Originally posted by dwhapham

A paging system accomplishes the same thing as zones do except they do it in real time as opposed to waiting for then entire zone to load in and out of memory. You can make a world of unlimited size and detail with a paging system. LOTR does it well, and so does WOW. LOTR for example has great graphics and will even run well on a P4 1.5 Ghz PC with 756MB RAM, and a Geforce3 VC (which is what I run on my spare PC). I know AOC will have even better graphics and will no doubt require more robust PC specs then LOTR, but saying the zones are the only way to create a detailed world is simply false. Zones actually limit what you can load into memory at any one time while paging systems load only the visible gameworld thus alowing you to load more objects and textures into the scene at any one time. Now, that's not to say the AOC isn't using a paging system within its zones, but I haven't seen any technical info to support that.... The only logical reason I can see for choosing zones is because of their planned console port.

I apologize for the rudeness, but are you being deliberately obtuse?

Let me spell it out for you. The developers want to include various portions of three different nations within the world of Hyboria as described by R.E.H. You can have a look at the map yourself HERE

Now pay attention, each of those nations are quite large, one of them alone could easily account for ingame landmass a thousand times over.

The game starts you off in the Barachan isles over on the west coast by Zingara, your following time is mainly spent in the nations of Aquilonia, Stygia, and Cimmeria, with visits to various other regions, including the spot labeled Border Kingdoms (where players will be sieging each other's pvp cities.)

This is already a hell of a lot of land to cover. If the designers were to make it seamless AND remain true to the lore, they would have to include even more, primarily the nations in between these regions, and probably the ones immediately surrounding those.

So, you are essentially asking them to either entirely abandon the lore which is one of the major selling points of the game in favor of a cartoonishly designed world that defies all laws of physics as it applies to weather patterns, or for them to create a virtual world approximately the size of Europe. And if, as I suspect they already intend to do, they add Khitai (over on the east coast) to the landmass in a later expansion, you'd be asking them to do something closer to the size of Asia. Somehow or another, I don't think players are going to love the idea of it taking literally months to go from one area to another. They already complain about EVE, with its half hour long distance trips (or several hours if they didn't pay attention to the tutorial and used autopilot like an idiot)

Of course, they could make it seamless, remain true to the lore, and still have a realistic programming goal. Hmm, maybe this is a good opportunity for them to introduce professions? Because like I said before, farming for grain is pretty much the only thing we will have to do except inside Tarantia itself. See you on the fields! We've got to beat up lots of that pesky wheat to meet quota!

Ryun, not this particular tidbit of info. Its zoned, trust me.

I agree that Vanguards seamless paging system is a wreck (almost everything about that game is) but many other games have done well with seamless worlds.

Aelfinn, I'm not sure you have a good grasp of how a seamless paging system is supposed to work... You can actually include MORE detail with a paging system then you can with a zone system since only the visible game world is loaded into memory at any one time. It doesn't matter how large the world is since only a small portion is loaded in RAM at any given moment. This means you have more memory to work with and more room to load textures, meshes, and effects. If the system is optimized well and includes multithreading (like in LOTR) the loading of objects in and out of memory as a player moves around the game world will be almost undetectable. The thing that worried me about AOC when I read the FAQ, is that the devs said the zones would only be a few kilometers in size which to me doesn't sound very large.  I wonder how many zones they have planned?

Originally posted by dwhapham

I agree that Vanguards seamless paging system is a wreck (almost everything about that game is) but many other games have done well with seamless worlds.

Aelfinn, I'm not sure you have a good grasp of how a seamless paging system is supposed to work... You can actually include MORE detail with a paging system then you can with a zone system since only the visible game world is loaded into memory at any one time. It doesn't matter how large the world is since only a small portion is loaded in RAM at any given moment. This means you have more memory to work with and more room to load textures, meshes, and effects. If the system is optimized well and includes multithreading (like in LOTR) the loading of objects in and out of memory as a player moves around the game world will be almost undetectable. The thing that worried me about AOC when I read the FAQ, is that the devs said the zones would only be a few kilometers in size which to me doesn't sound very large.  I wonder how many zones they have planned?

 

You are still missing the point entirely

A realistically proportioned seamless version of the Hyborian world include vast stretches of... nothing whatsoever important. As I keep mentioning, if the game remains centered around King Conan and his city, the only thing outside of the walls for miles would be well patrolled farmland with little dangers aside from maybe a few bandits.

I know the size doesn't matter in terms of software mechanics, but we are talking about enough land that it would take literally decades to encode (IF Funcom gets a much larger team than they currently have on staff), and who knows how many dozen external harddrives a computer would need just to hold the clientside map files.

Originally posted by dwhapham

The thing that worried me about AOC when I read the FAQ, is that the devs said the zones would only be a few kilometers in size which to me doesn't sound very large.

Originally posted by dwhapham

Originally posted by amous
I dont see what the big deal is, so what they are using zones. I mean is that going to kill the game for you.

It depends on how they are implemented. I'm sure most people would like to do without loading screens when traveling around the game world if they could. It takes away from immersion. As most people who played DAOC or Everquest can remember, they can also be easily exploited when fighting NPCs or other players. What worries me the most is that is is a regression in gaming technology. Most modern gaming engines use paging systems (LPs). To say that we are using zones so we can put more detail in the gameworld doesn't fly since the same thing can be done with LPs and without loading screens. I just think it was a bad early design choice by the devs. Does it mean the game will suck? of course not.

 

 

Originally posted by dwhapham

Like many, I can’t wait for this game to be released. I am however a little worried about the fact that they are using zones which are only 1 to 2 kilometers in length and width as opposed to creating a seamless game world like almost all newer MMORPGs. They say they are doing this so that they can add more detail to the game world, but I know for a fact that there are ways to use landscape and mesh paging systems to load and destroy object in memory as a player moves around the game world. This allows game developers to add as much detail as they want, and still keep the game world seamless (I’ve created LP systems myself using the Truevision3d and Irrlicht game engines).  Zones are old school and easily exploitable in combat. They also take a lot away from immersion. I’m really at a loss on why the AOC devs would even consider using zones.

Originally posted by dwhapham

Like many, I can’t wait for this game to be released. I am however a little worried about the fact that they are using zones which are only 1 to 2 kilometers in length and width as opposed to creating a seamless game world like almost all newer MMORPGs. They say they are doing this so that they can add more detail to the game world, but I know for a fact that there are ways to use landscape and mesh paging systems to load and destroy object in memory as a player moves around the game world. This allows game developers to add as much detail as they want, and still keep the game world seamless (I’ve created LP systems myself using the Truevision3d and Irrlicht game engines).  Zones are old school and easily exploitable in combat. They also take a lot away from immersion. I’m really at a loss on why the AOC devs would even consider using zones.

Welcome to 1999.

"I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves; that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day." - Thomas Pain

AOC will be using a modified anarchy online graphics engine. Expect it to have massive lag during pvp and other such problems and limitations parallel to the ones ao has.

Originally posted by Jetrpg
FAnboys FANboys Fanboys , the alarms sounds.

Seriously, what now zones = good because after all AOC is using them :)
I have never minded Zones so this is no biggy to me but i can't stand fanboydom. Sorry to hate , but id rather hate and think then love and Dee de Deee.

why are they doing it ... most likely it how they setup it up in the early stages of the game... tho seeing this makes me wonder how much of the AOC hype is just that .. After all they are using zones because its easier to code for it. and if your coders have issues addressing that then....

But still i am still playing many games with zones and they are wonderful as could AOC be ... but lets not go out and paint the fact that AOC is using outmoded zones as a GOOD thing.

A good thing? Not really. If it was possible within reason for AoC to have a seamless world, I'd still be playing it, but would be somewhat disappointed with FC. Of course, I mean Seamless like WoW is, not Vanguard.

However, like I keep saying, no matter how easy or hard the two methods are compared to each other, a true seamless world is quite simply not realistically possible within the Hyborian world, while remaining remotely true to lore.

Whether or not seamless is an overall "better" option, zoned is the only option open to the devs.

Welles, they are using a graphics engine that has been completely rebuilt based around solving the problems AO had. Huge fricking difference. Will it be perfect? Doubt it, nothing ever is. Will it have all or even most of the same problems AO did? almost definitely not.

How is what I've written fanboyism? I mean personally I'd love it if there weren't zones but I think I've raised a pretty valid reason why they have zoned it. Simply, if you want to portray cimmeria, Aquilonia and Stygia then there is a huge distance between them. Given Hyboria is the Eurasian and African continent, that's a lot of ground to cover. Clearly you know nothing about the lore.

Originally posted by Jetrpg
FAnboys FANboys Fanboys , the alarms sounds.

Seriously, what now zones = good because after all AOC is using them :)
I have never minded Zones so this is no biggy to me but i can't stand fanboydom. Sorry to hate , but id rather hate and think then love and Dee de Deee.

why are they doing it ... most likely it how they setup it up in the early stages of the game... tho seeing this makes me wonder how much of the AOC hype is just that .. After all they are using zones because its easier to code for it. and if your coders have issues addressing that then....

But still i am still playing many games with zones and they are wonderful as could AOC be ... but lets not go out and paint the fact that AOC is using outmoded zones as a GOOD thing.

"I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves; that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day." - Thomas Pain