AOC using Zones instead of seamless gameworld? Really....?

dwhapham

Like many, I can’t wait for this game to be released. I am however a little worried about the fact that they are using zones which are only 1 to 2 kilometers in length and width as opposed to creating a seamless game world like almost all newer MMORPGs. They say they are doing this so that they can add more detail to the game world, but I know for a fact that there are ways to use landscape and mesh paging systems to load and destroy object in memory as a player moves around the game world. This allows game developers to add as much detail as they want, and still keep the game world seamless (I’ve created LP systems myself using the Truevision3d and Irrlicht game engines).  Zones are old school and easily exploitable in combat. They also take a lot away from immersion. I’m really at a loss on why the AOC devs would even consider using zones.

0over0

Originally posted by dwhapham


Like many, I can’t wait for this game to be released. I am however a little worried about the fact that they are using zones which are only 1 to 2 kilometers in length and width as opposed to creating a seamless game world like almost all newer MMORPGs. They say they are doing this so that they can add more detail to the game world, but I know for a fact that there are ways to use landscape and mesh paging systems to load and destroy object in memory as a player moves around the game world. This allows game developers to add as much detail as they want, and still keep the game world seamless (I’ve created LP systems myself using the Truevision3d and Irrlicht game engines).  Zones are old school and easily exploitable in combat. They also take a lot away from immersion. I’m really at a loss on why the AOC devs would even consider using zones.

From what I've read, the npcs have activities whether any player's watching them or not`. For another, there are other people in the game, so the chances that in any given area there's only the one person that the system is creating an environment for would be kind of low--especially since there's so much hype.

Jupsto

After traveling a few miles you may be required to take a boat or other from one country to the next. Big deal. I much prefer it, means a whole lot less lag. And comepltely seemless has no use. the zones are BIG.

dwhapham

I guess zones would be ok if the zone size were huge, but that defeats the purpose of having zones in the first place. The FAQ said they were just  few kilometers in size which to me sounds small (Maybe it's a mis-print). Hopefully zones won't come into play that much, but I'm just surprised since technically there should be no reason they can't use a paging system instead of zones.

amous

I dont see what the big deal is, so what they are using zones. I mean is that going to kill the game for you.

dwhapham

Originally posted by amous

I dont see what the big deal is, so what they are using zones. I mean is that going to kill the game for you.

It depends on how they are implemented. I'm sure most people would like to do without loading screens when traveling around the game world if they could. It takes away from immersion. As most people who played DAOC or Everquest can remember, they can also be easily exploited when fighting NPCs or other players. What worries me the most is that is is a regression in gaming technology. Most modern gaming engines use paging systems (LPs). To say that we are using zones so we can put more detail in the gameworld doesn't fly since the same thing can be done with LPs and without loading screens. I just think it was a bad early design choice by the devs. Does it mean the game will suck? of course not.

 

 

Rehmes

I personally dont mind the zones xcept for one thing. If there are certain choke points in zones the those could be camped. And in a game based on pvp that could go bad real fast. So if in fact there will be those chokepoints i hope the implement something to counter abuse (im sure their not stupid not to), one thing any player hates more than getting ganked is getting pwned w/o even knowing you were in a fight cuz you were still in a black screen of doom.

I sure FC knows about these gripes though and if their smart they have something to counter such practices as well.

dwhapham

Originally posted by Rehmes


I personally dont mind the zones xcept for one thing. If there are certain choke points in zones the those could be camped. And in a game based on pvp that could go bad real fast. So if in fact there will be those chokepoints i hope the implement something to counter abuse (im sure their not stupid not to), one thing any player hates more than getting ganked is getting pwned w/o even knowing you were in a fight cuz you were still in a black screen of doom.
I sure FC knows about these gripes though and if their smart they have something to counter such practices as well.

Spawn camping loading zones is unavoidable, especially on an open PVP server.

I think I just found a possible reason why they are using zones. It look like they plan on porting the game over to consoles so they are going to have to deal with more limited memory/graphic requirements then what a PC user generally has. I can't think of any seamless MMORPGs that have yet to be ported to consoles (but I may be wrong).

 

daarco

I really trust the AoC developers in this one. Zones will help us to have better gameplay. We have all seen the amazing special graphics, so i rather have that then seamless.

And who just run around anyway?

Krebul

The only problem I have with zones, is when you're PvPing, people tended to camp the zone borders in AO.  So they get brave and when they realize they're going to lose, they zone to the other side (usually a non-pvp area, or a place with guards that will help them).  Even if you can attack them on the other side, the load time is sometimes enough to help them get away.

Easy fix:  Dont let people zone while in combat.  Well, maybe PvE combat should be escapable through zoning.

Other than that, there is really no compelling reason you need a seamless world.  As long as you're not zoning every 5 steps, it really doesn't matter that much.

Aelfinn

Whether or not a seamless world is possible/feasible with the kind of detail Funcom is gunning for, it still would not be possible withing the realm of the IP lore they are working with.

Hyboria is huge, no ifs ands or buts. For them to make the zones they are planning to include  seamless would be like cramming Siberia, China, and Australia next to each other and reducing their size by 1/1000th.

On the other hand if they went with a realisticly proportioned world, we'd have the city of Tarantia, and a huge frikken load of farmland, thats about it.

checkthis500

Originally posted by Aelfinn


Whether or not a seamless world is possible/feasible with the kind of detail Funcom is gunning for, it still would not be possible withing the realm of the IP lore they are working with.
Hyboria is huge, no ifs ands or buts. For them to make the zones they are planning to include  seamless would be like cramming Siberia, China, and Australia next to each other and reducing their size by 1/1000th.
On the other hand if they went with a realisticly proportioned world, we'd have the city of Tarantia, and a huge frikken load of farmland, thats about it.

QFT.  Seamless zones don't work when you want amazing graphics AND a lot of land mass to cover.  And with the graphics in this game, and a a peak over at the map of Hyboria, it's obvious that zones are the only way to go.



WoW is the only game that comes to mind as being seamless (with the exception of instances of course).



I also don't think people camping zone borders is going to be a problem in this game either since the only place you can PvP is the Border Kingdoms.  I mean I guess if they don't set up the entrance right, you might ahve people camping there, but if they're doing that, then they're not being very productive since you'll have Guild Cities and what-not.

Sovrath

Originally posted by checkthis500



WoW is the only game that comes to mind as being seamless (with the exception of instances of course).

Lineage 2 is seamless as well. just a note of interest.

eXizzLe

Zones is an easy way to say, "our game sucks."

Unicorns_Pwn

11/06/1999 Asherons call released..   seamless world

coffee

WoW style zones or Vanguard chunks?



WoW

zone based but appears seamless with no load screens except crossing from 1 continent to the other, but you can run from the top of Azeroth to the bottom with no loading screens and no pauses the zones merge seamlessly.



Vanguard

Harddrive exploding and 30sec pause while it loads in the data for the next chunck (which is just another name for a zone).. not very seamless.



I see no difference between zones and chuncks in WoW I can be in 1 zone and see into the other just as you can in vanguard... realy what is the difference?



So give me what works and not becuase its a new way of doing things. And if I have to see a loading screen as I cross an ocean then big whoop.

Bravnik

There is nothing more exciting that playing a next generation MMO that uses 1st generation technology.

Honestly, I don't care a whole lot one way or the other but I would rather have a seamless world for Immersion reasons. I will hold judgement till I actually play the game and decide then on if I mind it or not.

Vindicoth

Uh..



Dark Age of Camelot was mostly seamless except for loading into other realms and dungeons, Vanguard is completely seemless.7

dwhapham

Originally posted by checkthis500

Originally posted by Aelfinn


Whether or not a seamless world is possible/feasible with the kind of detail Funcom is gunning for, it still would not be possible withing the realm of the IP lore they are working with.
Hyboria is huge, no ifs ands or buts. For them to make the zones they are planning to include  seamless would be like cramming Siberia, China, and Australia next to each other and reducing their size by 1/1000th.
On the other hand if they went with a realisticly proportioned world, we'd have the city of Tarantia, and a huge frikken load of farmland, thats about it.

QFT.  Seamless zones don't work when you want amazing graphics AND a lot of land mass to cover.  And with the graphics in this game, and a a peak over at the map of Hyboria, it's obvious that zones are the only way to go.



WoW is the only game that comes to mind as being seamless (with the exception of instances of course).



I also don't think people camping zone borders is going to be a problem in this game either since the only place you can PvP is the Border Kingdoms.  I mean I guess if they don't set up the entrance right, you might ahve people camping there, but if they're doing that, then they're not being very productive since you'll have Guild Cities and what-not.

A paging system accomplishes the same thing as zones do except they do it in real time as opposed to waiting for then entire zone to load in and out of memory. You can make a world of unlimited size and detail with a paging system. LOTR does it well, and so does WOW. LOTR for example has great graphics and will even run well on a P4 1.5 Ghz PC with 756MB RAM, and a Geforce3 VC (which is what I run on my spare PC). I know AOC will have even better graphics and will no doubt require more robust PC specs then LOTR, but saying the zones are the only way to create a detailed world is simply false. Zones actually limit what you can load into memory at any one time while paging systems load only the visible gameworld thus alowing you to load more objects and textures into the scene at any one time. Now, that's not to say the AOC isn't using a paging system within its zones, but I haven't seen any technical info to support that.... The only logical reason I can see for choosing zones is because of their planned console port.

 

 

checkthis500

Originally posted by dwhapham

Originally posted by checkthis500

Originally posted by Aelfinn


Whether or not a seamless world is possible/feasible with the kind of detail Funcom is gunning for, it still would not be possible withing the realm of the IP lore they are working with.
Hyboria is huge, no ifs ands or buts. For them to make the zones they are planning to include  seamless would be like cramming Siberia, China, and Australia next to each other and reducing their size by 1/1000th.
On the other hand if they went with a realisticly proportioned world, we'd have the city of Tarantia, and a huge frikken load of farmland, thats about it.

QFT.  Seamless zones don't work when you want amazing graphics AND a lot of land mass to cover.  And with the graphics in this game, and a a peak over at the map of Hyboria, it's obvious that zones are the only way to go.



WoW is the only game that comes to mind as being seamless (with the exception of instances of course).



I also don't think people camping zone borders is going to be a problem in this game either since the only place you can PvP is the Border Kingdoms.  I mean I guess if they don't set up the entrance right, you might ahve people camping there, but if they're doing that, then they're not being very productive since you'll have Guild Cities and what-not.

A paging system accomplishes the same thing as zones do except they do it in real time as opposed to waiting for then entire zone to load in and out of memory. You can make a world of unlimited size and detail with a paging system. LOTR does it well, and so does WOW. LOTR for example has great graphics and will even run well on a P4 1.5 Ghz PC with 756MB RAM, and a Geforce3 VC (which is what I run on my spare PC). I know AOC will have even better graphics and will no doubt require more robust PC specs then LOTR, but saying the zones are the only way to create a detailed world is simply false. Zones actually limit what you can load into memory at any one time while paging systems load only the visible gameworld thus alowing you to load more objects and textures into the scene at any one time. Now, that's not to say the AOC isn't using a paging system within its zones, but I haven't seen any technical info to support that.... The only logical reason I can see for choosing zones is because of their planned console port.

 

 

Wasn't saying it was the only way to make a detailed world, was saying it's the only way to have AMAZING graphics, not just detailed graphics AND a huge world (Not talking about area size, but referring to spanning continents where the only way to travel between them without going through blank landscape or an ocean would be to fly or ride in a boat).



I should have specified what I mean by the huge world part.  I really don't want to walk through miles of desert to get to an interesting area.  I'd much rather zone there.  And I also don't want to ride miles on a boat to get somewhere.



And to the other mmo's mentioned, I was just saying what came to "my" mind.  I'm sure that there are even other games besides those that are seamless.  It's been a long time since I played Lineage 2, and I never played AC. 

Ryun511

To be fair, the FAQ hasn't been updated since last year so a few things could have changed since then.

Aelfinn

Originally posted by dwhapham




A paging system accomplishes the same thing as zones do except they do it in real time as opposed to waiting for then entire zone to load in and out of memory. You can make a world of unlimited size and detail with a paging system. LOTR does it well, and so does WOW. LOTR for example has great graphics and will even run well on a P4 1.5 Ghz PC with 756MB RAM, and a Geforce3 VC (which is what I run on my spare PC). I know AOC will have even better graphics and will no doubt require more robust PC specs then LOTR, but saying the zones are the only way to create a detailed world is simply false. Zones actually limit what you can load into memory at any one time while paging systems load only the visible gameworld thus alowing you to load more objects and textures into the scene at any one time. Now, that's not to say the AOC isn't using a paging system within its zones, but I haven't seen any technical info to support that.... The only logical reason I can see for choosing zones is because of their planned console port.

I apologize for the rudeness, but are you being deliberately obtuse?

Let me spell it out for you. The developers want to include various portions of three different nations within the world of Hyboria as described by R.E.H. You can have a look at the map yourself HERE

Now pay attention, each of those nations are quite large, one of them alone could easily account for ingame landmass a thousand times over.

The game starts you off in the Barachan isles over on the west coast by Zingara, your following time is mainly spent in the nations of Aquilonia, Stygia, and Cimmeria, with visits to various other regions, including the spot labeled Border Kingdoms (where players will be sieging each other's pvp cities.)

This is already a hell of a lot of land to cover. If the designers were to make it seamless AND remain true to the lore, they would have to include even more, primarily the nations in between these regions, and probably the ones immediately surrounding those.

So, you are essentially asking them to either entirely abandon the lore which is one of the major selling points of the game in favor of a cartoonishly designed world that defies all laws of physics as it applies to weather patterns, or for them to create a virtual world approximately the size of Europe. And if, as I suspect they already intend to do, they add Khitai (over on the east coast) to the landmass in a later expansion, you'd be asking them to do something closer to the size of Asia. Somehow or another, I don't think players are going to love the idea of it taking literally months to go from one area to another. They already complain about EVE, with its half hour long distance trips (or several hours if they didn't pay attention to the tutorial and used autopilot like an idiot)

Of course, they could make it seamless, remain true to the lore, and still have a realistic programming goal. Hmm, maybe this is a good opportunity for them to introduce professions? Because like I said before, farming for grain is pretty much the only thing we will have to do except inside Tarantia itself. See you on the fields! We've got to beat up lots of that pesky wheat to meet quota!

Ryun, not this particular tidbit of info. Its zoned, trust me.

ASmith84

who cares.  this game will blow all other mmo's away unless gw2 is good which makes that the best mmo since no monthly fee for it.  this is just to cut down on the lag probably.  i rather have no lagg and load a few times than lagg central all the time.

jor8888

oh look at Vanguard with no zone and it tanked bigtime. 

dwhapham

I agree that Vanguards seamless paging system is a wreck (almost everything about that game is) but many other games have done well with seamless worlds.

Aelfinn, I'm not sure you have a good grasp of how a seamless paging system is supposed to work... You can actually include MORE detail with a paging system then you can with a zone system since only the visible game world is loaded into memory at any one time. It doesn't matter how large the world is since only a small portion is loaded in RAM at any given moment. This means you have more memory to work with and more room to load textures, meshes, and effects. If the system is optimized well and includes multithreading (like in LOTR) the loading of objects in and out of memory as a player moves around the game world will be almost undetectable. The thing that worried me about AOC when I read the FAQ, is that the devs said the zones would only be a few kilometers in size which to me doesn't sound very large.  I wonder how many zones they have planned?

 

Aelfinn

Originally posted by dwhapham


I agree that Vanguards seamless paging system is a wreck (almost everything about that game is) but many other games have done well with seamless worlds.
Aelfinn, I'm not sure you have a good grasp of how a seamless paging system is supposed to work... You can actually include MORE detail with a paging system then you can with a zone system since only the visible game world is loaded into memory at any one time. It doesn't matter how large the world is since only a small portion is loaded in RAM at any given moment. This means you have more memory to work with and more room to load textures, meshes, and effects. If the system is optimized well and includes multithreading (like in LOTR) the loading of objects in and out of memory as a player moves around the game world will be almost undetectable. The thing that worried me about AOC when I read the FAQ, is that the devs said the zones would only be a few kilometers in size which to me doesn't sound very large.  I wonder how many zones they have planned?
 

You are still missing the point entirely

A realistically proportioned seamless version of the Hyborian world include vast stretches of... nothing whatsoever important. As I keep mentioning, if the game remains centered around King Conan and his city, the only thing outside of the walls for miles would be well patrolled farmland with little dangers aside from maybe a few bandits.

I know the size doesn't matter in terms of software mechanics, but we are talking about enough land that it would take literally decades to encode (IF Funcom gets a much larger team than they currently have on staff), and who knows how many dozen external harddrives a computer would need just to hold the clientside map files.