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[Charlizd]

Hi guys,

I Have a few Questions for some of you who may have some prior experience in what we are trying to achieve, i will give you a  run down of what i want to achieve and then turn it over to you guys to let me know the best way i am to go about achieving this.

Here is my Scenario, We are trying to create an Open, Very large world ( 3176 squarekilometres) for our future Sandbox MMO using seamless 2.0 and we are trying to figure out what the best size we should be making our Area's ( i.e. each individual Hieght map ), we know that the recommended size using seamless 2.0 should be at a size of 256 (as recommended via the Seamless 2.0 Video) but were hoping to use something a little bigger to minimise workload, we are not trying to take an easy way out but seeing that we are planning on having a very large world it would just help in us keeping a little sanity during the building process, Is having something bigger than 256 a feasable option? Or will it create too many issues down the track such as server to client reaction.
 Is it possible to get away with a bigger area such as a 1/2 mile square without it being too much of a hindrance on both sides Client and server side? or is this making a whole boot load of work for us in the future. I guess i am asking what is the best possible way for us to create our large landmass, Do we have to stay with the Recommended 256 sized area's or is there another option that we can play with, without it being too much strain on us and the potential playerbase.

Another Question i want to touch up on is do I need to creat Rooms for every individual Area i am creating, I know i need to create Rooms for an NPC city e.t.c to help with the Various aspects of Bandwith e.t.c but do i need to create Rooms for an open area within our world, such as If i have an open spanse of land that is only inhabited with the environment and Life forms within it, (no buildings or towns e.t.c) is it completely Necessary to make Rooms for these areas?

Any help with these Questions would be greatly appreciated

[HE-Cooper]

Areas are units of server simulation. You'll need to discuss your game design with your engineers and then prototype it to decide how much of your game can happen in a given area.

As new game developers I have two very important pieces of advice:
1. Just stick with the 256 recommended area size, unless you have experienced software engineers on your team.
2. Do not attempt to make the largest online game ever made, which is what you are currently attempting to do by a factor of 20.

Go for a few square miles. Polish them up beautifully, learn how the tools and the engine work, get your game systems in place, and put together a vertical slice of your game to get publishers and players interested and following your progress.

If you hit 50,00 likes on your facebook page, then you can think about what making 1000 square kilometers will get you, but every single designer working in the industry will still give you a resounding "do not do that", but with a huge following of your game development maybe you can recruit enough engineers and designers to pull it off. I put it at a team of around 130 that it would take to manage it and pull it off. :-)

[Charlizd]

Hi Cooper,
My calculations were wrong in world size, the actual world size is on 2k square kilometres and we plan on doing everything you suggested as above and we have all intentions on doing as you suggested but my next question is would there be any drawbacks to actually building something that large IF we had the people on hand to develop such a game, i guess this is why i was looking for information as to if it would be even possible or even a smart thing to do.
We fully intend on building and testing a small part of the world and get a fully functioning product within that small area, but what we want to know is that If we can get our initial smaller game polished would we get the same results out of a much larger world, and what would be the best course of action to take in building such a large world.
What i am trying to achieve is to get as much info now before we start building so as to not have to keep running back and forth with Questions regarding us building things ass about face

[FI-ScottZ]

I've always been told "size doesn't matter", but then that could be just me .

One caveat is that the larger the area, the more content you need to create to fill it up.  Any extensive parts that are not really populated and interesting are basically wasted.  You can always add to the world, so much better to let it grow proportionally to the amount of actual content you have.

Plus, it is always good to hold some stuff back from players that can be released later to keep people's attentions. Otherwise they can get weary if there is not new things very often.  Pace yourself.

[Ziljinn]

Scott and Cooper thanks for the replys .

Scott you make a very good point when it comes to content and area population. In most games especially those of the theme park style I would say yes content and population would be very important. We are trying to go as far from this current model as possible because most of the time with these models they seem to populate very quick with players then when the content wears off a good percentage of the player base leaves the game and servers are cut down. 

The game we are designing will have a lot of open areas that will be eventually populated by players, player housing and castles/keeps. If course we will want to be smart how we design this, so while we want players to have as much freedom as possible, we will have certain restictions so that performance is always at the top of the list.

As our world begins to populate it will obviously put more demands on the system but it will be easier to deal with at that time and I dont think it will ever get to the point it will stress our performance if its done correctly. Another thing that will be very Important in our game and one of the main reasons we are looking at a large world is the fun of adventurism and realism. We want our players to be challenged in intelligent ways that some games just do not deliver. Our crafting and resource gathering models are very extensive and collecting of said resourse will span the entire map.

All that being said if we build our world in areas of 256x256 and all our systems work well within that parameter we should be able to make the world as large as we want . Would this statement be correct ?

[Ziljinn]

Areas are units of server simulation. You'll need to discuss your game design with your engineers and then prototype it to decide how much of your game can happen in a given area.

As new game developers I have two very important pieces of advice:
1. Just stick with the 256 recommended area size, unless you have experienced software engineers on your team.
2. Do not attempt to make the largest online game ever made, which is what you are currently attempting to do by a factor of 20.

Go for a few square miles. Polish them up beautifully, learn how the tools and the engine work, get your game systems in place, and put together a vertical slice of your game to get publishers and players interested and following your progress.

If you hit 50,00 likes on your facebook page, then you can think about what making 1000 square kilometers will get you, but every single designer working in the industry will still give you a resounding "do not do that", but with a huge following of your game development maybe you can recruit enough engineers and designers to pull it off. I put it at a team of around 130 that it would take to manage it and pull it off. :-)

All that being said if we build our world in areas of 256x256 and all our systems work well within that parameter (after extensive testing of all systems) we should be able to make the world as large as we want . Would this statement be correct ?

[Charlizd]

Can i request this thread be moved to the world building Section please, i apologize for it being in the wrong section of the forums.
Thanks.

[Charlizd]

!!BUMP!!

I'm not sure if everyone overlooked my 2nd Question but do i need to create rooms for every area i create in my map?
I know i need to create rooms in Congested area's and such but what about in open expanses such as fields e.t.c?
Do i need to create rooms for such areas that may have nothing other than rolling hills with grass and a few tree's e.t.c
Again all i am trying to do is get all my facts right so i can do things right the first time and potentially not come across any snags down the track because i have designed things wrong.

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

[HE-Cooper]

Creating an area automatically creates a room that encompasses the entire area. Rooms are simply volumes that can be used to control visibility and or awareness. Their primary purpose is gameplay and environment settings since dpvs handles occlusion.

[Charlizd]

ok cool,
Thanks Cooper