I like to play GTA San Andreas, but not so much for the killing and missions and stuff. I like to just take a car and drive around, looking at stuff.
So I was driving around the back country on a stolen police motorcycle and thought to myself, this is kind of cool, but how much cooler would it be if I could build all my own models and buildings and stuff? Kind of like building a model railroad?
So...
Let's say you wanted to make your own digital model railroad, and time was not a factor.
You are officially willing to learn coding, procedural rendering, 3d modelling, whatever is necessary to the best approach.
What's the best way, do you figure, to create something like that?
How about something that you could share with other people?
Really? 10 views and no random musings, idle speculation, or "if I were to undertake this" scenarios?
Isn't that what Second Life is for? Or rather, isn't that what Second Life is for, for people who are not furries?
Haha - beaten to the post
Yeah, I guess that sort of is the ideal setup, now that you mention it.
Hmmm....
But while we're on the topic, any other suggestions?
Originally posted by: arigato But while we're on the topic, any other suggestions?
ask persist? This sounds right up his beautifully modelled alley 
He's a secondlife guy, I meant other options. Though if he does happen by this thread and has other ideas...
Well, minecraft was/is the biggest indie game developer succes of last/this year. Essentially a game about building your own environment, creating anything from working 8-bit computers, to huge buildings. One of the key factors here is that it's super easy to get into, while you are still able to go very deep into the technical end. Second Life suffered from being too hard to grasp for the casual gamer and ended up as a niche community.
Considering minecraft's succes you can bet there are some big software houses pumping resources into sandbox mmo worldbuilders right now. The recent Lego mmorpg has some steps into that direction too, but it's obviously aimed more at the <20 market.
well I think with some work maybe mixing curvy3d with prefab/away might not be impossible, well that is sort of where I am thinking anyway.
Hhmm - a little late to the party here.
For the walk around interactivity, you really can't beat the accessibility of 2nd life. I haven't worked with it other then flying around a bit, so I can't comment on the learning curve, but it is a viable option. The idea of an endless world or adding onto an existing world isn't a common thing to find that one can architect unless you are Christopher Nolan perhaps.
You might look at the Unreal game engine. Unreal Development Kit It's free and open to use. I played with this a few years ago. Weird learning curve, but if I understand it right, you can do a lot with it - from right within it or using it as an engine to drive an external modeling and lighting/texturing software i.e. Maya or similar. Look at UDK and see what they offer - it might be a bad suggestion, but one that comes to mind.
Sketchup - of course - for stills and basic animation, but tends to be more schematic and not mood evoking with lighting and feeling. Second life seems better at this from what I have seen.
I do 3D work full time now - 99% stills and starting to do animated fly throughs. I'm using Vectorworks, Cinema 4D, and Modo as my main softs + plus Photoshop, of course. I love that I get to do this all day and lately have been focusing on studying lighting and Material creation. There is always something new or different to learn and experiment with. It's a lot like railroads - you can tinker for hours and perfect something - or just blast out quick stuff and experiment. Very addictive.
Rambling - don't know if that helps any.
-temp.
I replied to ari in PM, but didn't realize this was a thread until now. I also live under a rock.
That discussion was purely about Second Life. But there is another alternaitve that may work.
So, the ini and property files in microsoft train simulator are designed for user generated content. Not saying it's simple, but it is there, similar to Microsoft Flight simulator where you have user generating worlds, land, maps, and airplanes.
There are communities and forums around this, and the content generated is usually easily shared.
The physics are excellent, and obviously tailored to trains, and the experience is about as spot on as you can get.
this looks fantastic
I saw that and was intrigued... Windows only, though. :(
This might be my excuse to install bootcamp and get grand theft auto, as well. 
I lurve windows 7 on my mac. do it.
You make a compelling case.
any news on this front.
was curious.
Nope, still too busy unpacking at this point. :(
There are free 3D models available for many famous buildings - both 3ds and google sketchup (and other) formats. Might be interesting to try and port those out to whatever framework you are going to use...
Here - for instance.http://www.GreatBuildings.com/gbc.html
Oh, fun! Great idea.
The latest free game engines are ludicrously powerful tools for world building. I made a lot of game maps years ago, first with te build engine, later with unreal edit - seeing what's possible these days makes me kinda sad that I didn't keep up with it.
Here's a fine example of a one man project customizing the Source engine ( the mod itself is brilliant btw ) :
Dear Esther foliage Dear Esther caves
Templeton mentioned the latest free Unreal engine. Source, IDtech and the recently made available Crytech are amazing too.
This is also inspiring :
nice thread and a cool project to tackle too ari.
unless you have a good hookup for space/prims or you don't mind paying monthly for space, i'd recommend against using sl for this. there's also the issue of getting people to install a nearly 200mb program (which can be confusing to use at first) just to be able to view your work. i dunno... that seems like a lot to ask imo.
i'm throwing my hat in the "use a free game engine" recommendation camp too but I'm going with Unity 3 which has quickly become one of the main engines used by indie developers. you can publish to mobile devices, browsers, desktops or consoles and soon there will be a direct export to Flash option and the early results look really good. just think about how many people you could share it with if you had it running in the flash player. i don't know if this option will be available for the free version or not though.
so i've been playing around with the program myself the past couple of weeks and i'm blown away by what can be done with it. i think it would be worth checking out for the landscaping and terraforming options alone but it doesn't look like it would be very hard (from what i've seen) to do the scripting for the train(s).
you can use it to make very simple things as well but here's some examples along the type of scale you might want/need for a railroad setting just so you can see what's possible anyway.
city night w/train - deferred rendering & audio filters:http://www.vimeo.com/9999214
mystic forest - landscape pack demo:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXgX7zvTw0E
fantasy world - nice level environment design:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svH6_fKULvw
Unity to Flash player 11 export demo:http://blogs.unity3d.com/2011/09/01/unity-and-flash-a-sneak-peek
Wow, that looks AWESOME. Unreal game engine looks really sweet, too. Now all I need is some spare time.