Hello. I tried walking my player off the end of the terrain to see what would happen. He fell off and went under the terrain and was unable to get back on. I figured this more a feature request than a bug. I think some kind of default collision detection at the end of the terrain to keep players from falling off the terrain would be good. If that is possible. I have no idea how that would be implemented. It would stink if someone were playing halfway through your game then got stuck underground. You would hope people wouldn't wander off the terrain, but why leave it to chance.

I think you would create your own boundaries within your game to make sure the player doesn't get to the edge.

yes, I thought of that too, but putting walls and such around the edge of the terrain is an ugly way to do it, and building a forest or such could eat up all the game resources. I don't know. What did you have in mind?

I agree with dennisb.



We need some simple way of preventing players reaching the very edge of the map. I don't mind if it is hard coded in the engine but a user definable playable or non-playable region would be a more elegant way of doing it, something like the win or checkpoint zones perhaps?



I've already dropped off the edge once and had fun exploring the world from underneath. Couldn't get back to the surface though.

I'm not sure that's really an issue, as I wouldn't let the player get within sight of the edge. I mean, if you're looking at the skybox you can actually see that your approaching the edge of the flat world - which we all know is really round - right? Not only do I not want the player to fall off, I don't want him to know there is an edge, so I'm going to prevent him from reaching it by quite a distance. We have to be responsible for some of this.



Brian.

Even if you create a terrain with the auto generate feature and climb to the top of a hill you can often see the edge of the world and drop off. Though the world being very large its not infinite enough to accommodate seeing the edge of the world without fog hiding it. I don't thing fog affects the skybox at horizon level and its density at end ranges I don't think are editable.



Ideally it would be best if the engine could prevent player fall off or prevention of entities getting to the edge by a specified range using some method perhaps a non enter able zone or texture control this because as has been pointed out there may be implications otherwise. Clearly adding a lot of boundaries as walls and such like is not visually sometimes helpful - though perhaps one could add (paint) an invisible wall especially if that was engine supported as performance may be an issue adding a complete perimeter barrier of a lot of physical entities otherwise? Unnecessary perhaps on engine drain if another way can be found by the engine design if that could be more efficient which I am sure it could be.



We have already seen reports that in large complex levels Performance is being badly affected.



Looking at Lees Blog of TGC are aware of the failings of the current system on performance and fps when looking to the future and adding much more to the engine when its already strained.



Looks like Lee is going to be re-writing half of it from the beginning so who knows how things will change. Best wait and see.

I'd have to agree that "edge drop off" is an issue. Another engine that I have used has a way of dealing with this. Much similar to the "win" and "trigger" zone idea above, a "collision marker" would be great. Or perhaps using a "trigger marker" with a "playcannotpass" command. I really like the configurable "zones" thing. Dragging the points to meet your needs. Something like this for collisions would be great.

The way I've been doing it thusfar is by simply creating cliffs that the player cannot climb at the extent of where I want them to be able to go on the map. However, surrounding your entire map with cliffs for every level would not be practical in a production game - player would get bored of "the same old thing". I like the idea of being able to mark the edge of a zone arbitrarily (not having to necessarily create a "square" zone) but also being able to have some sort of backdrop scenery so it doesn't look like an "edge of the world" thing.

I dont see this as a bug, as we all are game designers it is our job to block off the map, what I do is create my maps at first then I use the Rock Entities and Mountains to block the world, I also made a road leading out that was blocked off with debre to make it look less tacky, all game engines (that I have used) have world drop of, its part of building a game, use your mind and get creative the maps are so huge and imo if you surround the edges of the map in mountains and rocks they look fine and perfect. -sorry for any typos ahead of time.

I don't think anyone here was suggesting it was a bug. In fact, the OP even said he sees this more as a feature request, not a bug, and I have not seen anyone post in this thread otherwise.



However, as a feature request, I don't see anyone here (including myself) requesting something so outrageous that it warrants discrediting.



As a game designer, it is our job to do what we can given the tools we work with to make a professional product (if that is what you are using the software/tools for in the first place), but it certainly does not mean we should give up hope for expecting more.

the world or levels need IMO to have solid but invisible walls like a cube (the player zone) outside is the no-player zone or no-player terrain . if the player drops off the map buy-way of a glitch or hole in the level they need to be automatically re-spawned at the last checkpoint.

IMO this may help. like have a colored line in the edit map or something? So that you can set the size of the zone. Let you create your own boundaries within your game. a what if, the level has a design mistake or hole? (glitch) can the player recover?

Well, one thing to consider is that most MMORPG games out there have a /stuck command (or similar) that the player can use if they get stuck behind/in/around some unruly entity/terrain/other that places them at a valid location in close proximity to where they got stuck.



This would probably be helpful as part of the runtime engine that a game designer could optionally add in to their product (using whatever command format they want to design for their game). So I wouldn't mind seeing something like that added in to at least allow for "recovery".

I'm new here and a gold backer (still awaiting for confirmation, so forgive any ignorance about the product) but since the game has physics built into it, that also means there is a tool to handle walls etc.. available. My solution (without actually having the product to test the idea) would be (in this case) to put up invisible objects that are impassable, and let those restrict motion.



Just a thought.

I don't know about you... but for myself, when I "play" a game, I *hate* invisible walls. I'm all for the open world experience. However, its probably not reasonable to expect a never-ending world either. So I think I would rather have natural impediments to the player's movement, but still give it that *endless* feel (even if someone is on a hill not too far from the end of the map as someone else mentioned in this thread) by having a backdrop or something that can be displayed to present the *illusion* that the map goes on further, even though the player can't reach it due to the object impeding their way. However, the object impeding their way needs to be practical, and variable (so not just the same old cliff method I described earlier in this thread).



This also goes along with my suggestion (in a different thread) regarding re-sizable maps. So when you *expand* the map, and the default or chosen texture is expanded out to the new extent of the map, you could then *break open* (or remove) that impediment. For example like some bolder landslide that was covering an old road between some impassible mountains, and then of course adding in your new map area and a new impediment near the new end of map. The backdrop can then remain the same and it will look like you simply reached an area previously unreachable without changing the distant "look" of the exact same map.



Well, I hope that was explained well enough to be understandable.

The engine could automatically put a fog at the edges of the map that act as poison gas. That way if you go into it, you would be able to turn around. Or die and respawn I guess.

The same could be done for deep water and extreme heights. Deep water is pressure that hurts you, and heights is lack of oxygen.

Just a thought.