General question about open world design

Unity Engine
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1st off, Hello everyone, I am new to Unity, I’m an older male, late 40’s, avid gamer for nearly 20 years. I have some map design experience from in the early days of Quake using programs such as Qoole, QE Radient (aka GTK Radient), Worldcraft and some others who’s name I have long forgotten. All for hobby sake, no formal game development background.

My mindset obviously needs changed as game development has evolved immensely. long gone are the days where you have to load a new map during game play as you moved from one region of the game to another. here is where I choose to start my journey.

I’m confused on the term scene. does this encompass for example. Games such as World Of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Crisis, Halo etc, which have what I though was called “persistent world”, turns out that just means the game never stops, like life. Not sure now what the term is for a game that just loads chunks as you move from area to area, so a pause in game play is not required.

So I am tinkering toward a PvP game that would be in a world that is large, but requires no cut-scene per say, that never changes. Is this a scene or something else?

Thanks in advance for tolerating my ignorance, I have much to learn.

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Think of a scene as a level, but there is no specific size or location to it. It can be the inside of a building, inside of a room, a city, a menu screen - just a few examples. From a performance perspective it makes sense to try and break scenes into smaller sections (e.g. inside a house is a new scene), especially if you want to use nice graphics or effects. But it is really up to you - a pvp game would need a different level design than a single-player RPG.