Game Development Community

Play field size?

by Warren Gordon · in Torque Game Engine · 09/10/2004 (1:50 am) · 3 replies

Hiya

Im new to the torque engine , I was wondering how big can you have the play field size (level size)...

Im thinking of creating a very big level eg.. solar system size with real size planets
would this be possible?
or would it involve splitting it up

I know they manged to do this with elite sequals without stopping to load bits where flying around a solar system

thanks for any advice

#1
09/10/2004 (3:51 am)
Doing something like EVE is certainly possible atm. Eve uses Stargates to jump between solar systems and that is when it loads the objects.. etc.

Typically in torque, the longest part of the loading time is down to lightmap generation, but if your doing a space game it might be better not to lightmap anything and uses some dynamic lighting such as the Synapse Lighting Pack.
#2
09/11/2004 (11:34 am)
Thanks Westy.... i didnt know that about the light map

im not sure i put the scale into my first question... what mean to say is

im thinking of creating a solar system where the planets are life size eg.. 1m = 1m therefore it is possible for the chappy flying his craft though the solar system enter orbit and land on the planet...without loading

so the playing field will be the real life size of an entire solar system... the planets will have all there details(forests, cities,wildlife) all on one map

im thinking it might be possible due to the detail /range cut off ... eg things dont appear till your X amount of meters away from it

but im totally new to all this so any advice is welcome
#3
09/13/2004 (7:46 am)
It could be possible if you dynamically generate the surface of the planet. You wouldnt be able to use real world data, it would just be too much.

You would almost certainly run into problems with the coordinate system. The maximum orbital distance of pluto is 7.38 trillion meters. a 32 bit integer only goes up to 4 billion or so.

Its totally possible though, its just gonna take a little modification. Google for a program called "Celestia" its pretty spiffy.