EarthriseEarthrise is a post apocalyptic science fiction MMORPG set in the distant future. In the aftermath of the Third World War, mankind has managed to survive and build a new society: the prosperous city of Sal Vitas. Cloning, nanotechnology and quantum engineering are part of a new reality. Thanks to these technological advances, the human species has become immortal; each individual’s consciousness is stored in a data vault, ready to be uploaded into a cloned body as necessary. New energy sources have been discovered. There is a unified government that takes good care of those citizens who abide by its strict laws. Paradise, it appears, might really have come to Earth, and the people have embraced it.
I hope you all are enjoying the delightful spring weather. Today, instead of taking a question directly from the Question of the Week thread, I focused on two rather interesting topics that had come up lately, jumping and physics, both of which generated a surprising amount of discussion within our community! Here's the question:
There’s been a fair bit of discussion about jumping and physics. Can you tell us a little about the type of physics we can expect to see? Will there be ragdoll style effects? What about jumping? Will we be able to jump in combat?
Physics
While designing Earthrise engine we tried to build the best realistic experience and in the same time balance client requirements and server load. The physics engine will run simultaneously on the client and on the server. The server will ensure that the physics results from the client are feasible and prevent cheating. We are using a 3rd party physics core, which can take advantage of hardware and GPU acceleration and also have some internally-coded subsystems. Player movement and control is governed by the physics engine – forces such as gravity or wind (and other) will affect players, NPCs, and other game objects. Player mounts (vehicles) have mass and their movement and collisions are generated by the physics engine. Visual effects, such as particle systems, explosion blast waves, and projectiles will use the physics engine too, on the client side. The audio subsystem will use physics world and object materials to generate proper sound effects.
A ragdoll system will be used for players, NPCs, and monsters. It will augment animations to ensure good foot to surface contact, maintain player look and pose, provide realistic hit, knockback, and fall movements. The level of the effects of the physics system that the players will see will depend on the player hardware, allowing an essential set to run on hardware with the minimum Earthrise requirements. Many other effects such as object destructibility and buoyancy are planned with subsequent patches.
Jumping
Do birds fly? Does grass grow? So do players jump in Earthrise. We're still working on many aspects of movement and dynamics, by considering the combat system in every aspect, as well as realism. Presently, jumping will require a small expense of stamina, so "bunny hopping*" will be limited in activity. There are numerous abilities planned that will modify jumping in order to suit it for different situations.
Jumping will also solve environmental problems the players might face, and it will be on par with most other games in the genre.
Queston of the Week 19th May
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