Hi there,

I'd like to ask a question for which I couldn't find an answer through the forum search, A7oogle and the AUM-Search from gs-tools.

How could one create a seamless world with the 3dgs-engine?

I'd like to load the next adjacent level as soon as a player walks into visibility range so that there is no loadscreen. I really dont like that "walk to the edge of the world"-feeling. I know it's kinda like running two or more Levels at a time, but there has to be a way to do this. Other games have done it and it would really be a pity if A7 wouldnt support this.

To illustrate:

[1][2][3]
[4][5][6]
[7][8][9]

If player is on terrain 5 and heading west, I'd like to load maps 1,4&7 so that he can just change level borders without noticing. I really dont like the whole "walk to the end of the world"-concept.

I just need the basic technique and some pointers. I'll figure out the rest myself. Thanks in advance,

Patrick

Versuch ma das AUM:
http://aum.conitec.net/aum44/english/aum44/index.html

Da in die berginner´s Corner.. da sind infinite Levels ( treadmill methode )

Falls dir das Englische ned zusagt, such bei den deutschen magazinen im AUM 44 ^^

Deutsch: Hmm, danke für den Hinweis, aber das scheint leider nicht mit echten Leveln zu funktionieren. Ich dachte da eher an Rollenspielaspekte, also z.B. beim Bewegen Richtung Stadtrand schon den Wald dahinter zu laden beim Durchschreiten des Waldes, dann das Holzfällerlager usw. Das lässt sich, so fürchte ich, mit Prefabs nicht realisieren und ist mit "level_load" nicht vereinbar, da hierbei ja das aktuelle level beendet wird.

English: Hmm, thanks for the hint, but I don't think this would work with real levels. I was thinking more of a roleplaying aspect, e.g. inserting the woods at the city borders as you move towards them, then inserting the lumbering camp as you travel through the woods and such. This, i fear, can't be realized with prefabs and wouldn't work with "level_load" since the old level would be destroyed in the process.

Ive been working (on something similar) to this in secrecy for months now and
still dont have any joy so I'll be interested to see some of the offered suggestions.

BUT I have been avoiding "chunked" terrains for my own reasons but it may be
worth your time to look into them.
Basically, as I understand(vaguely), a large terrain get split up by the engine
and shown "a bit at a time" as you get near enough. So if you can figure which
bits are being shown, you can then plant entitys and prefabs(?) on it, before
your player gets in sight.
In theory anyway.

@Vorick There was a AUM explaining how to do a infinite car game similar to your matrix placement, I don't recall the exact magazine number. But that's one way. By tweaking that you should be able to achieve close to what you want.

I've been thinking of a complete dynamic model based "world", but then you have to re-think many of the common scene predefined building with wdl or whatever to 3d gamestudio and make a sort of SQL and model based structure totally based on dynamic create and delete functionality of models to your world and only manageable by lite-c. This will give you unlimited "world" space but you have to make a world function to manage everything. For the moment I'm not sure A7 gamestudio will give this totally freedom without some quirks since the main thinking is based on scenes and levels with a predefined calculated wdl in mind.

Thanks for this. The treadmill technique was also suggested by Esper in his german reply.

So the way I might have to go would be chunked terrains. Although I have not figured out yet, how they work.