If this game had no overworld..

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by DavidDC, Sep 28, 2019.

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  1. DavidDC

    DavidDC Programmer Moderator SOTA Developer

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    It would literally be like everquest. Why are the map not just connected to each other without having an overworld? I know it sound like a big puzzle to solve, but can you imagine this?

    Regional economy would be a thing, people wouldnt just leave a part of the world for fun as it would take a while to walk back there.

    Player Pot could be connected to any map, pretty easy to make an entrance in a map, wagons and such can still be used.

    Who care if the biome of the map doesnt match the entrance you take for the next one? People can easily imagine in their head that they had to voyage a bit between those in an empty area, hence why the loading instead.

    Runebook could be a thing. And that wouldnt break the regional economy if you can use runebook once X hours.

    I can only see great stuff if this would have to happen.

    edit: also technically, i can only see this as less work for portalarium to work on and it would lighten the game a whole lot to have this out. All the objects assosssiated with it and everything. Map could be unlocked as they are made, doesnt have to have a whole island on overworld with cloned map to make it look like its filled. You can unlock them one by one and make em that way. Until the final scene.

    Any tought?
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2019
  2. DavidDC

    DavidDC Programmer Moderator SOTA Developer

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    Having mount would make sense... :p
     
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  3. Dhanas

    Dhanas Avatar

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    It was already discussed times ago, they said it is how lands in ep 2 should be, but would be great having it for ep1 zones too.
     
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  4. evillego6

    evillego6 Avatar

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    They said the episode 2 scenes would be larger. I don't recall them ever saying they would be ditching the map.
     
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  5. Magnus Zarwaddim

    Magnus Zarwaddim Avatar

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    My thoughts. My own. Not indicative of anything.

    I rather like the Overworld. I get your point, Devil, I just thought that if a lot could happen on the Overworld (combat, PvP, gathering, etc.) PLUS the added benefit of being able to go into a zone to do those things, that would have been great.
     
  6. Vladamir Begemot

    Vladamir Begemot Avatar

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    Fishing. Showing fireworks on the overworld if they are being fired off inside, indicating events.
     
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  7. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    I like the concept of the overworld-as-fast-travel-lobby. I think it has its own issues but I would not relish having to go through dozens of load screens and ride across many zones to get where I'm going. Especially since to make that relevant you'd have to ditch all of the teleport-to-zone and teleport-to-friends scrolls entirely. I think the overworld is an elegant way to deal with performance limitations that would otherwise have us loading enormous scenes for no real purpose other. It would also create a very linear gameplay if you had to pass through x scene to get to y scene, instead of allowing the player to roam freely. You can already do this to some extent underground. Imagine if those catacombs were only way to get anyplace.
     
  8. Sentinel2

    Sentinel2 Avatar

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    What if there were no load screens.

    Ashes of Creation is doing that with their MMORPG. You walk from town into the wilderness. From there you walk into caves or whatever. No load screens.

    :D
     
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  9. craftymethod

    craftymethod Avatar

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    It seems logical scene sizes will only increase from here on out, push out the borders to less noticed places. Makes you wonder,

    "What is the biggest size a scene could be?"

    Imagine if once boats are in, coastal harbour scenes could transition to however larger scenes with only boats and limited land in them. I wonder if you could get 4 scenes to wrap around all of Novia or how many scenes would it take to 1:1 the cloth map scale? (imagine a 24h charity event sailing the perimeter of the known world lol)

    No need for backdrops or much visuals of the coast, sextants could be used to acquire headings of town access points. Would sure feel like there are no loading screens out there!

    Large maps would make looking for an invisible marker of some kind interesting that could trigger text to load a scene of event islands etc:

    "We have discovered Something on the horizon!" [Sail Towards] - [Sail Away]

    And when computers get a little more powerful, it would then be more realistic to make bigger scenes between towns on the Novian mainland.

    My random thoughts anyway, no idea what the Dev's plans might be.
     
  10. smack

    smack Avatar

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    I used to be a big proponent of this but given how things turned out, I would actually propose the exact opposite. :eek:

    If they allowed basically any interaction on the overworld, you could play most aspects of the game on it. Every adventure scene and town should be its own playable mini overworld map. Combat actions can perhaps take you into its own separate scene. Entering buildings or homes could do the same. The game would run and load 100x faster.

    :)
     
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  11. Xee

    Xee Bug Hunter

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    I had brought this up before with them as well, or at least to minimize the map access they could at least link forests together and zones that are close with passes etc. then as they expand they can alter the passes as they see fit to keep expanding
     
  12. Jason_M

    Jason_M Avatar

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    We would have a giant procedurally generated wolf habitat.
     
  13. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    Its not a new concept, other games have done/do it, but I think the load screens in Sota are more due to limitations of the engine from my understanding.
    Most of these games also included some sort of fast travel network, either via caravans, gryphons, ships, etc to get you to the right part of the world.

    As an aside, there was a period before persistence where I experienced a bug on the overworld where I was getting pulled into encounters every 2 steps (before they were visible bandits and such). It made getting anywhere actually impossible. Like 8 encounters between Soltown and Perennial Trail impossible. As a result, I got really familiar with the underground tunnels for travelling to Solania, Ardoris, Spectral Foothills and don't think I "came up for air" the entire release. Usually half a dozen loadscreens to get to two points on the map that were relatively close.

    I suppose now that we have teleport-to-zone scrolls it -could- be done, but you still have to get there in the first instance to unlock it, and I think rather than walk scene to scene, loadscreen to loadscreen, you'd simply have people making liberal use of teleport to friend rather than walking thus making implementing it that way pointless - its bypassable.

    The other issue is that "logging to the worldmap" is an option I'd not like to see us lose - not just for when you get stuck (which lets face it, its realllly useful for getting unstuck, esp when /stuck wont work if you're in combat or your character's glitching/hopping up and down, etc.), but its useful to save yourself some load screens if you're in an embedded scene, basement, etc.

    I don't think sota-without-loadscreens is a technical possibility though. I mean how would you deal with things like nested towns? Going to make them walk the wagon route? Not to mention the amount of work involved to link everything together, I just don't see it happening.
     
  14. Sentinel2

    Sentinel2 Avatar

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    Maybe. However there are other games such as RUST which use Unity just fine. And it's one really big map :D
     
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  15. Oakenhammer

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    The overworld design allows for them to add, remove, relocate, and otherwise modify entire zones without having to rebuild an open world. Can you imagine having to rebuild the world every time a POT owner changed the biome of their POT or moved their city?
     
  16. Rada Torment

    Rada Torment Community Ambassador (ES)

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    Correct. Its not an engine limitation (Unity here), its more about what you do with your game. If you try to put the housing system of this game into Rust, you would have another, worse, experience. Unplayable in most cases.

    So at the end engines are not limited when you want create an open seamless world, instanced worlds or a game like sota with tons of loading screens. What you put into your game and how you do it to implement theses systems is the key to understand how all these tech things works in the process of creating a game.

    Same when people talk about graphics quality with Unity, but the reality is that you can still find few Unity games looking better than some others created with UE. It's not always a matter of engine capabilities, but the skills and experience of developers.
     
    Last edited: Sep 30, 2019
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  17. DavidDC

    DavidDC Programmer Moderator SOTA Developer

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    The way i see it is like this:

    The loading screen would still be there. We can't change that.
    - Probably alot of map would need to go, all those that are useless or that no one go or have nothing special in it, no quest nothing, out. That will reduce the big puzzle of interconnecting all the scene together AND they could be on standby for a further episode and would be reworked on.
    - Runebook would become available. You can mark and use a teleport scroll on a rune to get the placed you marked it.
    - Teleport to friend and recall would act like it is now. But with a 1 hour timer
    - Teleport to zone would be used to recall on the rune from the book. At a great coast with still a timer of at least 30 minute, maybe even one hour too.
    Loading to the world map cause you are stuck could be easily fix using that stuck button, which could resurrect you and place you at entrance of the map (by which point you entered).



    Lets take soltown, map around soltown are - the swamps map, solace bridge, all pot around til the door to grundvald.

    Soltown have 2 entrance, one would lead to solace bridge, which can then have a way for solace bridge outskirt and for the grundvald door, also have a few entrance for the pot around there (which could also be connected to the outskirt directly or near the entrance of the grundvald door (sry cant remember the name, eastgrasp something).
    While the other open the path to east veiled swamp, and perennial coast, up to ardoris (all those map would include entrance to pot around)

    This is why teleport need to be on timer. This is what would be the regional economy, and why you would have to think twice before teleporting just anywhere around the world. Ressources node could have more ressources in them by an insane amount because you gonna have to walk to get back. And not just teleport around and collect everything quick. Less exploit, less grinding, more exploration, regional economy, loading screen that actually matter, in the end, fun.

    This would just be perfect for everything.
     
  18. Spungwa

    Spungwa Avatar

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    To me I like the possible flexibility of the overworked map and zone.

    As was said earlier it makes changing zone, position of POTs in the much easier.

    Some towns are decorated so such an extent they are slow to load, I can completely avoid then if I wish, Port has real control, or need any, for stopping that. But if I have to run past POTs I can't avoid then.

    Where I think the real beauty of the overworld is though is allowing Port to make games within the game. Different zone can have different rulesets, restrictions, and anything really Port can think of all in the same game. It could have a scene where combat is completely different. Say the wind valley where ranged combat and ranged magic doesn't work. You could have a scene where no combat worked at and all equipment does nothing (no jump modifiers) and create an assault course with timers. There are no limits as you can load and unload anything on zone in and out.
    All this without forcing a player into the zone, if it is a playstyle they don't like.

    This is not as easy to integrate into the overall game if you try to make this seamless.

    So I say, keep the overworld, embrace the instancing of zones, but use the advantages of that system by making unique and varied zones with different challenges not just different scenery.


    Regards
    Spung
     
  19. DavidDC

    DavidDC Programmer Moderator SOTA Developer

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    The game wouldnt be seamless, there would still be zone and all you mentionned would remain the same. When approching an exit a messge could be thrown saying your about to enter X places, with as much detail as needed.
     
  20. OzzyOsbourne

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    what do you do with all the random encounters? most of them have stuff like unicorns that you cannot find anywhere in the game
     
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