GW2 has loading screens because the game is build on the old GW1 engine. Meaning every zone is in fact instanced. The only difference is that now the zones can handle lot more than five players. But even in GW2 there are zone caps. Once the zone is full the server will create new instance of the zone.
Jeez, what are you talking about again? GW2 is NOT based on GW1 engine man. GW1 engine was basucally 2D coop, GW2's engine is full 3D mmo.
They probably ported some gfx routines and stuff from GW1 but netcode and the engine core is completely new, jeezus.
Again, "When did you stop beating your wife?"
You do know the difference between 2D and 3D, right?
Strange some of you are shocked when there are numerous old videos and screenshots showing portals connecting different areas. This is not news anymore.
However, having an illusion of one huge continent is always better than portals connecting different areas. This was obviously never going to be the case with GW2 because when you see e-sport, instanced PvP, and WvWvW taking place in a separate world it is a good indication that development was never focused on one seamless world.
I can't believe we fell for this thread. The op made a completely baseless assumption and then proceeded to ask a question based on it...
"When did you stop beating your wife?"
Loooll
Oldest troll trick in the book lol.
I don't know if it is baseless or not but so far from press releases yes there are loading screens. But like i said in another topic an average player sees laoding screens he thinks it is not seamless doesn't mean OP was trying to troll. I find it really ironic that you are calling him a troll after your own posting history on SWTOR forums.
Hypocricy at its best.
Criticizing is not trolling, fyi. Read it up.
I'm criticizing SW:TOR based on actual facts or personal opinions which are presented as such, rather than actively presenting factual untruths about the game.
The OP just using demagogic trickery to stealthily create an implicit impression of something which is actually not true.
"When did you stop beating your wife?"
And besides, there are plenty of things I can criticize GW2 for, but they are FACTS and INFORMED OPINIONS rather than shoddily implied untruths. In fact I'll make such a thread right now because I can see I'm on the verge of being pronounced a frothing fanboi.
Seamless is really a perception. WoW isn't seamless, but hides the seams briliantly. The size of the continents certainly hide the seams, for sure. Time will tell how apparent these are in GW2.
No, it`s not matter of perception. Either you load the entire zone at once per loading screen or you load and unload the content constantly.
Originally posted by Lobotomist Originally posted by Kimmyboy
Originally posted by Lobotomist
Originally posted by Mellkor
Originally posted by Lobotomist
Originally posted by aSynchro ANet are without a doubt skilled coders & designers, so it puzzle me that they kinda choose to have loading screen between zones: why not a seamless world like WoW, Terra etc. ? Is it because of some kind of limitations with the dynamic events or something ?
This is misconception Neither WOW (or TERA) has seamles world.
For example when you going from zone to zone - lets take quite obvious Dun Morogh to Loch Modan You are passing trough a lenghty tunnel. Now what happens while you pass trough it, is that the game actually loads next zone. It cleverly hides the loading screen, by putting you in not-interactive area ( tunnel in this case).
Don't think that theory is valid seeing as you can fly from one end of a continent to the other without any visual distortions.. Speculation; as the user comes closer to the end of a zone, they use dynamic streaming to impliment the next zone behind the far cliping plane. Exactly You are flying over non interactive zones. As i mentioned above. Wether its tunel, or fat area of land that player on foot can not pass. Its the same. Zone that exists only on your hard drive - there for no server information is needed. What's wrong with this guy ??? Can't he read ? No dude, you can take your horse to cross zones. All 40 of them in Eastern Kingdoms (and other continents) apart from flying.
Look. The WoW areas are loading in background. All they need is strip of land - lets call it a buffer zone. You can walk trough it, fly over it, swim over it...whatever
But while you are in them server is loading new zone and unloading old zone. All they have to be is long enough for loading/unloading to happen.
And since WOW is very light game (comparing to let say GW) This loading takes very little time. This is why the buffer zones became smaller and smaller as the technology advanced ( Vanilla >> TBC >> )
Why they didnt do this for GW2 ? Beats me... maybe the ammount of memory GW2 grabs is far larger than WOW ?
no.. It must be more complex than that
if your on the intersection of 4 zones, it doesn't unload-load static object and terrain data, its a seemless transition everything appears as it should be.
Which means either: 1.the entire continent is preloaded. 2.the data is streamed/generated well in advance.
In preparation for..
non static objects like npc's, mobs, particles (which require server auth) to be loaded when your closer to their proximity.
Having said that all, riding through a town on a horse at full speed, all objects are loaded on time and transversing of zones is seemless in any direction.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
GW2 has loading screens because the game is build on the old GW1 engine. Meaning every zone is in fact instanced. The only difference is that now the zones can handle lot more than five players. But even in GW2 there are zone caps. Once the zone is full the server will create new instance of the zone.
Jeez, what are you talking about again? GW2 is NOT based on GW1 engine man. GW1 engine was basucally 2D coop, GW2's engine is full 3D mmo.
They probably ported some gfx routines and stuff from GW1 but netcode and the engine core is completely new, jeezus.
Again, "When did you stop beating your wife?"
You do know the difference between 2D and 3D, right?
Yeah, I do.
I'm not sure if you know the difference between 3D gamespace engine and 3D graphical engine.
A hint, GW1 did not have 3D engine and that's why they couldn't add jumping later on. Another hint - Warcaft 3, League of Legends, Starcraft 2... they all don't have 3D gamespace engines. They're 2D games with 3D display engines.
I can't believe we fell for this thread. The op made a completely baseless assumption and then proceeded to ask a question based on it...
"When did you stop beating your wife?"
Loooll
Oldest troll trick in the book lol.
I don't know if it is baseless or not but so far from press releases yes there are loading screens. But like i said in another topic an average player sees laoding screens he thinks it is not seamless doesn't mean OP was trying to troll. I find it really ironic that you are calling him a troll after your own posting history on SWTOR forums.
Hypocricy at its best.
Criticizing is not trolling, fyi. Read it up.
I'm criticizing SW:TOR based on actual facts or personal opinions which are presented as such, rather than actively presenting factual untruths about the game.
The OP just using demagogic trickery to stealthily create an implicit impression of something which is actually not true.
"When did you stop beating your wife?"
And besides, there are plenty of things I can criticize GW2 for, but they are FACTS and INFORMED OPINIONS rather than shoddily implied untruths. In fact I'll make such a thread right now because I can see I'm on the verge of being pronounced a frothing fanboi.
Thats what you believe, i also believe i am the sexiest man alive doesn't mean i am right. I always say that every fan is a troll and vice versa you just have to wait and see whats the current game in question.
The fact is that game has laoding screens now you can come up with whatever gibbrish you want to explain it but for an average gamer loading screens means world is not seemless. I also find it amusing that you guys are so busy defending now when all older games were ripped to shred because they were not seamless.
I personally have no problems with loading creens, it is avery superficial criticism at best but the double standards are definitely amusing and hilarious.
GW2 has loading screens because the game is build on the old GW1 engine. Meaning every zone is in fact instanced. The only difference is that now the zones can handle lot more than five players. But even in GW2 there are zone caps. Once the zone is full the server will create new instance of the zone.
Jeez, what are you talking about again? GW2 is NOT based on GW1 engine man. GW1 engine was basucally 2D coop, GW2's engine is full 3D mmo.
They probably ported some gfx routines and stuff from GW1 but netcode and the engine core is completely new, jeezus.
Again, "When did you stop beating your wife?"
You do know the difference between 2D and 3D, right?
Yeah, I do.
I'm not sure if you know the difference between 3D gamespace engine and 3D graphical engine.
A hint, GW1 did not have 3D engine and that's why they couldn't add jumping later on. Another hint - Warcaft 3, League of Legends, Starcraft 2... they all don't have 3D gamespace engines. They're 2D games with 3D display engines.
Good to know, i was wracking my mind for ages whether or not hitman, Gears of war or bulletstorm were 3d games. By your definition every game which lacks jump isn't 3d, regardless of whether or not projectiles actively use the z axis like all of the above and guild wars does. Interesting...
GW2 has loading screens because the game is build on the old GW1 engine. Meaning every zone is in fact instanced. The only difference is that now the zones can handle lot more than five players. But even in GW2 there are zone caps. Once the zone is full the server will create new instance of the zone.
Jeez, what are you talking about again? GW2 is NOT based on GW1 engine man. GW1 engine was basucally 2D coop, GW2's engine is full 3D mmo.
They probably ported some gfx routines and stuff from GW1 but netcode and the engine core is completely new, jeezus.
Again, "When did you stop beating your wife?"
You do know the difference between 2D and 3D, right?
Yeah, I do.
I'm not sure if you know the difference between 3D gamespace engine and 3D graphical engine.
A hint, GW1 did not have 3D engine and that's why they couldn't add jumping later on. Another hint - Warcaft 3, League of Legends, Starcraft 2... they all don't have 3D gamespace engines. They're 2D games with 3D display engines.
So based on not being able to jump, you conclude, that they could not have used the GW1 engine?
How long do you think that would take to implement?
A hint: Jump or not is a gameplay decision. If you have a 3D engine, it is not difficult to make happen. Neither is flying.
GW2 has loading screens because the game is build on the old GW1 engine. Meaning every zone is in fact instanced. The only difference is that now the zones can handle lot more than five players. But even in GW2 there are zone caps. Once the zone is full the server will create new instance of the zone.
Jeez, what are you talking about again? GW2 is NOT based on GW1 engine man. GW1 engine was basucally 2D coop, GW2's engine is full 3D mmo.
They probably ported some gfx routines and stuff from GW1 but netcode and the engine core is completely new, jeezus.
Again, "When did you stop beating your wife?"
You do know the difference between 2D and 3D, right?
Yeah, I do.
I'm not sure if you know the difference between 3D gamespace engine and 3D graphical engine.
A hint, GW1 did not have 3D engine and that's why they couldn't add jumping later on. Another hint - Warcaft 3, League of Legends, Starcraft 2... they all don't have 3D gamespace engines. They're 2D games with 3D display engines.
Good to know, i was wracking my mind for ages whether or not hitman, Gears of war or bulletstorm were 3d games. By your definition every game which lacks jump isn't 3d, regardless of whether or not projectiles actively use the z axis like all of the above and guild wars does. Interesting...
Not really, that's what GW1 devs said when they were asked "Why no jumping." You see, what I'm talking about? Facts. See?
It's not "my definition," its a fact. You either have a full z axis when describing the postions of active objects in the world or you don't. First 3D shooters were actually 2D shooters with 3D graphical display tacked on. Quake was actually the first true 3D FPS.
You might have 2D+stacking engine, such as GW1 or Doom, but it's still not full 3D engine. It's 2D engine with implied Z axis, but it's not full 3D. In a fully 3D engine all 3 dimensions are equally open. In fact you'd be surprised how little of today's games are full 3D, actually. And that's because it is much easier to program and design those. Not to mention that it's much lighter on the CPU... and who will ever know when you have those marvellous GPUs providing all that "3D" eye-candy?
GW2 has loading screens because the game is build on the old GW1 engine. Meaning every zone is in fact instanced. The only difference is that now the zones can handle lot more than five players. But even in GW2 there are zone caps. Once the zone is full the server will create new instance of the zone.
Jeez, what are you talking about again? GW2 is NOT based on GW1 engine man. GW1 engine was basucally 2D coop, GW2's engine is full 3D mmo.
They probably ported some gfx routines and stuff from GW1 but netcode and the engine core is completely new, jeezus.
Again, "When did you stop beating your wife?"
Here:
"Guild Wars 2 uses a heavily modified version of the proprietary engine developed for Guild Wars by Arena Net. The modifications to the engine include real-time 3D enviroments, enhanced graphics and animations and use of the Havok physics system."
Pretty sure this is why there are loading screens in GW2.
When I look at a game to decide if I want to play it, zoning is not even on my list of things to watch for. I'd say it ranks right up there with being able to custom color my chat text. If it means that much to people, WoW is only a sub fee away. Of course, you'll end up playing WoW, but hey, you'll be doing it SEAMLESSLY.
By the way, I don't know the rationale for creating zones in the world, but I do know ArenaNet's track record for maintaining a stable world and one that doesn't need to come down on a weekly basis for maintenance. To me, that speaks so much louder than the complainers. Essentially, they've proven they know what they're doing - the rabble rousers only think they do. If there are zones, they are there for a reason.
GW2 has loading screens because the game is build on the old GW1 engine. Meaning every zone is in fact instanced. The only difference is that now the zones can handle lot more than five players. But even in GW2 there are zone caps. Once the zone is full the server will create new instance of the zone.
Jeez, what are you talking about again? GW2 is NOT based on GW1 engine man. GW1 engine was basucally 2D coop, GW2's engine is full 3D mmo.
They probably ported some gfx routines and stuff from GW1 but netcode and the engine core is completely new, jeezus.
Again, "When did you stop beating your wife?"
You do know the difference between 2D and 3D, right?
Yeah, I do.
I'm not sure if you know the difference between 3D gamespace engine and 3D graphical engine.
A hint, GW1 did not have 3D engine and that's why they couldn't add jumping later on. Another hint - Warcaft 3, League of Legends, Starcraft 2... they all don't have 3D gamespace engines. They're 2D games with 3D display engines.
So based on not being able to jump, you conclude, that they could not have used the GW1 engine?
How long do you think that would take to implement?
A hint: Jump or not is a gameplay decision. If you have a 3D engine, it is not difficult to make happen. Neither is flying.
But that's the point - GW1 did not have a 3D gamespace engine. Jeez man, that's a fact. It had 3D display engine but the gamespace was defined only in 2 dimensions and that's why they couldn't add jumping, swimming, diving and flying in a satisfactory way. I'll dig up the interview lol.
I'm not saying they wrote the complete engine from scratch. They definitely kept the core GRAPHICAL engine, but the game engine and the net engine are definitely brand new.
wow has (almost)seamless continents not a seamless world. belf area is still its own area i think, need to go thru portal in epl? been some time since i played last.
1) "Does wow loads stuff in the backround" yes it does so does any other 3rd game ever, every 3rd engine has multiple clipping mechanisms that are desined for 1 single thing and thats to lower the proccessing load which is required to render a a single frame in the screen space of the player. Go back to vanilla(or even Cata) turn on the graphic settings to low and youll see a fog, any thing beyond that fog does not get rendered, depending on the spec of the system and the engine it doesnt even load every thing into memory, thats why many games have a stuttering when you enter an open area for an encoulsed one for example.
2) Are seemless worlds more expensive - no they arent, WoW's world was far from perfect and any one who used to do WoW model tweaking and exploring back in the days before cata(or the various wall walking nerfs) knows, every thing between the edges of the zones was "poorly" done, huge flat areas with holes in the world like the area behind startholm, heck if you went a bit pass the end of the world island(which took some effort to get to in the first place) you would litterly reach the end of the world and could see the edge where water meets the empty skydom space
3) "Instanced" worlds like many MMO's have today have 1 big advantage and thats which can ofc be monitized but its a design methodology and not a technical or financial issue. WoW for example launched with unfinished zones like silithus and unguru, it also had and stil has alot of "dead" space around the edges of the map and between large zones. Some of that dead space was filled during expansions, and some new zones were added, but its much easier to add content, and to skip or halt the production of certain content prior to releasing the game when your zones are instanced. If a game would launch today with as many missing zones and content holes as WoW did at first it would be called an unfinished product and will be curcified for poor production values. Instant zones also give game designers and producers alot more freedom in scraping zones during production, or even redoing whole zones with out having to worry about the effects on the rest of the world and the game.
Cataclysm redesinged half the zones in WoW because you cant just change a single zone in a seemless world with out having to redo many other zones too.
1.1) Back to the technical stuff as i said there are alot of mechanisms that are used to lower the performance costs of rendering every single frame, there is no issue with loading an entire world.
There are cliping methods, Level of Detail scaling, adv texture techinques(texture atlast for example, these days you can texture your entire world from a single super texture, and when its done properly you cant tell the diffrence). The only thing i can think of that cannot be tricked are model meshes since models cannot be properly compressed(coordinates/vertex data does not provide much room for compression, and if you find a way alot of GIS companies would pay for that tech) but then again it does not take that much memory either, not for models that can be rendered in real time.
That said games and engines sitll have issues, ToR pops up a loading screen somtimes just to let your comp catch up and its a purely instanced game. WoW had lagforge for years and people even with high-end PC's at the time had problems doing 40 man raids.
It has nothing to do with server load, or any other nonsense like that either the game server only sends you the information you need, you dont get the info of what a player is wearing if they are not in range or any where close to you. If any thing its maybe more demanding on the server side running an heavily instanced game since it will require you to track multiple instances, sync and transfer information between them, and track additional information when transfering a player to a new zone.
I swear some of you guys just want all games to be clones and play and feel the same. It's ok to have preferences but to insist on every game having those prefernces is the sure fire road to generic boring.
haven't we seen enough of that in the last few years?
I don't care what sort of a strain seamlessness puts on developers or designers or programmers. In this day and age of MMOs there is just no excuse for not having a seamless world. If WoW can do it, then the others can as well. I know WoW is not 100% seamless, but at least it is on a continent and that is good enough.
I could not get into EQ2, AoC and SWTOR because of the loading screen nonsense. Developers should get out of their comfort zone a bit. SWTOR still plays like the Infinity engine and it is obvious that BioWare still base their code on what they did with the Baldurs Gate games.
In SWTOR, I almost expected the voice to tell me to "gather my party before venturing forth"
At least back in those days, Bioware made compelling games. I loved Icewind Dale and the Baldurs Gate games. Anyway, as to the OP, it isn't that big a deal to me personally...especially if the maps are as massive as we're told they are.
1) "Does wow loads stuff in the backround" yes it does so does any other 3rd game ever, every 3rd engine has multiple clipping mechanisms that are desined for 1 single thing and thats to lower the proccessing load which is required to render a a single frame in the screen space of the player. Go back to vanilla(or even Cata) turn on the graphic settings to low and youll see a fog, any thing beyond that fog does not get rendered, depending on the spec of the system and the engine it doesnt even load every thing into memory, thats why many games have a stuttering when you enter an open area for an encoulsed one for example.
2) Are seemless worlds more expensive - no they arent, WoW's world was far from perfect and any one who used to do WoW model tweaking and exploring back in the days before cata(or the various wall walking nerfs) knows, every thing between the edges of the zones was "poorly" done, huge flat areas with holes in the world like the area behind startholm, heck if you went a bit pass the end of the world island(which took some effort to get to in the first place) you would litterly reach the end of the world and could see the edge where water meets the empty skydom space
3) "Instanced" worlds like many MMO's have today have 1 big advantage and thats which can ofc be monitized but its a design methodology and not a technical or financial issue. WoW for example launched with unfinished zones like silithus and unguru, it also had and stil has alot of "dead" space around the edges of the map and between large zones. Some of that dead space was filled during expansions, and some new zones were added, but its much easier to add content, and to skip or halt the production of certain content prior to releasing the game when your zones are instanced. If a game would launch today with as many missing zones and content holes as WoW did at first it would be called an unfinished product and will be curcified for poor production values. Instant zones also give game designers and producers alot more freedom in scraping zones during production, or even redoing whole zones with out having to worry about the effects on the rest of the world and the game.
Cataclysm redesinged half the zones in WoW because you cant just change a single zone in a seemless world with out having to redo many other zones too.
1.1) Back to the technical stuff as i said there are alot of mechanisms that are used to lower the performance costs of rendering every single frame, there is no issue with loading an entire world.
There are cliping methods, Level of Detail scaling, adv texture techinques(texture atlast for example, these days you can texture your entire world from a single super texture, and when its done properly you cant tell the diffrence). The only thing i can think of that cannot be tricked are model meshes since models cannot be properly compressed(coordinates/vertex data does not provide much room for compression, and if you find a way alot of GIS companies would pay for that tech) but then again it does not take that much memory either, not for models that can be rendered in real time.
That said games and engines sitll have issues, ToR pops up a loading screen somtimes just to let your comp catch up and its a purely instanced game. WoW had lagforge for years and people even with high-end PC's at the time had problems doing 40 man raids.
It has nothing to do with server load, or any other nonsense like that either the game server only sends you the information you need, you dont get the info of what a player is wearing if they are not in range or any where close to you. If any thing its maybe more demanding on the server side running an heavily instanced game since it will require you to track multiple instances, sync and transfer information between them, and track additional information when transfering a player to a new zone.
Hmmm...sounds to me like you perhaps know what you're talking about.
Isnt it amazing, you explain that WoW is not seamless, that everything is loading in the background.
Yet, you still get post after post saying GW2 should be seamless like WoW. I am guessing these people must be from some third-world country, they have to be.
There is NO such thing as a seamless world, its all in how they hide it.
GW2 has loading screens because the game is build on the old GW1 engine. Meaning every zone is in fact instanced. The only difference is that now the zones can handle lot more than five players. But even in GW2 there are zone caps. Once the zone is full the server will create new instance of the zone.
Jeez, what are you talking about again? GW2 is NOT based on GW1 engine man. GW1 engine was basucally 2D coop, GW2's engine is full 3D mmo.
They probably ported some gfx routines and stuff from GW1 but netcode and the engine core is completely new, jeezus.
Again, "When did you stop beating your wife?"
You do know the difference between 2D and 3D, right?
Yeah, I do.
I'm not sure if you know the difference between 3D gamespace engine and 3D graphical engine.
A hint, GW1 did not have 3D engine and that's why they couldn't add jumping later on. Another hint - Warcaft 3, League of Legends, Starcraft 2... they all don't have 3D gamespace engines. They're 2D games with 3D display engines.
So based on not being able to jump, you conclude, that they could not have used the GW1 engine?
How long do you think that would take to implement?
A hint: Jump or not is a gameplay decision. If you have a 3D engine, it is not difficult to make happen. Neither is flying.
But that's the point - GW1 did not have a 3D gamespace engine. Jeez man, that's a fact. It had 3D display engine but the gamespace was defined only in 2 dimensions and that's why they couldn't add jumping, swimming, diving and flying in a satisfactory way. I'll dig up the interview lol.
I'm not saying they wrote the complete engine from scratch. They definitely kept the core GRAPHICAL engine, but the game engine and the net engine are definitely brand new.
I can agree to that. But I must stress, that the 2D happens at the gameplay level, also network-engine-wise. The basic network engine could probably have been reused (no idea if they did), as it is very generic (sends basic values like ints and floats). At the gameplay level the network traffic has probably be rewritten from scratch.
I don't care what sort of a strain seamlessness puts on developers or designers or programmers. In this day and age of MMOs there is just no excuse for not having a seamless world. If WoW can do it, then the others can as well. I know WoW is not 100% seamless, but at least it is on a continent and that is good enough.
I could not get into EQ2, AoC and SWTOR because of the loading screen nonsense. Developers should get out of their comfort zone a bit. SWTOR still plays like the Infinity engine and it is obvious that BioWare still base their code on what they did with the Baldurs Gate games.
In SWTOR, I almost expected the voice to tell me to "gather my party before venturing forth"
I completely agree. In this day and age there is really no excuse.
LOL at the hypocrites...any other MMO that has loading screens would be torn apart...GW2 has loading screens, it's rationalized away as a good thing.
hilarious.
This just shows the extreme hype of it all.
But it is a reality: GW2 will put a big scar on seamless world play.
And there is even a big chance it will become standard. All my hope is on Kaplan now. It can't be they'll do the same with Titan.
It just can't be.
Jeezus! What are you guys on? You see loading screens because of teleports. And that's it. The underlying engine is pretty much the same as WoW, the same guy did net engines for both games. The major difference is that capital cities are loaded separately, like if you were moving between continents and that's because the capitals are HUGE and crawling with content. What were you talking about again?
Of course it has loading screens. Jeez, how can you have teleporting mechanic in a mmo without a loading screen? Just because it has loading screens doesn't mean it's "zoned". And besides, if you hate loading screens then just don't teleport around. There problem solved.
And mentioning AoC in the same breath with GW2 is like the biggest case of hyperbole on this site I've seen in the past couple of hours lol.
Point being, Pilnk, people are rationalizing the loading screens. (I personally have no problem with loading screens). When talk centers around SWTOR loading screens, however, it's the devil's work. If SWTOR has loading screens, it's a failure; but if GW2 has loading screens, it's seen as a way to load content....
See the problem there? See the hypocrisy?
I at least have respect for those people who hate loading screens across the board.
LOL at the hypocrites...any other MMO that has loading screens would be torn apart...GW2 has loading screens, it's rationalized away as a good thing.
hilarious.
This just shows the extreme hype of it all.
But it is a reality: GW2 will put a big scar on seamless world play.
And there is even a big chance it will become standard. All my hope is on Kaplan now. It can't be they'll do the same with Titan.
It just can't be.
Jeezus! What are you guys on? You see loading screens because of teleports. And that's it. The underlying engine is pretty much the same as WoW, the same guy did net engines for both games. The major difference is that capital cities are loaded separately, like if you were moving between continents and that's because the capitals are HUGE and crawling with content. What were you talking about again?
Of course it has loading screens. Jeez, how can you have teleporting mechanic in a mmo without a loading screen? Just because it has loading screens doesn't mean it's "zoned". And besides, if you hate loading screens then just don't teleport around. There problem solved.
And mentioning AoC in the same breath with GW2 is like the biggest case of hyperbole on this site I've seen in the past couple of hours lol.
Point being, Pilnk, people are rationalizing the loading screens. (I personally have no problem with loading screens). When talk centers around SWTOR loading screens, however, it's the devil's work. If SWTOR has loading screens, it's a failure; but if GW2 has loading screens, it's seen as a way to load content....
See the problem there? See the hypocrisy?
I at least have respect for those people who hate loading screens across the board.
They know the obvious hypocricy here they just chose to ignore it conveniently. Like someone said in another topic. it is ok to give GW2 a free pass on this because it has such awesome features as WvWvW. So yeah GW2 gets a pass while other games get bashed to death for same superficial crticism..' it is not seamless'.
Instancing zones gives them option for the cash shop down the road (essentially buying content) - that's one benefit (whether they do it initially, down the road or at all is beside the point, it does give them the option.
So far that I can tell the only 3D game that is entirely non-instanced is VG, and their method leaves a lot to be desired. My guess is that no one has figured out how do a non-instanced world efficiently and on budget.
Comments
You do know the difference between 2D and 3D, right?
Strange some of you are shocked when there are numerous old videos and screenshots showing portals connecting different areas. This is not news anymore.
However, having an illusion of one huge continent is always better than portals connecting different areas. This was obviously never going to be the case with GW2 because when you see e-sport, instanced PvP, and WvWvW taking place in a separate world it is a good indication that development was never focused on one seamless world.
Criticizing is not trolling, fyi. Read it up.
I'm criticizing SW:TOR based on actual facts or personal opinions which are presented as such, rather than actively presenting factual untruths about the game.
The OP just using demagogic trickery to stealthily create an implicit impression of something which is actually not true.
"When did you stop beating your wife?"
And besides, there are plenty of things I can criticize GW2 for, but they are FACTS and INFORMED OPINIONS rather than shoddily implied untruths. In fact I'll make such a thread right now because I can see I'm on the verge of being pronounced a frothing fanboi.
No, it`s not matter of perception. Either you load the entire zone at once per loading screen or you load and unload the content constantly.
This is misconception
Neither WOW (or TERA) has seamles world.
For example when you going from zone to zone - lets take quite obvious Dun Morogh to Loch Modan
You are passing trough a lenghty tunnel.
Now what happens while you pass trough it, is that the game actually loads next zone.
It cleverly hides the loading screen, by putting you in not-interactive area ( tunnel in this case).
Don't think that theory is valid seeing as you can fly from one end of a continent to the other without any visual distortions..
Speculation; as the user comes closer to the end of a zone, they use dynamic streaming to impliment the next zone behind the far cliping plane.
Exactly
You are flying over non interactive zones. As i mentioned above.
Wether its tunel, or fat area of land that player on foot can not pass. Its the same.
Zone that exists only on your hard drive - there for no server information is needed.
What's wrong with this guy ??? Can't he read ?
No dude, you can take your horse to cross zones. All 40 of them in Eastern Kingdoms (and other continents) apart from flying.
Look.
The WoW areas are loading in background. All they need is strip of land - lets call it a buffer zone.
You can walk trough it, fly over it, swim over it...whatever
But while you are in them server is loading new zone and unloading old zone.
All they have to be is long enough for loading/unloading to happen.
And since WOW is very light game (comparing to let say GW)
This loading takes very little time. This is why the buffer zones became smaller and smaller as the technology advanced ( Vanilla >> TBC >> )
Why they didnt do this for GW2 ?
Beats me... maybe the ammount of memory GW2 grabs is far larger than WOW ?
no.. It must be more complex than that
if your on the intersection of 4 zones, it doesn't unload-load static object and terrain data, its a seemless transition everything appears as it should be.
Which means either:
1.the entire continent is preloaded.
2.the data is streamed/generated well in advance.
In preparation for..
non static objects like npc's, mobs, particles (which require server auth) to be loaded when your closer to their proximity.
Having said that all, riding through a town on a horse at full speed, all objects are loaded on time and transversing of zones is seemless in any direction.
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Yeah, I do.
I'm not sure if you know the difference between 3D gamespace engine and 3D graphical engine.
A hint, GW1 did not have 3D engine and that's why they couldn't add jumping later on. Another hint - Warcaft 3, League of Legends, Starcraft 2... they all don't have 3D gamespace engines. They're 2D games with 3D display engines.
Thats what you believe, i also believe i am the sexiest man alive doesn't mean i am right. I always say that every fan is a troll and vice versa you just have to wait and see whats the current game in question.
The fact is that game has laoding screens now you can come up with whatever gibbrish you want to explain it but for an average gamer loading screens means world is not seemless. I also find it amusing that you guys are so busy defending now when all older games were ripped to shred because they were not seamless.
I personally have no problems with loading creens, it is avery superficial criticism at best but the double standards are definitely amusing and hilarious.
Good to know, i was wracking my mind for ages whether or not hitman, Gears of war or bulletstorm were 3d games. By your definition every game which lacks jump isn't 3d, regardless of whether or not projectiles actively use the z axis like all of the above and guild wars does. Interesting...
So based on not being able to jump, you conclude, that they could not have used the GW1 engine?
How long do you think that would take to implement?
A hint: Jump or not is a gameplay decision. If you have a 3D engine, it is not difficult to make happen. Neither is flying.
Not really, that's what GW1 devs said when they were asked "Why no jumping." You see, what I'm talking about? Facts. See?
It's not "my definition," its a fact. You either have a full z axis when describing the postions of active objects in the world or you don't. First 3D shooters were actually 2D shooters with 3D graphical display tacked on. Quake was actually the first true 3D FPS.
You might have 2D+stacking engine, such as GW1 or Doom, but it's still not full 3D engine. It's 2D engine with implied Z axis, but it's not full 3D. In a fully 3D engine all 3 dimensions are equally open. In fact you'd be surprised how little of today's games are full 3D, actually. And that's because it is much easier to program and design those. Not to mention that it's much lighter on the CPU... and who will ever know when you have those marvellous GPUs providing all that "3D" eye-candy?
Here:
"Guild Wars 2 uses a heavily modified version of the proprietary engine developed for Guild Wars by Arena Net. The modifications to the engine include real-time 3D enviroments, enhanced graphics and animations and use of the Havok physics system."
Pretty sure this is why there are loading screens in GW2.
When I look at a game to decide if I want to play it, zoning is not even on my list of things to watch for. I'd say it ranks right up there with being able to custom color my chat text. If it means that much to people, WoW is only a sub fee away. Of course, you'll end up playing WoW, but hey, you'll be doing it SEAMLESSLY.
By the way, I don't know the rationale for creating zones in the world, but I do know ArenaNet's track record for maintaining a stable world and one that doesn't need to come down on a weekly basis for maintenance. To me, that speaks so much louder than the complainers. Essentially, they've proven they know what they're doing - the rabble rousers only think they do. If there are zones, they are there for a reason.
But that's the point - GW1 did not have a 3D gamespace engine. Jeez man, that's a fact. It had 3D display engine but the gamespace was defined only in 2 dimensions and that's why they couldn't add jumping, swimming, diving and flying in a satisfactory way. I'll dig up the interview lol.
I'm not saying they wrote the complete engine from scratch. They definitely kept the core GRAPHICAL engine, but the game engine and the net engine are definitely brand new.
wow has (almost)seamless continents not a seamless world. belf area is still its own area i think, need to go thru portal in epl? been some time since i played last.
Holy moses so much nonsense in a single post.
1) "Does wow loads stuff in the backround" yes it does so does any other 3rd game ever, every 3rd engine has multiple clipping mechanisms that are desined for 1 single thing and thats to lower the proccessing load which is required to render a a single frame in the screen space of the player. Go back to vanilla(or even Cata) turn on the graphic settings to low and youll see a fog, any thing beyond that fog does not get rendered, depending on the spec of the system and the engine it doesnt even load every thing into memory, thats why many games have a stuttering when you enter an open area for an encoulsed one for example.
2) Are seemless worlds more expensive - no they arent, WoW's world was far from perfect and any one who used to do WoW model tweaking and exploring back in the days before cata(or the various wall walking nerfs) knows, every thing between the edges of the zones was "poorly" done, huge flat areas with holes in the world like the area behind startholm, heck if you went a bit pass the end of the world island(which took some effort to get to in the first place) you would litterly reach the end of the world and could see the edge where water meets the empty skydom space
3) "Instanced" worlds like many MMO's have today have 1 big advantage and thats which can ofc be monitized but its a design methodology and not a technical or financial issue. WoW for example launched with unfinished zones like silithus and unguru, it also had and stil has alot of "dead" space around the edges of the map and between large zones. Some of that dead space was filled during expansions, and some new zones were added, but its much easier to add content, and to skip or halt the production of certain content prior to releasing the game when your zones are instanced. If a game would launch today with as many missing zones and content holes as WoW did at first it would be called an unfinished product and will be curcified for poor production values. Instant zones also give game designers and producers alot more freedom in scraping zones during production, or even redoing whole zones with out having to worry about the effects on the rest of the world and the game.
Cataclysm redesinged half the zones in WoW because you cant just change a single zone in a seemless world with out having to redo many other zones too.
1.1) Back to the technical stuff as i said there are alot of mechanisms that are used to lower the performance costs of rendering every single frame, there is no issue with loading an entire world.
There are cliping methods, Level of Detail scaling, adv texture techinques(texture atlast for example, these days you can texture your entire world from a single super texture, and when its done properly you cant tell the diffrence). The only thing i can think of that cannot be tricked are model meshes since models cannot be properly compressed(coordinates/vertex data does not provide much room for compression, and if you find a way alot of GIS companies would pay for that tech) but then again it does not take that much memory either, not for models that can be rendered in real time.
That said games and engines sitll have issues, ToR pops up a loading screen somtimes just to let your comp catch up and its a purely instanced game. WoW had lagforge for years and people even with high-end PC's at the time had problems doing 40 man raids.
It has nothing to do with server load, or any other nonsense like that either the game server only sends you the information you need, you dont get the info of what a player is wearing if they are not in range or any where close to you. If any thing its maybe more demanding on the server side running an heavily instanced game since it will require you to track multiple instances, sync and transfer information between them, and track additional information when transfering a player to a new zone.
Seamless or not seamless... who cares.
Whatever works best for the game in question IMO.
I swear some of you guys just want all games to be clones and play and feel the same. It's ok to have preferences but to insist on every game having those prefernces is the sure fire road to generic boring.
haven't we seen enough of that in the last few years?
At least back in those days, Bioware made compelling games. I loved Icewind Dale and the Baldurs Gate games. Anyway, as to the OP, it isn't that big a deal to me personally...especially if the maps are as massive as we're told they are.
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Hmmm...sounds to me like you perhaps know what you're talking about.
Sorroe, Human Mesmer
Jade Quarry Server
Isnt it amazing, you explain that WoW is not seamless, that everything is loading in the background.
Yet, you still get post after post saying GW2 should be seamless like WoW. I am guessing these people must be from some third-world country, they have to be.
There is NO such thing as a seamless world, its all in how they hide it.
I can agree to that. But I must stress, that the 2D happens at the gameplay level, also network-engine-wise. The basic network engine could probably have been reused (no idea if they did), as it is very generic (sends basic values like ints and floats). At the gameplay level the network traffic has probably be rewritten from scratch.
You have to be careful how you define 2D.
I completely agree. In this day and age there is really no excuse.
Point being, Pilnk, people are rationalizing the loading screens. (I personally have no problem with loading screens). When talk centers around SWTOR loading screens, however, it's the devil's work. If SWTOR has loading screens, it's a failure; but if GW2 has loading screens, it's seen as a way to load content....
See the problem there? See the hypocrisy?
I at least have respect for those people who hate loading screens across the board.
They know the obvious hypocricy here they just chose to ignore it conveniently. Like someone said in another topic. it is ok to give GW2 a free pass on this because it has such awesome features as WvWvW. So yeah GW2 gets a pass while other games get bashed to death for same superficial crticism..' it is not seamless'.
GW2 is not seamless.
Only ANet can tell you why, but my best guess is due to optimization issues.
Instancing zones gives them option for the cash shop down the road (essentially buying content) - that's one benefit (whether they do it initially, down the road or at all is beside the point, it does give them the option.
So far that I can tell the only 3D game that is entirely non-instanced is VG, and their method leaves a lot to be desired. My guess is that no one has figured out how do a non-instanced world efficiently and on budget.