ROAM Planet rendering

[Sovaka]

Havok has all the features we're after; AI, Navigation, Physics, Animation et c.

As we have stated before, we are making the system modular.
So yes, you will be able to replace Havok.

[theMouse]

We are working hard at the business side of things so we can get some more talent on board to really kick this off.
We have also devised a Donation Reward system similar to Kickstarter (without the Amazon payment system nightmare).
Hopefully with that, we can get some cash flow to ease our financial burdens.

Hey, long time lurker, big time fan. A couple of questions.
1) Where is this donation system and how do we do it?
2) Source code .. will you just be releasing an api/library or the source code. I've been a long time Axiom3D user.
would love to see the code to port it.

theMouse

[palaslet]

Hi theMouse,
The source code question has been raised so many times before in this thread.
Please read this: http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic. ... de#p458797

[theMouse]

When someone releases something for money they don't often release the source code, and they have changed their minds before. Was just looking for clarification of how it stands as of this moment.

I am interested in donating, how much kind of depends on how open it will be.

theMouse

[palaslet]

Alex,
I don't know how much performance tweaking you have done, or even how much you want to do since there is always the trade-off in readability and maintainability when optimizing code.
Anyway... I found this video series about performance tweaking while viewing a few MIT video classes. Might be some cool stuff in here that you could take advantage of to squeeze out a few more FPS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzpkXLH9 ... 8eTw2M10UM

[DavlexDesign]

G'day guys,

I am still banging away here, but we are in the back end stuff at the moment, nothing really new to look at, sorry guys.

When someone releases something for money they don't often release the source code, and they have changed their minds before.

It's still the same as previously stated in this forum, so don't worry.

Might be some cool stuff in here that you could take advantage of to squeeze out a few more FPS.

FPS isn't my problem, plus I find it hard to listen to the Indian Accent sometimes.

I have my own Math libraries I use in this plugin engine just for those reasons mate, all this OOP, IMMUTABLE, and all that bullshit, gets in my way when I'm dealing with tight memory constraints, and fast code execution. Don't get me wrong, all this stuff has it place, and I use it, but there are places where it just can't cut it (IN MY OPINION).

Good find on the videos though, could be very handy.

Alex

[Sovaka]

Good morning everyone,

It has been a while since we have posted any major update simply because its all behind the scenes work.
Today however, instead of putting up some nice new juicy details on the engine, we want to post up something else.

I had mentioned in a previous post of some issues we have run into and today, we would like to seek the help of those that want to be apart of our project.
Outside of needing some funds to help with development, we need manpower more!
Yes, we can hire people with funds, but we want people with a strong passion for this kind of project.

What we are looking for at this moment, are programmers (shaders and scripting) and character modellers.

If you would like to help us out and be apart of Aussie Genesis and work on Planetarian, then please send an email to employment@aussiegenesis.com
Please list the subject as = "Resume - {Your Name} - {Area of Expertise}"
Without the "" and with { } areas filled in with information relevant to yourself.
In the email, list what you have been working on in the past couple years, attach some examples along with your portfolio and cv.

If you have any questions regarding this opportunity, then please send me an email first; gcampbell@aussiegenesis.com


Now, a general update.
For the past month, we have been putting together a small mobile game targeted at the Android platform as a form of income.
We will release some more details of that shortly.

In regards to Planetarian, we have actually moved away from all the pretty stuff and now working on getting in our scripting system (new one) to get some game mechanics up and running.
So the next video you see will be of some generic biped mesh running around on the planets surface along with some basic ship controls for entering/exiting the planet.

Our writers have nutted out a fantastic setting for our universe and the ideas we have come up with for gameplay elements are truly dynamic.
I don't want to say too much yet as being so early in development, and number of aspects could change or be removed.
But we are keeping in mind that this will be designed around Multiplayer coop without penalty to those that wish to solo.
As well as keeping all content dynamic and procedural in nature to allow for almost limitless preplayability.

We hope to get this moving a lot faster with more hands on deck.

Thanks for your time!

[LordBaal]

Hell. It was about time. I have a sever case of the flu right now but I will send you a email as soon as possible.

[dudeabot]

Glad to see you back posting

this week i stumbled across this project, and it remimded me on what you are trying to achieve (mainly the climate aspect)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7BIaERf ... ature=plcp

and the source is available as well!

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=15808

[UT2007]

Glad to see you back posting

this week i stumbled across this project, and it remimded me on what you are trying to achieve (mainly the climate aspect)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7BIaERf ... ature=plcp

and the source is available as well!

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=15808

GREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT ............

[ultramedia]

Hey Guys,

Long time no hear, how's it going this year?

[DavlexDesign]

G'day ultramedia,

Yeah long time no hear I know, sorry about that. Happy New Year and what not to all you guys.
I've been working on this thing quite allot the past few months, prep-ping it for true plugin status, with no dependencies to any one particular engine (I found a few things that needed addressing in regards to that).
As for the engine itself, well, it's coming along quite nicely, I may have solved the river problem, still got to make them form more convincingly in the distance, but they seem to work even when morphing the planet to a different seed while on the ground, or inside the atmosphere, as well as outside, for the really large ones that you should be able to see quite clearly from outer space / low orbit, most of my efforts where all about actual game play and back end stuff, galaxy and solar system persistent and relatively convincing seed based (of course) generation, network communications data access so as to free the user from any one particular networking library, so doesn't matter what system you decide to use, the data is available to pass around between peers and servers alike. The data is all zone based, so the closer zones get priority over the distant ones, and these are all generated consistently across the board, so it can minimize the amount of actual data needed to be passed around over the waves between peers and servers alike.

Well, that's just a couple of the things I have been toying around with, there are far more that I have been working on, but you will see them soon enough, I hope to have a video up showing some of this new stuff in February some time, I have to get a few more things sorted first, and time is my biggest killer, but I am still plugging away at it.

Alex

[DavlexDesign]

G'day guys,

Long time between posts.
Anyway, just starting to get this thing ready, but one thing that was erking me was the look of the volumetric clouds from space, so I have been mucking around a little with the shader for them. I'm still getting good fps, (100 - 200 +) even when flying through them. For some reason my text overlay thingy (from the Ogre wiki) locks up the Ogre 1.9 based engine. Something to do with the Overlay manager being a plugin now I think.

volumeetricClouds_1.jpg

Just a little more detail to them now, not so ice cream looking I think.

volumeetricClouds_2.jpg

Still a bit crap from the ground, but I will work on that.

Alex

[Aranor]

I found this thread a short while ago. Amazing what you are accomplishing. A bit of a bummer no comments since the last post 2 months ago.

The clouds looks good but as you said from the ground they look layered.

Given the amount of time that has passed since you began this project have you reconsidered selling it in its current state? Enough people have watched the videos and posted here to perhaps get you going financially. Perhaps charge when updates are made or something.

[DavlexDesign]

G'day Aranor,

Given the amount of time that has passed since you began this project have you reconsidered selling it in its current state?

No, I'm not going to sell it, I'm going to give it away, but it's no good giving something away that isn't truly user friendly, otherwise it will die on the spot, and labelled a joke or something that is all too hard to use.

It's all coming along pretty nicely, I have the ROAM system Threaded up and running how it is supposed to now, so you can run it in whatever resolution you like, and the mesh keeps up with you, you can now go from space to ground at full speed, and the mesh doesn't lag behind, and also doesn't fall apart (threading something as dynamic as this mesh, and keeping it all in tact was a real trip). Plus I didn't want the threading taking up too many CPU cycles, and overload the CPU to GPU bandwidth, pushing buffers up to the GPU all the time, so I got it now using 2 extra threads, one main thread for the crux of the work, and another as an assist that only helps out (mainly for the distant stuff while on the ground) while the main thread keeps the close up stuff updated mainly. The beauty is, it uses only 10 - 20% of the CPU (I5 Intel) to do all this, including ocean clouds and all the rest of the crap (other systems) I'm also dicking around with.

screenshot_2.jpg

Alex

[Aranor]

Regardless how you distribute it its pretty impressive what you have done.

Question, is there a way to identify areas of the glode as different regions? ie near the equator is tropical, near the poles are arctic, deserts etc?

[DavlexDesign]

G'day Aranor,

is there a way to identify areas of the glode as different regions? ie near the equator is tropical, near the poles are arctic, deserts etc?

Most definitely, It does have a whole weather / climate system in there, my shader just isn't using it right now, it's just one of those systems that is a work in progress too.
I have those bands of moist air that rise and then come back down as dry in bands from the equator back towards their respective poles, which will cause the drier arid areas we see on Earth.
Also where the bands come back down towards the surface, and the next band rises, there is what they call the slip stream, that is also in there.
Depending on planet make-up and mass, those bands can vary in number and dimension, take a look at pics of Jupiter, it has really visual bands of that stuff in action, and allot of them, due to its mass and rate of spin and stuff, also the make-up of it's atmosphere, makes them easily visible.

Alex

[Zonder]

G'day Aranor,

is there a way to identify areas of the glode as different regions? ie near the equator is tropical, near the poles are arctic, deserts etc?

Most definitely, It does have a whole weather / climate system in there, my shader just isn't using it right now, it's just one of those systems that is a work in progress too.
I have those bands of moist air that rise and then come back down as dry in bands from the equator back towards their respective poles, which will cause the drier arid areas we see on Earth.
Also where the bands come back down towards the surface, and the next band rises, there is what they call the slip stream, that is also in there.
Depending on planet make-up and mass, those bands can vary in number and dimension, take a look at pics of Jupiter, it has really visual bands of that stuff in action, and allot of them, due to its mass and rate of spin and stuff, also the make-up of it's atmosphere, makes them easily visible.

Alex

So your not calculating it based on the sun, size & type and the planets rotation?

[DavlexDesign]

G'day Zonder,

So your not calculating it based on the sun, size & type and the planets rotation?

Yes, those factors also play a part, what I was getting at was the climate zones mainly, look at Earth, you have desert type regions close to the equator as well, (north and south), because the air has lost its moisture once it has risen from the humid zones, and then comes back down as dry air, so the foliage and stuff gets less moisture out of the air, causing those dry arid zones even though they are quite temperate, they are like belts around the globe on the larger land masses.

Alex

[Zonder]

G'day Zonder,

So your not calculating it based on the sun, size & type and the planets rotation?

Yes, those factors also play a part, what I was getting at was the climate zones mainly, look at Earth, you have desert type regions close to the equator as well, (north and south), because the air has lost its moisture once it has risen from the humid zones, and then comes back down as dry air, so the foliage and stuff gets less moisture out of the air, causing those dry arid zones even though they are quite temperate, they are like belts around the globe on the larger land masses.

Alex

I thought you must be with the random nature of the game you are planning.

[DavlexDesign]

G'day guys,

Here's a pic I found, to explain some of this crap I've been talking about ....

Earth_Global_Circulation.jpg

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind

Alex

[Zonder]

intertropical stays at 30 all year round. this must be because it points at the sun but rotates fastest away from direct sunlight other parts get sun for longer periods. or it's my beer addled mind that is calculating this

[LordBaal]

So... how is the good old Lord Baal doing orbiting that star?

I sorta kinda have a question.

Do you guys think that, at some point would it be possible to employ only the procedural generation parts of your engine to make 3D maps of planets, star systems and galaxies? And then, at least for the planet maps, divide them up in several squares or tiles?

[DavlexDesign]

G'day LordBaal,

Do you guys think that, at some point would it be possible to employ only the procedural generation parts of your engine to make 3D maps of planets, star systems and galaxies? And then, at least for the planet maps, divide them up in several squares or tiles?

yes

That's sort of what it is doing anyway, it really doesn't matter what kind of mesh you want to produce, the procedural mechanics part of this thing doesn't give a dam about what point on a shape you are asking for, so you don't have to ask for left to right, top to bottom orders or anything like that, but if that's what you want, it will supply it. so using a standard tiled approach like Geometry Clip maps, or just a recursive quad tree, will work fine, it will also (if you want it to) supply a colour map, a height field, a detail normal map, a climate map, a surface substance map, and a couple of other specialized ones for my engine, if required, all at different resolutions, for the same tile, if need be.

Alex

[LordBaal]

Ahhh excellent. What I have in mind is to create a 3D galaxy with a few dozen or so star systems, also of course in 3d. But for each planet, instead of being capable of seamless letting you get from orbit to the ground, create the terrain maps like those of civilization or total war games, and when "double clicking the planet" for example, enter the "Civ" like map, and from there each square, hex or tile would have it's full detailed map at ground level. I don't know if I'm explaining myself well or not.

The better example of this that I could find is the Rome 2 Total War game, where Creative Assembly said that the map is basically a huge, continuous battle map now (no more random maps), and when a battle was triggered, it's to be fought over a section of this map.

Btw, are you still planing on hiring?