12 réponses à ce sujet

[DiatribeEQ]

I'm a dungeon crawler.

I'm the kinda guy who was fed the old school D&D style (potentially) massive dungeons.  So, with the toolset, I sit here looking at it; watching some videos; reading some guides; and I'm left wondering:  How BIG can I make my dungeons?  Can they be one massive "Ruins of Undermountain" styled place?  Or do I have to scale it back?  If I'm unrestricted, I want to make a place so massive, I feel like Flynn in the original Tron and say my version of "I wrote too many tank programs."

Depending on the answers I might potentially get, it'll affect my next couple questions.

Thanks.

[-Semper-]

well. the size of your level will determine the lenght of the process to render all the lights within your level. technically you're able to create huge indoor levels. ingame the performance should not be decreased because the engine only streams connected and therefor visible rooms.



however i recommend to download the single player ressources and try to stay at similar area sizes. never underestimate the rendering time of your lights

[DiatribeEQ]

Okay. Npc counts? Is there a limit to how many can be spawned in an single player instance? I don't want to create a large place and have it feel empty due to limitations. I ask, because I like the idea of making a person stop & think "Hey, maybe I should check the rooms to my left & right first, instead of the blind "Screw it, I'll kill it all!" mentality many folks have. I want moments of potential "F*CK F*CK F*CK F*CK F*CK! Why did I charge in there like that? There's so many of them. Where are they all coming from!?!?!" all because people just ran in blindly to a new area of the map.

[-Semper-]

dunno. never tried it for myself. just create an area and place lots of them

the fact that bioware plays videos in mass battles would hint to performance problems. perhaps this only affects consoles. the cities and camps are well populated and therefor atleast you should be able to place them without limitations. a battle with masses and lots of action will definitely end in stuttering performance

[DiatribeEQ]

Oh, I'm not looking at having 50+ guys on screen. Heck, most times, 12+ npcs on screen attacking a party of 4 often times leads to the party dying.

[-Semper-]

10 villains to slay down your party should play well. up to 20 will decrease your performance more or less. 20+ is surely a no go... these are just assumptions. try it out and push the engine to the limits^^

[DiatribeEQ]

Looks like it's time to break out the grid paper and see what all I can do, eh?

[-Semper-]

fire the toolset up and look what will work

[Qutayba]

For interior levels, it's my understanding that the sky is the limit (except you're indoors, so maybe that phrase isn't best ). The trick is breaking down the level into rooms. You designate which rooms are visible from which others, and the game will only render those rooms together. A practical limit may present itself when the size becomes unwieldly for the toolset itself.

Outdoor levels, according to most accounts, shouldn't be larger than 512x512 (at least per area). The way Bioware did a huge area like Ostagar was to have a big level, but break it down into a few distinct areas. I've made some large areas, and they work fine in game, but the larger the area, the longer the model placement, lightmapping, and exporting take.

Just from a design perspective, you shouldn't make all your areas big. Contrast is good.

[Sunjammer]

The following points are from a conversation between Andrew Farrell (BioWare level design guru) and myself regarding making console-friendly levels:

Andrew Farrell suggested:

Don't make a exterior area bigger than 256x256.
Try and keep interiors no bigger than 128x128.

From this we can assume that on average interiors are more demanding that exterirors. In fact Andrew went further to say:

Andrew Farrell suggested:

If you trying to make a large cavern, try and use terrain with a cave roof, this will cut down on part count.

Of course if making console-friendly levels isn't a concern for your project then you can happily double or entirely disregard these recommendations. However if, like us, you have one eye on the future then it probably pays to exercise some restraint when building levels.

That said BioWare have several exterior levels that are in the 800x800 or 1024x1024 range. The difference there is that the playable area is considerably smaller than the actual size of the level.

Modifié par Sunjammer, 16 mars 2010 - 01:20 .

[Sunjammer]

Note to self: don't press the quote button when you want to edit!

Modifié par Sunjammer, 16 mars 2010 - 01:19 .

[TimelordDC]

For interiors, aren't only the connected rooms streamed into memory (I assume this means just the area details and not the area layout since it must be loaded right at the beginning)? So, technically, a large interior world with small connecting rooms should be easy on the system, right?



A large cavern might be easier on the system if built using exterior terrain but a massive dungeon with small rooms would be better if built as an interior.



Please correct me if I am wrong here!