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Outerra Tech Demo download. Help with graphics driver issues

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Author Topic: Middle Earth  (Read 89721 times)

deathevor

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Re: Middle Earth
« Reply #30 on: October 21, 2012, 05:54:44 pm »

Thanks. Of course the best (for me) would be to store all addons on server - with layer based management.

It means saving tons of disk space over millions (hopefully) computers.(therefore Greenpeace will tell thanks for that, and we'll save loads of Pandas lives :) )
And easy experience of each add-on without downloading whole content.
And as stated before, it would be most effective way for Multiplayer. As this problem exists in loads of Multiplayer games, where you had to download all modifications used by host to connect to it. (Then you find that ping on this host is way to high and trying to connect to other host, which uses other addons).


Of course the local addons also must be supported. As there wont be so much space on server for everybody and of course some modifications wont deserve this space.


There's another cool idea - Layer (add-on) mask editor. So user can mask an area of addon that he wants to use.
Imagine that you have 2 full world add-ons, but you really like Europe on one and Africa on another one. So basic layer management will not solve the problem, as one of add-ons will have priority on another one, and you'll never see it. Masking the areas will solve it fully.


All above will also work great not only for maps, but also for building, roads and some disaster things like forest fires and floods.
Actually biomes, weather, and traffic scripts also can be managed by layers and masks (especially masks), with gradual switch when you cross their borders.


Sorry daydreaming,
I'll stop here :)







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seppen

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Re: Middle Earth
« Reply #31 on: October 21, 2012, 06:44:42 pm »

Very interesting, I know many dis cloudbased software, but it might be the future.
Warming up to it myself.
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monks

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Re: Middle Earth
« Reply #32 on: October 21, 2012, 07:22:49 pm »

Layers and masks, yes. As an interface and a way of organising things they're very user friendly. I never really played multiplayer online games (I would have addiction problem quite quickly lol) so can't really comment on that server stuff- can never get my head round it. :) I think that could be one great setup!
 At the very minimum without the switch in the login that Brano mentioned, all the medem map would require is drop the dir structure into data, and a small change in the cfg file to point Outerra at it.

 Ok, update, coastlines are in.

 I've settled on which dem I'm going to use now for the lowlands so I'm working to that setting up the mountains right. A couple of pics of the Blue Mountains.

 

 Full res:
 http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Development2/BlueMts_01.jpg
 http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Development2/BlueMts_02.jpg

 Apart from the mountains, I'm going to add some hills in a few places.
 The blue craters are lakes and wetlands.  ;D Not sure what to do with those since Outerra doesn't distinguish
 between multiple levels of water at the moment. I'll probably leave them in as is this time.
 There's a few finessey things I could do I suppose, but it's never ending...

 Then I can build it and run it through our make system which produces a procedural texture via GTS software.
 That will probably take a few days in itself, but that's down from 10 days!, it seems to now...almost fly  :P

 The terrain here is covering half the area it should (4000 km ^2) so there's x2 vertical exaggeration.

monks
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monks

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Re: Middle Earth
« Reply #33 on: October 27, 2012, 12:44:14 pm »

I've tinkered with this for long enough for the time being. Time to pack it off to make!




Full res images here:
http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Development/gallery.htm

monks
« Last Edit: October 31, 2012, 07:23:10 pm by monks »
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seppen

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Re: Middle Earth
« Reply #34 on: October 31, 2012, 02:06:43 pm »

Looking forward to release  :)
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monks

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Re: Middle Earth
« Reply #35 on: November 30, 2012, 12:41:11 pm »

After making some improvements and a few rendering problems, we've got a tile set to put into the make process which usually takes a few days. Need to run a test on the tiles first to hash out any make issues. Will probably take about a week in all. Then we can take a look in Outerra!..and then we'll arrange a download for folks to have a play with :)

monks
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Sam

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Re: Middle Earth
« Reply #36 on: December 02, 2012, 12:00:08 pm »

Sounds great!  :)
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monks

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Re: Middle Earth
« Reply #37 on: December 18, 2012, 08:59:55 am »

Unfortunately release is going to be delayed somewhat. Computer is in the shop with a hardware problem. Hope we can get it fixed!

monks
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Sam

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Re: Middle Earth
« Reply #38 on: December 18, 2012, 12:43:42 pm »

No worries about that. Haste makes waste.  ;)

Good luck!
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monks

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Re: Middle Earth
« Reply #39 on: December 26, 2012, 07:55:49 am »

Hope y'all having a jolly festive season! :)

 PC issues ironed out. Santa's elves have been busy down the me-dem mines haha...some screens from the latest build. We're doing some tests in make to get the textures right in GTS. Once we've done that, we'll put out the release build. The release build is already waiting at the beginning of the pipeline and has some improvements/adjustments.
 There's a lot of fog in the pics but it serves to give some visual cues to the landforms. Outerra's biomes are slated to come online in the next 6 months, so we'll have a scripting interface with which to change the textures, veg and snow placement. You may have noticed that the forests on the map are missing. The devs have kindly offered to put a quick hack in to get those in for release. Woohoo! :)






Full res here:
http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Outerra1/gallery.htm

monks
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Bartolomeus

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Re: Middle Earth
« Reply #40 on: January 02, 2013, 02:36:44 am »

Great work so far! Looking forward.

Marko

monks

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Re: Middle Earth
« Reply #41 on: January 02, 2013, 09:56:02 am »

Thanks Marko!

 ...I've still had the hardware problems but I'm pretty sure I've worked out what it is. I just need to run the system for the next week to be 100% certain. Then we can get back to it.
 Brano has coded a quick forest texture look-up so all of the forests will be in their correct place :-D It looks
awesome!
 In the down time I'm taking the opportunity to make a few more improvements. Erebor has been added (hey I went to see the Hobbit  ;D )...

 Here's some pics from last week:









Full res here:
http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Outerra1/gallery.htm
 

monks
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Bartolomeus

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Re: Middle Earth
« Reply #42 on: January 03, 2013, 01:47:38 am »

AWESOME!  :)

Marko

ZeosPantera

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Re: Middle Earth
« Reply #43 on: January 03, 2013, 02:08:11 am »

Don't quite know how you can make this look so much more interesting then the actual earth but it does.

Next up is a fully realized Westeros! All the imaginary lands on one planet go!
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monks

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Re: Middle Earth
« Reply #44 on: January 03, 2013, 09:38:38 pm »

Cheers guys!... Funny you should say that Zeos, that was one of the places mentioned when we talked about doing other worlds in the future
 More interesting? I think the fog helps. Once the biomes come online things will get very interesting. Another thing though is the terrain height. I was flying around the Earth data for comparison- checking on how to improve our model and I noticed that so much of Earth is very flat, and you would expect that. But it doesn't impact that much visually. We output the terrain for Outerra scaled by 1.4. We did that so that the snow shaders would look better. so you can consider our terrain for Outerra as a kind of map presentation with vertica exagerration for effect...or cheating  ;D. But when the biomes come online we won't have to anymore.

monks
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