Doing the unthinkable...
by Jacob Dankovchik · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 09/26/2005 (6:56 pm) · 27 replies
This time, I'm totally bringing Atlas to its knees. The Massive, a 32,768 square meter terrain has nothing on what im planning next. This of cource is going to be a very long scale work, several months if I'm lucky.
What I'm doing is I plan to make a terrain for my mission that has the same area as the planet Earth. Thats right, I hope to get my game to have as much area as the entire Earth. I'm not totally sure if Torque can handle all this at once, so right now I'm putting it to the test. I'm using 4096 heightmaps stretched to 40 meters per pixel for a 163,840 meter terrain. I'm simply using flat planes for the moment, just placeing them all out to see if it'll work right. So far I'm up to 1,310,720 meters, no problems. I need to reach about 40,000,000. If Torque can handle this much terrain all at once, then the battle is half won.
After I get all my terrains placed and see Torque can take it, I'll begin replacing the world, segment by segment, with the real data. This is the part that will take forever and a day. After this there will then be a few engine things that need adjustment such as the water physics bug and effects like sectional fog and rain. After that I need to pray for a dynamic shadowing across the terrain so my dynamic sunlight looks right. And I can only pray all the interiors work out right.
But if this works, it will be truley glorious. Never before has a game had an entire world all at once, the same size of the planet!! And to think, such a feat may be accomplished by a little indie game designer. :)
If anyone would like to offer support, I'll be more then happy to take it! Let me know and I'm sure I could use help to get this to form together easier.
Wish me luck! By Friday I should have the full area of the world placed out in flat planes. If Torque holds up that is...
What I'm doing is I plan to make a terrain for my mission that has the same area as the planet Earth. Thats right, I hope to get my game to have as much area as the entire Earth. I'm not totally sure if Torque can handle all this at once, so right now I'm putting it to the test. I'm using 4096 heightmaps stretched to 40 meters per pixel for a 163,840 meter terrain. I'm simply using flat planes for the moment, just placeing them all out to see if it'll work right. So far I'm up to 1,310,720 meters, no problems. I need to reach about 40,000,000. If Torque can handle this much terrain all at once, then the battle is half won.
After I get all my terrains placed and see Torque can take it, I'll begin replacing the world, segment by segment, with the real data. This is the part that will take forever and a day. After this there will then be a few engine things that need adjustment such as the water physics bug and effects like sectional fog and rain. After that I need to pray for a dynamic shadowing across the terrain so my dynamic sunlight looks right. And I can only pray all the interiors work out right.
But if this works, it will be truley glorious. Never before has a game had an entire world all at once, the same size of the planet!! And to think, such a feat may be accomplished by a little indie game designer. :)
If anyone would like to offer support, I'll be more then happy to take it! Let me know and I'm sure I could use help to get this to form together easier.
Wish me luck! By Friday I should have the full area of the world placed out in flat planes. If Torque holds up that is...
About the author
#2
Will be interesting to see how this goes.
09/26/2005 (8:02 pm)
I hope you're not placing all that by hand... :)Will be interesting to see how this goes.
#3
Heh, no, I'm editing the mission script file. No way i could move and set these all by hand, I've never been able to travel from one end of a tile to the other. After around 3 minutes of flying in the same direction at full speed without hittin it, I got bored and gave up. And thats just one tile.. One out of a soon to be 244.
09/27/2005 (3:19 am)
Quote:I hope you're not placing all that by hand... :)
Heh, no, I'm editing the mission script file. No way i could move and set these all by hand, I've never been able to travel from one end of a tile to the other. After around 3 minutes of flying in the same direction at full speed without hittin it, I got bored and gave up. And thats just one tile.. One out of a soon to be 244.
#4
09/27/2005 (3:38 am)
Well, just realized I made a hell of a miscalculation with the 244.. Going to be way more then that.. Crap. :/
#5
Definately keep us up to date on this though, it sounds like a great idea.
Oh yeah are you planning on having a curvature or just flat terrain. It would be cool to see a curved terrain for this, i have seen it mentioned in another thread. But then you could actually have your sun orbit your earth :)
09/27/2005 (5:27 am)
You might want to write a c program to write your mission file out for you. The only problem i am seeing is that torque will be able to handle quite a few flat terrains becuase of its poly generation on that terrain, but once you start adding the grand canyon and other hugh terrain alterations that cause many polys your going to have to come up with some sort of new paging to bring in the terrain off disk or network. Also you will run into storage issues as well. Right now i have done about a 32km^2 area of real world with about .2m resolution to real life and i get about a 24mb file. If you reduce the accuracy to .25m you can get a 8 mb file but still at 8mb a piece you will probably take up about 10 gb of space. Which is fine for space but not for memory. Definately keep us up to date on this though, it sounds like a great idea.
Oh yeah are you planning on having a curvature or just flat terrain. It would be cool to see a curved terrain for this, i have seen it mentioned in another thread. But then you could actually have your sun orbit your earth :)
#6
Bah! Ye olde church still has a hold of you.
09/27/2005 (5:39 am)
Quote:But then you could actually have your sun orbit your earth :)
Bah! Ye olde church still has a hold of you.
#7
I then calculated out how long this'll take. If I use a much bigger size map at 4 tile size, it'll take around 5,770. If it takes me 6 hours for each (which is way less then it'd actually take) I'd have to work for 4 years NON STOP!
This was also a rough kick in the face.. Then I began to think.. Over 70% of the world is ocean... Since I'm not making the earth, just a world to the same size, I'll go ahead and make it 75% to make things even. Nobody will see ocean floor so I could just make one tile and repeat it or outright skip them and nobody would notice. So that leaves 25% of the work to do. Next step is, my game is set in a middle-ages style setup. So not many people, lots and lots of forest and untaimed land.. If your running through a forest, I VERY highly doubt if people would notice that every 524 kilometers or so, things seem to kind of repeat. So I could easily reuse tiles as well.
So all in all I may end up only doing 10% or less of actual unique maps. This very greatly helped my enthusiasm and now I feel a bit more confident.. But still, first step is seeing if Torque can handle all this.
And Kip, your right, I'ma need some sort of program to write all this for me. And I have no plans to make things rounded.. Gotta worry about the basics before i get fancy. ;)
09/27/2005 (12:31 pm)
Well, today I discovered just how horrible my miscalcuatlion was last night. After I figured things out right, I almost gave up this idea completely. At my current rate I'll need around 58,000 of these squares. Thats just plain too many, both to put in my mission file and to have of terrain files.I then calculated out how long this'll take. If I use a much bigger size map at 4 tile size, it'll take around 5,770. If it takes me 6 hours for each (which is way less then it'd actually take) I'd have to work for 4 years NON STOP!
This was also a rough kick in the face.. Then I began to think.. Over 70% of the world is ocean... Since I'm not making the earth, just a world to the same size, I'll go ahead and make it 75% to make things even. Nobody will see ocean floor so I could just make one tile and repeat it or outright skip them and nobody would notice. So that leaves 25% of the work to do. Next step is, my game is set in a middle-ages style setup. So not many people, lots and lots of forest and untaimed land.. If your running through a forest, I VERY highly doubt if people would notice that every 524 kilometers or so, things seem to kind of repeat. So I could easily reuse tiles as well.
So all in all I may end up only doing 10% or less of actual unique maps. This very greatly helped my enthusiasm and now I feel a bit more confident.. But still, first step is seeing if Torque can handle all this.
And Kip, your right, I'ma need some sort of program to write all this for me. And I have no plans to make things rounded.. Gotta worry about the basics before i get fancy. ;)
#8
Its less but still far more then anoyne else has pulled off. :)
Unless of cource I get enough help for my Earth plan.. But I'd need quite a bit.
09/28/2005 (12:37 pm)
Actually, after further looking at things.. This may be a bit too much of a project to set as a goal for my game as it would take SOO very long to make all this terrain. I'll still see if torque can have that much area but for my goal I may just end up going with the surface area of the moon.Its less but still far more then anoyne else has pulled off. :)
Unless of cource I get enough help for my Earth plan.. But I'd need quite a bit.
#9
[quote]
Realism != fun
[quote]
The only pratical way to travel in such massive world would be via teleport/insta-travel. That would make 90% of the existing terrain useless, as nobody would see them. Someone crazy enough could leave a town and start walking in a certain direction to see what they would find, but I'm certain most would get bored and give up after a few hours. Then they'd realize it'd take the same amount of time to get back from where they came from.
A *much* smaller world can be far more maangeable, and still be vast enough to serve exploration needs without requiring you to spend a whole day to travel from a point to another.
Instead of storing constant-detail data for the whole world, why don't you store only key location data, and fill the gaps with parameter-based dynamically-generated data?
You could create custom data structures that define sparse shoreline outlines, determinate areas' vegetation/soil parameters, and the actual terrain geometry, landmark positionings, and vegetation for each dynamic tile is generated when the player is about to enter that tile, at run-time. That would greatly reduce the storage and pre-processing requirements. Of course, coding something like that would properly need an all custom terrain class or major modifications to Atlas.
10/06/2005 (6:09 am)
Having such massive terrain area in a game sounds pointless to me. Mostly when you plan to have a medieval setting game, where transportation methods are more limited. A boat would take weeks or months to cross certain oceans, and travelling by horse from a city to another would take a few real-word days, and I believe very few people would find that funny.[quote]
Realism != fun
[quote]
The only pratical way to travel in such massive world would be via teleport/insta-travel. That would make 90% of the existing terrain useless, as nobody would see them. Someone crazy enough could leave a town and start walking in a certain direction to see what they would find, but I'm certain most would get bored and give up after a few hours. Then they'd realize it'd take the same amount of time to get back from where they came from.
A *much* smaller world can be far more maangeable, and still be vast enough to serve exploration needs without requiring you to spend a whole day to travel from a point to another.
Instead of storing constant-detail data for the whole world, why don't you store only key location data, and fill the gaps with parameter-based dynamically-generated data?
You could create custom data structures that define sparse shoreline outlines, determinate areas' vegetation/soil parameters, and the actual terrain geometry, landmark positionings, and vegetation for each dynamic tile is generated when the player is about to enter that tile, at run-time. That would greatly reduce the storage and pre-processing requirements. Of course, coding something like that would properly need an all custom terrain class or major modifications to Atlas.
#10
10/06/2005 (12:18 pm)
Well, you seem to have sort of missed basically the entire point of this.. Having that much terrain available would be kinda cool, but yes, about 90% is useless. The point is to try to have that much. Theres no way all of it could be used. 
#11
I am in the middle of putting together a 256km x 256km terrain with 8 meter resolution in 2km x 2km sections. I've not tried it but I assumed that from Jacob's original post that you can have multiple Atlas terrains loaded simultaneously... I hope that's the case otherwise I'm in trouble. ;-)
Since the server really needs to load the whole terrain for collision detection, I figured it'd be best to keep the terrains smaller, but hopefully seamless.
That's quite likely the largest terrain I'll have to put together. We'll see if I can get it to work. So far I'm about 8 hours into the heightmap generation... I just hope it doesn't crash.
10/06/2005 (2:49 pm)
Well, the intial plan seemed a bit daunting and I'd definately not want to do it myself :PI am in the middle of putting together a 256km x 256km terrain with 8 meter resolution in 2km x 2km sections. I've not tried it but I assumed that from Jacob's original post that you can have multiple Atlas terrains loaded simultaneously... I hope that's the case otherwise I'm in trouble. ;-)
Since the server really needs to load the whole terrain for collision detection, I figured it'd be best to keep the terrains smaller, but hopefully seamless.
That's quite likely the largest terrain I'll have to put together. We'll see if I can get it to work. So far I'm about 8 hours into the heightmap generation... I just hope it doesn't crash.
#12
No screens for now because its nothing at all worth looking at, just a very very ugly flat square. But i set my viewing distance to 100,000.. my vid card held up for it but all i could see was endless flat.. A never-ending plane.. Its so amazing, I'm kind of in shock right now.. If I'm able to peice a world together, it'll be just so amazing!
10/19/2005 (6:12 pm)
Welll, fantastic news! It works thus far! I used a simple square, stretched the hell out of it, and placed a 14 by 14 square of em and got something slightly over the surface area of the moon. Fog is totally hacked to hell beucase of the stretching, but it should be fine later. Torque handled the large coords fine. Load time was a bit longer, but actually not bad, at least for now..No screens for now because its nothing at all worth looking at, just a very very ugly flat square. But i set my viewing distance to 100,000.. my vid card held up for it but all i could see was endless flat.. A never-ending plane.. Its so amazing, I'm kind of in shock right now.. If I'm able to peice a world together, it'll be just so amazing!
#13
10/19/2005 (6:23 pm)
It sounds like you have a square area big enough to start replaceing those flat terrain with more detailed/unflat terrain squares. :D
#14
10/19/2005 (6:27 pm)
Welll, I'm startin to run into some strange anomolies upon closer inspection.. I'm not sure what's causing all this though.. I'll give more details on it as more info arises..
#15
and unfortunatly, my computer prolly couldn't handle producing terrains at the sizes I need. My rebuilt one will though.
10/19/2005 (6:41 pm)
Ahh, scratch that. The problem I was having was I could never seem to find any connections between plates. No matter what i only would find 1. If I put my camera to spawn at the corner of 4, I would only be at the corner of one. But I figured out why. I forgot that these plates im using don't fully stretch the distance they need to so what I'm doing is placing the camera at the corner of one plate expecting to see 3 others, but they can't reach that far cause I didn't make them big enough. So all is well still!and unfortunatly, my computer prolly couldn't handle producing terrains at the sizes I need. My rebuilt one will though.
#16
When your terrain slope is great, chunked terrains don't fit well (except if your error metric ==1.0). It works with flat terrains, but not with mountains, or high slope terrains.
You may encounter texture problems also, (White texture instead of your TQT texture).
10/20/2005 (12:04 am)
PUTTING TERRAIN TOGETHER don't work !When your terrain slope is great, chunked terrains don't fit well (except if your error metric ==1.0). It works with flat terrains, but not with mountains, or high slope terrains.
You may encounter texture problems also, (White texture instead of your TQT texture).
#17
For the textures, well.. I'll see when I get there. But I'm going to try some stuff out maybe today. What I'm going to do first is make a tiled ocean terrain and build up from there.
10/20/2005 (3:12 am)
Well, I've already taken the slope thing into consideration. Theres actually going to be much less seams interacting between different terrains then you may think, so I can manage that pretty closely.For the textures, well.. I'll see when I get there. But I'm going to try some stuff out maybe today. What I'm going to do first is make a tiled ocean terrain and build up from there.
#18
10/20/2005 (3:37 am)
Quote:For the textures, well.. I'll see when I get there. But I'm going to try some stuff out maybe todayWhat kind of solution do you think about?
Quote:What I'm going to do first is make a tiled ocean terrain and build up from therevery good idea... so you can have a very huge terrain filled with large isles (4096x4096 heightmaps or tiles)... but make a great continent with this tiled method, seems to me difficult.
#19
Hard to think of a solution to a problem I haven't had yet.
Actually, shouldn't be difficult at all. The terrain is built by a 14X14 tile grid. All I have to do is design a map of my world in the same grid setting and then create the blocks I need and replace the same grid numbered block in the mission file.
10/20/2005 (8:54 am)
Quote:What kind of solution do you think about?
Hard to think of a solution to a problem I haven't had yet.
Quote:very good idea... so you can have a very huge terrain filled with large isles (4096x4096 heightmaps or tiles)... but make a great continent with this tiled method, seems to me difficult.
Actually, shouldn't be difficult at all. The terrain is built by a 14X14 tile grid. All I have to do is design a map of my world in the same grid setting and then create the blocks I need and replace the same grid numbered block in the mission file.
#20
If someone from GG could respond with any sort of info if this could be corrected, that'd be great. If not, not really a problem. I'll just end up splitting the world into 5 or 6 zones to correct the problem. Which I may end up doing anyhow because once I add in all the items too, things may start getting overkill in mission load. Dunno how a computer would handle all that item load.
Oh, and on a further note for the whole tiling issue, I hope to try to see if I can later on combine my files into one for the final version, so no problem there really anyhow. I saw a function being worked on in TSE for doing this, so ya.
10/20/2005 (6:23 pm)
Well upon inspection with a player in the game, seems things aren't as good as I had hoped.. I noticed in the mission editor that higher up coords began to write out in scientific notation it seemed, and I was a bit worried about this. Everything seemed fine until I got a player in there.. When I go beyond the point of exact coords, the player starts to scramble as he animated. The nodes start bouncin all over the place. The further out you go, the worse it gets. Eventually you turn into a swirling cloud of random peices.If someone from GG could respond with any sort of info if this could be corrected, that'd be great. If not, not really a problem. I'll just end up splitting the world into 5 or 6 zones to correct the problem. Which I may end up doing anyhow because once I add in all the items too, things may start getting overkill in mission load. Dunno how a computer would handle all that item load.
Oh, and on a further note for the whole tiling issue, I hope to try to see if I can later on combine my files into one for the final version, so no problem there really anyhow. I saw a function being worked on in TSE for doing this, so ya.
Torque Owner Robert Buckley
Good luck!