Hello Everyone! I was wondering if anyone could clarify a few things for me concerning the engine features?

First, is it capable of multiplayer (ie client-server, p2p) or merely intended for single player? Are there any plans in this direction?

Second, aesthetic and gameplay preferences aside, is the engine capable of using a first-person camera? And would this functionality be exposed to lua?

Lastly, does the engine support streaming scenes with an exterior and several interiors? Could you for instance program interactive doors windows and interact with object outside while inside (ie gunfire from the second floor window down into the street below)?

Thanks!!

Hey NS,

1: There is currently no networking in the engine, but it is a planned feature and Spark has already done some work to make it secure by separating bits from other bits. Aru has expressed interest in writing a net library or adapting an open one to Grit, but we haven't spoken in a while so I'm not sure if there is any progress from him.

2: There isn't one programmed now, and it would probably be something someone else would need to add, and even then it may or may not make it into the official builds. It is certainly possible and would be a very great addition to the engine. You wouldn't end up with the typical FPS which tend to use BSP and special occlusion to do what they do in those games, but the player would know no difference provided your controller and view models were familiar or "proper" to them.

3: It is planned to support in-overworld interiors (like GTA IV, not like ENEX/GTASA), but as far as interacting from the outside into the inside and inside to the outside (I suppose like the first mafia 2 mission with the mini-gun?), I can't be sure what that would take, and it would be worth looking into, and awaiting Spark's input on whether we will shoot for providing anything like that in the core game and engine offering.

I will notify him you posted

When we do networking it will probably be a more conventional client/server model, where the server is the overrding authority, to try and help with cheating, and not a peer-to-peer thing. However there is still a lot of design work to do there.

A first person camera is pretty easy. It will still be an open world engine though. I expect this kind of thing will always remain as lua script so tweaking it will be very easy.

This indoor/outdoor thing is typically solved with portal-based scene management which we don't have yet but will probably add, eventually. This would indeed allow you to shoot out of windows.

Thanks for the quick replies.

I imagine with some occlusion culling strategies (ie Back-face culling) an FPS camera would be pretty manageable.

So does that mean that if the building interior was homogenous with the structure portal scene management wouldn't be needed? The reason I wonder is because Ive made some simple models in Revit.

I also noticed the new plugin PCZSceneManager in the Ogre SVN. Is that something that would apply here?

PCZSceneManager is indeed a portal-based scene manager for ogre, and we would probably use it

The other approach is to use occlusion geometry (probably cuboids), which fits into the octree but noone's done that in OGRE afaik. I don't know whether artists prefer placing portals or placing occlusion geometry.

A critical requirement is to prune draw calls, not just overdraw.