Rhetorical question about game engine
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Despite some personal interest I didn't spend much (and nearly enough) time playing with Crysis, Unity or Xenko engine. One question that came to my mind though.. As I was playing "Torment Tide of Numenera" pre release (made with Unity and very small map), they seam to all come with the concept of a rectangular map / level. And when you move out of it.. well you are loading the next one... Can be long.. (is painfully slow in Torment, like in those RPG of yore) So I wonder.. How come in, say, Skyrim, I can see the whole country (If I climb to the tallest mountain first though hey!) or / and in Fallout I can freely move about, never a loading screen! (well going in / out of town / house seem to trigger it) but I can still wander the wilderness for kilometers and spot things far ahead! How does that works? [EDIT] Well, yeah, I suspect They automatically generate a simplified world map for long distance vision and always have the 8 neighboring maps preloaded in the background for smooth transition... I just wondered if there is more to it.. Otherwise why did it take so long for this to be the norm?
All in one Menu-Ribbon Bar DirectX for WinRT/C# since 2013! Taking over the world since 1371!
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Despite some personal interest I didn't spend much (and nearly enough) time playing with Crysis, Unity or Xenko engine. One question that came to my mind though.. As I was playing "Torment Tide of Numenera" pre release (made with Unity and very small map), they seam to all come with the concept of a rectangular map / level. And when you move out of it.. well you are loading the next one... Can be long.. (is painfully slow in Torment, like in those RPG of yore) So I wonder.. How come in, say, Skyrim, I can see the whole country (If I climb to the tallest mountain first though hey!) or / and in Fallout I can freely move about, never a loading screen! (well going in / out of town / house seem to trigger it) but I can still wander the wilderness for kilometers and spot things far ahead! How does that works? [EDIT] Well, yeah, I suspect They automatically generate a simplified world map for long distance vision and always have the 8 neighboring maps preloaded in the background for smooth transition... I just wondered if there is more to it.. Otherwise why did it take so long for this to be the norm?
All in one Menu-Ribbon Bar DirectX for WinRT/C# since 2013! Taking over the world since 1371!
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Despite some personal interest I didn't spend much (and nearly enough) time playing with Crysis, Unity or Xenko engine. One question that came to my mind though.. As I was playing "Torment Tide of Numenera" pre release (made with Unity and very small map), they seam to all come with the concept of a rectangular map / level. And when you move out of it.. well you are loading the next one... Can be long.. (is painfully slow in Torment, like in those RPG of yore) So I wonder.. How come in, say, Skyrim, I can see the whole country (If I climb to the tallest mountain first though hey!) or / and in Fallout I can freely move about, never a loading screen! (well going in / out of town / house seem to trigger it) but I can still wander the wilderness for kilometers and spot things far ahead! How does that works? [EDIT] Well, yeah, I suspect They automatically generate a simplified world map for long distance vision and always have the 8 neighboring maps preloaded in the background for smooth transition... I just wondered if there is more to it.. Otherwise why did it take so long for this to be the norm?
All in one Menu-Ribbon Bar DirectX for WinRT/C# since 2013! Taking over the world since 1371!
There are different game maps: rectangular, circular (leaving the left side brings you back on the right), circular with dynamic links, generated...and the combination of these As for the loading - background loading is an old trick, I had games on C64 using it...
Skipper: We'll fix it. Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this? Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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Of course! So Simple! :laugh:
All in one Menu-Ribbon Bar DirectX for WinRT/C# since 2013! Taking over the world since 1371!
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There are different game maps: rectangular, circular (leaving the left side brings you back on the right), circular with dynamic links, generated...and the combination of these As for the loading - background loading is an old trick, I had games on C64 using it...
Skipper: We'll fix it. Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this? Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
Well, yeah, I suspect They automatically generate a simplified world mad and always have the 8 neighboring maps preloaded in the background... I just wondered.. if there is more to it.. otherwise why did it take them so long for this to be the norm?
All in one Menu-Ribbon Bar DirectX for WinRT/C# since 2013! Taking over the world since 1371!
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Despite some personal interest I didn't spend much (and nearly enough) time playing with Crysis, Unity or Xenko engine. One question that came to my mind though.. As I was playing "Torment Tide of Numenera" pre release (made with Unity and very small map), they seam to all come with the concept of a rectangular map / level. And when you move out of it.. well you are loading the next one... Can be long.. (is painfully slow in Torment, like in those RPG of yore) So I wonder.. How come in, say, Skyrim, I can see the whole country (If I climb to the tallest mountain first though hey!) or / and in Fallout I can freely move about, never a loading screen! (well going in / out of town / house seem to trigger it) but I can still wander the wilderness for kilometers and spot things far ahead! How does that works? [EDIT] Well, yeah, I suspect They automatically generate a simplified world map for long distance vision and always have the 8 neighboring maps preloaded in the background for smooth transition... I just wondered if there is more to it.. Otherwise why did it take so long for this to be the norm?
All in one Menu-Ribbon Bar DirectX for WinRT/C# since 2013! Taking over the world since 1371!
It requires rolling a 6 , but with faster computers now, they can roll much more frequently than in days past, so you don't generally see as much delay.
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Well, yeah, I suspect They automatically generate a simplified world mad and always have the 8 neighboring maps preloaded in the background... I just wondered.. if there is more to it.. otherwise why did it take them so long for this to be the norm?
All in one Menu-Ribbon Bar DirectX for WinRT/C# since 2013! Taking over the world since 1371!
There is no norm when you create a game (except to acceptable response time), all type of map creation has it advantages and disadvantages, and you should chose the best for you...
Skipper: We'll fix it. Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this? Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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Despite some personal interest I didn't spend much (and nearly enough) time playing with Crysis, Unity or Xenko engine. One question that came to my mind though.. As I was playing "Torment Tide of Numenera" pre release (made with Unity and very small map), they seam to all come with the concept of a rectangular map / level. And when you move out of it.. well you are loading the next one... Can be long.. (is painfully slow in Torment, like in those RPG of yore) So I wonder.. How come in, say, Skyrim, I can see the whole country (If I climb to the tallest mountain first though hey!) or / and in Fallout I can freely move about, never a loading screen! (well going in / out of town / house seem to trigger it) but I can still wander the wilderness for kilometers and spot things far ahead! How does that works? [EDIT] Well, yeah, I suspect They automatically generate a simplified world map for long distance vision and always have the 8 neighboring maps preloaded in the background for smooth transition... I just wondered if there is more to it.. Otherwise why did it take so long for this to be the norm?
All in one Menu-Ribbon Bar DirectX for WinRT/C# since 2013! Taking over the world since 1371!
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Well, rhetorical it might be, but people still can have an opinion! ;P
All in one Menu-Ribbon Bar DirectX for WinRT/C# since 2013! Taking over the world since 1371!
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Despite some personal interest I didn't spend much (and nearly enough) time playing with Crysis, Unity or Xenko engine. One question that came to my mind though.. As I was playing "Torment Tide of Numenera" pre release (made with Unity and very small map), they seam to all come with the concept of a rectangular map / level. And when you move out of it.. well you are loading the next one... Can be long.. (is painfully slow in Torment, like in those RPG of yore) So I wonder.. How come in, say, Skyrim, I can see the whole country (If I climb to the tallest mountain first though hey!) or / and in Fallout I can freely move about, never a loading screen! (well going in / out of town / house seem to trigger it) but I can still wander the wilderness for kilometers and spot things far ahead! How does that works? [EDIT] Well, yeah, I suspect They automatically generate a simplified world map for long distance vision and always have the 8 neighboring maps preloaded in the background for smooth transition... I just wondered if there is more to it.. Otherwise why did it take so long for this to be the norm?
All in one Menu-Ribbon Bar DirectX for WinRT/C# since 2013! Taking over the world since 1371!
Well, I worked in games dev for many years, and as someone mentioned, there are loads of ways to approach this. The main concepts are "level of detail", which you kind of hinted at, and techniques like SOAR, projective grids etc. The Virtual Terrain Project[^] has loads of resources if you want to dig more into them. Another commonly used technique is predictive loading, i.e. trying to stay ahead of the player in loading the environment, but that applies more in enclosed environments, and isn't easy to do in large open one.
Days spent at sea are not deducted from one's alloted span - Phoenician proverb
