Multiple water levels & sizes and High object count?

[Tes96]

1. I'm currently designing a cave for Skyrim: Home of the Nords and in the midst of designing, realized how nice it would be to be able to set multiple water levels at different sizes. I don't know if OpenCS would ever be able to do this. We have static models of water but as you can guess, when you jump in them, they don't make a "splash" sound. Nor do they have water beneath them. It would be great to have pools of water in multiple levels in caves. Would this be something that could be done after OpenCS version 1.0 is released?

2. I'm assuming this is a gambryo engine issue. My cave currently has over 3000 object references and is very deep. I get certain CTD issues when walking in certain areas, even though the entire thing is one cell. Will OpenMW allow for high object count stability (i.e. 10000+ objects in a single cell)?

[scrawl]

1. I'm currently designing a cave for Skyrim: Home of the Nords and in the midst of designing, realized how nice it would be to be able to set multiple water levels at different sizes. I don't know if OpenCS would ever be able to do this. We have static models of water but as you can guess, when you jump in them, they don't make a "splash" sound. Nor do they have water beneath them. It would be great to have pools of water in multiple levels in caves. Would this be something that could be done after OpenCS version 1.0 is released?

There are plans for creating our own scene-XML-format replacing NIF files. It will make use of Ogre's and Bullet's native mesh/collision file formats to make exporting easier. The material system will also be fully exposed so you could add your own custom shaders (water, glass, etc) to objects. Having it actually behave like water (splash effects, underwater effect, etc) should then be as simple as turning on a flag in the XML file. So, basically, you'll have a water "mesh" that truly looks and behaves like water, and can be placed in OpenCS just like any other object.

2. I'm assuming this is a gambryo engine issue. My cave currently has over 3000 object references and is very deep. I get certain CTD issues when walking in certain areas, even though the entire thing is one cell. Will OpenMW allow for high object count stability (i.e. 10000+ objects in a single cell)?

Having too many objects should not affect stability, but keep in mind that a larger scene graph leads to lower performance.

[Tes96]

Wow, that's great news to know about the water meshes! Thanks.
My framerate is fine. I think it just may be my laptop since it's rather shitty.

I tried my esp with OpenMW version 0.29 and it plays perfectly fine. So I think it's the shitty gamebryo engine that is causing this mysterious Crash-to-Desktop.

[Tes96]

The water for OpenMW looks fantastic in caves, guys! It has a cloudy hazy blue color to it. Now, while that looks awesome, it is not realistic. The lighting in my caves is pitch dark; set at 5,5,5 so that you cannot see anything, unless you have a means of lighting your way. With that said, the water should also be pitch dark within the cave. It looks strange having a pitch dark cave and then glowing light blue water. Is there a way to get the interior water to be as dark as the lighting to which the interior is set? Will that be something that can be implemented in the future?

Also, just some feedback, the ripples in the water are too harsh in my opinion. They last for a long time and are very large; looks kinda like watery sand dunes moving across the water surface.

[Greendogo]

@Scrawl- That's a really cool idea with the water meshes/objects.

I'd like to say, however, that doing exterior work like rivers, at different altitudes and with any kind of motion that affects either the surface graphics or object movement would be unwieldy with just water objects.

I think you could take the water plain and allow it to have a heightmap or rip it (create tears) and let the (a?) physics engine take care of the water flow mechanics and graphics. High water sloped downward could be made to look like it's flowing downward and it could affect movement of objects put into it (like the player or enemies, or eventual free floating physics objects).

[Greendogo]

But water objects would at least be lower-hanging fruit than that, and definitely would be widely adopted by users.

[Tes96]

@Scrawl- That's a really cool idea with the water meshes/objects.

I'd like to say, however, that doing exterior work like rivers, at different altitudes and with any kind of motion that affects either the surface graphics or object movement would be unwieldy with just water objects.

I think you could take the water plain and allow it to have a heightmap or rip it (create tears) and let the (a?) physics engine take care of the water flow mechanics and graphics. High water sloped downward could be made to look like it's flowing downward and it could affect movement of objects put into it (like the player or enemies, or eventual free floating physics objects).

Are you talking about actual water physics like this? As in, where ever the water falls, it reacts with the exterior terrain and environment? Can Bullet do that?

[Greendogo]

Probably not

But if it could, it'd definitely be pretty damn useful.

[SGMonkey]

Are you talking about actual water physics like this? As in, where ever the water falls, it reacts with the exterior terrain and environment? Can Bullet do that?

You're talking about fluid dynamics which aren't even in modern day commercial games. Let alone an open source project.

Physics boxes are something I suggested a while back too. If it could be done via a 3d model or a BSP then that would be super handy.

[Tes96]

Are you talking about actual water physics like this? As in, where ever the water falls, it reacts with the exterior terrain and environment? Can Bullet do that?

You're talking about fluid dynamics which aren't even in modern day commercial games. Let alone an open source project.

Physics boxes are something I suggested a while back too. If it could be done via a 3d model or a BSP then that would be super handy.

Do you have a video example on youtube?