which types of gameplay could Ember support?

Jul 27, 2016
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#21

Bah i hate zones split between loading screens or instanced content, but i guess there is no option if we want a vast world.
Design a super computer that can handle all that then you will be a millionaire. Until then, loading screens are a reality.
 

Bl4ckhunter

Active Member
Jul 26, 2016
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#22
Design a super computer that can handle all that then you will be a millionaire. Until then, loading screens are a reality.
And that is just not true, seamlessness (it's it a word?) does come with a set of problems that make it harder to impement and in some cases cost inefficient but there's just no way that the client hardwere is the bottleneck. (supposing you aren't using a wooden pc ofc)
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/LevelStreaming/
 
Jul 27, 2016
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#23
there's just no way that the client hardwere is the bottleneck.
I didn't say the players computer was the problem. It still needs to load from the server somehow (npcs/ai pathing/etc/etc.) and that's on the companies end of things in game design. I'm just gonna use FireFall as an example but they were not able to achieve seamless worlds. Why is that?

http://forums.firefall.com/communit...-technical-limitations.2259721/#post-34694221
http://forums.firefall.com/communit...see-dredge-again.2199321/page-7#post-33902621

Nice link, so why hasn't this been used in any games anywhere before?
 
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Bl4ckhunter

Active Member
Jul 26, 2016
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#24
I didn't say the players computer was the problem. It still needs to load from the server somehow (npcs/ai pathing/etc/etc.) and that's on the companies end of things in game design. I'm just gonna use FireFall as an example but they were not able to achieve seamless worlds. Why is that?
Nice link, so why hasn't this been used in any games anywhere before?
first, you told him to build a computer that could handle that so i told you that computers already can handle that not that it was very competitive for mmos.

Second firefall runs did run on offset not on unreal, so odds are that it simply didn't have support for it.

Third who told you that it's not being used? there are a TON of games that run on it from WoW to gta/infamous/saint's row, it's just that with maps hand crafted and limited by budjet/manpower you're bound to hit the edges, seamless is NOT a synonim of procedurally generated, and 3d mesh procedural generation is more complex than voxel grid procedural generation in order of magnitudes and you've still got to account for a load of weird edge cases that with voxels simply don't happen, so for "high definition" games it's not really been applied but it's being pushed forward with upcoming new titles like rust, no man's sky and dual universe (i think this one will be a massive fail thought the devs lack even a basic understanding of human nature)
 
Jul 27, 2016
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#25
first, you told him to build a computer that could handle that so i told you that computers already can handle that not that it was very competitive for mmos.

Second firefall runs did run on offset not on unreal, so odds are that it simply didn't have support for it.

Third who told you that it's not being used? there are a TON of games that run on it from WoW to gta/infamous/saint's row, it's just that with maps hand crafted and limited by budjet/manpower you're bound to hit the edges, seamless is NOT a synonim of procedurally generated, and 3d mesh procedural generation is more complex than voxel grid procedural generation in order of magnitudes and you've still got to account for a load of weird edge cases that with voxels simply don't happen, so for "high definition" games it's not really been applied but it's being pushed forward with upcoming new titles like rust, no man's sky and dual universe (i think this one will be a massive fail thought the devs lack even a basic understanding of human nature)
It was an obvious reference for him to build a supercomputer for the engine/servers to run the game in a seamless environment because he dislikes loading screens....
That terrain still needs to be populated with props, buildings, plants, lighting, sounds, textures, etc. And then you need to populate it with NPCs and creatures. And then you need to place missions and content. And all of those still lead back to the original problem of an AI server that can handle all of that content and NPCs and the physics calculations across multiple servers or even the same server trying to handle billions of physics objects.
Not my problem you can't read.
 
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Beemann

Active Member
Jul 29, 2016
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#29
We just don't know what method of procedural generation we will use yet. We have to look at every option from real-time to pre-proessed procedural generation that generate a library of maps that are randomly drawn upon. Sorry I don't have more info. All I know it we can't handcraft the maps like we did with Firefall and we need to find ways to generate a lot of terrain, and a good variety, with a very tiny team and budget.
Tilesets can work pretty well provided they're done right, though that style of terrain reuse combined with the setting is giving me pretty strong PSO vibes. Not bad vibes to have, to be totally honest.

I also vastly prefer repeating dev crafted areas to having to deal with a big empty box or a randomly generated land blob. Allows for better encounter construction. That's just me though

My only concern is the implication you made in your previous post about dropping terraforming machines. Will this be player driven then? I can't help but feel as though there should be some level of dev centric content gating beyond that. Like, say you have a planet where one of the unlocked zones is a jungle. If players can unlock other areas themselves at any point, given enough time and effort they could unlock spots all over the planet, and if the plan was to have a new volcano area and those assets aren't done yet, you now have to pave over what could be someone's favourite jungle zone or save it for another planet

Just an example, and ultimately irrelevant if I misunderstood the process
 
Jul 27, 2016
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#30
facepalm. do you even read the posts you quote?
Those aren't seamless, they have walls on the outer edges and they aren't massive. Those are open world games with one singular area you are stuck inside. Seamless means to go from one zone to the next without a loading screen between them that takes the player out of immersion.
 

Bl4ckhunter

Active Member
Jul 26, 2016
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#31
Those aren't seamless, they have walls on the outer edges and they aren't massive. Those are open world games with one singular area you are stuck inside. Seamless means to go from one zone to the next without a loading screen between them that takes the player out of immersion.
you're confusing seamless with infinite. get a dictionary or better yet read the posts you quote, seamless does in absolutely NO WAY imply procedural generation, lack of outer walls or infinite, it simply means that, in the game isnt divided in multiple instances.
 
Jul 27, 2016
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#32
you're confusing seamless with infinite. get a dictionary or better yet read the posts you quote, seamless does in absolutely NO WAY imply procedural generation, lack of walls or infinite.
Seamless is to go from one area to the next without loading screen. I think it is you who needs to look it up.
 

Bl4ckhunter

Active Member
Jul 26, 2016
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#33
Seamless is to go from one area to the next without loading screen. I think it is you who needs to look it up.
yes. it is. and the games i quoted don't have loading screens except for an handful of story missions (wow excluded ofc but still the istancing there is limited compared to other mmorpgs and there are 5 seamless continents still).
 
Jul 27, 2016
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#34
yes. it is. and the games i quoted don't have loading screens except for an handful of story missions (wow excluded ofc but still the istancing there is limited compared to other mmorpgs and there are 5 seamless continents still).
But they are open world, you don't load into a new zone seamlessly.

Those aren't seamless, they have walls on the outer edges and they aren't massive. Those are open world games with one singular area you are stuck inside. Seamless means to go from one zone to the next without a loading screen between them that takes the player out of immersion.
 
Jul 27, 2016
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#36
5) We have never said that the world would be "seamless". You may have inferred that, and for that I apologize that we were not more clear. But we have never said that it would be seamless. Even in the video where Mark shows you the whole world there are 20-30 small zones all disconnected from each other. We never explicitly said that there would be loading screens, but we also never explicitly said there wouldn't be. Our fault for not being clear, yes, but please for my sanity and the sanity of this community stop saying we're going back on "promises" that were never made.

6) Just because the world is not seamless does not mean we can not hide the transitions, and this has always been part of the plan. But like everything else with Firefall, we implement early and polish later. Yes, we can make it so that you enter a dropship and fly through a melding storm all to hide the fact that you're loading a new zone. Unfortunately that takes time to implement and we need better in-game cinematic tools to make it good.
 

Bl4ckhunter

Active Member
Jul 26, 2016
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#37
not of that. of the fact that the word seamless means anything else than a lack of loading screens masked or otherise, you seem to have picked up that it also means that the world is infinite and unlimited and that is neither here not there.
 

Pandagnome

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Jul 27, 2016
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#38
I could see a mech type race concept within the world of ember where mech pilots could race
or blast their foes in an area/arena. Having the chance to earn upgrades or even currency helps to customize/improve the mech even make an additional mech for one for your army buddies.

There could be A.I racing along side and the occassional surprise gm as a race mech pilot where all mech racers need to destroy it before it crosses the line to earn bonus points etc etc

It would be like a clash of super mario kart with strike suit zero, and armored core 4a :D
 

EvilKitten

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Jul 26, 2016
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#39
When I played Vanguard: Saga of Hero's the game had 3 massive continents, each of which were separated into "chunks". While there was a loading screen between each continent, each one was itself a seamless world. The chunks were 1km on a side and you could simply walk between them with only a bit of visual stutter. There was no loading screen, just that anything not in your chunk would be rendered at an extremely reduced level. This is from a game that is so old it is already closed down...

Here is a picture of one 12km x 9km contiguous continent with the chunks visibly shown:
 

TankHunter678

Well-Known Member
Jul 26, 2016
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#40
Second firefall runs did run on offset not on unreal, so odds are that it simply didn't have support for it.
Actually Firefall did have support for it. They modified the offset engine to be capable of it. In fact they used it a the time. The problem was that all the other systems could not keep up with it. The AI server especially which got throttled the more and more AI it had to spawn. They had to limit the size of the zones and cap the amount of players in a given shard in order to make everything work.