This dude is on his $*^# when it comes to this stuff, and while I'm not sure I can 100% understand it all (the only subjects where I excelled in school were English and computer classes), I can definitely say this is a very well-thought and well-spoken (well-typed, if you prefer) response.
It's also the first 3 pages of a brief history of time.
An indie MMO Love had a spherical world. If you advanced your settlement enough to get jump pads, you could launch yourself into space and take in a nice view of the planet. Or you could just try to run around the whole thing, and you'll end up back where you started.
Has there been a game with enough landmass to support a spherical world?
Most games choose a small area upon a world and as such don't encompass a large enough landmass to realistically portray a true globe, even if the game is set on a spherical world. As has been mentioned as well for the person on the ground you would never know that the world you live on isn't flat from your general day to day.
Unless an indie game picks up such an idea I don't think it'll happen to the extent many would like (I can't see a AAA trying it with modern MMO direction. Development costs would be one major issue for such a world to be developed to the standard most would accept, and as such restrictions are put in place (they could move into a procedurally generated world but that has it's own issues). I had dreams of what could be in the future of MMOs back when I started and very little to none has been realised, I don't forsee an MMO accomplishing this in the forseeable future given the advancement of the last decade in the genre.
Has there been a game with enough landmass to support a spherical world?
Most games choose a small area upon a world and as such don't encompass a large enough landmass to realistically portray a true globe, even if the game is set on a spherical world. As has been mentioned as well for the person on the ground you would never know that the world you live on isn't flat from your general day to day.
Super Mario Galaxy has a lot of very small worlds that are roughly spherical.
What I'm working on has a spherical world with a radius of about 1 kilometer. Trying to draw everything perspective correct for a real sphere would violate your intuition in many ways, as it would seem like every direction is always downhill off in the distance. So I draw the world as locally flat instead. That's large enough that it looks fine, and most MMORPGs have a game world about on par with that or larger.
Now, if you wanted to put one small zone onto a spherical world, you'd end up with more problems. You need a game world to be large enough that you can see way off in the distance, but what you can see out there is only a small fraction of the way around the sphere. But to make the entire game world a sphere will usually work fine. If from one corner of the game world, you can only see 10% of the way to the opposite corner, then that's plenty large enough that you could make it a sphere if you wanted to.
Originally posted by jalexbrown This is something I've been pondering for a while: While don't any MMO developers try to create spherical worlds? The idea of a flat world seems archaic; we've known for thousands of years that our world is round, so why are MMOs stuck in this flat plane? Imagine an MMO world that didn't need any sort of invisible walls, because going in any one direction long enough just meant you ended up where you started. Wouldn't that be ideal?
tell me something, can you do that in real life? so long as you pick a direction you can just keep going and you'll eventually end up where you started? the answer is no. people can't normally climb mountains and cross oceans, which is the major form of blockage you will find of why you can't go in one direction and eventually end up at the same spot.
invisible walls are in place to prevent idiots (the people who'll end up in a max level area when they're level 1 and then qq about it) and also to prevent explorers from seeing unfinished or spoiler areas.
technically the worlds are spherical in shape, they just have things in place that makes it not really feasable to travel the world in a complete circle. it's a pretty silly thing to want in the first place because unless you had a very small world which is a bad thing when talking about mmos, then it would take you forever to be able to pull it off. and you wanting devs to build the game just so you can do it is a bit stupid in my opinion. devs have better things to put their time and focus on.
Originally posted by jalexbrown The idea of a flat world seems archaic..
Only since those first orbital photos. That "Blue Marble" shot from Apollo 17, maybe. 1972?
Really, that's when people realized the world wasn't flat? I was sure it had been a few thousand years longer than that.
Originally posted by Sephiroso
Originally posted by jalexbrown This is something I've been pondering for a while: While don't any MMO developers try to create spherical worlds? The idea of a flat world seems archaic; we've known for thousands of years that our world is round, so why are MMOs stuck in this flat plane? Imagine an MMO world that didn't need any sort of invisible walls, because going in any one direction long enough just meant you ended up where you started. Wouldn't that be ideal?
tell me something, can you do that in real life? so long as you pick a direction you can just keep going and you'll eventually end up where you started? the answer is no. people can't normally climb mountains and cross oceans, which is the major form of blockage you will find of why you can't go in one direction and eventually end up at the same spot.
invisible walls are in place to prevent idiots (the people who'll end up in a max level area when they're level 1 and then qq about it) and also to prevent explorers from seeing unfinished or spoiler areas.
technically the worlds are spherical in shape, they just have things in place that makes it not really feasable to travel the world in a complete circle. it's a pretty silly thing to want in the first place because unless you had a very small world which is a bad thing when talking about mmos, then it would take you forever to be able to pull it off. and you wanting devs to build the game just so you can do it is a bit stupid in my opinion. devs have better things to put their time and focus on.
The world is only 24,906 miles around; right now I could hop into a commercial passenger plane and feasibly make it around the world in less than 48 hours (disregarding gas as an issue, of course). Now, I don't suggest that flying mounts (if you subscribe to the school of thought that flying mounts are okay in MMOs) should be comparable in speed to a commercial passenger plane, but I also don't suggest that an MMO world should be 24,906 miles around. Even if you took a world as large as Azeroth and wrapped it around a sphere, I'd wager you could hop on the fastest flying mount and travel around the world in a large but reasonable span of time.
Originally posted by jalexbrown The idea of a flat world seems archaic..
Only since those first orbital photos. That "Blue Marble" shot from Apollo 17, maybe. 1972?
Really, that's when people realized the world wasn't flat? I was sure it had been a few thousand years longer than that.
Originally posted by Sephiroso
Originally posted by jalexbrown This is something I've been pondering for a while: While don't any MMO developers try to create spherical worlds? The idea of a flat world seems archaic; we've known for thousands of years that our world is round, so why are MMOs stuck in this flat plane? Imagine an MMO world that didn't need any sort of invisible walls, because going in any one direction long enough just meant you ended up where you started. Wouldn't that be ideal?
tell me something, can you do that in real life? so long as you pick a direction you can just keep going and you'll eventually end up where you started? the answer is no. people can't normally climb mountains and cross oceans, which is the major form of blockage you will find of why you can't go in one direction and eventually end up at the same spot.
invisible walls are in place to prevent idiots (the people who'll end up in a max level area when they're level 1 and then qq about it) and also to prevent explorers from seeing unfinished or spoiler areas.
technically the worlds are spherical in shape, they just have things in place that makes it not really feasable to travel the world in a complete circle. it's a pretty silly thing to want in the first place because unless you had a very small world which is a bad thing when talking about mmos, then it would take you forever to be able to pull it off. and you wanting devs to build the game just so you can do it is a bit stupid in my opinion. devs have better things to put their time and focus on.
The world is only 24,906 miles around; right now I could hop into a commercial passenger plane and feasibly make it around the world in less than 48 hours (disregarding gas as an issue, of course). Now, I don't suggest that flying mounts (if you subscribe to the school of thought that flying mounts are okay in MMOs) should be comparable in speed to a commercial passenger plane, but I also don't suggest that an MMO world should be 24,906 miles around. Even if you took a world as large as Azeroth and wrapped it around a sphere, I'd wager you could hop on the fastest flying mount and travel around the world in a large but reasonable span of time.
thats where you're wrong(about it taking a reasonable amount of time). if you try running top to bottom of kalimdor it takes a retarded amount of time. and you can mostly achieve this, sure you have to take a few detours (more after the cataclysm) but the amount of time it takesjust to get to top to bottom of kalimdor is insane, then add in the ocean between kalimdor and northrend and then you're traveling from bottom and top of north rend and you pretty much have the time it takes to go around the world right there, its a stupid amount. (thats of course assuming you could travel the distance of the ocean.
and traveling by plane irl is obviously cheating/outside parameters. we're talking about traversing the world with our characters in an mmo. not a fucking air plane.
Originally posted by jalexbrown The idea of a flat world seems archaic..
Only since those first orbital photos. That "Blue Marble" shot from Apollo 17, maybe. 1972?
Really, that's when people realized the world wasn't flat? I was sure it had been a few thousand years longer than that.
Some people still haven't realized it, in fact. But until Missouri sees it with their own eyes, there ain't no such animal.
But 'a few thousand years' is probably a little generous--there's a Dark Ages in there--16th century (Magellan) perhaps.
Speculative, no clear demarcation--yep, perfect for a 40 page forum argument.
The theory of a spherical earth has been around since the 6th century BC. Despite modern media the world has been regarded as spherical for the largest part of the last 2000 years due to various observations. 240BC had the first estimation of the world's circumference at around 30,000 miles in Egypt. Humanity knew long before that photo the world wasn't flat.
Columbus for example knew the world was spherical, and this remains one of those woefully perpetuated myths. Don't get me wrong the vast majority of people wouldn't have known, but that would be down to education of the time, nor would they have likely cared with living conditions and other pressing matters being far more relevant and pressing to them.
The theory of a spherical earth has been around since the 6th century BC. Despite modern media the world has been regarded as spherical for the largest part of the last 2000 years due to various observations. 240BC had the first estimation of the world's circumference at around 30,000 miles in Egypt.
Columbus for example knew the world was spherical, and this remains one of those woefully perpetuated myths. Don't get me wrong the vast majority of people wouldn't have known but that would be down to education of the time, nor would they have likely cared with living conditions and other pressing matters being far more relevant.
It'd be fun to poll 11th centurty serfs to learn what they did or did not know about the next town over, let alone cosmology.
and traveling by plane irl is obviously cheating/outside parameters. we're talking about traversing the world with our characters in an mmo. not a fucking air plane.
In every measure except speed, how is a plane not comparable to a flying mount?
and traveling by plane irl is obviously cheating/outside parameters. we're talking about traversing the world with our characters in an mmo. not a fucking air plane.
In every measure except speed, how is a plane not comparable to a flying mount?
first off flying mounts are only added to appease newer generation of players. most mmo players(the ones who actually use their brains and not their "omg thats cool" feelings) know that flying mounts are on a whole BAD for an mmo experience.
second off, you're not traveling the world in a plane, you're merely going around it.
Ultima Online is a sphere in lore, but the map is topologically a doughnut.
Co-ordinate systems for truely spherical worlds have a lot of extra math in all your movement calculations that only make a difference over large distances.
The way I might hide the math is to make most of the world ephemeral, procedurally-generated wilderness dotted with a sparse collection of permanent and semi-permanent flat zones. This lets you have characters move from square map to square map, while hiding all the quirks of curvature in the way the winderness is generated as you meander around.
Originally posted by jalexbrown The idea of a flat world seems archaic..
Only since those first orbital photos. That "Blue Marble" shot from Apollo 17, maybe. 1972?
Really, that's when people realized the world wasn't flat? I was sure it had been a few thousand years longer than that.
Some people still haven't realized it, in fact. But until Missouri sees it with their own eyes, there ain't no such animal.
But 'a few thousand years' is probably a little generous--there's a Dark Ages in there--16th century (Magellan) perhaps.
Speculative, no clear demarcation--yep, perfect for a 40 page forum argument.
See post #23 in this thread. People knew that the world was round in ancient times. And they not only knew that the world was round; they knew its radius and their own local latitude to decent precision. Once you have some notion of trigonometry, it's not that hard to compute. You really just need three people who live hundreds of miles away from each other to take fairly precise measurements of the sun for a year and then get together to compare them.
Originally posted by jalexbrown The idea of a flat world seems archaic..
Only since those first orbital photos. That "Blue Marble" shot from Apollo 17, maybe. 1972?
Really, that's when people realized the world wasn't flat? I was sure it had been a few thousand years longer than that.
Some people still haven't realized it, in fact. But until Missouri sees it with their own eyes, there ain't no such animal.
But 'a few thousand years' is probably a little generous--there's a Dark Ages in there--16th century (Magellan) perhaps.
Speculative, no clear demarcation--yep, perfect for a 40 page forum argument.
See post #23 in this thread. People knew that the world was round in ancient times. And they not only knew that the world was round; they knew its radius and their own local latitude to decent precision. Once you have some notion of trigonometry, it's not that hard to compute.
i'd challenge that thought of people knowing the world was round back in ancient times just based on the fact that yes, after the fact, we can see how it would be easy for them to figure things out, but that doesn't mean thats what they actually thought.
based on your moon eclipse example, they could have just seen the eclipse and thought the world was a circle, but not a sphere. so it would still be a flat circle.
and the ships on the horizon thing, im sure they were used to hills on the land, so maybe they thought the same could happen with the water.
i mean you're talking about people that thought the gods were angry when it rained or stormed. i'd say you're giving them to much credit.
and traveling by plane irl is obviously cheating/outside parameters. we're talking about traversing the world with our characters in an mmo. not a fucking air plane.
In every measure except speed, how is a plane not comparable to a flying mount?
first off flying mounts are only added to appease newer generation of players. most mmo players(the ones who actually use their brains and not their "omg thats cool" feelings) know that flying mounts are on a whole BAD for an mmo experience.
second off, you're not traveling the world in a plane, you're merely going around it.
Flying mounts? Ha! How about teleportation. We still don't have that in real life the way that some games do. On the bright side, real-life doesn't come with loading screens while you wait for the zone that you're teleporting to to load.
and traveling by plane irl is obviously cheating/outside parameters. we're talking about traversing the world with our characters in an mmo. not a fucking air plane.
In every measure except speed, how is a plane not comparable to a flying mount?
first off flying mounts are only added to appease newer generation of players. most mmo players(the ones who actually use their brains and not their "omg thats cool" feelings) know that flying mounts are on a whole BAD for an mmo experience.
second off, you're not traveling the world in a plane, you're merely going around it.
Flying mounts? Ha! How about teleportation. We still don't have that in real life the way that some games do. On the bright side, real-life doesn't come with loading screens while you wait for the zone that you're teleporting to to load.
i would throw teleportation right along with flying mounts(as would most in that it takes away from the experience of the game if you can just zip around the world in seconds).
also irl does have loading screens. they're called highways. just look outside your window next time you're driving on the highway. you even get a few loading screen tips like "Save 40% or more if you get Geico today!"
Originally posted by jalexbrown The idea of a flat world seems archaic..
Only since those first orbital photos. That "Blue Marble" shot from Apollo 17, maybe. 1972?
Really, that's when people realized the world wasn't flat? I was sure it had been a few thousand years longer than that.
Some people still haven't realized it, in fact. But until Missouri sees it with their own eyes, there ain't no such animal.
But 'a few thousand years' is probably a little generous--there's a Dark Ages in there--16th century (Magellan) perhaps.
Speculative, no clear demarcation--yep, perfect for a 40 page forum argument.
See post #23 in this thread. People knew that the world was round in ancient times. And they not only knew that the world was round; they knew its radius and their own local latitude to decent precision. Once you have some notion of trigonometry, it's not that hard to compute.
i'd challenge that thought of people knowing the world was round back in ancient times just based on the fact that yes, after the fact, we can see how it would be easy for them to figure things out, but that doesn't mean thats what they actually thought.
based on your moon eclipse example, they could have just seen the eclipse and thought the world was a circle, but not a sphere. so it would still be a flat circle.
and the ships on the horizon thing, im sure they were used to hills on the land, so maybe they thought the same could happen with the water.
i mean you're talking about people that thought the gods were angry when it rained or stormed. i'd say you're giving them to much credit.
You underestimate how seriously a number of ancient civilizations took their astronomy. If you worship a sun god, you're probably going to track what the sun is doing very precisely. If you have a few people at different latitudes doing such tracking who compare notes, you'll pretty quickly be led to the conclusion that the world is round.
Sure, people see hills on the land. But you know where you don't see hills? On the water. And why would every single body of water have precisely the same curvature in all directions if the world wasn't round?
Just because most people in ancient times weren't educated doesn't mean that they were stupid. They weren't any less clever than we are today and they knew a ton of things that we don't just because they needed it for daily life and we don't.
and traveling by plane irl is obviously cheating/outside parameters. we're talking about traversing the world with our characters in an mmo. not a fucking air plane.
In every measure except speed, how is a plane not comparable to a flying mount?
first off flying mounts are only added to appease newer generation of players. most mmo players(the ones who actually use their brains and not their "omg thats cool" feelings) know that flying mounts are on a whole BAD for an mmo experience.
second off, you're not traveling the world in a plane, you're merely going around it.
You know what else was made to appease people that wanted to do things faster? Planes.
i'd challenge that thought of people knowing the world was round back in ancient times just based on the fact that yes, after the fact, we can see how it would be easy for them to figure things out, but that doesn't mean thats what they actually thought.
Originally posted by jalexbrown The idea of a flat world seems archaic..
Only since those first orbital photos. That "Blue Marble" shot from Apollo 17, maybe. 1972?
Really, that's when people realized the world wasn't flat? I was sure it had been a few thousand years longer than that.
Some people still haven't realized it, in fact. But until Missouri sees it with their own eyes, there ain't no such animal.
But 'a few thousand years' is probably a little generous--there's a Dark Ages in there--16th century (Magellan) perhaps.
Speculative, no clear demarcation--yep, perfect for a 40 page forum argument.
See post #23 in this thread. People knew that the world was round in ancient times. And they not only knew that the world was round; they knew its radius and their own local latitude to decent precision. Once you have some notion of trigonometry, it's not that hard to compute.
i'd challenge that thought of people knowing the world was round back in ancient times just based on the fact that yes, after the fact, we can see how it would be easy for them to figure things out, but that doesn't mean thats what they actually thought.
based on your moon eclipse example, they could have just seen the eclipse and thought the world was a circle, but not a sphere. so it would still be a flat circle.
and the ships on the horizon thing, im sure they were used to hills on the land, so maybe they thought the same could happen with the water.
i mean you're talking about people that thought the gods were angry when it rained or stormed. i'd say you're giving them to much credit.
You underestimate how seriously a number of ancient civilizations took their astronomy. If you worship a sun god, you're probably going to track what the sun is doing very precisely. If you have a few people at different latitudes doing such tracking who compare notes, you'll pretty quickly be led to the conclusion that the world is round.
Sure, people see hills on the land. But you know where you don't see hills? On the water. And why would every single body of water have precisely the same curvature in all directions if the world wasn't round?
Just because most people in ancient times weren't educated doesn't mean that they were stupid. They weren't any less clever than we are today and they knew a ton of things that we don't just because they needed it for daily life and we don't.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I don't think there's any real benefit to make a game with a round world unless you're letting players travel off planet.
To make a round world you'd just have to make the gravity always pull to the center of a sphere and make sure the bottom of things always faced the center of the sphere.
I'd love to have a huge, round sandbox world to play, and also have the stars have meaning (mostly as deep mysteries to solve) in the context of the game, both functionally and in lore.
Comments
It's also the first 3 pages of a brief history of time.
Has there been a game with enough landmass to support a spherical world?
Most games choose a small area upon a world and as such don't encompass a large enough landmass to realistically portray a true globe, even if the game is set on a spherical world. As has been mentioned as well for the person on the ground you would never know that the world you live on isn't flat from your general day to day.
Unless an indie game picks up such an idea I don't think it'll happen to the extent many would like (I can't see a AAA trying it with modern MMO direction. Development costs would be one major issue for such a world to be developed to the standard most would accept, and as such restrictions are put in place (they could move into a procedurally generated world but that has it's own issues). I had dreams of what could be in the future of MMOs back when I started and very little to none has been realised, I don't forsee an MMO accomplishing this in the forseeable future given the advancement of the last decade in the genre.
Super Mario Galaxy has a lot of very small worlds that are roughly spherical.
What I'm working on has a spherical world with a radius of about 1 kilometer. Trying to draw everything perspective correct for a real sphere would violate your intuition in many ways, as it would seem like every direction is always downhill off in the distance. So I draw the world as locally flat instead. That's large enough that it looks fine, and most MMORPGs have a game world about on par with that or larger.
Now, if you wanted to put one small zone onto a spherical world, you'd end up with more problems. You need a game world to be large enough that you can see way off in the distance, but what you can see out there is only a small fraction of the way around the sphere. But to make the entire game world a sphere will usually work fine. If from one corner of the game world, you can only see 10% of the way to the opposite corner, then that's plenty large enough that you could make it a sphere if you wanted to.
tell me something, can you do that in real life? so long as you pick a direction you can just keep going and you'll eventually end up where you started? the answer is no. people can't normally climb mountains and cross oceans, which is the major form of blockage you will find of why you can't go in one direction and eventually end up at the same spot.
invisible walls are in place to prevent idiots (the people who'll end up in a max level area when they're level 1 and then qq about it) and also to prevent explorers from seeing unfinished or spoiler areas.
technically the worlds are spherical in shape, they just have things in place that makes it not really feasable to travel the world in a complete circle. it's a pretty silly thing to want in the first place because unless you had a very small world which is a bad thing when talking about mmos, then it would take you forever to be able to pull it off. and you wanting devs to build the game just so you can do it is a bit stupid in my opinion. devs have better things to put their time and focus on.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
Only since those first orbital photos. That "Blue Marble" shot from Apollo 17, maybe. 1972?
Really, that's when people realized the world wasn't flat? I was sure it had been a few thousand years longer than that.
The world is only 24,906 miles around; right now I could hop into a commercial passenger plane and feasibly make it around the world in less than 48 hours (disregarding gas as an issue, of course). Now, I don't suggest that flying mounts (if you subscribe to the school of thought that flying mounts are okay in MMOs) should be comparable in speed to a commercial passenger plane, but I also don't suggest that an MMO world should be 24,906 miles around. Even if you took a world as large as Azeroth and wrapped it around a sphere, I'd wager you could hop on the fastest flying mount and travel around the world in a large but reasonable span of time.
Some people still haven't realized it, in fact. But until Missouri sees it with their own eyes, there ain't no such animal.
But 'a few thousand years' is probably a little generous--there's a Dark Ages in there--16th century (Magellan) perhaps.
Speculative, no clear demarcation--yep, perfect for a 40 page forum argument.
thats where you're wrong(about it taking a reasonable amount of time). if you try running top to bottom of kalimdor it takes a retarded amount of time. and you can mostly achieve this, sure you have to take a few detours (more after the cataclysm) but the amount of time it takesjust to get to top to bottom of kalimdor is insane, then add in the ocean between kalimdor and northrend and then you're traveling from bottom and top of north rend and you pretty much have the time it takes to go around the world right there, its a stupid amount. (thats of course assuming you could travel the distance of the ocean.
and traveling by plane irl is obviously cheating/outside parameters. we're talking about traversing the world with our characters in an mmo. not a fucking air plane.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
The theory of a spherical earth has been around since the 6th century BC. Despite modern media the world has been regarded as spherical for the largest part of the last 2000 years due to various observations. 240BC had the first estimation of the world's circumference at around 30,000 miles in Egypt. Humanity knew long before that photo the world wasn't flat.
Columbus for example knew the world was spherical, and this remains one of those woefully perpetuated myths. Don't get me wrong the vast majority of people wouldn't have known, but that would be down to education of the time, nor would they have likely cared with living conditions and other pressing matters being far more relevant and pressing to them.
In every measure except speed, how is a plane not comparable to a flying mount?
first off flying mounts are only added to appease newer generation of players. most mmo players(the ones who actually use their brains and not their "omg thats cool" feelings) know that flying mounts are on a whole BAD for an mmo experience.
second off, you're not traveling the world in a plane, you're merely going around it.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
Ultima Online is a sphere in lore, but the map is topologically a doughnut.
Co-ordinate systems for truely spherical worlds have a lot of extra math in all your movement calculations that only make a difference over large distances.
The way I might hide the math is to make most of the world ephemeral, procedurally-generated wilderness dotted with a sparse collection of permanent and semi-permanent flat zones. This lets you have characters move from square map to square map, while hiding all the quirks of curvature in the way the winderness is generated as you meander around.
See post #23 in this thread. People knew that the world was round in ancient times. And they not only knew that the world was round; they knew its radius and their own local latitude to decent precision. Once you have some notion of trigonometry, it's not that hard to compute. You really just need three people who live hundreds of miles away from each other to take fairly precise measurements of the sun for a year and then get together to compare them.
i'd challenge that thought of people knowing the world was round back in ancient times just based on the fact that yes, after the fact, we can see how it would be easy for them to figure things out, but that doesn't mean thats what they actually thought.
based on your moon eclipse example, they could have just seen the eclipse and thought the world was a circle, but not a sphere. so it would still be a flat circle.
and the ships on the horizon thing, im sure they were used to hills on the land, so maybe they thought the same could happen with the water.
i mean you're talking about people that thought the gods were angry when it rained or stormed. i'd say you're giving them to much credit.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
Flying mounts? Ha! How about teleportation. We still don't have that in real life the way that some games do. On the bright side, real-life doesn't come with loading screens while you wait for the zone that you're teleporting to to load.
i would throw teleportation right along with flying mounts(as would most in that it takes away from the experience of the game if you can just zip around the world in seconds).
also irl does have loading screens. they're called highways. just look outside your window next time you're driving on the highway. you even get a few loading screen tips like "Save 40% or more if you get Geico today!"
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
You underestimate how seriously a number of ancient civilizations took their astronomy. If you worship a sun god, you're probably going to track what the sun is doing very precisely. If you have a few people at different latitudes doing such tracking who compare notes, you'll pretty quickly be led to the conclusion that the world is round.
Sure, people see hills on the land. But you know where you don't see hills? On the water. And why would every single body of water have precisely the same curvature in all directions if the world wasn't round?
Just because most people in ancient times weren't educated doesn't mean that they were stupid. They weren't any less clever than we are today and they knew a ton of things that we don't just because they needed it for daily life and we don't.
You know what else was made to appease people that wanted to do things faster? Planes.
Here is an interesting NOVA episode related to how serious they were about it: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/ancient-computer.html
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I don't think there's any real benefit to make a game with a round world unless you're letting players travel off planet.
To make a round world you'd just have to make the gravity always pull to the center of a sphere and make sure the bottom of things always faced the center of the sphere.
I had this working in a prototype game.
Once upon a time....
http://thewordiz.wordpress.com/