streets, trains on rails going by at random, boats sailing up a river/ocean, etc.
wibblywobblytime:
It'd definitely be cool for city building. Like, I genuinely lose sleep thinking about how much I need this.
You wouldn't have the whole world accesible at the one time, but you could fly to a place in the world and 'choose' that region (like a big big square) and build your city there.
Something so many city builders lack, that only Simcity 4 really did to its max potential - region size. Not neccesarily map size, but the ability to really stack up towns and cities from different parts of a continent and have them all exist together, just as a visual thing. To know that more exists than just the tile you're working on.
With an Outerra based city builder, you could have your main city in some continent, fly up high in the air to see it from up there, then fly down to another valley many kilometres away to start building a satellite town. Then, the sheer joy of creating a winding highway to connect them, creating a train network to join up all your little towns and hamlets and satelite cities you've made.
So it's less about map size, (CitiesXL and Cities Skylines both had pretty big maps) and more about the *world* being there, being on earth, being on this continent, being in this region. Makes such a difference. No other game does it to it's biggest potential.
Outerra already has the ability to handle thousands of roads and buildings, so it's definitely capable of handling a city to an extent, and the road-building system is quite good.
Just watch this video Cameni posted and tell me it wouldn't be possible to take it a step further with much bigger selection of models, a few more road types, and connecting those buildings to a population :)
So it's definitely the most interesting long-term possible 'game' for me. I know so many people would appreciate and lust over. The idea that you could work on your region for many many years, slowly working your way over the continent to other places.
To deal with the challenge of rendering multiple cities, when you want to fly up to see them all, I thought of a solution. I'd say every half hour or so, the game takes low res aerial 'pictures' of each population center from 1k up, 5k up, 10k, 100k etc. And just stores them. So that when you fly up above the corresponding region and want to see all the city growth together, it can load in those aligned pictures underneath the atmosphere, without rendering a single little building.
This is SO possible. I know traffic logic and RDI is a pain in the ass to figure out in a realistic way, but that's barely the most important thing to me. I really just want to do what Outerra can already do, but with various road types, various house and building types, a few ways to draw parks (the way CitiesXL handles parks is great). Not to mention Outerra already offers zooming down to street level, walking around the beautiful natural world with bird sounds and wind. Imagine doing that but you're surrounded by neighborhood houses with laneways and parks, a suburban train line nearby.
The most immersive, grand-scale city builder of all time.
wesleyibruce:
I like the ideas here. I think the technology exists or can be created to deliver more than one type of game in the world at the same time. Though in the game may be the wrong term. Layered on top of the world may be better.
I'm a would be game designer but world building is a pain. Having something like the Outerra engine as the world would work wonders.
I suspect game play should be served by external light servers holding a reference point in Anteworld and a catch mesh and all the build items relative to the reference point. Add a genre selection option so it finds all the builds matching your genre and play style and if multiplayer is allowed you see the other players. [A catch mesh is the unmodified ground mesh moved down 2 cm so if something does not load you don't fall though the world. My pet peeve in star citizen. ]
Items on your build are interactable, if set to be, but not movable or destroyable.
I like survival games. To do them we need a file to get the biome details, ground/ rock type, and decorations (buildings and road). Then a search function turns up pick able resources with tools expanding those resources. Spawning the resources on the terrain may stress the computer. Its an extra step that may not be needed. I have wanted to do a game where the player starts with nothing and survives but has an exotic range of environments to do it. Outerra has that world. It has 90% of the data.
However the end game for a survival game is generally a morph into a base building, ship building or social sim game. That results in clutter. No draw clutter is an option. Setting your builds to be visible only to friends and guild would work.
Those that like big varied combat could allow see all builds/ clutter. That makes the world more interesting for a fighter, bomber, tankers, etc. In this context clutter is cover. Or builds may be seen by genre. Note: battle damage may be a tag on a build that effects combatants but not the build. I.e. cover, concealment. reduced armor. reduces movement speed. This means people can battle though your decorative or survival build with out mattering to you if your off line.
Having an autoclean up on craters, trench works, wrecked vehicles for non combat players would reduce conflict. That could be a log in setting that would make non combat players happy while "allowing" full use and abuse of their builds and battle space when they are off line. While your on lone I can see ways on battle shielding builds as neutral civilian/ UN locations. Your build becomes impassable and un targetable.
Outerra sails to the edge of game engine limits with some terrain. Northern hemisphere trees do double duties as southern hemisphere trees eucalypts, acacias, etc. Adding trees, bushes, rocks, resources needs some magic, better compression or early load tests to see which biome folder is loaded. That's planned. One pass changes from zipped files. However that needs to be probably client/ game side not changes to the engine.
I'm probably a little over ambitious. I'm not expecting anything fast. I know I'm commenting on an old topic.
fly77:
--- Quote from: wesleyibruce on June 19, 2022, 11:53:01 pm ---I like the ideas here. I think the technology exists or can be created to deliver more than one type of game in the world at the same time. Though in the game may be the wrong term. Layered on top of the world may be better.
I'm a would be game designer but world building is a pain. Having something like the Outerra engine as the world would work wonders.
I suspect game play should be served by external light servers holding a reference point in Anteworld and a catch mesh and all the build items relative to the reference point. Add a genre selection option so it finds all the builds matching your genre and play style and if multiplayer is allowed you see the other players. [A catch mesh is the unmodified ground mesh moved down 2 cm so if something does not load you don't fall though the world. My pet peeve in star citizen. ]
Items on your build are interactable, if set to be, but not movable or destroyable.
I like survival games. To do them we need a file to get the biome details, ground/ rock type, and decorations (buildings and road). Then a search function turns up pick able resources with tools expanding those resources. Spawning the resources on the terrain may stress the computer. Its an extra step that may not be needed. I have wanted to do a game where the player starts with nothing and survives but has an exotic range of environments to do it. Outerra has that world. It has 90% of the data.
However the end game for a survival game is generally a morph into a base building, ship building or social sim game. That results in clutter. No draw clutter is an option. Setting your builds to be visible only to friends and guild would work.
Those that like big varied combat could allow see all builds/ clutter. That makes the world more interesting for a fighter, bomber, tankers, etc. In this context clutter is cover. Or builds may be seen by genre. Note: battle damage may be a tag on a build that effects combatants but not the build. I.e. cover, concealment. reduced armor. reduces movement speed. This means people can battle though your decorative or survival build with out mattering to you if your off line.
Having an autoclean up on craters, trench works, wrecked vehicles for non combat players would reduce conflict. That could be a log in setting that would make non combat players happy while "allowing" full use and abuse of their builds and battle space when they are off line. While your on lone I can see ways on battle shielding builds as neutral civilian/ UN locations. Your build becomes impassable and un targetable.
Outerra sails to the edge of game engine limits with some terrain. Northern hemisphere trees do double duties as southern hemisphere trees eucalypts, acacias, etc. Adding trees, bushes, rocks, resources needs some magic, better compression or early load tests to see which biome folder is loaded. That's planned. One pass changes from zipped files. However that needs to be probably client/ game side not changes to the engine.
I'm probably a little over ambitious. I'm not expecting anything fast. I know I'm commenting on an old topic.
--- End quote ---
amazing considerations...so glad to have you here...someone like you who has actually understanding of how games are constructed....I'm just a simple modder and have no idea how a game can be constructed....but this is something that I'm very interested in. As a start I created a ultrasimple small game "snowball game" that you can find here in the forum ( https://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=5020.msg49763#msg49763) you can try it out and/or have a look at the code...maybe I /we can improve on it. I'm very much interested in constructing something more professionally ..still keeping it ultrasimple.
wesleyibruce:
I am not strictly a game dev. I have dyslexia so while I know what the codes doing; if you hand me a page of code my head explodes with in 5 minutes. It actually hurts to read!
I also see game designers making work for them in many case by by making changes to the game world then the changes could be to an empty in the game world. The over designed elevators in star citizen are a case.
Ideally a game in Anteworld should be a set of empties that you interact with so major changes to the engine are not happening around you.
There is no reason why a game can't be a chain of mods. That's how Minecraft developed.
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