World size and levels
Bandersaur
Australia Join Date: 2014-10-25 Member: 199120Members
Australia Join Date: 2014-10-25 Member: 199120Members
One of the main disadvantages of not using procedural map generation is that the maps are finite in size. This raises a few questions in my mind, and until now I haven't seen anything particularly definitive on this topic
How large will each of the handcrafted open world pieces be?
Will they fit together to create a huge world or will it consist of multiple smaller levels?
How far and deep can we actually go?
How large will each of the handcrafted open world pieces be?
Will they fit together to create a huge world or will it consist of multiple smaller levels?
How far and deep can we actually go?
Comments
So if you keep sailing in 1 direction, you will end up in the same place, eventually.
Right now the *goal* is about 4km on a side and 2km deep. So there will be a top layer as well as some underground parts (such as huge underground caverns and tunnels. Think Mammoth Cave).
What happens when we reach the edge of the map? Are there invisible walls, does it wrap around or something else entirely?
As the level is on an underwater plateau, once you left the level boundaries the sea floor would drop away rapidly as you traveled outwards. If you descended too far, your submarine would find itself unable to take the immense pressure and crack. Of course, if you stayed near the surface you could continue indefinitely or until you reached another of the defined areas, which would be seen as another plateau.
This would solve the problems of having level boundaries and also eliminate the need to load separate 'Levels'. This is because each of the handcrafted areas would be their own little underwater environment, also making it incredibly easy to add new environments to the randomly generated mix at world generation.
If you need me to draw a diagram, I can.
This leaves us with the issue of how to deal with people being at the surface. As you said, then they would be able to go on forever. The problem with this is, that may not be a good option. First off, one would except animals to live in this area, so should there be creatures constantly generated into infinite? The concept of other plateaus you could eventually reach is intriguing, but may be difficult to code. Perhaps a level of procedural generation could fix it, but again, that is extra work.
All solutions offer new issues, and I am not fundamentally against your suggestion, hell, I think it is one of the better ones, I just also do not think it solves many of the bigger problems. What is needed is a solution that works in all three dimensions, not just going forward or down.
As for infinite creatures? Procedural generation would fix that nicely, and you'd hit another plateau before too long anyway unless you were avoiding the levels intentionally.
Yes but they changed it to make the world look nice.
Yeah when you do procedural gen, there are trade offs between the look of the world and the complexity of it. The "tiles over plateaus" approach is exactly what we did for the PAX demo, but that results in a fairly limited variety of spaces. Namely....just tiles over plateaus. For 2D games like Diablo and Path of Exile and Spelunky, this is fine. Even for 3D but heightmap-terrain games, such as Sir You Are Being Hunted, this is fine. But for us, we are fully 3D with full freedom of vertical movement, so we wanted more interesting, truly 3D spaces. We couldn't figure out how to do this without sacrificing visual look (which is the sacrifice that Minecraft makes).
Come Oct 31st, I hope you'll find that the kind of spaces we have handcrafted were worth this change.
Any of my personal favorite open world games were for example fallout ,or skyrim which are excellent examples of an open heavily detailed well designed game.
If you dont supply the gamer with enough content then it can be a disapointment finding out the game only has short gameplay hours, thats kinda the whole point of open world games .
1. The map isn't finished yet so its going to get bigger. I don't remember where I saw it, but I remember seeing that the map is only like 60% complete.
2. Not that simple.
3. You two necroed a post over a year old. Mods will be in here soon to lock it up.
For the areas that your working on and have planned to place something in the future add a random biome to that area as a placeholder.
For the space outside the map (where your not going to put anything) have that be procedural to give an almost infinite world (so that it is set at a depth average of 1-1.5km) and goes out 6km from the map edge then have a sudden cliff that comes up from the floor to about 10m above the surface (this will become the boundary marker). The procedural area could be done up so that once it is created then just like the way the save stores the changes to the map that you have already done while building/exploring it will also store the data for the outer area. To help the game remain as quick as it is I would also suggest that the map be done up so that all of the terrain be split into 2km x 2km x 2km sections that just touch (most systems run better with smaller but more objects than they do for 1 large object).
@SteveRock
=( I really thought the map would go much deeper than 2 km. I think deeper is more important than wider. 8 km depth would be great and thrilling!
But what if we compromise to a cubic map of 4 x 4 x 4 km ??
Hope you and the other Devs could reassess that suggestion.
Does anyone else agree?
or have the mysterious electromagnetic pulse take the player out.