How to make a game without requiring copy-pasta'd terrain.

[BelgianRofl]

***Warning*** this video is for smart ppl who are intrigued by smart person stuff. Other ppl will get bored.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhyyUiYQolA

Edit: Actually, it is copy-pastaing, but using different sizes, orientation, and skew of pasta.

[Abriael]

If procedurally generated worlds were the answer, everyone would use that solution (while no one does). Making a procedurally generated world is actually easier, faster and less costly than making a world that needs to be manually designed from the ground up.

The side effect, though, is what you get in Fuel. The world is BIG, yeah, but it's extremely bland, and it's not optimized for it's purpose. For instance in Fuel you notice quite easily that the world isn't designed around the tracks (as it should be for a good racing game), but the tracks are designed around the world, making them rather poor for gameplay use and simply not fun to race on.
On top of it,unless the developer actually gets around tweaking every single world element and decoration manually to make up for the obvious misplacements and problems created by the fact the automated world generation, you end up with glaring flaws (of which fuel had plenty) like floating rocks, compenetrating trees and buildings and things like that.

It's a cheap way to get immense worlds, but it's not a be all, end all solution,especially for a world that needs to have gameplay elements installed on it.
In the end, art direction-wise, manually designed worlds have a TON more potential to be actually interesting than procedurally generated ones.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

large worlds take time to traverse. Imagine spanding 3 hours to get from point a to pint b using 5 different travel methods. ppl would quit. I like morrowwind and oblivions take. The world feels larger. But in truth isn't.
Copy and pasting happens in all games. It would take to much time and space to create a large enough world w/o it. Its just alot of ppl in ffxiv, due to lack of stuff to do, overly analyzed the world around them and noticed or felt they saw copy and pasting. As I said I didn't notice it in any vids. Prob cuz I wasn't looking for it.

If you look for things in games you will see them. Like graphical errors/ bugs. Like a shadow that is off, or a rock not fully on the enviroment. Abd it will start to annoy you.

[Nephera]

I think Coerthas illustrates that they know most of the information in this video, they just derped.

[gifthorse]

large worlds take time to traverse. Imagine spanding 3 hours to get from point a to pint b using 5 different travel methods. ppl would quit. I like morrowwind and oblivions take. The world feels larger. But in truth isn't.

Weren't you in another thread saying that you liked taking your time in MMOs? If you want to take your time, then large game worlds are better than large grinds, amirite?

Copy and pasting happens in all games. It would take to much time and space to create a large enough world w/o it. Its just alot of ppl in ffxiv, due to lack of stuff to do, overly analyzed the world around them and noticed or felt they saw copy and pasting. As I said I didn't notice it in any vids. Prob cuz I wasn't looking for it.

If you look for things in games you will see them. Like graphical errors/ bugs. Like a shadow that is off, or a rock not fully on the enviroment. Abd it will start to annoy you.

You do notice copy-paste in game, even if you don't look for it. I was skeptical at first too about copy-paste, because I never noticed it in closed beta. For example, if you travel through La Noscea, it's not very prevalent. But if you travel between the docks from La Noscea to Ul'dah, then you do start to notice it. You ascend the exact same slope/hill/valley layout twice, almost consecutively. It's weird because you begin to ask yourself "am I running in circles?". It's the exact same series of objects, one after the other.

Then you travel to Broken Water and notice that the chasm you cross is exactly the same one you saw on the way to Blue Fog.

Then you travel to The Black Shroud and notice that there are only about three repeating structures the whole way between the entrace to the Black Shroud and Gridania. If you travel further into the forest, you do begin to find some nice things, but still, such discoveries are totally compromised by a series of repeating identical structures in between the nice areas.

I think the worst offender of copy-paste design is The Black Shroud, of all the zones. Meanwhile, Thanalan and La Noscea can be endured in the state they are in presently, although ideally the placement of a few sections should be looked into.

All in all, I think Belgianrofl brings up a good point about procedurally generated areas. I mean, the reason FFXIV is so rampant with repeating structures is purely because SE were trying to conserve space. You can't deny that the zones are far from optimal. So there has to be a solution that optimises on quality of landscapes and also on data conservation, and FFXIV obviously hasn't found that optimal state yet.

I think some combination of procedurally generated areas and the present system which uses repeated "doodads" might be in order. Otherwise, they will need to add more "doodads" to the equation, as the current ones do not suffice to give the illusion of an authentic game world.

Perhaps giving players freedom to place their own houses or other structures onto the expansive maps might also alleviate the copy-pasta issue.

[zaviermhigo]

I would like a bigger map, or at least something that feels bigger. In EQ a boat ride would take 3hours or so, I wouldn't even mind if they added a "first time is 3 hours", in XI people planned around crap like this, for example zoning into places you might receive a cut scene if it is your first time, to avoid annoying people you should pre-do. People are lazy in this game, and anima makes it even worse. Its all summed up by SE adding "can you do it for me" to the auto-translate, that disgusts me lol.

[Vanguard319]

I would like to point out another way to save memory while making large, detailed worlds. I can't remember the name of the technique, but there is an algorithm that causes very distant objects to be rendered in simple fashion, and gradually become more complex as the player approaches them. The idea is that it is pointless to have these very distant objects finely rendered, since the human eye can't discern the difference in detail at long distance. (few people have better than 20/20 vision) It's a fairly new technique, but it was used pretty well in Halo: Reach to make some impressively large maps. (Forgeworld alone was ginormus for a FPS mutliplayer map, and large even when compared to campagin levels for example)

[kukurumei]

I would like to point out another way to save memory while making large, detailed worlds. I can't remember the name of the technique, but there is an algorithm that causes very distant objects to be rendered in simple fashion, and gradually become more complex as the player approaches them. The idea is that it is pointless to have these very distant objects finely rendered, since the human eye can't discern the difference in detail at long distance. (few people have better than 20/20 vision) It's a fairly new technique, but it was used pretty well in Halo: Reach to make some impressively large maps. (Forgeworld alone was ginormus for a FPS mutliplayer map, and large even when compared to campagin levels for example)

Otherwise commonly termed "LoD" (level of detail). You swap around low resolution textures with high resolution textures in a streaming data flow.

None of it has anything realistically to do with copy and paste terrain(Lod is strictly a memory saving trick, and works with anything. Look at Drake's fortune for instance), unless they have a problem with HDD space.

Copy and paste terrain...is copy and paste. What else did anyone expect?. Nothing is going to solve it without good old grease work, or other wise known as paying your graphics artists.

Sure there are tons of work on procedural generation (otherwise known as random dungeon effect), but realistically, it's very hard to have a computer trick the human mind. It's easier and sometimes cheaper to have a human trick other humans.

They probably didn't want to pay the bill, so ended up copy and pasting. Either that or you had very stupid QC people that got tricked by their employees...given the horsebird incident I'm not willing to rule it out.

[Abriael]

I would like to point out another way to save memory while making large, detailed worlds. I can't remember the name of the technique, but there is an algorithm that causes very distant objects to be rendered in simple fashion, and gradually become more complex as the player approaches them. The idea is that it is pointless to have these very distant objects finely rendered, since the human eye can't discern

That's LOD, and FFXIV has it.

It's not to save memory by the way, it's purpose is to lighten the stress on the video card.

[gifthorse]

Otherwise commonly termed "LoD" (level of detail). You swap around low resolution textures with high resolution textures in a streaming data flow.

None of it has anything realistically to do with copy and paste terrain(Lod is strictly a memory saving trick, and works with anything. Look at Drake's fortune for instance), unless they have a problem with HDD space.

Copy and paste terrain...is copy and paste. What else did anyone expect?. Nothing is going to solve it without good old grease work, or other wise known as paying your graphics artists.

Sure there are tons of work on procedural generation (otherwise known as random dungeon effect), but realistically, it's very hard to have a computer trick the human mind. It's easier and sometimes cheaper to have a human trick other humans.

They probably didn't want to pay the bill, so ended up copy and pasting. Either that or you had very stupid QC people that got tricked by their employees...given the horsebird incident I'm not willing to rule it out.

Well it's also an issue of how much data can be loaded in between loading screens as much as it is an issue of constructing the data. Given that the zones aren't seamless, it's safe to assume that the content is loaded in whenever you 'zone' into a new area. Having too many unique objects cannot be realised with the current game engine (Crystal Tools) which doesn't feature game-world streaming technology. They would have to compromise on the size of the zones if they were to make the zones more unique.

... or fix their engine.