Hi, I have quite a short question but it's very useful to me and other people, are open world games possible in Unity?
(Examples)
Fallout New Vegas or Fallout 3
Grand Theft Auto 4
Red Dead Redemption
FarCry 2
Oblivion
Borderlands
Saint's Row 2
If they are possible what can give you trouble when trying to create one, the amount of Polygons in one scene? the scale of the map? the use of Physics and AI, or even Multiplayer!
Unity is powerful but I'm wondering what you can throw at it before you start having problems half-way through develolpement.
Also i'm talking about Multiple scenes, like areas in Borderlands or GTA4's Islands.
(But alot larger than Borderland's Areas, maybe the size of Saint's Row 2's Map
Thanks for reading!
Remember the PRO version of Unity has "Occlusion Culling" witch means that the engine will only renderer what the player sees. And witch this it is much easier making e.g open world games.
Mubatey : how do you convert map files and load them to unity? Me : I didn't know where to put your comment. Please don't use the answer for that kind of things.
Yes, it is very possible. Unity has very few limitations - it can do almost anything. An open-world game is just like a normal one without objectives! It can also randomly generate infinite maps, using raycast.
Just one thing, it's hard to make a good open world game. Don't just try copying an existing game - make something new and original!
It is all possible with unity, you may come across some culling issues with rendering but that can be dealt with by LOD and occlusion culling. Games such as Rust, The Forest and Epidemic use Unity3D and are all open world. Also i highly recommend NOT using multiple scenes for the map this creates unnecessary loading times and a bunch of if() statements and scripts you shouldn’t need running in the background. Unity can handle a full open world map the size of dayz PROVIDING you manage LOD correctly. If you wander through one of the games you mentioned (GTA/Saints…) take notice of the map and the way everything works you will notice that things in the very far distance may just be a cube with textures and as you get closer then it get windows and then more and more detail is added. Aslong as you have correctly placed LOD’s and try to minimise active scripts then your game should run as smooth as a babies bottom.
When you develop this open world game you want i reccomend PLANNING out like a map where all the trees and buildings are going to be and draw some lines and measure how many models are active at once, you can also put in a camera with unity and look at the “stats” tab to see how many objects and polys are active at once. I recommend trying to get under 600,000 polys especially if your game will have player built structures. If there is more than that at one point you should consider repositioning buildings or tweaking the LOD’s so that the buildings reduce their polys sooner. If you make sure that there is less that 600 ,000 polys at one time and there is only very important scripts running then i assure you that your game will run smoothly.
Unity is not suitable for open world games like GTA and neither is UDK, nor are they “just like regular games without objectives!”
the Grit engine is being made for real open world games with objectives, with LOD and real modeled worlds like in GTA and GTA modding, Red Dead Redemption, Bully, games like that - but it is early in development. Unity can do a lot of things, but you show me an open world game with unity that is not just a terrain with trees and some models batched over it, with a volcano, and I will eat a hat.
GTA doesn’t use terrain, not so far anyway, perhaps they will use some later, but right now, it’s all been modeled and cut up, exported with LODs and streamed. Data streaming for new levels is not the same as streaming content in and out. The streaming in UDK and Unity are different.
FPS, third person, car game, casual game, puzzle game, limited large overworld adventure game, all possible in unity, but you can’t do Liberty City in Unity. Not at 30 or even 60 fps. (if you can, show me)
Unity also supports LOD's. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. @muzz 1's answer was right. Have you seen "The Forest"? Its an open world game made with Unity. So go ahead and eat a hat, and please film it :D
Yes i agree with Levo and beleive you dont know what your talking about. Unity supports ALL types of game and actually has one of the best LOD systems ive seen in game engines. Games such as Rust, The Forest, Epidemic, Stranded deep are all made with unity and are all open world. And if you cross to a new engine then you have all the new release bugs that will hold you back in development. A full GTA could be remade in unity with proper development could also run just as good.
Open world games are of course possible in Unity. Here’s some things you need if you want to make a game like the ones you are suggesting. I also realize the person who asked this question never started the game from being discouraged from the get go no doubt.
Here’s what you need:
Lots of time (I’d say probably at least 3 months full time if you are working by yourself, but it really depends on your skill set. A lot of this time depends on what’s in your game: how big the map is, if you run into any serious issues along the way, didn’t back up data and you lose stuff, AI system, but in short “how much is in the game” will really answer the question of how long it will take)
Money (probably $300-500 to buy assets you need to make your life a lot easier)
Fast learner (seriously, you need this to pick things up if you haven’t worked with Unity before)
Organization skills (Open world games have thousands of objects in the game, you gotta organize it depending on how you want to set up the world)
Forums and Videos (You’ll need to spend a lot of time on forums, and I would suggest getting assets from the Unity asset store which have amazing support) Feel free to hit up YouTube of course
That’s all I have for now. But start with those things because there’s so many things that go into building an open world game.
Remember the PRO version of Unity has "Occlusion Culling" witch means that the engine will only renderer what the player sees. And witch this it is much easier making e.g open world games.
– FLASHDENMARKMubatey : how do you convert map files and load them to unity? Me : I didn't know where to put your comment. Please don't use the answer for that kind of things.
– Berenger