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[RaikoRaufoss]

Given that Outerra will eventually be used in games which have people in them, it would be wise, IMHO, to create playable humans in the engine and give them basic functionality.  At the least, they should be able to walk around and crew the vehicles already available.

This topic is where anyone can make suggestions as to what people we can put in.  Feel free to make suggestions!

[MatthewS]

It would be good if "crowds" could be simulated with low fps hit.  I'm thinking low poly models so that airports, train stations, city streets etc could be populated with people.

I know Outerra is OpenGL based and not DirectX.   Does OpenGL support hardware instancing of objects such as tree, building and people models?  It would seem this is a way populate the world with thousands of objects and still have high FPS.

[angrypig]

I know Outerra is OpenGL based and not DirectX.   Does OpenGL support hardware instancing of objects such as tree, building and people models?  It would seem this is a way populate the world with thousands of objects and still have high FPS.

Yes OpenGL supports hardware instancing, it supports every HW feature as DirectX and a few more which are specific for ATI or Nvidia cards. But instancing is not a universal cure, in scenes filled with lots of objects you are still limited to polygon count/vertex count/bandwidth. When you make a barrel with 200 faces and instance it in a scene one thousand times you are still creating scene with 200 000 faces... We are already using HW instancing in Outerra, but under OpenGL it's not such big difference because OpenGL is more effective in this area.

[McArcher]

I want to add about playable human characters.
Apart from nice looking models and animations, the most important moment is interraction with the environment. What do I mean? In many games, embarking and disembarking vehicles is made simplified - no process is shown and in many games you cannot act when sitting inside of vehicles of other objects.

I want playable humans to be able to, for example, jump and walk inside of transport airplane, shoot from weapons sitting in truck's back, get inside vehicles using programmed animations for each vehicle, not just teleporting to driver's position, hit objects with weapons or hands if collision detected, not just penetrating the walls. Also sitting on the armored vehicles is a great examaple of this. This thing is used in some armies of the world to make disembarking rapid, to get extra capacity or to have doubled defence and more chances to survive from mines.

People must be able to carry objects (on thei back, in hands, on their suits, or can change their uniform). Several models of different body types can be made and a lot of addtional addon objects will be weared on them... Would be nice... Also many faces can be made to choose from.

P.S. I'm for OpenGL as a crossplatform engine, it will bring people from different OSes and will make engine really universal.

[Chrischn]

As soon as I read the word "crowd" I remembered instantly a video I saw on YouTube.

It is called Kynapse AI and is made specifically to simulate large groups of moving AIs.



Would be awesome if Outerra would be at least compatible to this. I´m no game developer so I dont even know if these to branches of simulation even have the slightest thing to do with each other...  I just wanted to spread the word for no reason  

[Grind and Click]

Yeah im guessing if you were to render 100+ player models it would start to bog down alot?

This is just me trying to imagine this engine in an MMO.

[alasmattano]

how many polygons (max) do you need in the human poly model?

[cameni]

Provided there's a reasonable LOD and batching implementation, large amount of models is not such a problem. It's simpler than trees. Simulating them all could be a problem, depending on the AI and script performance.

[krz9000]

outerra seems to be set to become a great sandbox in the way minecraft works..but instead of crafting the environment the goal could be filling it with realworld content. the game could be that players get achievements for verifying or adding content that comes in for e.g. openstreetmap, or content that is modeled, animation loops that are added to an animation database that outerra can connect to and so on. giving objects physical attributes,...this could be the creative part of the "game". next you can give "players" the option to create a lobby and this lobby will create an "instance" of the world they can be playing in (an instance like in world of warcraft). they can play around with objects or vehicles and create their own adventures. the "mod-community" could create scripts and custom objects that act as gamedesign elements...e.g. a flagpole object that is connected to a gui element. and voila you can have a capture the flag game. all this ideas come from playing minecraft but i think outerra can take the same direction but with the goal to crowd-source the content creation. the more data-sources it can connect to the better. i think it would be premature to develop ONE game with it. i think the engine would benefit more from a creating stable modtools instead. these mods could be then implemented once they are considered beneficial for the bigger goal of outerra

[SpaceFlight]

outerra seems to be set to become a great sandbox in the way minecraft works..but instead of crafting the environment the goal could be filling it with realworld content. the game could be that players get achievements for verifying or adding content that comes in for e.g. openstreetmap, or content that is modeled, animation loops that are added to an animation database that outerra can connect to and so on. giving objects physical attributes,...this could be the creative part of the "game". next you can give "players" the option to create a lobby and this lobby will create an "instance" of the world they can be playing in (an instance like in world of warcraft). they can play around with objects or vehicles and create their own adventures. the "mod-community" could create scripts and custom objects that act as gamedesign elements...e.g. a flagpole object that is connected to a gui element. and voila you can have a capture the flag game. all this ideas come from playing minecraft but i think outerra can take the same direction but with the goal to crowd-source the content creation. the more data-sources it can connect to the better. i think it would be premature to develop ONE game with it. i think the engine would benefit more from a creating stable modtools instead. these mods could be then implemented once they are considered beneficial for the bigger goal of outerra

You mean like instances and mod tools first and then later on, when the tools are functional enough,
a game in a persistent world, with some of the approved mods?

I think the content contribution system you describe sounds great. But packaged as a game?
I wonder if a preview function of some sort for the content created would do the same job?

But why would it be premature to make a game?
I am guessing that it would be highly upgradeable and the development of modding tools and mods could still be done once the OT game is open for business so to speak.

[s0beit]

I think the content contribution system you describe sounds great. But packaged as a game?

Ever heard of garry's mod? It's quite fun. People (given the userbase) definitely could contribute content to keep the game going and even be awarded free subscription time, points or things of that nature.

The real problem is deciding who approves what, imagine if somebody approves a very non-real-life flying pizza plane, lol, see that thing flying around at mach 5.

[SpaceFlight]

I think the content contribution system you describe sounds great. But packaged as a game?

Ever heard of garry's mod? It's quite fun. People (given the userbase) definitely could contribute content to keep the game going and even be awarded free subscription time, points or things of that nature.

The real problem is deciding who approves what, imagine if somebody approves a very non-real-life flying pizza plane, lol, see that thing flying around at mach 5.

Never tried garry´s mod.

Mmmh, pizza.  

I would think that ultimately the developers of the game, or people assigned by them, would decide what to approve and what not.
Should for example a gamestudio (provided OT will be licensed) decide to open up their game for modifications of some sort, they could choose what kind of mods would fit into the theme of the game.

[ZeosPantera]

the scripting in gmod is a terrible example of a good system. Yes things like wire and precision alignment are excellent tools but for every 1 good and helpful tool there are literally 1,000 horrible mingy ones.

A more complex modding process involving modeling and scripting such as with addons for racing sims would be better as less people are capable of doing it and with less coming out there is more likelyhood of something being inspected and included.

[zuluknob]

whatever the people look like i think one of the most important things is the animation. motion capture would be the way to go and there are now cheap systems using kinect to capture. also a system like havok cloth would be nice.

[C. Shawn Smith]

whatever the people look like i think one of the most important things is the animation. motion capture would be the way to go and there are now cheap systems using kinect to capture. also a system like havok cloth would be nice.

In-house, Cameni and Angrypig have already obtained (I think) a few MoCaps for animations   We just need a reliable skeleton for (what was originally designated Jose Jalapino) the current model.