Ok, something very strange has started to happen. Walking around a city at night, all of a sudden a huge elliptical space is bathed in light. I can’t see it until I step right into it, and then it seems to be visible depending on how I walk around it. I thought it was vehicle headlights, but it is not shaped as a cone.
What is that?
that is headlight from cars loading into your reality bubble.
When the headlights enter your bubble the light shines. The reason it engulfs you is because the headlights have a massive range. Further than your bubble.
But, the headlights dont actually exist until you get close to them and they enter your bubble. Which is about 72 tiles in radius
Sucky. Is there a way to fix that?
Not any easy ones. It’s a much bigger problem than just this game, and if you had a solution to it, all of gaming-dom would LOVE you.
Not any easy ones. It’s a much bigger problem than just this game, and if you had a solution to it, all of gaming-dom would LOVE you.[/quote]
There is a partial solution, though its nothing new. Akin to the LOD concept, we could maybe do something similar:
More than just one reality bubble where everything inside is fully simmed, we could have two or three, each larger in radius than the previous.
Each bubble has its own objects that exist inside it (and thus interact with the world when the player is inside that bubble)
If the objects existing in each bubble are hierachically chosen (so, eg. trees and cars are in the wider bubble. but monsters and NPC’s exist in the nearer), we can extend the wider bubble much further without bringing the CPU to its knees. Its just that not everything will exist at too far distances, only the static entities (terrain, vehicles, etc).
This is a partial solution, of course, not really changing the approach or actually solving the problem, but it usually mitigates that problem by making the world ‘feel’ better than having one reality bubble only very near the player.
Of course, many things in cata now override the bubble rules (e.g. hordes) and this solution could be a ton of work…
maybe decrease lenght of headlight light?
Not any easy ones. It’s a much bigger problem than just this game, and if you had a solution to it, all of gaming-dom would LOVE you.[/quote]
There is a partial solution, though its nothing new. Akin to the LOD concept, we could maybe do something similar:
More than just one reality bubble where everything inside is fully simmed, we could have two or three, each larger in radius than the previous.
Each bubble has its own objects that exist inside it (and thus interact with the world when the player is inside that bubble)
If the objects existing in each bubble are hierachically chosen (so, eg. trees and cars are in the wider bubble. but monsters and NPC’s exist in the nearer), we can extend the wider bubble much further without bringing the CPU to its knees. Its just that not everything will exist at too far distances, only the static entities (terrain, vehicles, etc).
This is a partial solution, of course, not really changing the approach or actually solving the problem, but it usually mitigates that problem by making the world ‘feel’ better than having one reality bubble only very near the player.
Of course, many things in cata now override the bubble rules (e.g. hordes) and this solution could be a ton of work…[/quote]
Yes, this kind of thing is the standard solution, and yes, it’s generally a ton of work and hard to balance right.
In “first person”-style games, “big” things get drawn at almost any distance (skyscrapers, mountains). As you get closer, “medium” things get added (houses, large vehicles), then, really close “small” things get added (repeat this however many times you’re willing to mess with).
If our case, “big” would need to be “how wide is it’s area of effect”, so vehicles in general would need to be in that, since might have their lights on… but then, buildings (which are otherwise small) might be between that car and you, so you can’t really load the car and show its headlights without loading all the buildings (and trees) in between. Oops.
Showing stuff but then blocking it as you get closer looks REALLY silly in a first person game - the equivalent here would be shining the headlights on you, then blocking them with a building as you get closer.
Getting this to work well, not be a massive resource hog, and actually look good (objects not magically appearing OR disappearing) is really hard, which is why games that manage to do a half-decent job are so well regarded. A real solution to this problem would be SO much better… but no one has come up with one.