I know this engine is in early development but will users eventually be able to create Open World games?

Eventually yes, but how long "eventually" is is anybody's guess!

lee has hinted to infinite terrain for 2015 as a test idea for possibilities (may or maynot come to pass)
or he maybe do things the same as the elderscrolls games and fallout games by Bethesda, and incorporate the multi map stitching they use.
fallout 3 and new vegas plus elderscrolls games are not 1 big map but many many smaller maps stitched together to give the appearance of open world single map. you can see this when having to load new areas outside on the fly.. (no loading screen but a short loading of new areas assets and such). at some point in time we will of course also get multi map games available, i.e more levels linked by some zone marker or something like that, how that will work and when though I don't know lol.

Multi maps will come before larger maps, but developers will be able to make much larger maps by clever use of several smaller ones.

SC

Using the Multi Map stitching system would certainly save on resource usage

Probably not, more likely to increase it, unless they really decrease viewing distance, but still would be a nice feature along the road. What would be nice would be a feature to load into a different scene from anywhere, not a new level, as that would take ages, but a small unique scene you can set up for say, interiors for buildings which otherwise are inaccessible. This is possible now, but you would only move to a different part of the map, not a hidden area. So you would have to hide these areas somewhere in your scene at present and as such slow down the main level. Having some way to go to a unique area without having to unload the current level (we don't want a massive loading time here), while also not slowing the main scene by having many secretly hidden areas around would be useful. Workarounds could be made if occlusion is fixed possibly. Just by transporting you somewhere under the map, or way out of range for instance although at present that is not possible.
Of course we can speed things up when inside buildings. If you can't look outside them, that is, by disabling water and terrain, but a unique area of limited size or just a way to position them way out of the way, would be easier to work with I feel. Or of course, just having the engine insanely fast so it makes no odds, bar taking up map space.

Unlikely but not impossible.

You'd need serious manpower to make an open-world game anyway.

Not necessarily, as games such as Minecraft, Rust and Landmark are good examples of users making their own content, among others. But yes, for most games you need a lot of media, hence many artists, or big pockets to buy it all. Fair enough, many features from both are unavailable in Reloaded, but basics are still possible to an extent. Although I may be hoping for a little too much here, lol.

I don't think you are and i think it could work along the lines of a pre-load area going from one map to another and back giving the feel of open world.

@DVader the hiding another area for Interiors is totally possible and with some lua possible to minmise performance impact, you could have your interior scene set up on the edge of the map and have a zone covering it so that when player is not in the zone

@ AuShadow, I realize this. I did much experimentation on my Commando compo entry with it. In the end I gave it up, as hiding objects is not the same as them not being there in the first place. It may help for a couple of zones, but when you start adding

other engines also use load range (not lod) the load range could be used in the fpe and would work from the players position so you can set each entity's load range giving alot more fps.

if you really wanted such control you could also turn all the other settings off while you are hiding the entities
gravity, collision, animations etc
could also set the map into sections already in this manner so that it only loads areas which you are in or near
this is however quite a lot of work and is more of a (theoretical) temporary fix which i would only recommend on a finished game, a real solution to the fps would be much better though of course

i think that the terrain also needs a big fps boost as that alone will still cause a big drop
so yes in future having seperate maps with custom sizes would be very useful for this.

I have begged lee for selectable map sizes from day 1 lol.. would be nice to have the options to use diffenert size and shaped maps from a drop down or something, and some form of area transition between 2 maps or 1 map with multi areas that might be for separate buildings to save overall space or size of game ect would be good.. I will have to wait for the multi level standalones feature and everything though lol.
I find that the slider for terrain size is not changing the size of the terrain, it just hides it sort of temporarily from view which is not the same as you can just unhide this by walking closer to the edges of what visible.
the terrain map should be scalable downwards by grids from the outer edges until desired size for any given scene, I sometimes want to make a meat grinder map that's long but not to wide, other times I only want to do a small tower block for example and just build upwards for a indoor map ect. I don't need the whole thing all the time, also I would like to see more control of the random map generator lol, being able to pick say hill height and overall % of hills to plains. I find its takes a fair amount of time to get a map suitable in a balance of both hill scenary and plains construction sites.

All You make me to remember Zelda.

This should work as theater, you change the scenario and continue with the game. You will never need all things, since the player can not be everywhere at once.

It could create structures that would contain all the entities, characters, animations, etc, of each map, so only would have to load into memory the map that the player has chosen to play. The engine would have to only worry about the animations, collisions, gravity, etc., affecting the items involved in the active map.

But these are just ideas of an inexperienced like me.

3com

Obviously, with Lua you can control some of these things, but I doubt we can do that much in Lua for real performance gains. Try filling a level with loads of objects until things crawl down to 15 fps or so. Then put in a hide script. You won't notice a lot of difference, or at least I haven't in my tests. I haven't tried disabling animation, collision and gravity as well, this was before those commands were around, and so that may help. But you are still having to check through lists of objects in Lua, while Reloaded does the same, it's not gonna be awesome speed boosts. Any serious improvements have to be engine side, that's the main key. Lua tricks and such will help people refine stuff, but the core needs the speed to start with.
A fellow coder gave Reloaded a look awhile back and said it could be okay, but it still needs another couple of hundred fps on a blank map to allow for ai and such down the line, as they can eat up so much resources. I agree, and am hoping to see at least the beginnings of this in 1.9. I remember Lee saying who wants there levels running at over 700fps? Me. Then I can go mad and not have to worry about it running below 60 anytime soon

same here dvader m8

Very interesting of course.



Yes best not to get too ambitious at the moment.



The bottom line is the maths and engine efficiency throughout all its systems in managing large volumes of complex data apart from all the other complexities, instabilities and threats we all know about from long experience.



Not quite sure Reloaded will quite make everyone's aspirations for game making a possibility and I suspect one will have to live with the limitations of the technologies used and or incorporated.



Currently seems there will be a long way yet to go from the engine being in bits as now and when its back together hopefully at the very least it will be useable in some form and the current show stoppers hopefully working again. That would be a good start.



Whatever the quality of the engine core efficiency and stability across all its internal and external systems is the key to all things and you can only work within that framework at the end of the day. Work arounds and so on including as much effort and skill as you can or want to muster wont change the core and its capabilities itself and so will at best have limited influence.



Basic maths, the physics and natural laws of how they add up or don't dictate the end result. You cant cheat these things as they are fixed.



When things are not infinite as in our world then the laws of diminishing returns as with other things dictate there's always a limit on what you can do without adverse affects creeping in when the optimum balance is lost.



Like sharing out a pot of gold or dividing up the cake if something has is finite then you can move things from one place to another and or give more to one than another but if you want more of and for all you just have to make the pot or cake bigger if that's possible.



Reloaded is a cake and you will only have a certain amount to go round and given that the ingredients and bake are sound can feed only a limited number of people with what they want.



If you want more then you have to make it bigger in this case of managing data by having more power, stability and efficiency. In general clearly things can be made better which is why we continue to have better and faster hardware and software and to achieve that one has to advance understanding, knowledge and technologies the full limits of which are nowhere near yet reached quite likely.



How much of that Reloaded can call upon I have no idea either now or as things move forward.



Seems to me any game engine has to move forward with new advances in available technologies to be able to take maximum advantage of them.



To be fair Reloaded if you overlook the current hickups and recent releases and look at the wider picture, is and or has some potential to help users make some reasonable games as shown by what users have done with it to date, but currently at this time no one knows where it can or will go from here. It's in a state of limbo at the moment as far as end users are concerned.



Lee and TGC I am sure are trying to do the very best that can possibly be done given available resources and alike in relation to their particular situation which we or at least I know nothing of.



Just have to wait and see what the next release brings so the end users can make some valid assessment of the product in real time use as to where it is then. Thereafter who knows.



All just pie in the sky at the moment. All I know is my Reloaded at the moment is on the shelf with the other versions but that's my personal choice. I have to admit I cant help launching it sometimes as like everyone else here cant live without being inside a game making tool though currently my session experience does not usually last very long before I shut down again due to issues or it shuts me down by crashing.



Ooo the frustration of it all!



Happy Days!

Ignore if Reloaded is multi-thread, even a background worker, if not, this might help, thought.

3com

@DVader : Your idea of hiding sub-levels under the terrain is a good one, and one I might have opted for where it not for my ambition to make multi-level switching very fast. Essentially, only the terrain changes and loading of static pre-baked geometry

Sounds like a good idea. Not sure how it would work with mostly new assets in a level, but sounds good for keeping trees and such, that you will probably repeat a lot over many levels.

I feel the same i wouldn't want to use to much of the same assets in each level as i would get boring and very repetitive fast.