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Outerra Tech Demo download. Help with graphics driver issues

Author Topic: Feature ideas  (Read 11521 times)

helio2

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Feature ideas
« on: November 19, 2009, 06:09:00 pm »

This is a great game you have so far from what i have seen and heard.

One thing that i want to request is the ability to run around the planet's surface as a character with the option of having a first person view and a thir person view, similar to Oblivion IV. If its not already implemented into the game.

I believe this would work great with the land vehicles you are already working on.

Also i think you should add the ability to modify the planets terrain by simply adding a Terrain Lower/Higher tool that can be accessed by a vehicle or some kind of "god mode" along with a Smooth Tool. This would add a great dimension to the game.

From a developers point of view i would like to request a simple way to make your own planets. Simply by Adding a Planet Heighmap and Color map to a folder in the game's directory and having the ability to set up and make your own Star Systems Similar to how the orbiter Space Flight Sim does it in Text files or XML files.

This will surely give potential players variety when it comes to playing this game, because other devs can Craft their own height maps for planets in Photoshop or any other paint program. Maybe also the Ability to place down building models done with 3DsMax or if you want to take it a step further the ability to build your own buildings within the game engine itself by allowing the players to great Solids in-game. Im not sure what are the limitations of this engine but im just throwing all the features out there, and i believe they are within reason.

Also is there a demo out for this yet? i mean i know there is virtualy no game there but just wondeing around the planet would be cool.
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Outerra needs a Planet size modifier.   < nuff said!

cameni

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Feature ideas
« Reply #1 on: November 20, 2009, 05:31:11 am »

Yes you will be able to run around the surface, initially in first person view and later when we have animations in place also the 3rd person view.

Modifying the terrain in-game isn't easily done - currently the terrain uses real Earth elevation data in ~76m resolution, and then the engine continues to refine the terrain using fractals. If we wanted to add a possibility to modify the terrain, we'd have to store the modifications in multiple places - for multiple levels of detail - and that means overrides for wavelet-compressed elevation data and for the fractal-computed levels. That is a rather complex issue, but we plan to deal with that later. Actually, roads already modify the terrain but they are stored as splines with attributes.

Making your own planets should be easy. The height maps can be of varying resolutions, though. You can have some central game area in better detail, and rest of the planet defined more coarsely. However, the fractal part refines everything down to the centimeter resolution so you'll be seeing the detail everywhere, only having less control over the topology of the coarsely defined parts of the planet.

Color maps - that's a different problem. The engine generates and textures the terrain according to a land type model, and you'll be able to roughly specify what land type should be where - like a dessert, savanna, forests (of what type), arctic and so on. So the color will actually specify that. More detailed control will be possible by using vector-data based edits of terrain type, for example you should be able to make a corn field by setting up a polygon constraining the area and assigning a type. These artificial constructs may even be subjected to some degradation coefficient, so that for example the original land type could creep in with time in a fractal manner.
 Although for some rocky planets without vegetation it could be possible to use the color directly to tint a generic material.

We are also currently working on COLLADA import so you should be able to import 3D objects to be placed in game, after fulfilling certain requirements. In fact there are some very basic buildings already in there.

I expect that a demo could be available sometime in January. It should feature some drivable vehicles and a flying mode for exploring the planet, also ability to place some stock buildings. Not sure what other features get through - maybe a flyable plane, placement of roads (and airfields?) etc.
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helio2

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Feature ideas
« Reply #2 on: November 22, 2009, 08:09:37 pm »

Quote from: cameni

Making your own planets should be easy. The height maps can be of varying resolutions, though. You can have some central game area in better detail, and rest of the planet defined more coarsely. However, the fractal part refines everything down to the centimeter resolution so you'll be seeing the detail everywhere, only having less control over the topology of the coarsely defined parts of the planet.


How is this done? Is it like different tiles of various resolutions?
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Outerra needs a Planet size modifier.   < nuff said!

cameni

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Feature ideas
« Reply #3 on: November 23, 2009, 07:13:43 am »

The planet heightmaps are compressed using wavelet compression, that naturally creates all levels of detail. Fractal algorithms continue to create artificial levels of detail, just after the real elevation data end. The real data don't have to have the same resolution everywhere - for example for Earth we currently use 1km resolution for oceans and 90m resolution for land, with optional 30m resolution for selected areas or for mountainous areas.
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