Better Map For Subnautica
reddirtgamer
Join Date: 2017-10-03 Member: 233375Members
Why not contain the map inside a Crater, that way the game feels natural instead of unnatural void that never ends? Instead of procedure generated which makes the game boring if you decide to explore further than usual. You can also come up with new things buried inside the walls of the crater, like alien seabase or experimental gene manipulation. Below 3,000 meters, you can start add new type of sea life that adapted to the crushing depths and maybe creatures even more massive than the most massive creature you have the game at the moment. It would also be interesting to find wrecks at the bottom of the ocean as well... from the alien race that manipulated the creatures on the planet to their own ends. In the future content, you could easily collapse the walls of the crater and expand outwards. Not only would players be wondering what is beyond the crater, it would pose a imposing feeling that you are cut off from the rest of the world.
Comments
I also like subnautica's playarea as it is. The map is colossal, and tripling the size from one end of the map to the other doesn't sound like a good idea. New areas could easily be tacked on to any side of the map without issue.
Maybe after a certain point there could be currents that push the player back into the game map (or some other barrier that works even in creative mode) since there's already issues with graphical glitches when the player gets too far out.
I believe that was the original design, but it doesn't pose well with an open ocean game. Also it feels unnatural.
In the end you can build a rocket, so what could stop you from making a simple plane and explore outside the crater?
@gamer1000k
Procedural seafloor is a nice idea and suggestions about it come and goes. Keep in mind that ocean basin around volcanoes on earth may linger between 5-6 km, so it can go much deeper than what we can explore in the game.
In my opinion the void should be slightly less steep, instead of that nearly vertical wall. So you could walk to your limit depth, with procedural resources spawning sparsely on it.
Somewhere beyond an invisible line would start popping ghost leviathans, as currently.
In reality, this is because the devs have already said the game is pretty much finished and the only real content that's going to be added at launch is the rocket. But from a game standpoint-- why would Alterra send you plans for a plane? They're under the impression that they're rescuing a bunch of people from the Aurora by sending the rocket plans.
Actually it is much much larger than what you see in this map. The crater would be huge, basically remnants of a ancient asteroid that struck the planet.
They don't need to. Imho, If you can build subs and rockets then you can build planes. Or at least something similar that will allow you to get over the mountains if you want to.
Anyways, that's beside the point.
I just argued that stucking the character in a crater would degrade the immersion of an "ocean planet". It is quite simple really, if it is surround by mountains it is no longer an ocean, but a lake.
They already have one asteroid that struck the map - it was the excuse for permanently sealing up the Dunes - ILZ entrance. The explanation given for the map shape and the abyssal nothing beyond it was it was a giant volcano in the past, which I kinda hope is just a placeholder since it'd potentially limit post-1.0 biome additions in the future.
Then again some thinking and they could add pretty much anything as a "deeper than 700m+" surface biomes around the edge, so who knows.