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Round Planets to walk around.
keithian
Member UncommonPosts: 3,191
Does anyone know whether the planets are actually round? What I mean is that you can actually walk around the planet rather than it just ending at a border as in most other games out there. I never really thought about it since I would be happy with a WOW or Lord of the Rings Online type of world without loading screens between zones like AOC or EQ2. However, since this is a next Gen MMO, I think walking around the planet would be a cool feature :-). Are there other MMO games out there where you can actually do that?
There Is Always Hope!
Comments
we are talking about mario galaxy walk around the world except on a much bigger scale type of thing right?
Yeah that would be a cool feature, is it in ToR?
Lets say if it was i would be pleasantly surprised. Do i expect that, no. I expect a big open area you can explore but i don't expect to go west and end up in the east, so to speak. Would be nice, maybe a novel idea for another MMO.
Cool feature.
Chance of ToR having it, near 0, nothing has said it would be (not that you have or arguing it does), course on that same note, nothing says it isn't, but seeing as we haven't seen this before in an MMO and thats a pretty big feature you could go with. I don't see it happening.
Edit: Fixed some errors, and added that last bit.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
No, they are large multi-part zones.
Remember Old School Ultima Online
Somehow I doubt it. My reasoning is fairly simple. If they make an entire planet and you can walk "Around the World in 80 Days" then they can't add anything to that world later of without changing the entire planet. I think you will instead see huge world maps that have no real ending (similar to WoW) so they can always add to it without reworking the whole thing.
I could be wrong though. I have yet to see any videos or article mention this particular subject. I guess time will tell.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
First, I would say no. Second, TOR will not be a next gen MMO. They are taking the features that work in themepark MMO's and changing or adding here or there. Then dropping a BW level RPG in the middle of this MMO. It is an attempt to bring the focus back to the RPG and leveling process as well as all the MMO features.
How many people long for that "past, simpler, and better world," I wonder, without ever recognizing the truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them?
R.A.Salvatore
No. To make a virtual world that was round it would have to be big enough so as not to see the curvature of the planet at the horizon... which would be ridiculously huge . Id personally love to see that. But it may be a while.
yup, idea would be great, but im affraid that creating whole planet... 16 of them O.o ... whoa, that would be incredible, 16 years of exploring?
that would demand EvE's type of game world i think, only one "server" with all of the players from all continents playing on it to not feel alone... but at other hand, with that type of design, imagine Coruscant with lets say a milion PC's running around O.o
incredible... thx for the idea, i will propably have it in mind whole day now
Be Who You Are and Say What You Feel Because Those Who Mind Don't Matter and Those Who Matter Don't Mind. Dr.Seuss
I'm pretty sure that round planets will not be in the game, and I do not think they would be a good idea as round planets would limit how much content the devs can put into that planet. As an IA I would like to be able to visit Tython/Ord Mantell/Coruscant as part of a high level expansion, assuming that they're Republic-exclusive at launch.
Some day we may see an online game take place on a fully realized planet. TOR will not be that game.
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
To think of the processing power to hold such a world... wow! O_O
I'd say something like that won't happen anytime within the next 10 years.
But if it does, I'd love to be part of a team that makes it though.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
In one of the press events there was one of the guys there who decided to try something. He had heard the accusations that mountains and the like would probably be rendered in 2d and wouldn't be things you could actually go to and climb. I believe it was one of the guys from TOROcast. I can't recall if it was at E3 or the 6 hour exhibition thing, I'm thinking it was E3. Anyway, he went there and found that the mountain was indeed 3d so he tried to cross it, he was able to do so but when he got to the other side the terrain disappeared. He surmised the mountain would likely be made to be impassable at some point, but because it was a very early build they hadn't gotten to that yet. It's either that or they planned to add more terrain.
In any case, it just shows the areas are indeed walled in, however large they are. This is no more than I expected. I think anyone who expected fully developed worlds sixteen times over is just being ridiculous. Maybe one day someone will make an MMO based on a single, seamless world that is fully developed, but even then it would be a huge project. And like someone said, it'd have to be like Eve on a single server so that it wouldn't be so empty.
Edit: This happened when critics were still saying that the worlds would all be small and on rails like all of Biowares single player games. It was at this same event that the press began to see that the worlds were indeed large and had plenty of area to explore.
Yeah, I in no way expected the worlds to be completely round and explorable. Kinda surprised me when you brought it up. I was like hmm i never even thought about that in this game, i was expecting a wide open world like EQ to explore, minus the zoning. That was what i expected and apparently thats exactly what i'm going to get.
As for the round planets. Like a lot have said, good idea for a MMO in the future. Chances of ToR doing is are almost 0. Better to just expect a wide open area you can explore.
Before anyone gets that wrong (as apparently it needs to be spelled out) a wide open area with buildings, tunnels, caverns, and underground stuff to do. Before you start thinking it's a flat plain or something :P
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I hope they're square tbh - I wanna go up to the edge and jump off.
I don't know that it's been stated anywhere officially, but yeah, flat planes would be my guess. A round planet would be cool in some way, but the scale would need to be massive...too massive for an MMO like this (multiple planets) imo.
In TOR I very, very much doubt it.
In future games I don't see why not but other than gimick reasons I don't see an awful lot of pluses but quite a few minuses. You could implement an east west link easily enough even a doughnut but a full sphere (or ellipsoid) would require a large game area and as we know they are few and far between even now.
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The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
We will just have to choose to disagree on what next gen means. No MMO has ever used voice over for the entire game, or had so many branching story lines based on the choices you select, or had people people able to roll in a group on those choices, or brought single player companions into an MMO to something other then a pet like a warlock has in WOW, or have the amount of story equal to several dozen novels, so if that isn't Next Gen, I dont know what is. Bioware also hasn't released all available info on the game. What I do know is that AOC tortage was extremely successful and generally was praised until you left Tortage. This game is taking Tortage and multiplying the options and experience 10 fold. To me, that is also next Gen.
Now back to the topic. I agree after reading all these responses that yea, it would have to be a massive amount of land to be able to run around and have a curvature that is realistic. Maybe they will have you run off the flat end and re-appear on the other side? lol
There Is Always Hope!
You know Infinity has round planets. And you can seamlessly orbit and land on them without loading screens. But sadly, im not sure if it will ever come out. They need to liscence that world generating engine though.
This is essentially just asking if the map wraps around right? If so, I don't think this would be a "next-gen" type feature as I believe SWG did this very thing. That said, I don't imagine this game going that route. Don't get me wrong. This is not a lets compare SWG/SWToR statement. Just the first game that popped in my head as having the type of implementation.
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers.
Do something wrong, no one forgets"
-from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
It's been done before by Blizzard with Outland's land mass. You can fly north and end up south on the map. Same with heading east and appearing west eventually.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
SWG maps didn't wrap, you just hit an impassable boundary.
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The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
My mistake if that is the case, but I was almost certain that, at least the classic planets, that was the case. I know the planets added later were a bit less 'flexible' with zones and such, but I did not play them much aside from a "please come back vets" type trial.
At any rate, the underlying point that wrapping a map isn't a technological challenge is still there. I think this would be more a design decision then anything else and, as I said, not a design I imagine SWToR using.
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers.
Do something wrong, no one forgets"
-from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
It can be done with procedural programming. For example you make a game with 3000 solarsystems, use DX 9, and the game size on your drive is less than a GB. Here is a really good example of what you can do with it. Click here then here
And we are talking a lot less resources used on a server. My vision for a sci fi is to do what is in this video and have avatars playing on the ground with no loading screens except for your standard instances.
Edited: Here are the latest vids Part i and Part ii
A game in development Citadel of Sorcery is doing just this. They have just finished generating full worlds and are about to decide which to pick for the game going forward ; an interesting one to watch.
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Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel