Post by Damian on May 15, 2016 11:42:38 GMT 10
We've been saying since the beginning that we wanted to blend linear story telling with open levels that permit you to explore. Ultimately these levels would have a start and a finish, but you would have the freedom to find your own path to the finish and discover some side quests along the way.
This would also allow players to get the most out of enemy drops and chests to warrant the Flesh Crafting System and and our procedurally generated body parts.
We also felt that it helped separate us from some similar games like Nekro and Overlord which are linear games with minion mechanics.
I think we have delivered on that in the small Pre-Alpha level. However, we already started to run into some performance issues and limitations and the level is not even complete. We wanted to add more buildings and caves and larger terrain areas not to mention that this was supposed to be one of many levels.
"Premature optimization is the root of all evil", but clearly we have to do something. I want to mention that we have not been completely lax here. We're already doing some common sense optimisation like Occlusion Culling, Level Of Detail, Object Pooling, Screen Space processing, etc. The size of the levels simply requires more.
So I started researching other ways to reduce memory usage and CPU and GPU cycles.
Streaming
Large Open World games like Skyrim and Shadow of Mordor are too big too keep in memory all at once. They use a technique called "Streaming" whereby they slice the world up into manageable chunks called "tiles".
Tiles are approximately the same size as the player's maximum viewing distance so they cannot see the edge of the world and can contain terrain, roads, buildings, characters, etc. Tiles can be squares, circles, hexagons or virtually any shape you like.
In practice only the tile on which the player is standing and any adjacent tiles are loaded so that resource usage is kept low.
As the player moves through the world tiles are seamlessly loaded and unloaded as required to maintain the illusion of one large world.
The Difference
So now that I am implementing streaming in Lord Of Decay there is only a couple of key differences between Open Level and Open World.
The distinction is that:
The definition of Open World in this instance is something like Dragon Age Inquisition.
The Definition
Lord Of Decay will have 3 x acts (ACT I, ACT II, ACT III) and 3 x main regions so that story pacing and level design can proceed hand-in-hand.
You can only leave a region after completing a set of main story quests. Once you leave you cannot return.
So if you're a completionist you'll need to complete all side quests and exploring the map before leaving the region.
You can move around a region freely and encounter terrain and enter small buildings without any loading screens.
You can enter caves and large buildings by standing in front of the door and pressing E. There will be a short loading screen when travelling to these locations. Much like Skyrim.
So that's it. I hope that gives you a better sense of what the levels will look like and what kind of experience to expect in future builds.
This would also allow players to get the most out of enemy drops and chests to warrant the Flesh Crafting System and and our procedurally generated body parts.
We also felt that it helped separate us from some similar games like Nekro and Overlord which are linear games with minion mechanics.
I think we have delivered on that in the small Pre-Alpha level. However, we already started to run into some performance issues and limitations and the level is not even complete. We wanted to add more buildings and caves and larger terrain areas not to mention that this was supposed to be one of many levels.
"Premature optimization is the root of all evil", but clearly we have to do something. I want to mention that we have not been completely lax here. We're already doing some common sense optimisation like Occlusion Culling, Level Of Detail, Object Pooling, Screen Space processing, etc. The size of the levels simply requires more.
So I started researching other ways to reduce memory usage and CPU and GPU cycles.
Streaming
Large Open World games like Skyrim and Shadow of Mordor are too big too keep in memory all at once. They use a technique called "Streaming" whereby they slice the world up into manageable chunks called "tiles".
Tiles are approximately the same size as the player's maximum viewing distance so they cannot see the edge of the world and can contain terrain, roads, buildings, characters, etc. Tiles can be squares, circles, hexagons or virtually any shape you like.
In practice only the tile on which the player is standing and any adjacent tiles are loaded so that resource usage is kept low.
As the player moves through the world tiles are seamlessly loaded and unloaded as required to maintain the illusion of one large world.
The Difference
So now that I am implementing streaming in Lord Of Decay there is only a couple of key differences between Open Level and Open World.
The distinction is that:
- Open Level is several large regions that the player moves through in a given order and cannot return a previous region.
- Open World is several large regions that the player moves through in a any order and can travel between regions freely.
The definition of Open World in this instance is something like Dragon Age Inquisition.
The Definition
Lord Of Decay will have 3 x acts (ACT I, ACT II, ACT III) and 3 x main regions so that story pacing and level design can proceed hand-in-hand.
You can only leave a region after completing a set of main story quests. Once you leave you cannot return.
So if you're a completionist you'll need to complete all side quests and exploring the map before leaving the region.
You can move around a region freely and encounter terrain and enter small buildings without any loading screens.
You can enter caves and large buildings by standing in front of the door and pressing E. There will be a short loading screen when travelling to these locations. Much like Skyrim.
So that's it. I hope that gives you a better sense of what the levels will look like and what kind of experience to expect in future builds.