Design Q: Dividing to Wold <-> Zone <-> Scene et

[Halifax]

With seamless outdoor scene swapping i had a technique idea once im sure its been tried, but i found in irrlicht ti worked well... what you do is have zones and then a last "transition zone".

|======|
| map |
| |==[ TRANSITION zone ]== | outdoor
|======|

My idea was you lock them in the transition zone, and while they are trying to find a way out you are loading the outdoor stuff slowly dropping all the rest of the map stuff , and then unlock the outdoor when its loaded.

this might only apply to certain types of games of course and is very limiting. it worked well in my test though i got good results

Yes, that is a great implementation Fuzzy, and in fact has been implemented before. Although I don't consider it is robust as the other hierachial solutions, it is definitely and awesome, and more easy solution.

If you would like to see some examples of this working, then I would have to say the best one would be Tony Hawk's Underground 2 I think...I don't know, there are so many of those games. I will look up for a link of it though.

The funny thing is that I played this game way before I ever got into game development and I still recognized that it was "faking" streaming levels.

Basically what you would do to change levels is you would have to go down these stairs into this completely closed off, and very long hallway with nothing in it, and then you would notice a little skip in the game when you reached the middle, and then you would go up the stairs on the other side and enter the new level! Everytime you go over the middle of the hallway though you notice a skip, so it's pretty obvious.

<offtopic>
Haha, I have to agree with you JP! It seems that you can't go anywhere without seem some awesome Blender screenshots from dlangdev.
</offtopic>

EDIT:
Let me correct myself, the game was Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, and it professed over its super advanced streaming system! But hear is a screenshot of the winding hallway you have to go through when switching levels.

http://www.gamerankings.com/screens5/928082/33.jpg

[dlangdev]

Creating An Optical Illusion:

One thing I noticed in viewing games like COD4, UT3, OB, HL and others was the illusion of big space.

I can't really described it as I'm still trying to figure this out. Maybe when I get much closer to the solution will become obvious.

[Halifax]

Creating An Optical Illusion:

One thing I noticed in viewing games like COD4, UT3, OB, HL and others was the illusion of big space.

I can't really described it as I'm still trying to figure this out. Maybe when I get much closer to the solution will become obvious.

I don't exactly know what your talking...never have I heard it even referred to, but you might be thinking about interior designing? That is a concept of interior designing, the fact that you can make spaces look more spacious by item placing, and lighting. Although I don't think that has anything much to do with a zone occlusion system.

[Halifax]

Creating An Optical Illusion:

One thing I noticed in viewing games like COD4, UT3, OB, HL and others was the illusion of big space.

I can't really described it as I'm still trying to figure this out. Maybe when I get much closer to the solution will become obvious.

I don't exactly know what your talking...never have I heard it even referred to, but you might be thinking about interior designing? That is a concept of interior designing, the fact that you can make spaces look more spacious by item placing, and lighting. Although I don't think that has anything much to do with a zone occlusion system.

[TheBeef]

Everyone's answers are so technical, so I hope this doesn't make me sound dumb or anything.

The question to me sounds like you want a way to divide up how to load areas for users, so as to not have them load a hueg map for the computer to process all the time?

Someone mentioned something about transition zones. If you've ever played Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, you can tell how they did the 'seamless' levels. Basically, whenever you went from one part of the city to another, there was usually a big long tunnel or something that covered the fact that the game was loading where you were going.

You could do something like that.

Or, depending on the game, you could just have it Half-Life 2 style: at a certain point when stuff calms down, just have it stop to load the next map.

Hopefully I don't sound like an idiot with this post.

[MasterGod]

@TheBeef: You don't. And yes I like the Half-life 2 way where in some point the screen freezes while it loads the next zone. - Never seen the Tony Hawk way..

[rogerborg]

HL2 (and Deus Ex, off the top of my head) also have transition zones (tunnels, corridors, especially with a bend in them so that you can't see both ends at once), it's just that they pause to do the load rather than doing it in realtime. It's fairly obvious what's going on in both cases.

A more interesting game is GTA: San Andreas where an enormous world can be traversed seamlessly, at high speed (in a plane) and while looking into the far distance in arbitrary directions, on both PC and console (i.e. a constrained memory situation).

I can only assume that it's cleverly zoned, with some very aggressive LODing and purging. The trouble with us normal mortals emulating that is that the Rockstar guys have an external brain-pack strapped around their waists, and I can barely even follow some of the thought processes that I've seen leaking out from them.

[TheBeef]

A more interesting game is GTA: San Andreas where an enormous world can be traversed seamlessly, at high speed (in a plane) and while looking into the far distance in arbitrary directions, on both PC and console (i.e. a constrained memory situation).

As far as I can tell, the game only keeps major objects loaded, such as buildings. For example, I know (from experience) that if you even drive too fast, sometimes the road will not load quickly enough and you'll fall through it.

So, my guess would be that it keeps only the major landmarks loaded, then when the user approaches it, everything else loads (people, other cars, etc).

[TheBeef]

A more interesting game is GTA: San Andreas where an enormous world can be traversed seamlessly, at high speed (in a plane) and while looking into the far distance in arbitrary directions, on both PC and console (i.e. a constrained memory situation).

As far as I can tell, the game only keeps major objects loaded, such as buildings. For example, I know (from experience) that if you even drive too fast, sometimes the road will not load quickly enough and you'll fall through it.

So, my guess would be that it keeps only the major landmarks loaded, then when the user approaches it, everything else loads (people, other cars, etc).

[FuzzYspo0N]

I was thinking about that zoning a little more...
in games like Hl it seems the scenery in the far distance is just animated skyboxes. I havent played it in ages, but think about imposters, they can do a lot for big maps, and loading times can easy be helped with "Stream loading.

For example, in a game like, lets say tony hawk. Lets say i have one part of a skatepark, and another part with a transition zone, u can calulate the probability they will enter this zone to hit the next zone, and then u can simply load the next part. (as i mentioned)

What i was thinking is this :

when im in ZONEA, i can have a prerendered flat view of ZONEB, and just put up a "screen" to show it in the view. then it looks like its there but in the distance, when im driving across big part of grass to ZONEB, ZONE A drops and zone b loads "quietly" giving hopefully a smoother transition

[Halifax]

Everyone's answers are so technical, so I hope this doesn't make me sound dumb or anything.

The question to me sounds like you want a way to divide up how to load areas for users, so as to not have them load a hueg map for the computer to process all the time?

Someone mentioned something about transition zones. If you've ever played Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, you can tell how they did the 'seamless' levels. Basically, whenever you went from one part of the city to another, there was usually a big long tunnel or something that covered the fact that the game was loading where you were going.

You could do something like that.

Or, depending on the game, you could just have it Half-Life 2 style: at a certain point when stuff calms down, just have it stop to load the next map.

Hopefully I don't sound like an idiot with this post.

Just going to point this out, but that sounded a lot like the post I posted 4 days previous to yours...

@rogerborg: To me it seems as though Rockstar is doing some crazy layered LOD based techniques. They are more noticeable on the PSP than PS2. This is how I break it down:

* A precedence list is setup in order for distance based LOD calculation. Foilage and all that pops in almost right in front of you, while buildings can be seen popping in the background.
* Buildings also seem to contain LOD meshes as well. If you look closely you can see some buildings pop in without roofing details that later come in.
* They also implemented dead texture and mesh removal. If you look in one direction, drive towards it/whatever for a little bit, and then turnaround to a highly populated area you will notice some lag as if it is loading them back in again.
* Zone breaking down is also another obvious one.

And if you can't understand their brain-pack thought paths, then you could always just try asking some developers from Rockstar North for a general explanation. They are almost always happy to answer questions to aspiring developers. (Most of them that is.)

[MasterGod]

How about to create a smooth transition from one zone to another, lets say you're in zone A and you reach a special shared zone where both zone A and zone B are loaded so you won't have the loading screen nor special room/doorway/whatever and when you leave that shared zone the zone you left will be dropped. Also to improve the loading time, if you're coming from zone A to zone B then in that shared zone as close you are to zone X the more objects of that zone will be loaded and the less of the zone you're leaving. - Playing with such settings to improve loading time and make a smooth transition between zones.

What do you think of that idea?