If the developers of Pantheon were to announce that they figured out a way to make it seamless, I doubt that anyone would become upset. LOL
That is true. But you have to understand that implementing a seamless world is a HUGE task from a coding standpoint.
You could compare it like this:
A used 2.000 Dollar car will have a color, say red. If you buy it and desperatly want it blue, you will spend about 2500 on the blue color. Effectivly paying more for the color then the car itself. That is simply silly to do. You get no real benefit from the color.
Now if you buy a new highend car for 250.000 Dollar the same paintjob would cost 10.000 bucks, but who cares about 10k if you just spend 250k? If the basic investment is high enough you can easily justify an additional "minor" investment to enjoy the basic investment more.
For now Pantheon is like a used car. It does not have enough funding to spend money on something as unimportant as a color change. That may or may not change. But with a tight budget it is important to spend it wisely on the CORE parts (engine!) and not on fluff.
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
Since games like WoW have taken us to the next level in this regard, it's not really possible for me to go back and enjoy the old primitive way.
Lol, because there's nothing immersion breaking about a world of shockingly loud cartoon colors, or giant question marks floating over characters heads. For me it's the exact opposite, everything about Wow, at every turn, screams: this is a game and not a world, compared to that zoning is a tiny thing,
Also, Asheron's call released in Nov 1999 had a huge seamless world, five years before the Nov 2004 release of Wow. Crediting Wow with taking it to the next level is a huge stretch.
ROFLCOPTER, because there's nothing more immersion breaking than exploring a world you're immersed in only to constantly run into zone boundaries so that you can load into another zone, either through a specific entrance/exit that you're forced to go through, or invisible zone lines where you'll constantly unexpectedly stumble into a loading screen. A big chopped up world of separate zones where things are happening independently in each zone. For me, it's the most immersion breaking.
The fact remains that WoW has a seamless world in comparison to Pantheon and going backwards is a negative no matter how anyone tries to spin it. If the developers of Pantheon were to announce that they figured out a way to make it seamless, I doubt that anyone would become upset. LOL
It will have zones, if that breaks the game for you that can't be helped. You see it as a big negative, the majority of us don't. Sounds like Pantheon is not the game for you. No big deal. EQN is where you may want to spend your time and energy if you're someone that holds WoW in high regard.
Maybe it was just me, but I never really considered VG seamless, but more of a marketing strategy to make it unique in the world of zoned MMOs.
They simply replaced a loading screen with the terrain that is in front of you. You still ran through the zone line, mobs didn't chase you, and there was typically lag as you crossed it. You may have ultimately "zoned" a bit quicker than Everquest without seeing a Loading... Please wait screen, but in reality, the only thing that was different was the backdrop of the landscape.
If Pantheon can deliver on all the tenets, this topic is not even a blip on the radar.
By this definition there woundnt be any RPG with big world can implement it seemlessly, unless you load the entire game into your memory (20gish) in to your memory when the game starts or there will always be a loading process when you cross the "zones", by feet, mount, or teleport. The truth is, NO BODY CARES, why would any game load the entire world at once just to make it seemless? No loading screen is good enough for me, heck i dont even really care if there is one if the zone is big enough.
You didn't really zone in Vanguard there was no loading screen and you could see others and mobs across chunk lines. When you zone from one area to another you actually dissappear and reappear in another zone. I can't see you if I'm still in the zone you have just left.
Maybe it was just me, but I never really considered VG seamless, but more of a marketing strategy to make it unique in the world of zoned MMOs.
They simply replaced a loading screen with the terrain that is in front of you. You still ran through the zone line, mobs didn't chase you, and there was typically lag as you crossed it. You may have ultimately "zoned" a bit quicker than Everquest without seeing a Loading... Please wait screen, but in reality, the only thing that was different was the backdrop of the landscape.
If Pantheon can deliver on all the tenets, this topic is not even a blip on the radar.
By this definition there woundnt be any RPG with big world can implement it seemlessly, unless you load the entire game into your memory (20gish) in to your memory when the game starts or there will always be a loading process when you cross the "zones", by feet, mount, or teleport. The truth is, NO BODY CARES, why would any game load the entire world at once just to make it seemless? No loading screen is good enough for me, heck i dont even really care if there is one if the zone is big enough.
I'm not sure I'm understanding your point here. My argument was although Vanguard looked seamless, in actuality, it really wasn't. If you're saying nobody should care about loading screens, I agree - I don't care about having loading screens, but not all agree with that opinion as can be seen in this thread. I'm not even sure how to address your tangent about memory as I had not even remotely discussed that point.
I'd much rather the development team focus on quality zones/content rather than make the world seamless - especially with finite resources.
Originally posted by SavageHorizon You didn't really zone in Vanguard there was no loading screen and you could see others and mobs across chunk lines. When you zone from one area to another you actually dissappear and reappear in another zone. I can't see you if I'm still in the zone you have just left.
While that's true, if VG was truly seamless, the mobs would have chased you across the chunk lines and there wouldn't be the hitching etc. when crossing over the chunk lines.
And, I agree, you didn't really traditionally "zone" in VG, but it also wasn't really seamless either. You basically were just able to see where you were zoning or transitioning to versus like you said, in EQ, where you disappeared and reappeared giving the appearance of a seamless world in VG.
Originally posted by SavageHorizon You didn't really zone in Vanguard there was no loading screen and you could see others and mobs across chunk lines. When you zone from one area to another you actually dissappear and reappear in another zone. I can't see you if I'm still in the zone you have just left.
While that's true, if VG was truly seamless, the mobs would have chased you across the chunk lines and there wouldn't be the hitching etc. when crossing over the chunk lines.
And, I agree, you didn't really traditionally "zone" in VG, but it also wasn't really seamless either. You basically were just able to see where you were zoning or transitioning to versus like you said, in EQ, where you disappeared and reappeared giving the appearance of a seamless world in VG.
You didn't specifically, but If a person says a game has no zoning, then a seamless world is implied, especially when the post describes aspects of what makes zoning different from how a person would describe a seamless world (being able to see mobs/players past the chunk lines) in a thread titled Will non Seam-less Zones Hurt Pantheon.
Back on topic though, as of now, when people describe seamless versus zoning it's usually an either/or argument where I would put Vanguard as a hybrid of both.
Either way, not looking to argue over semantics/opinion.
Maybe it was just me, but I never really considered VG seamless, but more of a marketing strategy to make it unique in the world of zoned MMOs.
They simply replaced a loading screen with the terrain that is in front of you. You still ran through the zone line, mobs didn't chase you, and there was typically lag as you crossed it. You may have ultimately "zoned" a bit quicker than Everquest without seeing a Loading... Please wait screen, but in reality, the only thing that was different was the backdrop of the landscape.
If Pantheon can deliver on all the tenets, this topic is not even a blip on the radar.
By this definition there woundnt be any RPG with big world can implement it seemlessly, unless you load the entire game into your memory (20gish) in to your memory when the game starts or there will always be a loading process when you cross the "zones", by feet, mount, or teleport. The truth is, NO BODY CARES, why would any game load the entire world at once just to make it seemless? No loading screen is good enough for me, heck i dont even really care if there is one if the zone is big enough.
I'm not sure I'm understanding your point here. My argument was although Vanguard looked seamless, in actuality, it really wasn't. If you're saying nobody should care about loading screens, I agree - I don't care about having loading screens, but not all agree with that opinion as can be seen in this thread. I'm not even sure how to address your tangent about memory as I had not even remotely discussed that point.
I'd much rather the development team focus on quality zones/content rather than make the world seamless - especially with finite resources.
Actually I am saying the definition of seemless is not well definied, and there isnt a defninition everyone would agree. so, "vanguard looks like a seemless game but it really isnt" is not an accurate description, you are using a very strict standard to judge if a game is seemless, which is "if a game doesn't load the entire map to its memory at the begining, it's not seemless" which technicaly no (big enough) game can or would want to acheive. By my definition, if a game doesnt have a loading screen, or a black screen (ESO), and can load zones sneaky, it's seemless.
And technicaly you do mentioned the memory part. "Loading screen" means loading the map from hard drive to memory here, so if anyone talked about loading then he is talking about load something to memory. If i am talking about driving, then a car is included, you can't really seperate them. Imagine the scenario:
A:Only someone can drive 700km per hour on land can be called a good driver.
B:Such car doesn't exist.
A:I am not even remotely discussing about cars, I am talking about driving.
Actually I am saying the definition of seemless is not well definied, and there isnt a defninition everyone would agree. so, "vanguard looks like a seemless game but it really isnt" is not an accurate description, you are using a very strict standard to judge if a game is seemless, which is "if a game doesn't load the entire map to its memory at the begining, it's not seemless" which technicaly no (big enough) game can or would want to acheive. By my definition, if a game doesnt have a loading screen, or a black screen (ESO), and can load zones sneaky, it's seemless.
And technicaly you do mentioned the memory part. "Loading screen" means loading the map from hard drive to memory here, so if anyone talked about loading then he is talking about load something to memory. If i am talking about driving, then a car is included, you can't really seperate them.
I see your point now after clarification - and I would say we are more in agreement than disagreement, we just have a different definition of seamless. I see your point on loading the game fully not being feasible, but for me, it's not so much that eliminating hitching to load a new chunk/zone that would create a seamless world but instead more related to NPC behaviors. Agoed mobs should also hitch and follow you through a zone line (never-ending trains instead of train to zone!!!) in a seamless world. Until that would be the case, I wouldn't consider it seamless. Strict maybe, but having an invisible/transparent line with hitching may look better and be an improvement over load screens, but to me, like you said, it's just sneakier way to load zones. With VG, I still trained over chunk lines to avoid death.
Actually I am saying the definition of seemless is not well definied, and there isnt a defninition everyone would agree. so, "vanguard looks like a seemless game but it really isnt" is not an accurate description, you are using a very strict standard to judge if a game is seemless, which is "if a game doesn't load the entire map to its memory at the begining, it's not seemless" which technicaly no (big enough) game can or would want to acheive. By my definition, if a game doesnt have a loading screen, or a black screen (ESO), and can load zones sneaky, it's seemless.
And technicaly you do mentioned the memory part. "Loading screen" means loading the map from hard drive to memory here, so if anyone talked about loading then he is talking about load something to memory. If i am talking about driving, then a car is included, you can't really seperate them.
I see your point now after clarification - and I would say we are more in agreement than disagreement, we just have a different definition of seamless. I see your point on loading the game fully not being feasible, but for me, it's not so much that eliminating hitching to load a new chunk/zone that would create a seamless world but instead more related to NPC behaviors. Agoed mobs should also hitch and follow you through a zone line (never-ending trains instead of train to zone!!!) in a seamless world. Until that would be the case, I wouldn't consider it seamless. Strict maybe, but having an invisible/transparent line with hitching may look better and be an improvement over load screens, but to me, like you said, it's just sneakier way to load zones. With VG, I still trained over chunk lines to avoid death.
Yes, IMO it just depends on how sneaky to load zones, the real technically seemless is not practical. Actually I do remember mobs can chase through zones even in some obviously zoned games (mmo or not), it does make a game feel more seemless. Bigger zone is actually just a method to make the map more seemless. For me, It's "seemless(or zoned) to what level" instead of "seemless or not".
Seamless means no seams. Not sure why everything has to become something ambiguous, words have meanings. If there is a division between two pieces of fabric, or in this case a zone (loading), that is a seam.
Now that that's established. No, you don't have to load entire worlds into memory to be seamless. You can simply load the surrounding area into memory. That way only a teleportation spell would require loading, and honestly it makes sense for there to be a period of loading during the process of magically traveling through a rift or portal. If you wanted to further eliminate that load screen, you could preload a portal destination when a player gets near the portal, or you could preload it upon a player loading a teleportation spell. All of those things could of course cause different complications, so the easiest way to do seamless is just to load adjacent areas.
All that said, its just not that important (to me). The most immersive game I've ever played hands down was EQ, and it wasn't seamless. The atmosphere was created by other elements like sound, music, danger, actions with consequence and the risk involved with seeking reward. To me, I would much rather have them focus on those things than trying to major in what I would consider the minor aspects of a virtual world. Even the games that have boasted a seamless world have trouble suspending my disbelief when they neglect factors like a fear of dying or an open world without being fractured by instances.
Seamless means no seams. Not sure why everything has to become something ambiguous, words have meanings. If there is a division between two pieces of fabric, or in this case a zone (loading), that is a seam.
Now that that's established. No, you don't have to load entire worlds into memory to be seamless. You can simply load the surrounding area into memory. That way only a teleportation spell would require loading, and honestly it makes sense for there to be a period of loading during the process of magically traveling through a rift or portal. If you wanted to further eliminate that load screen, you could preload a portal destination when a player gets near the portal, or you could preload it upon a player loading a teleportation spell. All of those things could of course cause different complications, so the easiest way to do seamless is just to load adjacent areas.
All that said, its just not that important (to me). The most immersive game I've ever played hands down was EQ, and it wasn't seamless. The atmosphere was created by other elements like sound, music, danger, actions with consequence and the risk involved with seeking reward. To me, I would much rather have them focus on those things than trying to major in what I would consider the minor aspects of a virtual world. Even the games that have boasted a seamless world have trouble suspending my disbelief when they neglect factors like a fear of dying or an open world without being fractured by instances.
No, you really have to load the entire game to memory to make it really seemless. All other methods are just sneaky ways to implement a zoned world, "load the destination when player load the spell, or when he is teleporting" if that makes the game really seemless, how about we make a heavy zoned game but between each zone we place walls and a very heavy door which requires 1 min to open,it's not a loading screen, just you opening the door. Does this make the game seemless? There is a game actually does this, FF14, a heavily zoned game, but as I remember most zones are connected by teleporters, or some wierd vortex, and i dont think anyone would call the game seemless.
Same to the load surronding area thing, it just make a big loading process to smaller ones, you still load, just a little bit harder to notice. But there is not even a reason to do so since you can preload the next zone before you cross the line. And the more importantly, the pricinple for coding is to lessen the frequency to access the hard drive, not to increase it. Actually that's the main reason we even use a memory, why use a memory at all if you are planning to consistently access the hard disk? Loading from hard drive all the time as your character move is the worst possible way to implement a seemless map, it actually should be called an extreamly heavy zoned map instead of a seemless one according how the memory hierarchy works. You just can't make a program keep reading from the hard drive, it causes heavy latency especially in a real time interactive one, that's a common sense in coding.
let me give you an example, let's say a linear zone needs 30 seconds to load, and you can run rough it in 5 mins use the fastest possible way. Now we load the map as we move instead of preload it all together, it means you have a 0.1 sec minimal freeze every sec, and it would be much much much higer since we can explot the spatial locality of data storage when preloading the entire zone, and there is also heading every time we access a hard disk.
Sorry bud, but you're mistaken. First of all, there is no right or wrong way to do it. If your game is small enough to load the entire thing into memory, thats great. Unfortunately most games are 10+ gigs, and no developer is dumb enough to require that much memory at one time. It may use that much if its there, but never require it.
No seamless game in the past loaded the entire game into memory. Theres nothing "sneaky" about caching textures and sending and receiving packets around your present location in order to prevent there from being seams. That is literally how its done. If you play WoW, even back in 2004 when no one had enough RAM to load the entire game, you still went from one area to the next without loading. I can tell you right now, if WoW was loading the entire continent every time you entered the world, maybe 5% of their playerbase could have run the game. If you went through a portal, then you would load (even if it was a portal to the same continent in the open world, because it wasn't cached). If you were on something like a flight path, you could hear your HDD spinning up to cache the area around you.
Sorry bud, but you're mistaken. First of all, there is no right or wrong way to do it. If your game is small enough to load the entire thing into memory, thats great. Unfortunately most games are 10+ gigs, and no developer is dumb enough to require that much memory at one time. It may use that much if its there, but never require it.
No seamless game in the past loaded the entire game into memory. Theres nothing "sneaky" about caching textures and sending and receiving packets around your present location in order to prevent there from being seams. That is literally how its done. If you play WoW, even back in 2004 when no one had enough RAM to load the entire game, you still went from one area to the next without loading. I can tell you right now, if WoW was loading the entire continent every time you entered the world, maybe 5% of their playerbase could have run the game. If you went through a portal, then you would load (even if it was a portal to the same continent in the open world, because it wasn't cached). If you were on something like a flight path, you could hear your HDD spinning up to cache the area around you.
Uhh... what? We dont load the entire game to the memory, yes, that's what ive said. And that's why we dont have really techenically seemless game with big map. There is actually a wrong way to do it, sorry bud. Keep loading the surronding as you move is the wrong way. Not personal but it just can't be done. Wow doesnt load the map consistenly as you move, even on flight path, or you would hear the hdd ticking all the time, every single second when you move, but instead we just load once in a while, just more frequently on flight path. That's called preload, just like vanguard, but wow does this better so it's even harder to notice. Preloading zones is not equal to keep loading the surronding when you move. It requires predefined zones, and the game load the predefined zones when you approach them.
And I tohught you talked about let's not make words ambiguous, then loading screen even in teleport is not tolerable, so wow is not a seemless game. To me, it is seemless enough though.
Such a pointless thread....for any game. These "seams" only help everyone to play the same damn game. This friggin "seamless world" crap is starting to irritate me when I see people post about it. You CAN'T have a large/huge world that way....DON'T YOU GET IT?!?
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
Originally posted by Gestankfaust Such a pointless thread....for any game. These "seams" only help everyone to play the same damn game. This friggin "seamless world" crap is starting to irritate me when I see people post about it. You CAN'T have a large/huge world that way....DON'T YOU GET IT?!?
It is kind of pointless, because they've already said what they intend to do. However, there have been a number of games without loading that have large worlds. The original Darkfall was one of the biggest, and it was seamless.
Originally posted by vzerov
Wow doesnt load the map consistenly as you move, even on flight path, or you would hear the hdd ticking all the time, every single second when you move, but instead we just load once in a while, just more frequently on flight path. That's called preload, just like vanguard, but wow does this better so it's even harder to notice. Preloading zones is not equal to keep loading the surronding when you move. It requires predefined zones, and the game load the predefined zones when you approach them.
And I tohught you talked about let's not make words ambiguous, then loading screen even in teleport is not tolerable, so wow is not a seemless game. To me, it is seemless enough though.
Oh boy, semantics. "Preloading", caching (which means preloading), whatever. Thank you for getting on board. Yes, you can create seamless worlds by creating a world and only loading the surrounding areas. I'm not talking about an idea here that I think could work, this has been done in many games already. Like I said, you can even prep an area beyond a portal by "preloading" the destination when a player moves near a portal. All are viable alternatives to loading the entire game into memory.
I think almost any player would prefer seamless if asked, but there is a lot of technical reasons that makes it cheaper and running better on low to mid end computers.
Pantheon not being seamless doesn't hurt it as such but if it had been it would be one more good feature to the game compared to most competitors.
Zones really just end up actually hurting a game when they are really small like in AoC, it forces the devs to throw in too much things on a small area. EQ2 had this problem initially, when Freep and Q was splitted in a lot of small instances that killed of the immersion since you zoned several times just to get between places inside the town.
So if Pantheons zones are large zones then I don't see any problem even if I would have prefered it without zones.
Oh boy, semantics. "Preloading", caching (which means preloading), whatever. Thank you for getting on board. Yes, you can create seamless worlds by creating a world and only loading the surrounding areas. I'm not talking about an idea here that I think could work, this has been done in many games already. Like I said, you can even preload an area beyond a portal by "preloading" the destination when a player moves near a portal. All are viable alternatives to loading the entire game into memory.
Guildwars 2 was initially designed to be like that (actually talked to Strain about in on a forum just when they told us they were starting on it). For some reason he decided to not go that way though. And he is one of the best coders who made a MMO, I assume ha had good reasons like how demanding it would be or the cost would be far too much.
But it surely is possible even though I think you need both an ace programmer and a far better budget than Pantheon to pull it off.
Originally posted by Gestankfaust Such a pointless thread....for any game. These "seams" only help everyone to play the same damn game. This friggin "seamless world" crap is starting to irritate me when I see people post about it. You CAN'T have a large/huge world that way....DON'T YOU GET IT?!?
It is kind of pointless, because they've already said what they intend to do. However, there have been a number of games without loading that have large worlds. The original Darkfall was one of the biggest, and it was seamless.
Originally posted by vzerov
Wow doesnt load the map consistenly as you move, even on flight path, or you would hear the hdd ticking all the time, every single second when you move, but instead we just load once in a while, just more frequently on flight path. That's called preload, just like vanguard, but wow does this better so it's even harder to notice. Preloading zones is not equal to keep loading the surronding when you move. It requires predefined zones, and the game load the predefined zones when you approach them.
And I tohught you talked about let's not make words ambiguous, then loading screen even in teleport is not tolerable, so wow is not a seemless game. To me, it is seemless enough though.
Oh boy, semantics. "Preloading", caching (which means preloading), whatever. Thank you for getting on board. Yes, you can create seamless worlds by creating a world and only loading the surrounding areas. I'm not talking about an idea here that I think could work, this has been done in many games already. Like I said, you can even preload an area beyond a portal by "preloading" the destination when a player moves near a portal. All are viable alternatives to loading the entire game into memory.
I am not sure if i undserstand you right. Preloading predefined map blocks when player approaching, yes, and alot of games doing this. Keep loading the surrounding inch by inch as the player move, no. Simple as that. Loading screen is still needed when teleporting, unless the destination is known (this only applies to the one teleporter verses one distination scenario, telepoters in most games dont work like this, thus not possible to preload the distination) before doing so or lengthen the teleporting process to cover it. Ofcourse there are alternative ways to make it looks more seemlessly while it's actually not, but there is no 100% perfect method. like ive said, one can even use heavy doors between zones to cover the old good loading screen if the devs are that desperate. The problem is that how good a game can do it, instead of if its seemless or not, because it's not. That's not ambiguous, just a fact.
It's not that complicated to explain how zoning breaks immersion for me. It reaffirms that I am boxed in a zone. Takes away the feeling that I am in a world, but rather inside a zone. Reminds me that the horizon I am looking at in any direction is actually a zone barrier. Reminds me that I am in a zone with only the people who are also in my zone. If I am chasing anyone, they will disappear when they enter the magic zone line. If I am being chased, all I have to do is run to the zone line. The other immersion breaking features that you listed are also a problem, but this one is the biggest for me by far. Negative features are not excused by pointing to other negative features.
They're either going to make specific zone entrances/exits which will completely ruin the immersion of the freedom of exploration, or they will have to make it so that you can zone into another zone anywhere, which will be really weird and annoying if you don't know where the zone line is and you're constantly zoning in and out of places accidentally the whole time. EQ1 was a mixture of both and only worked for EQ1 because it was the first of its kind and people were so amazed by it that they didn't care and had no 3D MMORPG in a seamless world to compare it to.
Since games like WoW have taken us to the next level in this regard, it's not really possible for me to go back and enjoy the old primitive way.
Does someone asking if you want a cup of coffee not break immersion more than anything?I just don't get all this lol.
Originally posted by Gestankfaust People that are still seriously judging MMO by some seamless zoning crap need to stop playing games. Get over it PLEASE! Such a small part of a game to worry about.
Not sure what would even make you say this, but speak for yourself. In a high fantasy game world with a serious focus on the immersion and rpg elements, seamless worlds are very important.
Don't get me wrong, its not going to make or break a game by any means, but a seamless world is pretty much unanimously preferred by mmo players of all kinds.
Totally agree with Dullahan, infact most of his comments seem better worded comments of what i think for the most part. It's not a game braking design at all if the zones are large enough, but immersion to one person is most definitely not the same as another. for example if you ever played the old eqoa ps2 which was a seemlass world was totally bad ass, just throwing this out as example.
I never played eq but did play VG and loved it minus the bugs and lack of peeps due mostly to bugs. That game is still legendary to many folks and I would be so hooked with something like that i might consider leaving my wife since she bitches so much when i am hooked on a good mmo, but thats another story.
Anyways just make the dam game as fast as possible with minimal bugs, just think of this while your working from "field of dreams movie"
" If You Make It They Will Cum "
or somthing like that
btw i love all you guys for supporting this game idc if i know you or not, were all human minus the internet shield. and im immune to flame (:
Wrong type of come bro. Or was it? Damnit! Now I'm confused.
Originally posted by Ghavrigg I've never understood why seamless vs. non-seamless was ever an issue. If the atmosphere is great during those non-seamless zones, who cares if you have to load a bit here and there between others?It's simply nitpicking. Get over it.
I tend to agree, I never understood the big deal. Zones or no zones doesn't make a bad game good, or a good game bad - to me at least.
Originally posted by Ghavrigg I've never understood why seamless vs. non-seamless was ever an issue. If the atmosphere is great during those non-seamless zones, who cares if you have to load a bit here and there between others?
It's simply nitpicking. Get over it.
I tend to agree, I never understood the big deal. Zones or no zones doesn't make a bad game good, or a good game bad - to me at least.
True, but it makes a good game better, or a bad game worse, lol.
After playing Everquest 2 for the past, almost, 5 years, I'm not bothered by zones. As long as the zones aren't super small like they are in Final Fantasy !4. If it's going to be like the chunks in Vangaurd, then I'm fine with that too. In fact chunks never bothered me.
Comments
That is true. But you have to understand that implementing a seamless world is a HUGE task from a coding standpoint.
You could compare it like this:
For now Pantheon is like a used car. It does not have enough funding to spend money on something as unimportant as a color change. That may or may not change. But with a tight budget it is important to spend it wisely on the CORE parts (engine!) and not on fluff.
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
It will have zones, if that breaks the game for you that can't be helped. You see it as a big negative, the majority of us don't. Sounds like Pantheon is not the game for you. No big deal. EQN is where you may want to spend your time and energy if you're someone that holds WoW in high regard.
By this definition there woundnt be any RPG with big world can implement it seemlessly, unless you load the entire game into your memory (20gish) in to your memory when the game starts or there will always be a loading process when you cross the "zones", by feet, mount, or teleport. The truth is, NO BODY CARES, why would any game load the entire world at once just to make it seemless? No loading screen is good enough for me, heck i dont even really care if there is one if the zone is big enough.
I'm not sure I'm understanding your point here. My argument was although Vanguard looked seamless, in actuality, it really wasn't. If you're saying nobody should care about loading screens, I agree - I don't care about having loading screens, but not all agree with that opinion as can be seen in this thread. I'm not even sure how to address your tangent about memory as I had not even remotely discussed that point.
I'd much rather the development team focus on quality zones/content rather than make the world seamless - especially with finite resources.
While that's true, if VG was truly seamless, the mobs would have chased you across the chunk lines and there wouldn't be the hitching etc. when crossing over the chunk lines.
And, I agree, you didn't really traditionally "zone" in VG, but it also wasn't really seamless either. You basically were just able to see where you were zoning or transitioning to versus like you said, in EQ, where you disappeared and reappeared giving the appearance of a seamless world in VG.
While that's true, if VG was truly seamless, the mobs would have chased you across the chunk lines and there wouldn't be the hitching etc. when crossing over the chunk lines.
And, I agree, you didn't really traditionally "zone" in VG, but it also wasn't really seamless either. You basically were just able to see where you were zoning or transitioning to versus like you said, in EQ, where you disappeared and reappeared giving the appearance of a seamless world in VG.
When did I say it was seamless in my post?You didn't specifically, but If a person says a game has no zoning, then a seamless world is implied, especially when the post describes aspects of what makes zoning different from how a person would describe a seamless world (being able to see mobs/players past the chunk lines) in a thread titled Will non Seam-less Zones Hurt Pantheon.
Back on topic though, as of now, when people describe seamless versus zoning it's usually an either/or argument where I would put Vanguard as a hybrid of both.
Either way, not looking to argue over semantics/opinion.
Actually I am saying the definition of seemless is not well definied, and there isnt a defninition everyone would agree. so, "vanguard looks like a seemless game but it really isnt" is not an accurate description, you are using a very strict standard to judge if a game is seemless, which is "if a game doesn't load the entire map to its memory at the begining, it's not seemless" which technicaly no (big enough) game can or would want to acheive. By my definition, if a game doesnt have a loading screen, or a black screen (ESO), and can load zones sneaky, it's seemless.
And technicaly you do mentioned the memory part. "Loading screen" means loading the map from hard drive to memory here, so if anyone talked about loading then he is talking about load something to memory. If i am talking about driving, then a car is included, you can't really seperate them. Imagine the scenario:
A:Only someone can drive 700km per hour on land can be called a good driver.
B:Such car doesn't exist.
A:I am not even remotely discussing about cars, I am talking about driving.
See the problem?
I see your point now after clarification - and I would say we are more in agreement than disagreement, we just have a different definition of seamless. I see your point on loading the game fully not being feasible, but for me, it's not so much that eliminating hitching to load a new chunk/zone that would create a seamless world but instead more related to NPC behaviors. Agoed mobs should also hitch and follow you through a zone line (never-ending trains instead of train to zone!!!) in a seamless world. Until that would be the case, I wouldn't consider it seamless. Strict maybe, but having an invisible/transparent line with hitching may look better and be an improvement over load screens, but to me, like you said, it's just sneakier way to load zones. With VG, I still trained over chunk lines to avoid death.
Yes, IMO it just depends on how sneaky to load zones, the real technically seemless is not practical. Actually I do remember mobs can chase through zones even in some obviously zoned games (mmo or not), it does make a game feel more seemless. Bigger zone is actually just a method to make the map more seemless. For me, It's "seemless(or zoned) to what level" instead of "seemless or not".
Seamless means no seams. Not sure why everything has to become something ambiguous, words have meanings. If there is a division between two pieces of fabric, or in this case a zone (loading), that is a seam.
Now that that's established. No, you don't have to load entire worlds into memory to be seamless. You can simply load the surrounding area into memory. That way only a teleportation spell would require loading, and honestly it makes sense for there to be a period of loading during the process of magically traveling through a rift or portal. If you wanted to further eliminate that load screen, you could preload a portal destination when a player gets near the portal, or you could preload it upon a player loading a teleportation spell. All of those things could of course cause different complications, so the easiest way to do seamless is just to load adjacent areas.
All that said, its just not that important (to me). The most immersive game I've ever played hands down was EQ, and it wasn't seamless. The atmosphere was created by other elements like sound, music, danger, actions with consequence and the risk involved with seeking reward. To me, I would much rather have them focus on those things than trying to major in what I would consider the minor aspects of a virtual world. Even the games that have boasted a seamless world have trouble suspending my disbelief when they neglect factors like a fear of dying or an open world without being fractured by instances.
No, you really have to load the entire game to memory to make it really seemless. All other methods are just sneaky ways to implement a zoned world, "load the destination when player load the spell, or when he is teleporting" if that makes the game really seemless, how about we make a heavy zoned game but between each zone we place walls and a very heavy door which requires 1 min to open,it's not a loading screen, just you opening the door. Does this make the game seemless? There is a game actually does this, FF14, a heavily zoned game, but as I remember most zones are connected by teleporters, or some wierd vortex, and i dont think anyone would call the game seemless.
Same to the load surronding area thing, it just make a big loading process to smaller ones, you still load, just a little bit harder to notice. But there is not even a reason to do so since you can preload the next zone before you cross the line. And the more importantly, the pricinple for coding is to lessen the frequency to access the hard drive, not to increase it. Actually that's the main reason we even use a memory, why use a memory at all if you are planning to consistently access the hard disk? Loading from hard drive all the time as your character move is the worst possible way to implement a seemless map, it actually should be called an extreamly heavy zoned map instead of a seemless one according how the memory hierarchy works. You just can't make a program keep reading from the hard drive, it causes heavy latency especially in a real time interactive one, that's a common sense in coding.
let me give you an example, let's say a linear zone needs 30 seconds to load, and you can run rough it in 5 mins use the fastest possible way. Now we load the map as we move instead of preload it all together, it means you have a 0.1 sec minimal freeze every sec, and it would be much much much higer since we can explot the spatial locality of data storage when preloading the entire zone, and there is also heading every time we access a hard disk.
Sorry bud, but you're mistaken. First of all, there is no right or wrong way to do it. If your game is small enough to load the entire thing into memory, thats great. Unfortunately most games are 10+ gigs, and no developer is dumb enough to require that much memory at one time. It may use that much if its there, but never require it.
No seamless game in the past loaded the entire game into memory. Theres nothing "sneaky" about caching textures and sending and receiving packets around your present location in order to prevent there from being seams. That is literally how its done. If you play WoW, even back in 2004 when no one had enough RAM to load the entire game, you still went from one area to the next without loading. I can tell you right now, if WoW was loading the entire continent every time you entered the world, maybe 5% of their playerbase could have run the game. If you went through a portal, then you would load (even if it was a portal to the same continent in the open world, because it wasn't cached). If you were on something like a flight path, you could hear your HDD spinning up to cache the area around you.
Uhh... what? We dont load the entire game to the memory, yes, that's what ive said. And that's why we dont have really techenically seemless game with big map. There is actually a wrong way to do it, sorry bud. Keep loading the surronding as you move is the wrong way. Not personal but it just can't be done. Wow doesnt load the map consistenly as you move, even on flight path, or you would hear the hdd ticking all the time, every single second when you move, but instead we just load once in a while, just more frequently on flight path. That's called preload, just like vanguard, but wow does this better so it's even harder to notice. Preloading zones is not equal to keep loading the surronding when you move. It requires predefined zones, and the game load the predefined zones when you approach them.
And I tohught you talked about let's not make words ambiguous, then loading screen even in teleport is not tolerable, so wow is not a seemless game. To me, it is seemless enough though.
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
It is kind of pointless, because they've already said what they intend to do. However, there have been a number of games without loading that have large worlds. The original Darkfall was one of the biggest, and it was seamless.
Oh boy, semantics. "Preloading", caching (which means preloading), whatever. Thank you for getting on board. Yes, you can create seamless worlds by creating a world and only loading the surrounding areas. I'm not talking about an idea here that I think could work, this has been done in many games already. Like I said, you can even prep an area beyond a portal by "preloading" the destination when a player moves near a portal. All are viable alternatives to loading the entire game into memory.
I think almost any player would prefer seamless if asked, but there is a lot of technical reasons that makes it cheaper and running better on low to mid end computers.
Pantheon not being seamless doesn't hurt it as such but if it had been it would be one more good feature to the game compared to most competitors.
Zones really just end up actually hurting a game when they are really small like in AoC, it forces the devs to throw in too much things on a small area. EQ2 had this problem initially, when Freep and Q was splitted in a lot of small instances that killed of the immersion since you zoned several times just to get between places inside the town.
So if Pantheons zones are large zones then I don't see any problem even if I would have prefered it without zones.
Guildwars 2 was initially designed to be like that (actually talked to Strain about in on a forum just when they told us they were starting on it). For some reason he decided to not go that way though. And he is one of the best coders who made a MMO, I assume ha had good reasons like how demanding it would be or the cost would be far too much.
But it surely is possible even though I think you need both an ace programmer and a far better budget than Pantheon to pull it off.
I am not sure if i undserstand you right. Preloading predefined map blocks when player approaching, yes, and alot of games doing this. Keep loading the surrounding inch by inch as the player move, no. Simple as that. Loading screen is still needed when teleporting, unless the destination is known (this only applies to the one teleporter verses one distination scenario, telepoters in most games dont work like this, thus not possible to preload the distination) before doing so or lengthen the teleporting process to cover it. Ofcourse there are alternative ways to make it looks more seemlessly while it's actually not, but there is no 100% perfect method. like ive said, one can even use heavy doors between zones to cover the old good loading screen if the devs are that desperate. The problem is that how good a game can do it, instead of if its seemless or not, because it's not. That's not ambiguous, just a fact.
Does someone asking if you want a cup of coffee not break immersion more than anything?I just don't get all this lol.
Wrong type of come bro. Or was it? Damnit! Now I'm confused.
I tend to agree, I never understood the big deal. Zones or no zones doesn't make a bad game good, or a good game bad - to me at least.
True, but it makes a good game better, or a bad game worse, lol.