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Video game level design - terrain boundaries

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Video game level design - terrain boundaries

Postby legend411 » Tue Apr 06, 2010 1:49 pm

Hey all,

I've been trying to throw together a heightmap for a semi-open world fantasy game I'm developing in Unity, and am having a really tough time coming up with a design, but maybe I'm being way too anal about it.

I've studied the worlds of games like Zelda: Twilight Princess, Mercenaries 2, Just Cause 2, Oblivion, Risen, Divinity 2: Ego Draconis, Sacred 2, zones in WoW, and more.

My problem is, I can't figure out how I want to define the boundaries of the game world. Some games use high canyon walls, others just use the ocean. Some use mountain ranges, and some just use invisible boundaries.

I also think I just have difficulty visualizing if I like the way I have a terrain set up without populating it with things like roads, grass, doodads and villages, but I'm afraid to invest the time and wind up not liking my terrain anymore afterward.

Does anyone have any good examples of terrains designed with l3dt used in games, with clever use of boundaries?
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Postby Quen » Tue Jun 15, 2010 7:50 am

Hi legend,

I just got L3DT a few days ago, so I cannot show you a sample of a design you are looking for, yet.

But I am trying something similar like you: I am building a virtual reality simulation and want to create the environment with L3DT. Limiting the "walkable" area is one of my major problems.
Right now I think, I will use the design of the world in combination with invisible boundaries:
Creating a "designable random map", editing the design map a little and doing the main work in the heightfield editing then: placing flat places for villages or streets, creating cliffy mountains and oceans at the borders of the map. Within the map I will try to restict the movement areas with small cliffs, lakes, rivers and buildings in an optical way, and place invisible borders along them for collision detection.

Basicly the boundaries of your world are coming from it's design. I know that is not an "easy" solution and a lot of work! But I think it is the only way, to "hide" the movement-restriction from the user (or let it look natural).
So I think that planning your world (in a logical, not graphical way) is what you will have to go for first.
Where do you want the player to start, where do you want which village or town be located, where to place other locations (e.g. tempels, dungeons,..) and then you can design around this defined points.

Well at least that is how I will try it :wink:
Hope this could give a little inspiration :)
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Postby lmaceleighton » Tue Jun 15, 2010 9:17 pm

Hey guys here is what I would do if I was you:

First realize that constructing these worlds by your self is a great task! not impossible, as i have done some very large worlds, but if you want zones then I would break the zones up like they do in ever-quest, where each zone has a loading screen between it, otherwise if you want something like what WOW has you will HAVE to do some custom programming to "instance" those zones, but I am thinking you want a world that you can travel around in and that it right? You not building an MMO, if you are I hope you have team to help you, as you cant really make a "Full scale" MMO on your own, just plain impossible! You can build smalled scale MMO, check out the one called Minion of Mirth done by prairie games, it was made with Torque TGE and later ported to TGEA, and now T3D, IMHO that is the engine you should use, once owning it downing the MMOKIT as it is called is free. Even if you are not building an MMO this setup for a large expansive world is awesome. Also TGEA, the "Middle" Engine has what is known as Atlas Terrain, Which L3DT exports, and you can create some ENOUMOUSE terrain, bigger than all of AZEROTH, NORTHREND, and OUTLAND Combined, as I have made area that big with ease! I know very little about unity, but I did download the demo a while back, nice looking engine from what the demo shows but i don't know how their terrain system works, what is the maximum height-map you can use? Are you allowed more than one heightmap per map? if the last question is no, then you might want to take my initial suggestion. Please feel free to ask more question, building game terrain is my thing!
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Postby Quen » Wed Jun 16, 2010 6:43 am

Thank you for your impressions!

Well what I am building is not really a game, although I use similar technics. I user the Blender game engine as a base and extend it with a lot of features fitting my application. Basicly my project is a VR training simulation.
You get a head mounted display and sit on a training bike, your head-, hand- and leg movements are recorded by tracking hardware and streamed to Blender in realtime to contorl the camera movement (head tracking) and your avatar's movement. (If you look down, you see your virtual legs moving the same way your real ones are doing in that moment, take a hand from the handle bar and your avatar will do the same.) Then you can cycle through a virtual world while you are doing your training.

I got a basic concept for handling this world: You can only move along pre-defined areas, no free movement. I create tiles of terrain which got all the same "mesh-interface". (The mesh borders fit together) Then I load only 3 tiles at the same time: the one you are on at the moment, the one in front and the one behind you. When you move on the next tile, a new one in front will be loaded and one in the back will vanish. (Got that concept working already. Good to combinate with my LOD-System, too.)
So I can ride my bike endlessly. :wink:
Now I want to use L3DT to create the basic mesh and stencil material textures for this terrain-tiles. Some manual editing will be necessary of course, but I think it is a good start.

As this is my diploma thesis, I do not have a team helping. I do everything by myself. But at least I do not have to program any kind of client-handling, AI or interaction. Furthermore the world does not need to be "designed" like in MMOs, it may be kind of random.(I got some concept for placing environment objects like plants etc. randomly, based on the terrain material.) Main focus is the basic concept and bringing all that hardware together, not the content creation. But of course my personal claim is to let it look decent. :D
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