just how big will the world be? Thread - Boundless

Looking through your posts, you say things about Cities and temples and STUFF. so just how big will this world be? and will there be map/mod making tools or procedural generation?

We have no plans for procedural generation as we are using the UDK, so we have to prebuild lights, paths and other things.

How big it will be? I dunno, we'll notice. We want to make it big, and if the game unfolds to be a fun game, it will be big.

We have talked a very lightly about shipping the editor with the game, as there some UDK mappers out there that can probably make things we haven't even thought of, but we havne't nailed anything yet, as making proper mod support will probably require a UE3 licence and even more time (If someone knows how to make proper mod support with the UDK, please contact me). Before we even think this through seriously, we want a game that is fun!

Edited by: mackyman

Right now our programmers are working with the game's core systems such as hunger, sleep, inventory, etc, but we have two designers that are constantly expanding the map to make it as big, scripted, and rich as possible. Having a seamlessly huuuuge world is very important to Boundless, so that's something our designers will constantly work on. Like Mackyman said, it would be awesome if we would find a way for the community to help us make the world even bigger (as making high-quality scripted worlds takes a lot of time), but you will definately never have to worry about running out of content to explore in Boundless when the game is complete.

Awesome, i fudging love huge, beautiful worlds, and this certainly looks beautiful... i can imagine those cites right now...

mackyman wrote: We have no plans for procedural generation as we are using the UDK, so we have to prebuild lights, paths and other things.

Aw to bad. i was hoping for a infinite random generated world. Have you thought about using other engines? Maybe you guy's should have a talk with the creators of Outerra, their engine is still in alpha but their terrain system is just awesome.

We haven't thought of using any other engine, as we are well familiar with the UDK, the increased production speed is something that we really like a lot ( 2½ years of using it for me, and up to 3½ years for some in the team ).

Personally, I don't think there are any silver bullet when choosing game engines. The ability to not prebuild things means that doing it runtime will be slower. Choosing a engine that support a world without prebuilt light will mean that the lightning probably won't be as pretty. So we need to reduce everything in poly-count and the number of meshes for instance. Everything has a tradeoff.

It would be cool to have random generated worlds, but I don't think they ever will be as pretty, or giving us the real advantage we want with preconstructed environment. Because, we'll really need to construct the environment to be able to challange the player with good progress, as the items a carefully placed all around the world.

Edited by: mackyman

Hello,
At first, I really appreciate your work and I am really waiting for your games which seems to be awesome!
I only have 2 little questions regarding the self generation of the map.

1) I completely agree with you that if you make the map entirely, it will be way prettier than if it was auto-generated.
But, if I start the game twice, will all the elements be at the same place? Will the world be exactly the same?

2) If you make the map entirely, there is a risk that the game will maybe be too much scripted. For instance, if you want to cross a river, you need item a which allows you to get item b which allows you to cross the river. But you can only find these 2 items if you already have access to another area which you can access if you have item c or d etc.
My point is, will the player be really free to explore the world as he want, or will he have to follow one path if he doesn't want to die.

Hope my questions are clear enough and my english not too bad!

Thanks for your efforts!

Teoln

A quick question regarding death, and the steps afterwards.

When you die you must restart, right? What about your items that you were carrying? Will they stay where you died? Will your impact on the planet remain? If you continue the same map after death, will there be some sort of storage loot that you can find? Or perhaps a map that you could create to mark locations?

Ok, that was more than one question....

Teoln wrote: Hello,
At first, I really appreciate your work and I am really waiting for your games which seems to be awesome!
I only have 2 little questions regarding the self generation of the map.

1) I completely agree with you that if you make the map entirely, it will be way prettier than if it was auto-generated.
But, if I start the game twice, will all the elements be at the same place? Will the world be exactly the same?

2) If you make the map entirely, there is a risk that the game will maybe be too much scripted. For instance, if you want to cross a river, you need item a which allows you to get item b which allows you to cross the river. But you can only find these 2 items if you already have access to another area which you can access if you have item c or d etc.
My point is, will the player be really free to explore the world as he want, or will he have to follow one path if he doesn't want to die.

Hope my questions are clear enough and my english not too bad!

Thanks for your efforts!

Teoln

You have a lot of good questions! What we want to do basically is test and see what works best. We know already that we never want to put limits on the player, and players should never have to follow one "optimal path". Our aim is to make a game that is more free and more sandbox than any previous game. I understand your post, no players should feel they have to follow a certain path to progress, and ideally there should be a million ways to cross a river in the first place. Anyway, we are a few months away from those problems (for example, there aren't any rivers at all in Boundless yet ), so when we get there, we'll test different things and see what works best. But we completely agree with your post!

Phaez wrote: A quick question regarding death, and the steps afterwards.

When you die you must restart, right? What about your items that you were carrying? Will they stay where you died? Will your impact on the planet remain? If you continue the same map after death, will there be some sort of storage loot that you can find? Or perhaps a map that you could create to mark locations?

Ok, that was more than one question....

Hi!

Your question has already been answered here:
Indiedb.com

Also this is the "how big will the world be"-thread :p

why not after you make the game and have the map and everything make more maps that it randomly selects from and have the spawn random so they dont know what to expect

Edited by: daddya

It all depends on the pace we can produce content in.
We still don't know how much time it will take to make the world. It will probably take quite a while to create a world of the quality we want to achieve. Our current thought is to make one big world, but a alternative might be to make a few smaller maps that you have to survive in.

How about, if your pace allows, maybe one normal map, one smaller "practice" map where supplies are more abundant and you can get accustomed to the controls and layout of the game, and one "hardcore" map where everything drains faster and is harder.

Or you could do a difficulty system that bases how fast your fatigue and other stats increase (ie. stats rise faster in hard, slower in easy). This way a player could try again if they get bored at a different difficulty. I dunno if that really solves anything though.

i would much prefer one huge map to smaller maps myself

and no tutorial, it'll be intuitive, and if you cant figure it out LOOK IT UP

one large map is better if you ask me but I liked the idea about random spawn maybe not in alpha until the whole or almost all the world is made (when the world is big enough) so that its different every time rather than just play the same location over and over again because that could get a bit boring.

Phaez wrote: How about, if your pace allows, maybe one normal map, one smaller "practice" map where supplies are more abundant and you can get accustomed to the controls and layout of the game, and one "hardcore" map where everything drains faster and is harder.

Or you could do a difficulty system that bases how fast your fatigue and other stats increase (ie. stats rise faster in hard, slower in easy). This way a player could try again if they get bored at a different difficulty. I dunno if that really solves anything though.

I don't think we'll have difficulty levels in Boundless. Instead, everything will be hard =)

I think that sounds like the best way to do it.