SmedBlog: Seamless Continents/Naval Units

[cellinaire]

Originally Posted by Akrasjel Lanate

Would be interesting but thats rather longer term goal

Originally Posted by NewSith

I would rather have every map border to be a warpgate, so we actually load other continents by crossing the certain line and staying there for a certain period of time instead of making it seamless.

I think having 3 seamless continents may result in extreme stress for server/client.

EDIT: Extreme Stress for Server/Client means more unnecessary glitches, bugs and CTDs, while noby minds the absence of it. In fact it will, in my opinion, become hated if there's any problems (that are destined to be, there's no other way) with it after implementation.


TL;DR, no need for seamless stuff, we're not THAT persistance-twisted.

If it's possible with reasonable framerate and low lag, then why shouldn't they?

Yeah, it's not one of these things that "this seriously needs to be done", but it can always be a nice bonus to players like me, you know?


And guys, let's not ask Smed to tell his company secret.

[AnamNantom]

Originally Posted by Tatwi

I still wish you'd buy these guys,

http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php

Really, it's just one smart guy doing the programming. The concept has so much potential.

Yeah I'd heard of this from my corp mates in Eve Online. I will have to try the demo again as I couldn't get it working previously.

[Roy Awesome]

Originally Posted by Smed

the way the tech works it doesn't really matter. We stream a lot of stuff anyways.

Originally Posted by Smed

Forgelight has had seamless world support for quite a while now. We don't really discuss how we do a lot of our behind the scenes tech stuff for the simple reason that it's part of what gives us a competitive advantage. We use some pretty interesting techniques to deal with a large amount of players interacting with physics. Look at what we did with DCUO for example. One hero in New York can quite literally throw a bus and have it bounce off a guy in Austin while another guy turns it into a block of ice.

I don't want to make any of this sound easy. it's not. We have some truly brilliant engineers. I see tech demos all the time. I saw that one with 1,000 players. We didn't make a big deal about it but we've had more than that before.

For us it's the whole package. lots of users. supporting that on both the client and the server in a way that allows a great user experience. It's not easy but that's the "secret sauce" for us.

Yeah, I understand it puts you at a disadvantage if you go spilling tech details everywhere. As an engineer who is really interested in this kind of stuff, it saddens me, but It makes total sense

[Crator]

Now this, I must see!

[Justaman]

Originally Posted by Hmr85

It would definitely add a new dynamic to the game play. Could you imagine D-Day landings as you try to get a foothold on a new cont.

And instead of having "warpgates" that are ALWAYS under your factions control, the continent is only access-able from air/sea.

F T W.

Seamless continents are completely possible, it just takes work to program the memory management. Given the distance between, there's more than enough time to load the resources wile you travel to the location. So even lower end computers could handle it.


Also, it would be an entirely different meta game, as an assault would be reliant on the naval spawn points and gaining that successful foothold on the beach. If you didn't win the assault, you wouldn't be able to try again till you regrouped/respawned all the naval ships you needed to form up a new assault.

/droolz

[DarkMesa]

Now I would really like to see small islands in which the entire island acts as one large base.

I feel as though it would allow for very intense land-sea-and-air-battles.

[Ertwin]

TR & NC show up in destroyers, VS show up in a fleet of magriders. I can see that happening. Although I suspect all but the biggest ships would probably be faster than the Mag.

[Malorn]

Seems like a cool thing. I'm not seeing the value of seamlessly connected continents other than being neat. What's the practical purpose of it?

The ocean surface is a rather uninteresting thing. Just a big flat plane. Unless there will be islands to fight over and that sort of thing there doesn't seem to be much point in it. You could just as easily have made those continents.

And if the seamless connection is the only way to get to some places that seems like it's just tedious unnecessary travel time. Just make it a continent, throw some warp gates on it, and be done with it.

[exLupo]

I could maybe see this working if they wanted to expand the playscape but didn't want to add new conts. Warpgates already on the borders of the landmasses so they would, by default, also border the water areas.

Like has been said a bunch, it could just expand the hex control map. Mobile, water based spawn areas (carriers). Static control sites (rigs, islands, undersea domes, whatever) are focus points. It'd also provide for a whole other cert point sink later in the game's life.

I can get the why and the how. But, really, all I see is caves. *sigh*

[EVILPIG]

Originally Posted by IHateMMOs

I doubt they have enough tech to make Planetside 2 take place on an entire planet with no loading screen, but I can see water based battlefield.

WWII Online. It was done over 10 yars ago.

A seamless world is what we want.

Naval units is lame in my book. Naval bases, yes. Futuristic flight makes boats a no go. Doesn't mean we can't fight for naval bases. It doesn't even mean we can't fight in the water. Futuristic flying machines would be able to go underwater too.

[exLupo]

The main point I could see for actual naval vehicles would be mobile bases. Places to spawn aircraft and reinforcements. Add a water-based apc so you could get another troop transport without actually adding an air vehicle to compete with the Galaxy. There'd be a lot of air, of course, but you'd still need to get boots on the ground and I'd rather not rely on Gals for everything.

Maybe water based megatank analogues. However, to me, that leads directly to coastal shelling. I don't want to deal with arty.

[RoninOni]

Yah, I could see Naval mobile bases... basically oversized aircraft carriers that spawns any vehicle but a battleship. These would cost an immense sum and take outfits weeks of saving to purchase. You do NOT want to lose your mobile bases.

Battleships that can spawn from shipyards that would be some serious heavy firepower at a far more reasonable cost than mobile bases (which would be prohibitively expensive) but still very expenses and not something to throw away at all.

Finally TR & NC would have landing craft for taking tanks from the mobile bases to the shore. TR & NC may additionally sport small, cheap naval fighter boats that would be relatively inexpensive. VS would just use their Gravs which need no transport.

Air vehicles (all or some, fighters at least) could be underwater capable as well.

The ocean itself would have isles & islands as well as resource nodes for drill type platform bases. These would likely be player constructs which can be captured or destroyed by enemy (capturing saving the victors from needing to purchase it). These resource nodes would be one of the key elements for naval unit purchases & upgrades.

If pushed off a continent, likely a nearby island or isle would first be secured as a close by spawning base and naval yard for allowing a sustained assault on the main land.

[exLupo]

You'd have to make it so Mags couldn't go on open ocean. Say the water is too choppy for their lift systems or something. Otherwise it'd be a funky balance point. Either they would be useless or overpowered.

[RoninOni]

Originally Posted by exLupo

You'd have to make it so Mags couldn't go on open ocean. Say the water is too choppy for their lift systems or something. Otherwise it'd be a funky balance point. Either they would be useless or overpowered.

TR/NC simply have a cheaper, but more restricted (can't go on land), naval small fighter unit, which would also be better suited for naval combat. (Say on water VS tanks lose a lil speed or something).

in order to keep VS naval units restricted to water but still thematic... they still hover but due to their size they displace water from the direction they want to move to the opposite side of the craft, in effect creating their own water current. This efficient propulsion system only works over water of course.

Oh yah, and jet skis

[exLupo]

Jet skis? We need some photoshop up in here. First person to provide a pic of TRay motorboating (either type) wins a million internets.

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