OUR Avatar Game

Started by Eywayä lì'u, May 29, 2010, 03:15:01 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Ikranä mokri

skype is alex.heath11 im not on atm cause rents are getting at me to watch Tv with them





Tirea Tskoyä has a new look see it[url=http://forum.learnnavi.org/fiction-

Eywayä lì'u

yeah i got skype, that's genius! although i can't go on now because my brother's asleep in the other room and my mic only works well if i speak loud. I could go on in about 9 hours when it's morning my time, I'm gmt.
Oe prrkxentrrkrr ngeyä sa'nok!

GENERATION 18: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.

Niwantaw

so am i.. and  Ikranä mokri i think and Eana Taw atsawl  :D

just use text chat for now
Only mostly AWOL.

Ikranä mokri






Tirea Tskoyä has a new look see it[url=http://forum.learnnavi.org/fiction-

Eywayä lì'u

my skype is guiltyspark004, i think. If that doesn't work my name's sam rimell
Oe prrkxentrrkrr ngeyä sa'nok!

GENERATION 18: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.

Kerame Pxel Nume

Aside the fan movie I was also thinking about a sandbox style game. I'm a graphics coder, so for the fan movie project it's mostly writing and developing CGI stuff for me (I suck at actually modelling/animating things, but I can code the technology). Now this is not too far from engine programming. Using Unreal3 is a very good idea, but this engine is not so well suited for MMORPG sandboxes. Too big memory footprint to be able to deal with large maps also the networking stack can't deal with more than 64 connections.

However I think it was very feasible to develop a planetary scale MMORPG sandbox engine using today's technology: Trade visual quality and complexity for space and flexibility. And instead of single servers responsible for managing data, distribute it over the network using a DHT.
* Kerame Pxel Nume getting out sources of old terrain engine project.

Niwantaw

you got skype?

if yes add tawtewng and i'll add you to that chat where we can discuss this further (although i think everyone but me is in bed ATM)
Only mostly AWOL.

Eywayä lì'u

yay someone with coding experience!
Oe prrkxentrrkrr ngeyä sa'nok!

GENERATION 18: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.

Eana Taw atsawl

Right, discussions going quite well, but are definitely being hindered by the fact that we aren't all online at once.

So far the people in the group we have been using for discussions are:
Myself
Tawtewng
Eywayä lì'u and
Ikranä mokri.

We need to organise a time where we can all be on, instead of just two of us on at any given time. I'll let other people state what times they want and what day so we can get an overall concensus.

Irayo everyone.
Only a heretic brings a gun to a swordfight
                               But only a moron brings a sword to a gunfight


GENERATION 18: The first time you see this, copy it into you're sig and add 1 to the generation

Niwantaw

at a weekend it's about 11am until some point the following day on a Saturday and a Sunday it's about 11am - 10pm for me

weekdays I'm about 4pm - 10pm
Only mostly AWOL.

Kerame Pxel Nume

Quote from: Eana Taw atsawl on May 31, 2010, 05:15:41 AM
We need to organise a time where we can all be on, instead of just two of us on at any given time. I'll let other people state what times they want and what day so we can get an overall concensus.

It's not only about time but also about location, means, which method of communications to use. I'd propose using our IRC server irc.learnnavi.org. Skype is a No-Go for me (don't ask why, I have my reasons).

Eana Taw atsawl

Quote from: Kerame Pxel Nume on May 31, 2010, 07:38:56 AM
Quote from: Eana Taw atsawl on May 31, 2010, 05:15:41 AM
We need to organise a time where we can all be on, instead of just two of us on at any given time. I'll let other people state what times they want and what day so we can get an overall concensus.

It's not only about time but also about location, means, which method of communications to use. I'd propose using our IRC server irc.learnnavi.org. Skype is a No-Go for me (don't ask why, I have my reasons).

That's fine, I was mainly directing that to the 4 people I mentioned as we have been using skype. If you can't use skype, i'm sure people won't mind accommodating an alternative method of communication, and of course we should be using this thread to communcate ideas the we have that don't require real-time communication.

However as IRC requires software like Xchat or something, people may not want to bother downloading more software. It isn't my place to say "yes, we'll all do that" or "no, we'll do something else", I'm just trying to organise this. We need more people to give their opinions before we can reach a decision (or for whoever is running this show to make an "executive decision"  :D)

Only a heretic brings a gun to a swordfight
                               But only a moron brings a sword to a gunfight


GENERATION 18: The first time you see this, copy it into you're sig and add 1 to the generation

Eywayä lì'u

Oe prrkxentrrkrr ngeyä sa'nok!

GENERATION 18: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.

Kerame Pxel Nume

Quote from: Eywayä lì'u on May 31, 2010, 08:38:44 AM
IRC it is!
In case we go for our own engine:

So I started outlining the engine, project directory is called "Pandora". Like already mentioned, a few years ago I had a lot of cool ideas for a planetary scale terrain engine. I got my notes "from the attic" and today, with my increased experience it doesn't look so bad. What concerned me then, and still today on most terrain engines, is their use of quadrilateral patches. There are some papers about isotropic terrain models, but this paper implements it by skewing each odd row by the cos/sin 60° factor. This is fine if you want to implment a disc-world (Terry Pratchet fans would like this), but for a spherical topology you run into problems at the poles.

My idea is, to use subdivisable triangular patches in a icosahedral configuration. Yesterday I sketched a data structure for representing those in space efficient and LOD friendly manner - and got pure excitement when I discovered, that using my devised indexing scheme, the index-bitpattern together with a rather simple recursive algorithm can describe the geometry. This has always been THE reason for using quadrilaterals in a quardtree configuration: The quadtree index IS the position, so things get really simple with that. But now I (re-?) discovered a indexing scheme, which allows to use triangle patches, which give much nicer results. And as a side effect you can describe the patches in terms of DCT, allowing for JPEG like compression.
* Kerame Pxel Nume is putting together a bunch of illustrating pictures and renderings. Give me a few hours and I'll post some C code for an OpenGL program in which you can zoom down the subdividing icosahedron, as far as you want.

Eana Taw atsawl

I understood approximatly 55-60% of that  :)

Your knowledge of this blows me away I'm afraid, so making any useful statements at this stage is beyond me!
Quote from: Kerame Pxel Nume on May 31, 2010, 09:53:26 AM
What concerned me then, and still today on most terrain engines, is their use of quadrilateral patches. There are some papers about isotropic terrain models, but this paper implements it by skewing each odd row by the cos/sin 60° factor. This is fine if you want to implment a disc-world (Terry Pratchet fans would like this), but for a spherical topology you run into problems at the poles.
So, in layman's terms, the method that is most prevelant is to give a curve to the terrain engine by using either 1/2 or √3/2. This is fine for a 2-D space, but fails once you want to make a sphere.

Quote from: Kerame Pxel Nume on May 31, 2010, 09:53:26 AM
My idea is, to use subdivisable triangular patches in a icosahedral configuration.
So instead of using quadrilateral areas that are turned into a rounded structure by Sin/cos 60, you use triangles arranged into (D&D FTW here!) a 20-sided die shape.

Quote from: Kerame Pxel Nume on May 31, 2010, 09:53:26 AM
...I discovered, that using my devised indexing scheme, the index-bitpattern together with a rather simple recursive algorithm can describe the geometry. This has always been THE reason for using quadrilaterals in a quardtree configuration: The quadtree index IS the position, so things get really simple with that.
So the only advantage of using quadrilateral sections (which is that is it easy to play around with and...do...clever...stuff with
is now irrelevant as you've got a way to index your triangular version even easier and more effeciently than using quadrilaterals. This has the added bonus that you can compress it like a JPEG.

Have I got this right or is my advanced degree in Bulls**t not helping me here?
Only a heretic brings a gun to a swordfight
                               But only a moron brings a sword to a gunfight


GENERATION 18: The first time you see this, copy it into you're sig and add 1 to the generation

Kerame Pxel Nume

Yes, you got it right. Now JPEG style compression always has been used in terrain engines, however quantization matrices are then emphased on the medium frequencies, like a bandpass. Unlike image JPEG, which mostly acts like a lowpass.

And yes, triangular patches are more efficient. If you use quadrilaterals near the poles you either stretch them out, or use lower resolution, and if you do the latter in only one dimension, that things are getting ugly. Just fire up Google Earth, go to Antarctica and enable 3D terrain.

But using trilaterals you can retain full resolution, yet still save about 25% on data, just because the data structure better matches the topology. You can get the same saving using the other methods, but then at some point you've to switch between data representations, which requires this switch also being respected in the code paths of the renderer, the physics, entity management, spatial caching and so on.

Now my idea for the game was/is, that it should be both an interactive sandbox world editor (well, edit the terrain and place 3D models imported from other programs) and also be a distributed (i.e. no central server) MMORPG. Both editing and gameplay would be stored and communicated in a Git like fashion, so one can fork other's edits, makes his own changes, which at first only he sees, but other may import/merge. Then there might be kind of a "Team Eywa" responsible for merging all the good stuff into a "canon" dataset. And in the same way the world can be edited also modes of gameplay can be implemented and published.

So if someone wants a new game-mode he can implement this (maybe forking from another game mode) and share this. If "Team Eywa" likes it, it becomes an "official" mode.

Tsteu'itan

I would love to be involved in this in some way.  I have absolutely no coding experience whatsoever, and I don't know anything about game design, but it's something I've always really really wanted to be a part of.

That being said, I'd love to be a voice over actor if you needed them.  :)  My character is male and I'm female, so I wouldn't be able to voice him if you wanted to use our own OCs for the game, (Unless you didn't mind a very very girly-sounding Na'vi Eyktan.  :P) but I'd be up to voicing female Na'vi, Avatars, and Humans.  And I think I could do a good job with it, me and my family are all very good at mimicry and voice-acting types of things.  One of me and my sister's favorite things to do is have conversations as our favorite characters just for silliness, so it's something I've always done as second nature.

But there I go tooting my own horn.  :P  Sorry.  I guess when you get to that stage, you can do auditions or something, and if I'm not as good as I think I am, you can let me down softly.  XD  And if there is something other then voice-acting that you think I could do that someone with 0 game-design experience would be able to do to help, I'd be willing to do what I could.  ^_^

Eana Taw atsawl

Quote from: Tsteuitan on May 31, 2010, 11:39:34 AM
But there I go tooting my own horn.  :P  Sorry.  I guess when you get to that stage, you can do auditions or something, and if I'm not as good as I think I am, you can let me down softly.  XD  And if there is something other then voice-acting that you think I could do that someone with 0 game-design experience would be able to do to help, I'd be willing to do what I could.  ^_^
I never attack people for "tooting their own horn" (partly because it would be hypocrisy  ;D)

To me, blowing your own trumpet isn't arrogance it is justified self-confidence in an area you are skilled in (or you wouldn't put yourself forward)

I don't have a lot of coding experience either. I've only ever handled basic 2-D coding for fighting games and mathematical based stuff for Excel, but I'm sure you could contribute stuff to the project  ;)
Only a heretic brings a gun to a swordfight
                               But only a moron brings a sword to a gunfight


GENERATION 18: The first time you see this, copy it into you're sig and add 1 to the generation

Tsteu'itan

Quote from: Eana Taw atsawl on May 31, 2010, 11:47:58 AM
I don't have a lot of coding experience either. I've only ever handled basic 2-D coding for fighting games and mathematical based stuff for Excel, but I'm sure you could contribute stuff to the project  ;)

Oh, so game coding can be set up like Excel?  o_o  I have experience with that program.  If you told me what to input and gave me a refresher on what keystrokes I would need to do to make the exact inputs you wanted in Excel, I could do that.  I have a 112wpm typing speed, so that's not a problem.

What programs are used for coding, if I might ask?

Eeeh, but I forgot that I don't have a full version of Excel.  D8  I guess I'd have to find a free copy somewhere, or a program like it that can save in the proper format if you needed grunts to type things up in Excel - If you even do.

Kerame Pxel Nume

Quote from: Tsteuitan on May 31, 2010, 11:52:35 AM
What programs are used for coding, if I might ask?

Text editors. You know, something like Vim, Emacs, SciTe, Notepad++

If you want to turn your code into executable binaries you need a compiler. Which compiler, that depends on the language and the target system.

If you want a full blown IDE like Visual Studio, Eclipse or similar: Be my guest, but in my experience, those IDEs narrow your coding style to those of the frameworks and templates that come with the IDE.