as the title says, i am curious as to would the streaming terrain solve all problems regarding size memory issues of frame rates etc? i mean you playing on the fly meaning it will work better for all machines? and this would solve people and the issues of map size, maybe i am wrong, but would this go hand in hand with save and load?

also how would it work with distance? views? i am baffled but intrigued.

When you stream terrain you would only need a finite amount of active terrain, but it would still need to be the size of the present one for distance visibility so no reduction in memory footprint here. As the streaming terrain would be loaded from a virtual file storing a much larger terrain area, you would take a performance hit as you generated the new edges of the terrain as you moved through your world, but a multi-core system could reduce the impact of this game speed hit (though not entirely). The current system is locked to four textures, but a streaming system would require more video memory to stream in texture changes as you move through your landscape (i.e. tropical to glacial), and again a small performance hit on the generation and introduction into video memory to be rendered. The main benefit to streaming terrain is not memory conservation or game performance, it's to allow VERY large worlds to be created in a single continuous run with no loading pages. The problem with adding massive landscapes now is that we don't have the tools to populate an area that size (i.e. you would not want to spray trees down over a thousand mile square area, it would take you weeks). For landscapes this large, you would want some procedural generation going on to quickly shape valleys, hills, mountains and pre-populate them with the correct amount of rock, grass, ice, trees, shrubs and other fauna so you can start with a fresh complete landscape and then carve your game into it.

sounds very interesting indeed, do you think you can do it?

I can do almost anything, it just takes time (and then a little more time)

It's a feature on the voting list, just not high up yet. We really need more engine speed first though, or we would have really big empty maps.

i agree and disagree to some extent. this is low down but speed ups is always constant so it goes without saying, at the moment there is a lot of things that need adding, i for one think ai and lighting and x11 need adding, x11 was being sorted but it got dropped, as to core features i agree which is why i think building creators are not even engine features, it is almost 3rd party, so i agree that speed up is more essential than building kit, but now that the voting is in place we must adhere to it, and to suddenly drop the voting would benefit those who want it dropping, like after building creator drop the votes! that would benefit some, but those who may want quests without buying them ( i know it is cheap but still a paying store item and still being voted for unless free) then no complaints. but still in the democratic way of voting i sadly think it has gone too far to be fair to drop it. i am one who thinks a big mistake how it was laid out, could of been catagorised as in primary secondary etc. most of my wanted features are way way down way way down. but we must abide with the rules and fairly wait. not an offence and a valid point you make dvader, and i was also just asking how he would implement it and is it definately do-able, and so i was checking to see how it would lay out so i can design for 4 years till it is implemented. that was the aim of the thread.

happy days

No problems, I was just saying it is on the list, so is probably going to be implemented at some point. I agree the list is somewhat stacked for easy to add gameplay features rather than actual engine features at the moment. It doesn't help that there are so many options to pick from. Fair play to Lee though, he has added some very useful lua commands of late as well, at my request and others. I think of late the updates have been good, adding a few lua commands each update alongside the current voting list feature, is a good compromise to keep both advanced, beginners and everyone in-between happy.

The next update for instance allows for weapons to be carried over when moving to different levels. One of my youtube viewers asked me the question and I checked, found he was quite correct, informed Lee and it was fixed the same day! I also found while working on a new 2D project (similar to my Alien Invasion example) that 1000 sprites is the current limit. That was not good as it massively altered what I could do with my idea. In the next update we now have a 10000 limit which is somewhat more useful

We will get there. I'm hoping the features will be knocked off the list at a reasonable pace. I understand the reason why people want quest stuff and such to be made easier out the box. I just think that the engine is the most important thing to get 100% right for GG to shine.

totally agree with you.

i noticed the cap when i made my map with fog of war effect, good to know it can look a lot better soon

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I love it! That's the attitude that's got GameGuru as far as it had come!

loving the weapons being carried over ...yummy still waiting on some vehicle collision for the first game i did (shocking my speeders go straight through buildings) lol hey ho said poo (have to wait) but then i think ok lets do a medieval fantasy, no hand held torch when your in the dark , no shield altho smallg made one that was really cool and good fun :/ but these things will come im sure . Lighting was a pain but have it working to a nice level atm, i just think that the feature vote should be just that and combined with 60% essential engine updates so the features do get added but the main parts that make GG tick are added also