Map without border

kelor

What do you guys think about making the map endless (more specific: borderless) by simulating that you swim "around" the planet. So when you swim long enough in one direction, then you will come back to the point where you started. This would give the player the feeling of a much bigger neverending world.

Mezzmure

This is a very good idea.

FrostyFish

Not sure how you implement that correctly, since currently the map is actually a giant block; you'd have to teleport the player to the other side at some point.

kelor

How to implement it is, of course another pair of shoes ;-) But the game could for example start loading a part of the other side of the map when the player comes nearby the border.

SalmonJEDl

I've been thinking about this too, but first we devs need to expand the map a lot. It is way too small. We should wait untill the map is getting near the final size before thinking about this any deeper. This could became a really cool feature.

AliB

I don't think it would be that complicated to implement since you would only load the Chunks of the world in a circular manner (still they have to fit each other; Caves, Canyons...) and reset the coordinates. The real Problem would be that the planet might feel extremely small. But The Idea is great since it would end the Quest of defining the Borders of the world so that they look naturally but can be identified easily.

kelor

I certainly would prefer a borderless map over the neverending deep as it is now (but that's maybe only the cowardice talking in me; seriously this endless depth is creeping me out...)

Agreed, the map has to become bigger. For me personally however the sheer size of the map is not as important as the density it provides. What good is a spectacularly vast map if there is nothing new to discover while exploring it? But from the path the development has taken so far, I'm quite confident that there will be more than enough to do and I'm really looking forward to be surprised ;-)

Racer1

Based on comments I've see by UWE team, if Subnautica is very successful after it is released, they may expand the map. However, the current plan is to keep working on enhancing the existing map, which will stay at approximately 4km by 4km (by 2-3km deep).

Comprox

The current thoughts on this:

- The current map is way too small to turn into a round world. It was tested at some point waaaay in the past and people actually kept getting confused when you wrapped around a small map (long and boring explanation there)
- Some ideas have been thrown around, but nothing it set in stone yet. One option is to make the map as big as possible, and then procedural generate more random land outside of the hand crafted areas. Maybe they would wrap it around eventually then, or just leave it going out for ages (ala minecraft). I don't actually work on the game itself, so nothing I say could happen though!

Fluffers

Wrapping would be easy if you were just talking about underwater, but what about the aurora? And what about beacons, would you be able to see them in front of you and behind you at the same time? I honestly don't see how the map could be wrapped purely because of the design of the game.

Plus I kinda like the endless deep. I'm absolutely terrified of the ocean, and even more terrified of deep ocean, so the endless deep is like a horror game for me, it's fun to see how long I can last at 2,000 meters before I have a panic attack and close the game.

kelor

I have somewhat mixed feelings about procedurally generated content. So far subnautica's world is so lovingly crafted that I am a little worried that procedurally generated content could be too generic.

Regarding the proposed idea, maybe making the game world into a roundworld would require too big a map and I can see that the wrapping can easily confuse the player especially if the map is not very big. On the other hand, just a borderless map might be much easier to accomplish, there are quite a few games out there where you just go out on the one side of the map to find yourself on the other side.

@Fluffers: same here, obviously I'm not the only one that closed the game out of sheer panic when diving down deep ;-) I also like the endless deep, but somehow I would prefer it not to be the border but more of an area in the map to explore - if one is brave enough, that is...

FluffySpacePrincess

You could make episodic content. Require the largest sub, and then have like signals, that would take you to other locations, more plateaus like the one the aurora crashed on, maybe a really deep, massive cave system, an abandoned human science outpost floating over deep ocean. That way you could expand the world without having to just go "Oh look, some more land just appeared."