Worldmap and one big canvas

[Osvir]

Hi!

 

Wanted to first say what an amazing piece of art. Good job. It is very beautiful.

I've looked at it with a zooming glass, just because I appreciate the detail you managed to capture half a face in the waterfall as well, an angry God perhaps? Maybe even a statue in the waterfall which the water runs off from? No matter. The rock just next to the boat looks like a bearded man's head as well.

 

Has the thought struck you about one big world? One giant canvas? How intriguing does it seem versus the workload it naturally presents? Out of the scope or possibly a reality? A sandbox painting. There'd be prestige in it, no doubt. But is it something anyone would like to touch or even work with? Is it easier to create split areas instead of having a large painting?

Edited December 5, 2012 by Osvir

[Falkon Swiftblade]

They just posted on the newest update thread they're aiming for 20k pixels across per map, so it won't be a single canvas because that would WAYYYYYY too big. The Art Director compared it with the Icewind Dale maps saying those were roughly 4k pixels wide, so this game should be a fair amount bigger.

[Ieo]

No "open roaming" so there's no point to having a giant canvas world. Nor would it make sense because you'd need a realistic space between geographical regions for geological formations and climates to have logical progression (and it sounds like PE will have significant geographical range). Technically, it'd probably be impossible from the computing-power standpoint due to the tremendous size (file and otherwise) of the hand-painted art--the reason why "open roam" 3D can do that is because a lot of the art assets are repeating from a library or something, and you can disable stuff like "grass" to help render graphics faster. The hand-painted quality of the large and discrete IE-style maps makes each unique and not appropriate to repeating/tiling/whatever.

 

Old-school all the way.

[rjshae]

I've looked at it with a zooming glass, just because I appreciate the detail you managed to capture half a face in the waterfall as well, an angry God perhaps? Maybe even a statue in the waterfall which the water runs off from? No matter. The rock just next to the boat looks like a bearded man's head as well.

I can see at least four faces in the waterfall, plus a naked old woman's torso, a slide, and the snout of a wolf.

 

People are good at finding non-existent patterns in noise.

[Osvir]

Arr I agree with everything that is said personally it is just "It would be so cool!". Traveling across a giant world map that is one giant beautiful painting

[mstark]

It would be technologically possible to make an "open roaming" world in 2D, they'd still render their map files at 10-20k pixels square in a seamless manner, and create an engine that intelligently loads surrounding map areas in the background as you walk around. This would avoid overloading memory, and due to relatively slow travelling speed, the loading would never be seen and it would appear as one seamless world.

 

But I'm all with Ieo on this one, it's not really desirable for a game in this style. For one, it'd be impossible (time & cost) to make a world large enough to incorporate any form of realistic differentiation in geography. Not to mention that without fast travelling systems it'd take you hours of walking through beautiful, yet pointless, terrain to get anywhere, and implementing a fast travelling system kind of defeats the point of making it seamless to start with.

 

I would love to see something along those lines appear in an expansion, though. Say, the first expansion of PE would add a seamless, huge, map that covers the entirety of a section of the Dyrwood. It would be large, and allow seamless walking from one end to the other, but not so large as to make it impossible to fill with a decent content density.

Edited December 6, 2012 by mstark

[Osvir]

But I'm all with Ieo on this one, it's not really desirable for a game in this style. For one, it'd be impossible (time & cost) to make a world large enough to incorporate any form of realistic differentiation in geography. Not to mention that without fast travelling systems it'd take you hours of walking through beautiful, yet pointless, terrain to get anywhere, and implementing a fast travelling system kind of defeats the point of making it seamless to start with.

 

Well, Fast Traveling like TES and Fallout 3/NV is in concept like the IE fast traveling. When you find [Location] you can fast travel to it. I thought P:E would have a fast traveling system from point A to point B but I might be wrong? (Update #15-#16) Where in any of the posts in the thread is anyone talking about removing the Fast Travel feature?

 

Regardless, I'm on the same page.

 

Nor would it make sense because You'd need a realistic space between geographical regions for geological formations and climates to have logical progression (and it sounds like PE will have significant geographical range).

 

I think it would make excellent sense, "it makes no sense because it logically and realistically does make sense" is what I read from this quote (hence the S).

 

Yep.

Edited December 6, 2012 by Osvir

[mstark]

Yeah, the game will likely have fast travelling between areas, in the same way as Baldur's Gate 2 does: once you know of a location, you can go there. Creating all the landmass in between for people who would rather walk the entire way is not really feasible without tiling and repeated use of areas, this again defeats the point, since the only real reason to walk the entire way by foot would be to have a more realistic experience (ruined by repeated tiles), or to experience the scenery (there's no way they could fill it with enough content to make it worthwhile).

 

While it could be amazing to have a large seamless area to explore, I don't think they should go the route of Skyrim and create a huge & awesome, but rather soulless, world. I'd rather see many smaller, separate, highly differentiated, and content rich areas. I want to experience an awesome story, not a glorified Google Maps

 

If they did have the manpower, time, and money to actually make a seamless world filled with the same amount of content and diversity as we'd see in a BG2 style map, I'm all for it. That's why I think it could possibly make for a good expansion to expand a smaller area of the map to be a large, more seamless, one. Just to see what it'd be like .

 

Edit,

 

Example of a BG2 style map, with 20 exterior areas. Imagine each area is 20,000px x 20,000px:

 

 

 

 

Here's an example with these 20 exterior areas placed beside each other (80,000px x 100,000px). Visualizing how much work would be involved in creating the entire map as one seamless world:

 

 

Edited December 6, 2012 by mstark

[Wulfic]

Sacred had something like that. Check it out and I thought Sacred had more detail than the infinity engine. http://sacred.gameguru.ru/Pictures/maps/underworld/full_map_2.jpg

Sadly Sacred is only a H&S so I think it would be impossible to maintain Ai of the npcs and so on. In sacred they were just roaming the streets

[mstark]

Map looks very small, cramming a desert, grassland, and winter biome together. It works for some games, where you sacrifice realism to create a logistically enjoyable experience. So far, it seems like the PE devs aren't considering doing that, since they're developing a "realistic" world as part of their own IP.

 

Never played that game, but it looks awesome :D. How's the story/gameplay? Looks like a mix of something between IE and Diablo 2?

Edited December 6, 2012 by mstark

[Wulfic]

The story is really simple. A mighty wizard summons a Demon but fails demon wants to destroy the world. END. Not really to much cool quests. Its more like diablo for sure but the world of the game is really cool. The dragon look awesome and goblins and orcs and giants ( which are the most fun to kill because when they fell down there is such a cool loud echo ). Sadly u cant create ur own character you have to pick 1 from 8 archetypes. Well the difference between Sacred and diablo is Sacred has a really cool open world with many dungeons which dont load because all of them are part of the map,Huge cities,Huge monsters like dragons and mounts. For those who love to explore go for it its worth. I couldnt finnish the game myself because I hate h&s :/.

[HansKrSG]

Sacred had something like that. Check it out and I thought Sacred had more detail than the infinity engine. http://sacred.gamegu.../full_map_2.jpg

Sadly Sacred is only a H&S so I think it would be impossible to maintain Ai of the npcs and so on. In sacred they were just roaming the streets

 

Sacreds quests and monsters were random, or at least felt that way. It was big with lots of stuff, but it still felt empty. Maybe thats just my opinion though.

Edited December 6, 2012 by HansKrSG

[Wulfic]

Sacred had something like that. Check it out and I thought Sacred had more detail than the infinity engine. http://sacred.gamegu.../full_map_2.jpg

Sadly Sacred is only a H&S so I think it would be impossible to maintain Ai of the npcs and so on. In sacred they were just roaming the streets

 

Sacreds quests and monsters were random, or at least felt that way. It was big with lots of stuff, but it still felt empty. Maybe thats just my opinion though.

 

No,no ur totally right. Sacred was visually Awesome but it was booooring

[Hormalakh]

I just hope the devs have seen this thread.... http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61425-let-us-see-the-whole-area-please/

Edited December 6, 2012 by Hormalakh

[Falkon Swiftblade]

One thing I would like to see in this version of the game maps differently than the IE games is the perspective in different regions to change. Here's a few examples...

 

Here's an original IE game perspective in Icewind Dale 2. I get they're going for the whole no vanishing point in these types of games but the environments can feel kinda samey and boring.

 

 

I'm hoping for perspectives to be more like this, notice theres a background and who knows if you'll ever get there. There's also some dimension to the foreground so its not so birds eye view, but its still considered Isometric. I feel it makes the environments much more immersive and feel much larger than they really are.

 

 

 

Primarily what I'm saying is I want some foreground and background elements in there, so we see water below, or clouds below a cliff line. Maybe a floating rock or mountain peak you are ascending and the foreground is the side of the mountain and you pass water falls as we cross bridges etc. I don't just want this perspective the whole game with random objects obstructing my view. If the game turns out to basically be this, I'm gonna cry.

 

[rjshae]

I can see your point, but switching the viewing angle like that would require mathematically scaling the axes for movement, 3D rendering, shadows, lighting, displaying effects, and so forth. I'm not clear how practical it will be for them to make frequent viewing angle changes like that, unless they build it into the game from the start. But they can probably get comparable results just by planning the layout appropriately and using their artistic skills.

Edited December 7, 2012 by rjshae

[Falkon Swiftblade]

I don't think it'll be any different than what they're doing now. The main difference is how they draw the environmental art. Just imagine that top image in the OP and in the foreground was a cliff wall going down or a chasm with a waterfall in the foreground and a castle or keep in the background just out of shot. Instead of there being invisible walls or barriers it looks like a cliff that you wouldn't want to fall down, or maybe in another shot its the base of a mountain so you can't see up to the top.

[Jobby]

Personally i would like to see the BG1 system with wilderness tiles you had to pass through although i realise this is not to everyones tastes, for the resolution and detail Obsidian are planning i doubt a seamless world is possible although Divine Divinity is a very good example of a hand rendered 2D isometric game with a very large, detailed and seamless world

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&tbo=d&biw=1366&bih=620&tbm=isch&tbnid=whpSyeVDPjdKpM:&imgrefurl=http://lparchive.org/Divine-Divinity/Update%252001/&docid=Kv2eDg2Ljbk1wM&imgurl=http://lparchive.org/Divine-Divinity/Update%25252001/2-DD_partial_map.jpg&w=800&h=600&ei=MDnHUKrgBeOd0QW1roGwCQ&zoom=1

[Falkon Swiftblade]

hey does anyone remember if it was in the cards that we would have access to the world editor? I know there was mention of making it mod friendly where appropriate somewhere. I think by the time this comes out it will probably be really powerful.

[mstark]

They never promised a map editor or modding tools, as they wanted to focus the entire 18 month development period on making the game as awesome as it can be. Lots of people requested it, but it's not likely we'll see it with the initial release... maybe later if the game sells well enough