Continuous world

This article describes a future concept. It may still have some open issues and it was not decided, yet, whether to implement it in this way.

Currently the world is divided into zones. Crossing from one zone into another is visible to the player as walking towards a border and then being moved over. In a continuous world players and creatures would not notice these zone borders at all.

Features

• Players should not notice the tile grid (that is another topic)
• Players should not notice zone boarders
• Players should not get update message about a complete zone anymore

Notes from the Arianne project meeting 2010

• Zone change invisible to player
• Creatures must be able to cross zones
• Creatures must not be dragged to newbie zones
• Zones keeping creatures out need a natural barrier, or use protection
• Creatures walking back after invisible boarder are easy victims to archers
• Client refactored first?
• Marauroa needs a perception mechanism that is not purely based on zones.

TODO: Collect notes from older irc meetings

Literature

Relevant

• The Continuous World of Dungeon Siege
• gamedev-forum: Continuous World in a 2D game
• Game Development: XNA: Stream loading a HUGE 2D world map

Might be relevant

• Game Development: Best Way to Create A Map for a 2D Game?
• Game Development: Level Implementation
• Game Development: Game State 'Stack'?