Thanks to all for the help the past couple weeks with my terrain engine. Here are some screen shots for anyone that might be interested. http://samples.3dmuve.com Note the dates; the newer stuff is what I've been redoing. The older screen shots were from my old terrain system, which worked just fine, but was mostly hard-coded and very limited. This new terrain system is very dynamic and a lot more flexible. Quad

Is that seamless? the transition from flying a ship to walking on the ground? If so.. I would love to test drive that. Either way, it looks very awesome.

Looks pretty good. What kind of techniques are you using for the terrain and water? Keep us posted with updates, looks like a great game.

Thanks for the kind words. It is a seamless transition. Its my vision to offer a game that seamless blends FPS, 3rd Person RPG, 4th Person Strategy, flight sim, space sim, etc… into one seamless and massive universe with literally 1000’s of planets, moons, galaxies, cities and even space stations to visit and explore. I want to leverage massively multi-player in a way that combines multiple genres for a mixed gaming experience. Not to be confused however with a single player multi-genre game where one person has to perform all the various tasks. To the contrary, that is where I want to leverage massively multi-player where different players have different responsibilities across the different genres and only with their cooperation as a team will they be successful over other teams.

At least that’s the vision, I’m a lonnnnnnnnnng way off from that. However, I do hope to have a multi-player version of the latest terrain system running within a month or so, so when that happens I’ll repost the latest news.

Also, at http://www.3dmuve.com (if you haven’t already been there) there is a video I did with the old engine a couple of years ago (I took some time off to regroup, and support the family, pay bills, crazy things like that!). There is also a message board, but because I never told many people of my project I don’t get visitors. Maybe now is the time to let people hit the message board and share their comments, thoughts, ideas, and even criticisms with the project and others that want to get involved.

Quad

PS: Sr_Guapo, the terrain is a new technique that I’m considering a patent for so I don’t want to say too much on the details, but in short, I can support any size planet (literally) limited only by disk space. If you look at the latest screen shots, the last image shows a different map. If you didn’t notice, on the map heads-up display there is a map on the left “PLANET” map and on the right is the “ZOOM” map. The ZOOM map shows where you are relative to the RED area of the PLANET map. The first few screen shots are a good size map on their own, but you can see the RED marker for the PLANET map is pretty large. Look at the last screen shot and the red marker on the PLANET map is very small. However, I can transition to either planet without a hiccup, and loose no performance on any size terrain. Furthermore, there are no level loads, or waiting of any kind. Everything is instant and seamless. The next step is to automate the server side, so you don’t need the planets stored locally but you can download dynamically just the area necessary to begin traveling. Once that’s done then I’ll release a network version for alpha testing. In the screen shot of the big planet, there is over 40,000 separate height-maps and over 160 meg.

The water is just a simple texture with alpha, and I’m playing with the texture coordinates to simulate animation. I think it looks good enough for now.

The goal of this engine is not to be the best looking 3D engine, or anything like that. I just want an engine whose graphics would be acceptable, so I can really focus on the game. It is after all the game that differentiates what my vision is all about, not the engine. That’s just the means to the end :-)

Quote:Original post by QuadMV
At least that’s the vision, I’m a lonnnnnnnnnng way off from that. However, I do hope to have a multi-player version of the latest terrain system running within a month or so, so when that happens I’ll repost the latest news.

Finally someone who has realized he can't rule the world in one day ;)

Quote:Original post by QuadMV
PS: Sr_Guapo, the terrain is a new technique that I’m considering a patent for so I don’t want to say too much on the details, but in short, I can support any size planet (literally) limited only by disk space.

I'm not all into terrains and such, but considering patent must mean it is one kick-ass algorithm as none of the previous game developers would have utilized it.
And, just out of thought I really don't see what can be so extrodinary about it, except for splitting the world up into many chunks and having each chunk readable on the disk (as in one huge file with many chunks), and optimizations on top of that, this would effectively only limit you to the size of disk and not need more memory than what is needed to display what is on screen (and perhaps pre-caching). Which I am most certain is utilized by any game today that work with very large worlds.

Not to be rude in anway, but unless you really have some kick-ass rock solid algorithm that no one has thought of before, which I doubt, but I could be wrong, so don't judge me as evil ;) (I don't want to you explain yourself either if you are serious about the patent)

(And on top of that I believe you could make it all pretty simple as considering a planet "needs" to be random, then you random it all using algorithms and equations, and only use chunks/fixes for cities and places you want to have special look, which would allow you to have literally infinite worlds)

EDIT: oh, forgot to mention it's looking really great, as said below, just some simple shadowing for the terrain and it would look awesome.

[Edited by - Syranide on July 21, 2005 9:56:06 AM]

Looks great, I'd suggest trying dynamic lighting and bump mapping with it next, it really makes it look better.

Syranide,

It probably came across wrong. I don’t want a patent for the purpose of blocking others from using my ideas ( and I do think there are a few unique ones in there ). Nor do I want royalties or anything like that. It’s like having a college degree, does it really help us, or is it just a dumb piece of paper in the end? I’ve talked with a few groups about funding, about jobs, and about various opportunities. Often times they mention patents and is there anything that I could patent. In the end, they aren’t impressed, because they aren’t technical, they aren’t gamers; they are just business men. If the patent would help my career, then that’s only reason I’d be doing it. Once done, I’d actually like to write a paper on what I’ve done (I think I need to do it anyway for the patent), which I would make publicly available.

One last comment, you mention a lot of ideas in your post about some things that you think I might be doing, and you are right on some of them. However, if it’s so easy, and not all patents mean it’s hard, how come no games today (as far as I’ve seen) offer very huge worlds, or seamless transitions between ground, air and space? Anyway, I know my terrain isn’t the greatest, it’s actually only ok to get me by, but that’s all I’m looking for in my engine. There are still a few unique ideas about it that I want to consider the dumb piece of paper (or in this case a number) just to say I have it.

Ok, all I meant was, you don't get patents for discovering that you could actually do 3D with DirectX (with other words, you don't get patents for what has already by done). As far as I know, WoW allows more or less seamless transitions and very large worlds... take Far Cry, allows for it, flying, cars, not infinite worlds as far as I know but very very large, and seamless transitions.

Perhaps the game "boiling point" does that too, Battlefield 2 allows for seamless transitions.

And I didn't mean you had implemented them, I just made my point in what is possible and has been done in many guides/tutorials/games. So correct me if I'm wrong, but, seamless transitions has been done limitless times, infinite worlds has been documented and described in many guides, there are even books on it.

But let's not get unfriendly, for all I want is to wish you good luck with that engine and if you think you can get/afford a patent, then go for it.

I cannot get to your website. Can somebody post pics of this project ?

well said Syranide, I too want to keep things friendly, and wich I hadn't even posted that comment. You are however on my list to beta test for me ;-)

oconnellseanm, can you not hit www.3dmuve.com nor samples.3dmuve.com? Any idea what the problem is? You are probably getting redirected to port 81, because it's not a static IP, so I'm using DynDNS to proxy my IP for me. Make sure you don't block outbound on port 81.

The only way I know to post an image, is to use an
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