Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality (vr) is a little virtual reality test. Currently this project is going through a major rewrite and compiles for surely only using GNU/Linux. If you want to try it, click here.

Server is able to generate more terrain as the players move. The theoretical size of the world is about 18 889 000 000 000 000 km² which is about 37 000 000 000 times the surface area of Earth.

News:

2010-01-05: I've been implementing some simple widgets, like inventory and a list of buildable items, but they are not yet ready. Other thing I have been coding is understory that contains small bushes, hay, etc. It does not affect to game mechanics, it's only a decoration. While some bugs have been crushed, new ones have appeared.

2009-11-28: A special FRA update is here! At the beginning of December 2009, FRA will expand its Internet monitoring. FRA monitors all data traffic that passes through the borders of Sweden and since most of Finland's Internet traffic is routed through Sweden we have a little problem (vr-servers are located in Finland). To prevent personal data being spied, all chat messages will be encrypted from now on, so whatever you talk, Swedish or other authorities are not able to eavesdrop you! And as a bonus, it is also possible to send funny words. Funny words are read from ~/.config/vr/funny_words and then sent in random order and between random interval. It is not mandatory to use this feature, but if you like it, feel free to create your own list of funny words to mentioned location. The list is formed like this.

2009-11-27: New things are: Support for screenshots, items on the ground, text chat aka talking (players must be near enough to hear each others) and of course lots of bugfixes. Some code related to other creatures, such as animals, has been written, but it's currently very buggy and only supported when server side manually spawns creatures. I also wrote MS Windows port with my friend but it's not distributed anywhere, because code and network protocol is constantly changing. It was compiled using Mingw and I don't know how it works with other compilers. It's also unknown when there becomes new pieces of code that will not compile on Windows. But if you like, try to compile it.

2009-10-24: First simple implementation of obstacles is ready and players are again able to collide with them, although many collision detections, even to the ground, are still very buggy. The world can have over 8km difference in altitude, and currently this is done only using floats, so that may be one reason for bugs in collision system. In the future, integers will be added to bring extra precision. Also, the water is again visible and players can swim in it. In this rewritten version, mesh and materialdata of obstacles, players, etc. are loaded using a special datamanager that can automatically forget the data when it is not needed anymore. This makes it possible to use huge amount of textures, materials, etc. without overloading clients.

2009-10-13: Players are again able to see each others in the world. In the example screenshot, a small black dot is actually another player 1159 meters away from viewer. The purpose of this image is to test long view distance. Most things that worked in the old version are still not implemented in current one, but there is already at least one new feature: The view distance and fog are now automatically tuned so that FPS is good at all machines. The next thing I start to work on, are obstacles and first I will implement flora of terraingenerator with them. Also the server has been upgraded and it's now a 2700MHz Athlon dual core instead of an old 1800MHz Duron. This will affect greatly to terrain generating speed.

Screenshots:

New, rewritten version




Old version






How to try

To try this program, you need to have a GNU/Linux machine with 3D support. You can also try to compile it using other operating systems, but there might be some parts that will not compile. However major portability issues have already been fixed. As a poor student who works on this project only for fun, I can not give you any guarantee of the program, so if it breaks something, you can only blame yourself! For example there is a routine that will remove useless files and directories from data directory of game and it is not well tested. It should not access to other files in system, but who knows what nasty things bugs can bring. You have been warned!!! If you still want to try it and have either required operating system or enough patience to port it to other system, follow these instructions:
  1. Download and compile the client using this SVN repository.
  2. Fill the form below. I will use your e-mail address only to contact you concerning this project. For example I will e-mail you after I have (manually) added the desired information to the database of the game.


Form of a new user

Desired username:
Password:
E-mail:

If you have any problems or if you would like to give me any feedback, do not hesitate to contact me.

Back to projects