Originally posted by batolemaeus

You can create terrain procedurally too, and let people zone just like in Eve.

To be honest, i think saying "oh no, we can't do that because we have terrain" is very short sighted.

You can, it has been done on a smaller scale (hello wurm online), and you could easily do it on a larger scale if you want to. The only problem is, that nobody apparently wants to do it, apart form indie devs.

I think i listen enough reasons procedural terrain is extremely hard(read: not tangible) to implement. Everytime you make a step you have to check whether you are standing on terrain. Sounds simple? Its not. WIth free-form game like Eve, the only collision you have is between objects. Thats it. There is no "world" so to speak. Just floating objects.

Originally posted by jimmyman99 

 

I think i listen enough reasons procedural terrain is extremely hard(read: not tangible) to implement. Everytime you make a step you have to check whether you are standing on terrain. Sounds simple? Its not. WIth free-form game like Eve, the only collision you have is between objects. Thats it. There is no "world" so to speak. Just floating objects.

The ability to have a computer program automatically generate terrain has nothing to do with collision models. and with most terrain the collision models for the ground are simply a Z threshold coordinate that forbids the player from passing below a certain point.

Record was broken again this past Sunday (Jan18th) with a new high of 48,065 pilots online.

50K is gonna fall soon, I can just feel it.

eve is obviously dying.

Originally posted by Xennith

eve is obviously dying.

Agreed.

The steady increase in subscriptions and concurrent online players over the years is obviously just the dying gasp of EVE. 

Originally posted by sadeyx

Originally posted by lvlanoob

I've been playing this game for a couple of months now and I really like it. I've just been running some simple missions, doing some salvaging and mining, lvling my skills, and I've been podded a few times. After a couple of months I still feel like a complete noob. I LOVE it, because I know I've barely scratched the surface of what this game has to offer.

 

Thats exactly how I felt about the game when I first started playing.  But I made the mistake of soloing for too long and stopped playing for a long time after I got to the stage were I could solo lvl 4's in my Battleship.

I still come back every now and then, just wish I had joined a corp earlier.

Agreed 100%. Even though solo play in EvE is possible it really shines in group play. It was when I joined a bigger corp when I understood what EvE is about. It is truely a virtual world and not a single player online game. It is a very special game. And it is certainly not for everyone. But that's ok as long as CCP can pay their bills. Better have a special game than another WoW clone. Nothing against WoW. But we really do not need more WoW clones.

Anyway, what I like about CCP is how they try to push the limit even further. Being a software engineer myself I have maximum respect for them. They're really into state-of-the-art technology, always eager how to squeeze even more performance out of their system. That's cool imho. CPP shows what is technically possible if you try whereas other companies don't care about new ways.

hi ppl just want to point a thing we started talking here about online users on EVE server and now some of you talk about gameplay, make yourself a question if you cant focus in a thread are you able to focus in EVE to reach your goals ?
0/
kthxbye

Originally posted by cosy

hi ppl just want to point a thing we started talking here about online users on EVE server and now some of you talk about gameplay, make yourself a question if you cant focus in a thread are you able to focus in EVE to reach your goals ?
0/
kthxbye

C'mon cosy, EVE players are masters of multi-tasking.  Who hasn't watched a movie, had a meaningful conversation with the wife, eaten dinner, and programmed a new web page while completing their favorite missions, mined a few belts or camped a gate for 4 hours to catch that one big freighter you knew was heading that way?

But  back on topic.... go EVE, 50K, 50K, 50K!!!!

Originally posted by Nicoli

Originally posted by jimmyman99 

 

I think i listen enough reasons procedural terrain is extremely hard(read: not tangible) to implement. Everytime you make a step you have to check whether you are standing on terrain. Sounds simple? Its not. WIth free-form game like Eve, the only collision you have is between objects. Thats it. There is no "world" so to speak. Just floating objects.

The ability to have a computer program automatically generate terrain has nothing to do with collision models. and with most terrain the collision models for the ground are simply a Z threshold coordinate that forbids the player from passing below a certain point.

Without the terrain, you have to only check whether your object bumps into another object. With terrain you check for walls, rocks, trees, plants and other static objects - and any given MMORPG is full of them. Procedural generating adds volume (bigger world) but you can't program it in a way that would make sense visually 100% time. What I mean is, with procedural formula, you'd have artifacts like trees growing out of rocks, which makes no sense. You would have to visually go through ALL of procedurally generated content and test for visual artifacts like that. Which, taking into consideration the size of Eve's world, would be extremely hard to do. Also, Z axis you mentioned is not as easy to implement as you think. What about holes? What about when one terrain does not connect well to another? Then you fall down through the world. Happens with all games. Has this happened in Eve? Nope. Because it doesn't have that dimension. Terrain is like a 4th dimension, but more complex because its not flat and it is full of static objects.

If i were to compare MMO world like WoW to Eve's world, imagine Eve's world where there is an object every 2-3 meters ( a ship/asteroid/canister). Eve world is huge by size but small by number of objects. Every single rock, tree, grass, bush, statue is an object your character has to interact with. Eve doesn't have that.

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Originally posted by jimmyman99
What I mean is, with procedural formula, you'd have artifacts like trees growing out of rocks, which makes no sense.

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Existing games prove you wrong. I've never seen a tree grow on rock in Wurm..

You need to put some hard work into your creation process, maybe even as much as other devs put into their custom created content. But after that, nothing stops you from making thousands of different worlds..

Seeing as how EVE doesn't have much terrain and uses only simple collisions, 47k is completely reasonable. I love it, really: not having to worry about retarded tactics like jumping around like a fucking rabbit or humping the ground in order to fully exploit the shitty physics of an Unreal snowclone and compete in PvP.

Simple gameplay, unparalleled depth.

While other games have higher concurrent users (across multiple shards) by virtue of having more subscribers, EVE actually has a community worth speaking of and does it all on one server.

But EVE is sort of in a class of it's own. This "OMGz HUEG PPL NUMBRS" record doesn't mean squat to the rest of the market (the other games are built in a completely different way), but at least it's nice to know that Tranquility hasn't died because of an overflow recently.

Originally posted by batolemaeus

 

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Originally posted by jimmyman99
What I mean is, with procedural formula, you'd have artifacts like trees growing out of rocks, which makes no sense.

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Existing games prove you wrong. I've never seen a tree grow on rock in Wurm..

You need to put some hard work into your creation process, maybe even as much as other devs put into their custom created content. But after that, nothing stops you from making thousands of different worlds..

Not exactly tree growing out of stone, but out of steep cliff edge.

Wurm online uses special tile technique, which allowed their procedural  formula to be able to change physical world by users. As in, if you dig long enough, you can dig a big hole in a mountain. Its a huge benefit but it has its own drawbacks - tiles are often visually noticeable and esthetically displeasing.

Im not sure if the "chess boar" effect above was intended, but still, notice from the screenshots the number of sharp tile edges.

The whole point of procedural generation is in letting a formula design the world for you. It doesn't matter how complex the formula is, it cannot replace a human 3d artist designing the same world. But thats besides the point. The point is, Eve does not have to worry about any of this. Eve has no terrain, so it does not have this 4th dimension.

Jimmyman99 thats not an example that you can't do Procedural terrain generation its that poorly written formulas for Procedural terrain generation gives you poorly generated terrain. The more detailed the  formulas the better the terrain will look. With the right equations you can get a nice enviroment that has waterfalls cliffs, trees, oceans, coastlines etc... just check out some of the Single player city sim games and the automatic terrain generation there.  its not hard to auto generate terrain and populate it with flora and fauna. its also key to remember in something like a MMO you will only generate it once then people will go over and clean it up and modify it as nessicary.  It allows you to create a large world easily and only need developers to modify small parts of it.

One hell of a server..

wonder how they cool it down o-o

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Originally posted by luckypotato
One hell of a server..
wonder how they cool it down o-o

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Considering that it's a blade bluster, they most likely cool them like normal blades. ;)

And jimmyman99, you got a few facts wrong.

First, your tree did not get placed there during creation process. It grew there afterwards, and was probably planted. The slope is too steep to occur naturally in wurm, it would have been a cliff with rock instead. So it was man made. Nothing new there, you could restrict player created slopes if you wanted.

Second, you can't dig a hole into a mountain. The rock layer will get into your way, and you can't modify it that easily.

The tile concept is something every game uses. Every single game available, because most do their terrain with heightmaps. Wurm has an unusual scale of the tiles, but by increasing the resolution of the heigthmap you can make them smaller, and also apply more sophisticated texturing. Hardly something to use as an argument that this technique is a bad one.

Oh by the way, wurm looks beautiful, without any human ever touching it manually during creation process. Just some variables being changed.

Furthermore, the 4th dimension is time. Eve doesn't use a lot of terrain yet, although the engine is capable of coping with it. This might change in the future, and will probably change with Ambulation and WoD (which i think might be closely related to eve, game design wise). They created New Eden procedurally, and if they make wod huge, they'll use it for WoD too.

To be at least a bit on topic:
<&Valkyrie> Tranquility (EVE-EVE-RELEASE@ccp 5.20.72263): OK, 41328 players

Maybe tomorrow :)

Originally posted by Nicoli

Jimmyman99 thats not an example that you can't do Procedural terrain generation its that poorly written formulas for Procedural terrain generation gives you poorly generated terrain. The more detailed the  formulas the better the terrain will look. With the right equations you can get a nice enviroment that has waterfalls cliffs, trees, oceans, coastlines etc... just check out some of the Single player city sim games and the automatic terrain generation there.  its not hard to auto generate terrain and populate it with flora and fauna. its also key to remember in something like a MMO you will only generate it once then people will go over and clean it up and modify it as nessicary.  It allows you to create a large world easily and only need developers to modify small parts of it.

I can't prove or disprove your statement. However, as I mentioned before, you cannot create a formula so detailed it will be 100% esthetically pleasing to the human eye. If there were such a formula, the world would be filled with AI and not humans. No formula can ever replace human brain and human artist. Please do not compare city sims to an MMO, thats like comparing a bicycle to an airplane.

It is much more feasible to NOT create the world procedurally and then go over it manually. thats double work. Its much easier to create a tool, like most games do, to help you to design a level. You can even see job postings specifically hiring level designers for various games. When you design the world manually with that tool, you just use brush tools to lay the basic terrains, hills/rivers/oceans/lakes. If you have ever used Bryce3d, Terragen, Eovia Carrara then you would understand that when you make a world by hand, you make it as realistic as your artistic skill is. When you use a formula, you sacrifice this human touch for the size of the world. Formula will never be as good as a human level designer.

Originally posted by batolemaeus

 

And jimmyman99, you got a few facts wrong.

First, your tree did not get placed there during creation process. It grew there afterwards, and was probably planted. The slope is too steep to occur naturally in wurm, it would have been a cliff with rock instead. So it was man made. Nothing new there, you could restrict player created slopes if you wanted.

How do you know that? If a player can plant a tree on such steep slope, then how can you be 100% sure the formula cannot do so as well? You can only say that if and only if it is absolutely impossible to plant a tree there, either by player or formula.

Second, you can't dig a hole into a mountain. The rock layer will get into your way, and you can't modify it that easily.

Irrelevant. You are nitpicking here. The whole point of my posts was to point out that since Eve's universe is lacking some of the standard restrictive planes, it is the reason why Eve can host such a huge world. The discussion then slowly moved into comparing procedurally generated with hand-made terrains, which is already kind of out of topic.

The tile concept is something every game uses. Every single game available, because most do their terrain with heightmaps. Wurm has an unusual scale of the tiles, but by increasing the resolution of the heigthmap you can make them smaller, and also apply more sophisticated texturing. Hardly something to use as an argument that this technique is a bad one.

Irrelevant to the topic.

Oh by the way, wurm looks beautiful, without any human ever touching it manually during creation process. Just some variables being changed.

Cant argue here. But still irrelevant.

Furthermore, the 4th dimension is time. Eve doesn't use a lot of terrain yet, although the engine is capable of coping with it. This might change in the future, and will probably change with Ambulation and WoD (which i think might be closely related to eve, game design wise). They created New Eden procedurally, and if they make wod huge, they'll use it for WoD too.

Pardon my poor choice of words. The word "plane" would be a lot more accurate then "dimension".

Please lets stop discussing terrain generation since it has nothing to do with Eve. Obviously we all have opinions on how it is done, but the topic is about concurrent players in one big universe. The universe that does not rely on a physical world like most MMOs will be able to accomodate unlimited size. I probably shouldn't have brought this up in the first place since Eve's universe is so much different from other games. From this erspective, Eve is the first (and so far the only one) of its kind (SP games do not count of course).