Infinite game scene: Is this doable? How?

Unity Engine
1

Hey!

I’m developing a game and I’d like to find out what unity is capable of in terms of my requirements for my projects.

The idea is that I have a character traversing over very large, open environments very freely.
These environments represent believable locations of planet surfaces and locations in space.
Each environment is a seperate level, with the difference between planet and space levels being that space levels have no gravity and no terrain that prevent downward movement. Other than that, its mostly the same.

Now the question is, how can I achieve the following and is this even possible to do:

I want a level to be a large, low-detail, open area with virtually no limit how far can the player go. In both images, the center area is depicted as the traditional play-field within which all the scenery and an ordinary terrain is present and where the player will spend most of his time and complete a task (its a mission based game in an open level), but beyond the limit of this level, a flat terrain continues virtually for infinity. There is no scenery or foliage beyond the boundaries of the level, but just flat terrain, so theres no invisible wall or abrupt end of world. The arrows depict how the level continues to exist past its bounds, while the central area is the area where a tradional unity level would be built in theory.

For space levels, its just the ability to travel any direction virtually endlessly without the terrain hassle.

Also as mentioned, the center area would contain complex terrain (hills, mountains…) and also very basic scenery objects such as rocks and trees possibly.

And finally I’d need to have a persistent background or skybox of sorts that allows infinite movement.

How can I achieve this result and what should I do to create this?

What should I keep in mind if I make such levels?

I also need a way to create asteroids and/or flying islands. Since terrain is a plane and obviously wont work for such platforms, what should I use to create those?
(Do note that these platforms can be of very large sizes, so I’m afraid if trying to use them as premade objects would create unnecesary lag. It would also be great if there was a way to model such flying blobs of colliding terrain in unity like you build terrain.)

The point is to avoid the use of invisible walls or such to prevent player movement if he reaches a level border.
The game “Freelancer” has the exact same effect I’m going for, if anyone is familiar with that.

Please ask if anything was too confusing.

2

You simply tile it, as in 2D techniques.

So for the middle tile, you need a copy of that middle tile all around the middle tile. Then when you go over a boundary, you either move everything back by the tile size, or just move the tiles. It should have little to no effect on physics at all, since their calculations will have been done and the surfaces are the same.

if (ship.x < boundary.x)
{
level.x -= boundarySize.x;
update where boundaryx is
}etc

as an example. It is just an illusion but thats all you need.

It’s probably easier this way to move the tiles to catch up each time you go over a grid boundary, than it is to make all models that move a child of a master object and move the master object instead. But it will depend on whats best for you.

3

Ok, I must first say I’m very new to the technical side of making games, so I’m a little confused how do I do this.

Are there any examples of this that I can download and examine it inside out?

This is my first project in unity so I’m not fully aware of what is possible with it. From the impression I got by looking at tutorials and seeing some game projects, I see that a unity game is constructed out of scenes that have a limited environment; usually a square area within which you have a terrain and some game objects scattered across it. If you try to walk past this square area, an invisible wall will stop you or you’ll just fall into the abyss.

The game I’m making involves a robot character with full flight capabilities to navigate in space and on planet surfaces, like gundam or armored core style mechs. Space is seems pretty simple to construct, just put all the game stuff within the cube of play-area, but allow the player to leave its bounds, so that any possible combat that might occur would not be hindered by an invisible wall or lack of terrain.

For a planetary level, the idea is to have a custom terrain as the play-area, but at its edge’s, it continues with either a flat terrain or procedural terrain with nothing on top of it. The play-area’s custom terrain would try its best to merge with the surrounding flat extension-terrain.

This game is the perfect example how it would look visually:

This game demonstrates pretty much what I’m going for in terms of gameplay and visual representation of the world.
The scenes would be large and vast with only some major features like mountains and hills, basic scenery and nothing more detailed or complex than this.

I would really appreciate if anyone could give me an example or some hints how I can achieve this effect. And how can I apply this illusion you’re suggestion and how do I implement it inside unity.

4

For the space part, just use a starry skybox to simulate space - it’s dimensions are pretty huge so you shouldn’t have any problems with reaching the edge
As for the planet level, just make a load of terrain objects, and raise them into hills as you see fit