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

[gifthorse]

Nope. If we take it on theory, then yes, maybe, but in this case, big fat nope.

We can clearly see where the "loads" are, because the maps are "boxy". That's an old engineer's trick, and that should have been most of what they needed. The copy and pasting on top of that smells of rush jobs, and laziness.

And they didn't even work that hard to hide the "box" trick.

What is the box trick? Look At the maps. big open area, long corridor, big area, long corridor, aka choke point, for a seamless load. Characters moving through that corridor = loading in background.

It's easy to spot, because the moment you look on the map, people will look for "short cuts" of course they are quick to realize, there exist none, because each section is closed off followed by a "tube" that connected to the next region. That is where the technical trick is.

Copy and pasting is a whole separate issue it seems, and one likely attributed to money.

I agree that it could have been disguised better, but the point I was making is that making a series of individual discrete objects and then fitting them together is more difficult than just making one giant discrete object. One object would require more data than several repeated ones, hence why SE chose the latter. Their attempts at disguising it failed though.

The goal is to make several smaller objects and then fit them together or superimpose them in such a way that it gives the impression of one, greater unique object. SE failed at fitting their smaller individual objects together, they didn't fail at making them.

After all, they can't just make infinite amounts of discrete objects with today's technology. I mean they can if they want to, but their engine can't load them all in. SE faces technological constraints on the amount of data they can load in. Using another engine may have helped, but they would have to then compromise on graphical quality.

I think those zone margins within the greater zones are more network-based, and probably don't alleviate as much stress on people's video cards and ram as you think. The mini zones within the zones are still using the same textures, and whatnot. The tunnels which conveniently separate the areas are most likely there so people can load in the arrangement of the objects while travelling rather than to help load in entirely new objects.