I think this has been ask many times,
and I'm sure that it is verry hard to make it work well.

But what do you think about Collaborative World Building?
I mean something like this Hero Engine.

I think it could make team produce games allot faster,
and not only fasten but also better.

Whilst I haven't actually used it I am sure that the world editor and data server already supports this.

See
http://www.esenthel.com/wiki/index.php?t...ve_Editing

yea but I did understand that esenthel meant that when I place a tree, I click update, that you can load it than indeed, but we can't places tree's ad the same time, or did I understand it wrong?

Collab editing =/ realtime editing.

I also wanted this feature, but it is not going to happen. I guess that a lot of low-end machines would not be able to handle it.

We did realtime editing in HE, and it was pretty sweet.

High end machines would not be able to handle it.

Their is no way your internet or anyone else's could handle sending realtime updates to other PC's. This would be a tremendous strain.

Imagine streaming the entire world of warcraft height maps as well as the coordinates of every object.

doing this would kill any modern computer. The only way this could be possible would be if you stored and edited the Map from a server on a Local Network. This should provide the bandwidth and would store the data in a single place. With current technology this is the only way I see this working.

How about something like instead of the actual data being transferred, just the users actions are sent to everyone in the collab and their actions are replicated(to a degree of accuracy) by each user's editor?

(04-25-2011 02:09 AM)runewake2 Wrote:  High end machines would not be able to handle it.

Their is no way your internet or anyone else's could handle sending realtime updates to other PC's. This would be a tremendous strain.

Imagine streaming the entire world of warcraft height maps as well as the coordinates of every object.

doing this would kill any modern computer. The only way this could be possible would be if you stored and edited the Map from a server on a Local Network. This should provide the bandwidth and would store the data in a single place. With current technology this is the only way I see this working.

Not everyone's. At least here in my country, there is a town which has 1000 mbps available to users standard.

Or even a company-license of your internetprovider can handle it. Or just rent / buy a really powerfull server which can handle it, depending ofcource on the amount of funding that you have.

and how can it be inposible when hero engine has it?

It's not like you constantly need to stream the entire world.

The way I see it, the world is divided into areas anyway. And when you go into object mode, for example, all you need to stream is objects. No terrain, lights, or anything else. Of course, both users would need to have the same data structure and objects. Since you don't stream the actual model but just a reference to it.

When you switch to Terrain editing mode, all you stream is height- and colour maps once every few seconds or so.

And so on.

It would still be for users with a very decent internet connection, but it seems doable.
On the other hand, it would be a cool feature, but I can go without.

The thing is, what happens when you have two people editing the same area? Who has priority? If you both do an action that effects the terrain map which addition is added and which is lost?

You basically edit the map on a different machine. The map is not even stored on your machine, but stored on the server. That is why you need a powerful server for it to even run properly (and therefore is also costly) when editing with an entire team (the limit is therefore also set to 25 people per server!!!).

A high-tech teamviewer with more than 1 mouse on the screen, editing the same map from different viewports in the same editor. No data is lost. When I pull it up, the other user sees it at the same time when I see it (could be ~100 ms seconds later, depending on the per-user connection speed), and if you were to decrease the ground, we would get a small volcano-like thingy. Having skype running in the background, or if must, on a different machine, is almost a must.

It's like pulling up and down with the same mouse, but then with 2 mouses now imagine that with 25 mouses! (or mice? What is the plural of a computermouse?)

idk what mouse is plural. Mice seems fine.

I guess that could work. But then can't you already do what you are describing? I know you can use your home PC from your laptop using the internet so why would this be any different? Just load the Editor on the server or your PC and let everyone connect to it and edit. Not sure how that would handle the mouse thing.

You have convinced me that this is possible. It would just take a lot of work.

This is very possible even with low-end hardware. Of course an initial install would be required to get all the data at first, and it would be advisable to have the system do a full update on startup rather than streaming all the new data as you go along, but actual realtime changes could simply be sent in difference files. There are many different methods of generating difference files, similar to how many commercial patchers work. I worked with an in-house worldbuilding tool that updated in realtime using deltaMAX by indigorose to generate the binary difference files (http://www.indigorose.com/products/deltamax/). The team that built this system consisted of three programmers and it took them less than a month to build it ontop of a pre-existing non-collaborative editor. Using binary difference files, the actual data transfer required for realtime editing isnt very much at all. Of course, this is very subjective depending on how the engine is built. In our system, the packets needed to modify terrain could range from a couple bytes to a few kilobytes, nothing a modern broadband connection cant handle. Adding objects is just a matter of sending a tag and some coordinates, no more than an average MMO sends in each and every player movement update.

(btw, computermouse plural is mice, same as the animal )

So it is posible?! could like people like we make it in the engine, or does it req source edit?

(04-29-2011 10:05 AM)davidvp Wrote:  So it is posible?! could like people like we make it in the engine, or does it req source edit?

Esenthel himself or the company licenses (the one with the full source code acces). But as was stated in the other 6 topics about this feature request, Esenthel will not implement it.