Creating an island, a really big island

#1 Hey jay -

i think atlas can go pretty big.

but if you want the player to encounter the occasional human dwelling or town or whatever,
you need to consider how much you're expecting on the story and modelling side.

#2 Would an island 2 or 3 thousand miles across be feasable?

#3 IIRC something about the size of lake ontario would be possible with Atlas.

#4 Hi guys,

According to Ben Garney, Atlas can support land masses larger than the "observable universe" so the engine probably won't hold you back. :)

However, storage space for all that terrain data will be the killer. Depending on the resolution of your landmass, and the texture coverage, you may run out of hard drive space long before TSE stops accepting chunks.

By the way, if an island is 2 or 3 'thousand' miles across, I think you should start calling it a continent.

:)

#5 Ok that's what I was after, thanks Aaron.

You're right, it is a continent, I just wanted to avoid the "infinitely repeating terrain/mosaic replies" =)

Thanks!

#6 Ok one more n00b question on this topic:

This would be for an online FPS, would all that terrain data need to be stored on the client machines or could we somehow stream if from our servers?

#7 I can't truly answer the streaming/storage question for your situation, but my general opinion is that if everyone is living in the same world, walking on the same terrain and splashing in the same ocean, it would be better to keep all of that unchanging data on client-side hard drives rather than taking up bandwidth from all of the vital transitory gaming data (like movement, firing, etc.)

There are probably other opinions on that though. :)

#8 Would it be possible to chop up our continent into smaller pieces without resorting to a repeating terrain so the whole thing doesn't have to be loaded at any given time?

I'm trying to understand this whole process a bit better and find out what our options are for a landmass of this size. Is it even possible?

#9 I don't think I did a good job with that in my last post. Sorry. I'll try again.

The way I understand it, you can stream data for gigantic terrains, whenever it is needed (currently visible parts for example). So in TSE, there's no need to break your landmass up into separate chunks. Streaming terrain data from a user's hard drive into the engine, when needed is pretty much standard behavior in TSE.

However, if you wanted to stream all of the data from a central location (from a dedicated server for exampe) to all connected clients, you could probably do that also with a fair amount of work. But what I was getting at earlier was the idea that frequently changing information should take up bandwidth, not static data. If your land mass is the same for everyone, then it seems to make sense to keep it on everyone's hard drives rather than sending all of it over network cable.

However, I can think of some instances where you might want to stream more static content over the network.

This is all just speculation on my part (from what little I think I know of TSE). Hopefully someone else can clarify or correct me where I've messed up.

;)

#10 No that's great, I appreciate it!

That's exactly what I was after, our limit is, in reality, how much room we can spare on our DVD for our project....right?

Maybe there's another thread for this(?) but, is anyone else making anything similar? And if so, how much of your DVD is your terrain taking up?

Thanks Aaron,

Jay

#11 Yes, as I understand it, storage is your only real limitation.

It sounds like your users/players will be running your app from the DVD rather than installing it on their computers. I'm guessing you are aiming at the console market then.

I don't know of anyone who is currently using TSE for gigantic land masses. If I had to guess, though, I bet Josh Ritter would probably use that feature for the next version of Minions of Mirth. His project seems ideally suited for TSE/Atlas.