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Spherical worlds?
altairzq
Member Posts: 3,811
Hello, I was wondering, is there any MMO with a spherical world?
If not, why not? are the maths too complex to do? Guess no more complex than the equations to make a 3d enging (believe me I know, i have a thick book full of them of which I understood zilch).
Comments
How do you know that not EVERY mmo is spherical? The sun comes up and sets, traveling across the sky. Most games are not in a perspective that you would be able to say what sort of world it is, just like real life. If you are on the ground, walking around, everything looks flat. If you are VERY high up, THEN you see that it is spherical. :P
deja vu... I feel like I've seen this thread before.
Infinity: The Quest for Earth is the only MMO I know of that will have true spherical worlds. It's more of a space combat simulator though. Eve Online also has spherical worlds, moons, stars as well but you can't enter their atmosphere or interact with them.
The question isn't possibility, its practicality. Why have a world that big, when players will simply congregate to the instances and quest areas. Large worlds in that scale only have a place in sandbox games, where real estate is a top resource.
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It's harder to make and doesn't add anything to gameplay.
Unless you're only talking about traveling around the world in a circle (and not actually having the world be spherical-shaped,) which is doable with little effort but also little to gameplay.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
How do you know that not EVERY mmo is spherical? The sun comes up and sets, traveling across the sky. Most games are not in a perspective that you would be able to say what sort of world it is, just like real life. If you are on the ground, walking around, everything looks flat. If you are VERY high up, THEN you see that it is spherical. :P
Well, in a spherical world you can get to a point walking towards it following the shortest distance, or towards the opposite direction and going all around the world. You know, Columbus and all that.
You guys are putting too much into it.
Flat world = no defined size of the world = plenty of room for expansion.
Round world = finite space = expansion has to take place in alternate world/reality/realm/space
Say hello, To the things you've left behind. They are more a part of your life now that you can't touch them.
Not entirely true. Expansion could consist of renovated/remade old territory. Like Cataclysm
How do you know that not EVERY mmo is spherical? The sun comes up and sets, traveling across the sky. Most games are not in a perspective that you would be able to say what sort of world it is, just like real life. If you are on the ground, walking around, everything looks flat. If you are VERY high up, THEN you see that it is spherical. :P
You know its not spherical when you can teleport across the known world and its still the same time of day, for one thing.
Not entirely true. Expansion could consist of renovated/remade old territory. Like Cataclysm
Also you can have huge oceans to be filled with continents. And the whole underground. Also wow made Outland.. no problem there.
Populous Online, I'd like to see that.
Well one thing that a sperical/round world would add, Is that you wouldn't always have to travel the exact same route. I mean I dont' care whether you are playing FFXI, WoW, EQ1 you end up taking one path or another. ALOT of times.
So lets take WoW for an example, if I was in thunder bluff I wanted to get to undercity. 90% of the time i'd go to orgimar and then travel to undercity.
Where as if the world was round. I could just go from thunder bluff to undercity direct. It'd be alot cooler.
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It's not because the world is 'flat' that you can't go directly from one to the other, it's the fact they're on different continents and WoW segregates them.
I think you just want a sandbox open world, it doesn't matter what shape it is. A flat world works just fine, unless you start looking at the world from space.
It's not because the world is 'flat' that you can't go directly from one to the other, it's the fact they're on different continents and WoW segregates them.
I think you just want a sandbox open world, it doesn't matter what shape it is. A flat world works just fine, unless you start looking at the world from space.
Well what I meant was, in a standard map if I was to go from A-D I have to go through B & C, BUT in a spherical world I could go from A-D without hitting B & C.
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Populous The Beginning immediately springs to mind, and I'm sure there are more.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
As far as I know off, the only game I know that actually features spherical worlds is EVE Online, but even then you still couldn't actually land on the worlds, but in the coming expansions we will get to.
My guess is that technologically, game developers do have the resources to do such a thing, but unless it's a priority and it will add to the game world, they probably won't bother with it.
Main characters:
Jinn Gone Quiet (Guild Wars)
Princess Pudding (Guild Wars)
UO has a spherical world. Although the game is 2D, you can set sail from one end of the world and swim all the way around.
Again old MMOs shining in the desert of imagination we have now.
Again old MMOs shining in the desert of imagination we have now.
Tell me about it. It's a shame that a game developed over 10 years ago offered so much more than any of these so-called modern "MMORPGs."
Well if developers made a spherical world they would have to do one of two things.
Make it unbelievably large:
Like actual planet-size or close to it. Which is just not practical from a developing stand-point. That would take over 6 years most likely...probably double that and the graphical engine would be extremely obsolete by then. Also it's waaaaaaayyyyyyy too much work.
Make it tiny:
To the point where you can actually see the curve of the planet. But that would make the planet waaaay to small and they would have to make more of them. They could probably do it like SWG and have you travel from planet to planet, but that might take away from the immersion.
Overall it's very hard to pull off and a HUGE risk. That's why no one has done it.
I mean, I guess EVE has round planets, but you can't exactly go on them yet.
See, they would have to actually put the planet on a sphere (hard to do, especially when you have people with not huge industry computers playing the game) unless they wanted to have big load times for that kind of travel. It's all for the sake of immersion.
My guess is that in the near future there will not be 'true' geometrically spherical worlds in traditional 'world-based' MMOs. Many MMOs try to make their game worlds appear spherical even now, however.
Having one huge spherical object creates many technical challenges for programmers. A world consisting of multiple zones joined together to make the world appear spherical is something entirely different.
Aion's world is sperical, with the lands being inside the ball as opposed to being on the outside like earth is.
Well, not truly spherical, it is just an illusion. In reality, Aion is made up of multiple 'flat' zones.
Well, not truly spherical, it is just an illusion. In reality, Aion is made up of multiple 'flat' zones.
Well, yeah, as true with all games, but the world concept is a spherical one and, yes, you can look up and see the other side (even if it is illusion).
Besides, land on earth is also appears flat unless large distances or great heights are involved, which is why many cultures regarded the earth as flat.
Again old MMOs shining in the desert of imagination we have now.
Tell me about it. It's a shame that a game developed over 10 years ago offered so much more than any of these so-called modern "MMORPGs."
It's actually a torus but your point still stands - the older MMOs seemed to put more effort into building a world rather than just building zones.
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