Game Engine Trailer
This is a trailer of a game engine I have been working for a couple of years now. I am not really an artist but more of a programmer; I thought that I would throw it out there anyways
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rhOmoam6Bg[/ame]
It has some neat features including deferred lighting and a huge procedural procedural environment. You can move around seamlessly between any number of earth sized planets.
I am trying to get in touch with some 3D artist in the Vancouver, BC area. Is there anyone around ?
J
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rhOmoam6Bg[/ame]It has some neat features including deferred lighting and a huge procedural procedural environment. You can move around seamlessly between any number of earth sized planets.
I am trying to get in touch with some 3D artist in the Vancouver, BC area. Is there anyone around ?
J
Replies
are you remaking Elite or Frontier?
Only crit I have is pitch black shadows. Seems like some ambient light would help a lot.
The black shadows are really not suitable for a world with atmosphere though, you need some ambient light in there. For a moon enviro it works beautifully though.
I live in Van but unfortunately not too skillful yet.
It's true that transition between the planets is completely seamless. It is actually at the point where you can walk an avatar into the back of a shuttle, take off and land on another planet or inside a station. Rudimentary rigid body physics works throughout the environment with different contexts for each planet, station or ship. Theoretically there is no limit on the number of planets either, as each is generated by a noise function up to a few meters in detail. All that is stored are the initial noise parameters. Eventually I am going to create a galaxy by distributing stars with solar systems in a galaxy like pattern. I believe they have already done something like that in Infinity.
I am definitely working towards a space-based MMO where you can be a character, vehicle or ship, but I havent defined the actual game dynamics, storyline, economics etc. Although the MMO is the end goal I have come to realize that this is a huge undertaking which is probably beyond my scope at this point. So, now I am thinking of a simpler game first, such as a racing game along the planet surface using different ships. Following that I have a team-based combat game in mind where the fighting occurs between the lower atmosphere and outer space. Depending on how it goes I might skip the race game and go straight to the combat game. I know these are big plans But he, you have to start somewhere.
I you are interested you can find out more about the engine at www.geist3d.com including a download of the prototype used to make the trailer. You need pretty good graphics system though, which I image most of you have. The graphics engine also comes with an editor to import third party models, customize the planets, write scripts, shaders etc.
I am now seriously looking for artists/designers (not necessarily only in Vancouver) to actually develop a complete game. At this stage I have no money, so it would be some kind of revenue sharing if a game is published. I am also in the process of knocking on doors with publisher, developers and various funding organization here in BC. I do not have any experience with that but I know a few people in the gaming industry. Well see what happens.
Deferred lighting, yay. Will you implement any AA? (not that I care about AA anymore, it's old excuse for small resolutions, but it still is cool to see at mid resolutions, and I'd be interested to hear how you'll go about it - they say you can't, but you can, and you probably know you can, maybe you've already done it, I don't know)
have you thought about trying to introduce other procedural elements like thermal erosion, or adding a node based procedural terrain generator like in world machine or l3dt. I would love to see more interesting and varied terrain. right now the terrain comes off as too fractal.
this is not to say what you have done isnt totally amazing and awesome though, i have been keeping up on geist3d for a while now, im a bit of a fan and i hope you can fish up some talent here.
while im definately not the best, if you ever need any specific models i would love to give it a go.
One thing I'd say after watching the videos again is you either need to increase the LOD distance on the planet surface generation, or you need to smooth out the pop between LOD sections - right now it's painfully obvious when flying along in the ship, that the engine is frantically trying to keep up with building the higher detail terrain.
It was also very noticeable when the camera view switched rapidly and the terrain around the ship popped in, in stages. If there's a way to smooth that out, it'd probably make a good impression.
I would say at this stage, you're right, an MMO is too far to reach. Have you any experience with implementing networking code? Have you considered how you might divide up the galaxy in order to keep the data transfer to a minimum?
To me it seems like a simpler thing to go for here would be a singleplayer sim with purchaseable vehicles and trade routes, etc. Still a massive project however you look at it though.
Flying seemless to other planets sound cool at first but in the end it could be very boring when it takes years to get there!
Have you considered just making a full package game engine, and simply marketing that alone? Not that you ideas for a game don't sound really cool, but like you said, making this game would be a huge undertaking, and I would hate to see such a really cool game engine not be put to good use.
The editor supports 3DS and to some extent XSI file formats, but only the triangle mesh is imported. After that the GUI of the editor is used to add the textures, shaders, light sources, sounds etc. The models are then stored in the Geist3D internal format, either as a model or as a reusable object. The engine supports an instancing mechanism where you can assemble larger objects out of smaller ones. For example, the shuttle in the demo has two instances of the same engine. You can also put objects onto the planet surface or in obit. Collision detection works pretty much anywhere in the environment, and avatars can walk around inside buildings and ships. The high velocities still cause problems though in terms of missed collisions.
Yeah, I am not happy yet myself with the terrain. Since it is impossible to store all the data for a whole planet, a noise function is pretty much the only choice to generate the surface. That function is quite expensive and there are limits to how elaborate it can become. I am also thinking of mixing custom height fields in with the noise function in order to create some more interesting regions.
Yeah, that’s a whole planet, and you can fly right across to it. As you come closer it gets more and more detailed. The engine only ever tessellates what you looking at. So, if you are on the surface of the blue planet and you look straight up to the red planet, the terrain around you disappears almost completely and the corresponding terrain patches are reused to generate the red planet. That also causes the popping all over the place, which can probably still be reduced, but not completely eliminated.
Definitely! There will be different engines for interstellar flight as well suborbital flights. I have also already implemented stargates.
Yes, I actually had a networked version earlier this year. It took a while to get client-side prediction working properly. I mainly tested it with a few characters and moveable boxes. At the end, the latency was hardly notiecable anymore and I am pretty confident that I could get it going for a team-based combat game.
I haven't thought about how to divide up the galaxy. Clearly, for an MMO that would have to happen somehow, but not so much for something smaller.
This engine looks like it would be a good choice for a remake