Terrain for MMORPG too large?

[Kayden007]

Terrain for my upcoming MMORPG
84kmX56km Terrain made up of 6 other terrain each 28kmX2kmX28km(Heightmaps 4098x4098)
What do you think? Should I decrease the terrain size? Any why?

[TylerPerry]

Nah, I think it should work ok. You will have problems if you want a cave though.

[tatelax]

For a terrain of this size, you should not make it in Unity. Unity will not allow caves, like TylerPerry said. Also the terrain will have a lower polycount.

[npsf3000_1]

@tatelax

Unity will not allow caves

Rubbish.

[flaminghairball]

@npsf3000_1

Rubbish.

Not rubbish. They have a task force precisely for hunting down and kneecapping people who use caves in Unity.

[npsf3000_1]

@flaminghairball

Not rubbish. They have a task force precisely for hunting down and kneecapping people who use caves in Unity.

That could explain my avatar.

[keithsoulasa]

@npsf3000_1

Rubbish.

Ohh wise Nps3000 , do you have any examples to prove this wrong( no disrespect I actually consider you one of the smarter people here, thanks for showing me arrays way back when …)

[OmniverseProduct]

Might be too large. It might impact performance. One thing I would do to start off with is model the terrain for the islands and separate pieces of land outside of the mainland first and have everything loaded in, so to speak. Think of how Blizzard accomplished this with World of Warcraft. When the players moved from a bigger landmass to a bigger landmass (small islands don’t count) you got a loading screen. This usually only happened with continents though. Doing it that way should decrease the map size and thus improve performance by that much more (usually).

If it doing the terrain that way didn’t decrease the overall terrain size than I would think about breaking the mainland up into smaller chunks and having more loading screens. Loading screens may be evil to a lot of people, but I’m a firm believer that if you set everything up right to begin with it can be quite powerful. I always say to people that hate loading screens, “Would you rather experience lag?”

In any case, there are pros and cons to both ways. It’s up to you which way to go from there.

[npsf3000_1]

@keithsoulasa

Ohh wise Nps3000 , do you have any examples to prove this wrong( no disrespect I actually consider you one of the smarter people here, thanks for showing me arrays way back when …)

Sure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxLmW5EelhQ

There are a bunch of interesting technical problems around building caves, but there’s nothing impossible about it.

[Ayrik]

Make a smaller map, you’ll need a team of people just to dress the map. Stick to a smaller and more detailed, more immersive world. If you need more space you can always expand later.

PS: your avatar is awesome.

[janpec]

Not rubbish. They have a task force precisely for hunting down and kneecapping people who use caves in Unity.

Haha:smile:

As for caves, why not making caves as instances like most MMOs with same non-cave terrains do? Place some sort of model that shows entrance and then teleports player, ofcourse cave will have to be modeled, but this is easy if you use 3d coat and use voxels where you can “digg” out caves. After that you can use autopology feature that converts voxel mesh into normal mesh.

[Dewy]

@npsf3000_1

Sure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxLmW5EelhQ

There are a bunch of interesting technical problems around building caves, but there’s nothing impossible about it.

They meant building a cave into the terrain. I didn’t see a cave built into the terrain in that video just a cave interior, which you can do obviously; it’s just like a building. You can’t have caves built into the terrain in a height map based terrain system.

[Meltdown]

@npsf3000_1

That could explain my avatar.

Your avatar is something I would expect to find in a cave

Why use Unity’s terrain engine? Rather go with a custom mesh and implement your own LOD etc.

As JanPec says, you can always make the cave a new scene, or an instance if your game design allows for that.

@Kayden, what backend are you using for your MMO?

[BlackMantis]

Easy Roads plug-in from the asset store was working on a sweet cave tool, that uses Unity terrain. Also holes can be created in terrain with mask, and for the time your passing through the mouth of the cave the ignore collision method may be able to be used. (Untested Random Thoughts) lol

[npsf3000_1]

@Dewy

You can’t have caves built into the terrain in a height map based terrain system.

Course you can… you just need to be very sneaky

TBH, I suspect that given the OP cave’s won’t be an issue with the project. He’s either going to fail hard because he doesn’t understand the basic concepts… or he’s going to be very capable of learning and suprise us all.

[SimonAlkemade]

considering making a MMO takes many years to complete I think the map size is just fine by the time you finnish the game computers will probably be fast enough to run it just fine.

[jc_lvngstn]

@SimonAlkemade

considering making a MMO takes many years to complete I think the map size is just fine by the time you finnish the game computers will probably be fast enough to run it just fine.

That brought chuckle.

[Kayden007]

Thank you all for all this feedback never expected to get so much in just one night.

@tatelax

For a terrain of this size, you should not make it in Unity. Unity will not allow caves, like TylerPerry said. Also the terrain will have a lower polycount.

You mean will not allow or will cause the game to lag a lot due to the size of the terrain?

@OmniverseProduct

Might be too large. It might impact performance. One thing I would do to start off with is model the terrain for the islands and separate pieces of land outside of the mainland first and have everything loaded in, so to speak. Think of how Blizzard accomplished this with World of Warcraft. When the players moved from a bigger landmass to a bigger landmass (small islands don’t count) you got a loading screen. This usually only happened with continents though. Doing it that way should decrease the map size and thus improve performance by that much more (usually).

If it doing the terrain that way didn’t decrease the overall terrain size than I would think about breaking the mainland up into smaller chunks and having more loading screens. Loading screens may be evil to a lot of people, but I’m a firm believer that if you set everything up right to begin with it can be quite powerful. I always say to people that hate loading screens, “Would you rather experience lag?”

In any case, there are pros and cons to both ways. It’s up to you which way to go from there.

Thanks! More loading screens there will be.

@Ayrik

Make a smaller map, you’ll need a team of people just to dress the map. Stick to a smaller and more detailed, more immersive world. If you need more space you can always expand later.

PS: your avatar is awesome.

Sure, thanks.
That’s the avatar for the game btw.

@""

have you tried splitting the world into different segments / or different maps reachable by teleports?

it would be obvious you could make a “teleporter” asset and then loadlevel a different scene which represents a cave.

No and yes there will be teleportation(and flying)

@Meltdown

@Kayden, what backend are you using for your MMO?

What do you mean?

@SimonAlkemade

considering making a MMO takes many years to complete I think the map size is just fine by the time you finnish the game computers will probably be fast enough to run it just fine.

Lol, (Hope so) Don’t really care how long it takes to make…

[Kayden007]

Scaled down the whole terrain to 30kmX20km each of 6 terriains of 10kmX700mX10km

[SevenBits]

Personally, I see no problems with a terrain that size other than what has been addressed before. If you really want to keep everything all in one scene, then I suggest that you look into Unity Pro’s asset bundle streaming feature to allow you to stream that terrain from disk to reduce loading times.

I would also suggest investing in a decent procedural generation tool, as carving out all that terrain by yourself is going to be hell.