loading maps on the fly
schkorpio
I can mspaint Join Date: 2003-05-23 Member: 16635Members
I can mspaint Join Date: 2003-05-23 Member: 16635Members
<div class="IPBDescription">no more loading screens</div>Imagine this - a map ends, the players are in the ready room for that map, they are having a chat and victory chant etc, and during this time, a bulk head door opens, the players walk through it into a tunnel/phase gate/space shuttle which then opens up another bulk head door and this leads to the ready room for the next map, when most of the players are in the new ready room, the map loads while they chat.
this would do wonders for immersion
now lets say that players don't want the next map to load? they simply stay in the current ready room and the map repeats the round -its kind of like a voting system
games like dungeon siege did it, so why not - with people having gigs and gigs of ram these days.
if this is done well, then imagine where it could lead to for something like ns3 -> a giant space station with 100's of rooms connected by bulkheads with a maze 100's of tunnels and vents, that all dynamically load as you approach them, or while you are in a bulk head - with perhaps even hundreds of players and 10's of commanders.
this would do wonders for immersion
now lets say that players don't want the next map to load? they simply stay in the current ready room and the map repeats the round -its kind of like a voting system
games like dungeon siege did it, so why not - with people having gigs and gigs of ram these days.
if this is done well, then imagine where it could lead to for something like ns3 -> a giant space station with 100's of rooms connected by bulkheads with a maze 100's of tunnels and vents, that all dynamically load as you approach them, or while you are in a bulk head - with perhaps even hundreds of players and 10's of commanders.
Comments
Regardless, if the engine wasn't already designed to do this, it would take re-writing massive amounts of code and testing it all which would delay NS2 for many more months or years.
I once heard of a PS2 game that did something similar to this, and it cost the game developer well over a million dollars and almost a year to finish.
Moreover I prefer faster loading times over slow loading times for the sake of chatting, running around and whatever.
Now due to the fact they have LUA for the weapons, I think they would have at least planned this in the game, maybe not on this level. For all we know this could have been nexus. Or BUS if you rather call it.
However the problem with all loading screen less games, is they have to restrict where you can go at anyone time, or load everything. It is like Morrowind, you don't get a loading screen walking around outside, but if you try to teleport with recall, instant loading screen.
Besides if they write this well, you can get more fps, because you have to load less into memory, so you can work more on where you are. It just a pain to do it to that level though, but there is no reason why they can not.
I only have 2gigs :(
You can buy all of us more ram if you want.
The Unreal design, just for your information, is to maintain what's called a persistent level that represents the entire level. The map then can contain any number of sublevels that are loaded and unloaded as needed based on area volumes or scripting. As you enter a volume or hit a script trigger, the newly loaded level will stream in the background, becoming visible only when it has finished loading. When you leave the area or otherwise tell the game to drop the level, it immediately dumps it and then wipes it from active memory a short time later. This allows for completely seamless transitions between levels (provided they share the same world space, though you could append HL/HL2-style landmarks to the system) with no need for loading screens. You'll see this within Gears of War chapters (anytime you walk slow for a radio communication, the next level is streaming in the background; the slow speed prevents you from escaping the level and limits how much needs to be loaded at once), or in the elevators in Mass Effect.
The linked ready room idea is actually really interesting, and not dissimilar to a good hub-based SP campaign design. That said, don't plan on seeing it in NS2, but Max's design for things seems like it ould handle this relatively easily in a future version.
that makes me feel fuzzy inside :D
Have you played TF2 or other maps like left 4 dead?
The map loading times are very quick, better loading maps, then a big expensive server.
Though I doubt this will happen with natural selection, but in all practicality, would you really want to delay ns2 until they can figure out a way to do something which has never been done before with a half-life2 engine which could take potentially months just because you'd like to have a 'pre-load' ready room? Be honest.
ok i'll be honest.
ns2 isn't on the hl2 engine.
and its not something that needs to be out on first release - they have mentioned several times that they will continue improving ns2
If you actually believe that, there's a bridge in San Francisco I'd like to sell you. There's a wide variety of issues that make this model unattractive to anybody who isn't a technologically illiterate, money-grubbing executive.
I never said there weren't issues with that model. If there weren't, games would have long since started being produced in this manner. As it stands, you only have a few internet games using this model.
So everyone goes back to the ready room... and run around... The new map gets loaded... as people finish loading the new map, they are moved to the new ready room, and the old map is unloaded.
In the meantime, players can keep talking to each other and players on slower computers are the last to leave the previous ready room.
Even if the current map unloaded, and your screen went black, as long as you could keep typing and reading what other people type, and talk while listening to other people talking, this would be just as good. A hell of a lot better than twiddling your thumbs looking at L O A D I N G . . .
Basic staging area that's a marine briefing room or some sort of cargo space / passenger room in a shuttle. Doors open when everyone has loaded the new Readyroom and doors there open when the map has been loaded (for each individual?)
Or the days when you couldn't touch the joystick while your game was loading or it would corrupt the game and you had to restart the system...
I wonder what the going rate for a working C64 is on ebay?
I wonder what the going rate for a working C64 is on ebay?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
ahhh nostalgia
Joystick
Uh... my Atari managed it in under 10 Seconds O_o
...until someone mixed up our power transformers and the thing bursted in flames.