Multiverse Developer Newsletter Vol. 1, Number #5

Multiverse Developer Newsletter

Volume 1, Issue 5


In this edition:

Corey's Column: Rise of the Indies

We're hip-deep in preparations for next week's Austin Game Conference, so this issue of the newsletter won't be a big one. But we wanted to let you know about the big things that are underway.

Timed with AGC, we're announcing some of our customers. We'll also be showing off some of our customers' screenshots and trailers. For those of you not in the private beta, you'll finally see some of the worlds built on Multiverse. (And if you'd like to start building your world now, look for the article below about how to get fast-tracked into the private beta.) In our announcement next week, we'll be focusing on independent developers. For those of you out there who work at fully funded companies, we have much love for you, too, but the really unserved need is in the indie market.

Our goal with the Multiverse platform is to make it possible for you to be, yes, independent in what you build. Instead of seeing more of the same, we're looking forward to seeing innovation that would take the big game publishers years to get around to. We're convinced the rise of the indies will lead to greater innovation throughout the entire industry. You'll get a sneak peek at that innovation next week.

—Corey

Corey Bridges
Executive Producer, Multiverse

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Multiverse a Sponsor of the Austin Games Conference

The keynote speakers at this year's Austin Games Conference include Oscar award-winning producer and Multiverse advisor Jon Landau, Blizzard's Rob Pardo, Dell's Michael Dell, and Hugo award winning science fiction author Vernor Vinge, but we know you're really waiting for the special presentation the Multiverse team will be giving, including trailers and demos from some of your fellow developers. Multiverse, one of the sponsors of this year's Austin Games Conference, will be there in force, including participation by Corey Bridges and Ron Meiners in several of the Austin panels, and a welcome event for our developers in attendance (9 pm Tuesday night at the Hilton bar). You have to be there, right? Register online and you can still receive a 20% discount.

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Winners of the First Two Screenshot Contests

These two screenshots, both from Wardog team's Force of Arms, were the winners of our first two Developer Program screenshot contests. Click on the above images for larger versions.

Kudos to them and to all who participated!

Want to show off your game? We're expanding the Developer Program--see the next article for details.

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Expanding the Developer Program

The Multiverse Developer Program has been limited thus far, to ensure that we could offer support and pay solid attention to the teams involved and their suggestions. And it's been a great success, due in no small part to the dedication and selflessness of the teams involved, who have gone above and beyond the call in contributing to Multiverse in many ways. In fact, it's been such a success that we feel the time has come to increase participation and invite you to join us.

We've got a questionnaire online, that will help us get to know you better. Fill that out please, and email it to developers@multiverse.net and you'll be on the fast-track to getting in. There are great things going on, so why wait?

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Tech Corner: Collision Volumes

by John Hessler, Multiverse Art Department

I'm John Hessler. I'm a 3D artist for Multiverse. Recently it has been exciting for me to work on new assets for Multiverse. Lately, one of the most anticipated new features in the platform is the ability to use collision volumes. In this article, I hope to shed some light on how to create them with the Multiverse tools.

Collision volumes enable players to walk up stairs, into buildings, bump into walls and generally interact with the world in a more natural way, and they are fairly easy to understand and incorporate into your world. The steps are straightforward, and as long as you follow a few simple rules you should be successful in adding them to your world.

The current implementation of collision volumes for objects in the world use oriented bounding boxes or OBBs. These boxes can be rectangular or square but all corners must maintain a 90 degree angle. There can be no trapezoidal or custom shapes. The boxes can be rotated along any axis and along multiple axes as long as you don't mess with the angles on the corners of the boxes. This being the case, the process of creating collision volumes for a building consists of building with blocks of collision volumes to match the shape of the building as closely as possible without using too many collision volumes in the process. Since collision volume interaction is a CPU-intensive, the more frugal you are with the volumes, the less system resources will be consumed unnecessarily.

I'm going to step through this process in Maya since it has a peculiar way of object naming convention. Of course, you can also use 3ds Max, in which case you can ignore the Maya naming issues.

Step 1. Load your model into Maya.



Step 2. Create a polygon primitive cube.

Resize it and shape it to fit a portion of the current structure like the floor. To avoid a non-uniform scale issue, I use the scale and rotate tools exclusively on the object level, and never freeze my rotational transforms so the axis always aligns properly. Repeat this process until you have associated collision volumes with all important surfaces.

Step 3. Name the collision volumes.

The naming convention for collision volumes is: mvcv_obb_submesh-name_uniqueID. where:

  • "mvcv" stands for multiverse collision volume
  • "obb" stands for "oriented bounding box" (for other shapes, you use a different abbreviation)
  • submesh-name is the name of the corresponding submesh.
  • uniqueID is a unique identifier.

For example: mvcv_obb_human_wishbone_houseshape_01, mvcv_obb_human_wishbone_houseshape_02.

For models with more than one submesh (for example, a house with a porch), then associate collision volumes with each submesh, so if it is turned off in the world then the collision volumes for it go away as well.

For the unique identifier, you can use anything as long as it is unique. One scheme would be to use this identifier to associate a name of the volume with the piece it represents such as the floor. eg: mvcv_obb_human_wishbone_houseShape_floor. However, it is often easier and faster to use a number, especially if you have to rename a bunch of volumes.

Note: One issue in Maya that doesn't crop up in 3ds or XSI is a confusion as to how Maya names its objects. If you look in the outliner or the hypergraph places where items are commonly renamed, the mesh you're looking at would seem to be called human_wishbone_house.

This however is not the case in Maya. Maya names the initial object node (the transform node) with the name you give it. It then looks at the shape node (or mesh node) and appends the word "shape" to it. So the actual name of the mesh or submesh becomes: human_wishbone_houseshape. You can see this in the channels box:

So, in Maya you need to name your collision volumes incorporating the "shape" postfix that Maya adds to the mesh description node, for example, mvcv_obb_human_wishbone_houseShape_01.

Step4. Freeze your transforms and delete your history.

Step 5. Go through the exporter process and load the .mesh into the Multiverse Model Viewer. The export process step from .dae file to the mesh and related files strips the collision volumes information out and places the information in a .physics file. If you are not getting a physics file, then your version of the tools probably need to be updated or something has gone wrong in your export process. The collision volumes should not be visible in the model viewer. Go back and double-check your collision volume names.

If you get a physics file, but no volumes appear in Model Viewer, then you are good to go. So go have fun running around in your building.

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Found in the Forums:

"Of course, not all words are so electrifying to type. Here, I’ll show you: Grind. That was no fun to type at all. Typing “Grind” fills me a sense of impending frustration, a sense that I might just be wasting my time. Let’s try another: Treadmill. No, that’s no good. That one gives a sense of futility, a sense of expending energy but getting nowhere. Excuse me a moment… DING! There, that’s better."

—Tecknowolf, Multiverse Developers Forums