Questions/Answers after the gameplay video

[Phaethonas]

At the "First Fractured Gameplay Video Released!" post I made some questions arising from the said video. As more questions are arising and some questions are being answered, I gathered the questions and answers here, in order for them to gain visibility.

Questions

1. Is it possible to zoom in/out and change the camera angle?
2. I noticed that you were not grouped with the other player. Is grouping possible?
3. I noticed that there is friendly fire (yahoo!). Was this friendly fire that we saw at the video? Was Uriel being hit/losing endurance because he was targeted by mistake (aka miss-click) or was there real friendly fire, as in if another person is in the line of fire, that person will be hit as well, even if not selected/targeted.
4. In case grouping and friendly fire are possible, will friendly fire be possible for players within the same group?
5. I noticed that you bumped on a tree once or twice and once a plant "reacted" when stepped on. The latter is very nice, and shows some good work. Now to the question. What about player collision? Does this exist? Is there a distinction between "friendly" and "enemy" collision (see GW2)?
6. Supposedly there are "fully interactable environments", mentioned at the site and the gameplay video (I think). Does this mean that those trees and those rocks are "farmable"? For example, will I be getting (pine) wood from a pine tree?
7. How did you control the character? Both movement and combat wise.
8. Would it be possible to jump into the water/river and what would have happened then?
9. Is this procedural generation algorithm, in house tech or did it came with Unity/SpatialOS?

Answers (provided by @Prometheus and @Specter)

1. You can zoom but not change the camera angle. The world is built so you don't need it.
2. Yes, grouping will be possible.
4. You can group and that removes friendly fire too. We might reconsider this decision though.
5. There is full collision between any type of creature (players included, in the same party and not). SpatialOS makes it possible! However, we might tweak the rules here too. Alpha testing will tell whether it's really feasible on a large scale or not.
6. • You will be able to mine rocks and chop trees. Also, various skills will interact with the environment. (Ice freezes water, fire burns things, etc).
   • Yes, they are. That's "just" gathering though, only a part of what "fully interactable environments" means. A lot is related to how you can use the environment in combat - setting it on fire, freezing it, and so on.
7. • Fractured's movement is mouse-based. No WSAD.
   • Click to move - sometimes keeping the mouse button down, others pathfinding. If you ever played ARPGs like POE or Diablo - it's that!
8. Swimming is not in the picture so far I'm afraid.
9. • You can read more about procedural generation in the first State of the Game and the sprint recaps.
   • In house, although it partly relies on external code libraries.

Further Questions (post answer, questions)

1. Define mouse-based. Are we talking "I press left and right click at the same time" mouse-based, or "point and click" (e.g. Path of Exile) mouse based. Cause I couldn't see any "point and clicking". And i[I]s WSAD out of the question? What about the combat/skills.
2. So what would have happened if you fell on the water? Would the game stop you in the first place? Would you drown? Would you just walk on top of it?

Explanations/Clarifications

1. The procedural generation algorithm is "in-house" tech, as stated at the first State of the Game.

SpatialOS gave us the server architecture to create an open world of virtually unlimited scale. That alone is simply amazing, but it solved only half of the problem – we had to figure out ourselves the puzzle of client-side world building. It wasn’t much of a technical issue there, but rather one of game design: how can a small company without an army of level designers pull off such a gargantuan task?
The answer, we knew, was procedural world generation followed by human polishing.
Over the last couple months, we have defined, furiously thrown away and re-defined the world building tools and pipeline in a seemingly endless loop of never-satisfying iterations… until we made it!
Today, I can gladly announce we’re able to quickly generate large portions of maps which perfectly fit the mechanics of an MMO with isometric camera and ARPG combat. Exciting maps, with the detail and variety you’d expect from a AAA production (but made by an indie team). That’s cool, isn’t it?